What Makes A Good Side Job?

You’ve decided to earn some extra cash or start a part time gig to eventually turn full time and quit working for the machine.  Nice choice, but what to do?

When researching your options, keep these questions and suggestions in mind:

1.  What do you like to do in your spare time?

2.  What is it about your work that you absolutely enjoy or are good at?

• A common saying is to do what you’re passionate about.  Many people have found that whatever you do, the passion comes when you become good at it.

3.    If you could design your ideal job on paper, no matter if it earns money or not, what would that be?

• This is your brainstorming session.  Write down all jobs in mind, tasks you enjoy, what you enjoyed doing as a kid, problems you’ve noticed in your community, businesses you thought could do better, trends happening today…jot down anything and everything in a list, then start connecting two or three ideas together to see if any unique business ideas spring up.

4.  Take that job you just created and make a list of equipment, knowledge you might need in order to do it successfully.

5.  Who are you going to market this to?

• Is something that’s all encompassing or could this be a niche to a special audience?

6.  How are you going to promote and let people know what you’re offering?

• Most people are on limited budgets and can start with free or cheap marketing in the beginning, such as Craigslist, newspaper ads, posting signs on power poles.

7.  What kind of different services are you going to offer and what are you charging for each?

8.  What type of business model will you use?

9.  Will this be something to do strictly part time or eventually full time?  Would the full time income be enough to support you?

10.  Is it in demand that enough people would pay you for your services?

• Check the phone book, use Google keyword tool,  and do a web search for your business idea to see how much competition is in your territory.  The more competition there is, the more noise you’ll have to make in order to be seen (aka – more advertising and promotion money).  Or it just might take longer to be noticed by the market as you build clientele and word of mouth starts spreading about you.

11.  What kind of funding will you need in order to get this started?

Work this out on paper and this will help give you a clearer vision on what you might want to do.  You might’ve designed a whole new way of earning money that no one else even thought about!  If it didn’t completely make a clear way of earning an income, check out the side job ideas listed in this site and hopefully the ideas will start flowing.