Last week, we have shared five great ways to earn a side income. However, since we are feeling very generous indeed, here are five more easy and quick ways to earn that extra money.
1. Bake a Cake
When you are good at a hobby or a craft and people are willing to pay you for it, perhaps it’s time to listen to them and actually charge for it. That’s what happened to Nicole Lynn Goh. The creative lass who bakes as a hobby was given an opportunity to display her decadent creations at her sister’s flower shop a few years ago. Her sister urged her to make macarons as cupcakes and cookies were on a downward trend then. Knowing next-to-nothing about macarons, Nicole took three months to perfect the craft under the tutelage of a chef, who was a friend of her sister. Her macarons were so good that she soon quit her day job as a make-up artist and Babycakes Sweet Shoppe was born. Today, Babycakes is well known for its heavenly macarons and Nicole is happily busy catering to glamorous events and fun functions. The secret of her success lies in differentiating Babycakes by perfecting and honing her own signature macarons, and to continue coming up with innovative themes and designs for the events she caters to.
2. Be a Virtual Assistant
Want a location independent side job that gives you the flexibility of working where and when you want? If so, being a virtual assistant might just be right up your alley. A virtual assistant takes the tedious and mundane tasks off the hands of professionals and entrepreneurs so that they can focus on their business. Platforms such as Supahands offers the opportunity to be a virtual assistant (called SupaAgents) where you can provide services in the area of your expertise ranging from data entry, general information research, transcription, document formatting, booking appointments, lead generation, etc. Anyone can be a SupaAgent including professionals, students, stay-at-home mums and even retirees. It’s a great way to generate some extra cash when you have free time in your hands.
3. Offer Tuition/Coaching Services
If you love to teach curious minds, put those serious mathematics, language or piano skills to good use by giving tuition lessons. Depending on your preference and patience level, you can choose to tutor children and/or adults. It’s easy to promote your business, too. You can simply put a signboard in front of your home or advertise on online platforms such as My Private Tutor, which allows you to list your tuition services for a monthly fee (for a Premium subscription). The rates can vary greatly — you can charge as low as RM15 or as high as RM200 per hour depending on your qualifications and subject matter. However, if you price yourself too low, you may get more students but the perception may be that your quality of service is low, too. There’s also the power of the word of mouth. If you are good, the existing students will recommend you to their friends, which is great for business continuity.
And if you are a good listener and love guiding people who are stuck in the rut, you can opt to be a life coach. Julia Lim, a savvy marketer, discovered the wonders of coaching as a better way to lead people and decided to venture into that field upon retirement. But first, she had to undergo many hours of training and hands-on coaching before she earned her coaching certificate. Now, Julia finds her work very rewarding and she has clients from all over the world including corporations where she conducts face-to-face classes and individuals whom she coaches online. Which brings us to our next business idea…
4. Create an Online Course
Take your one-on-one tuition services a step further by creating an online course to reach out to students worldwide. We know of a housewife in Shah Alam with five young children. She is well-known for making the best traditional cakes and her reputation extends far beyond the borders of Shah Alam. Alas, due to her hectic schedule in taking care of five kids, it was hard for her to conduct a regular home-based cooking class. Renting a shop lot was out of the question as the cost was too high. Still, she had two free hours a day when her kids are at school to spare. She decided to make full use of these two precious hours to start an online class as well as via a WhatsApp group on how to make traditional cakes. The course fees were priced affordably and her business venture gained such a rousing response that she eventually had to limit the number of online students.
Today, she earns more than an office executive while being able to manage her family at home well. You can do it, too! Even if you are not able to create live online courses, you can easily build a website to upload video courses, the course syllabus of your video content, eBooks to help reinforce the lessons, podcasts which students can listen to on their free time and other related content at a suitable package price. That way, you can earn money even while you sleep.
5. Join a Referral/Affiliate Marketing Programme
In today’s world, people would read online reviews before they make a purchase decision, big or small. And if the reviews come from a trusted source or favourite blogger, the chances of purchase are much higher. So if you have a blog with decent traffic, it’s time to consider joining an affiliate marketing programme, if you haven’t already. You can be an affiliate through global entities such as Amazon Associates, Agoda, ClickBank, etc. Affiliates make money by recommending products on their blogs in hopes that their readers will click the links and make purchases through them. For example, if you have had a great experience staying at a hotel, you can write a raving review on your blog and put the link to that hotel which leads to the Agoda website. The link contains your affiliate ID and when your readers click on it and books that hotel through that link, you will get the pre-agreed commission from that transaction. This is your chance to connect your favourite products and services with your readers looking for trusted providers, while you make some money out of it. It doesn’t cost the both of you anything, too. Win-win!
As mentioned in our previous blog post, while the extra income from these part-time jobs will come in handy to meet your daily expenses and even emergencies, it is equally important to protect all that hard-earned income. Especially when what you earn is reliant upon the number of hours and effort you put in. What happens when you are suddenly could not work due to one of life’s unexpected events? Here’s where EZCergas comes in. Find out how you can get daily cash pay outs which not only helps to supplement those unexpected medical bills but to also provide a safety income net when you are unable to work.