I had a birthday last month and I bought myself a present- a course to learn how to start a drop shipping business. I had published a blog back in January talking about how I was thinking about drop shipping as a possible side hustle and I was looking into some courses (see my blog … Continue reading I’m diving into drop shipping as a side hustle
Tag: side hustle nation
Should my next side hustle be to dive into drop shipping?
The one thing I have been thinking about as a potential money maker from my original list is drop shipping. In a nutshell, drop shipping is where you sell someone else’s product on your website, when you get the money from the customer, you order it from your supplier at a discounted rate and then supplier ships the product directly to the customer. The beauty of this method of selling is that you don’t create or build the products and you never have to carry any inventory.
Reflecting on my first year of my Side Hustles
A year ago I had just turned 50 and decided that I wanted to shake up my life a bit. Not anything drastic like having another child, skydiving, getting a divorce or walking barefoot across hot coals but I just didn’t want to be remembered as someone who worked in sales her whole career, had kids, drove a minivan and was constantly tired. I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone and try new things without changing my whole life or having a mid life crisis (at this point in my life I’m more of a minivan than a sports car kind of person any way).
Creating The Side Hustle Journey website and blog
About 5 months after starting my The Ordinary Parent Facebook group and deciding to brand myself as The Ordinary Mom for my side hustles, I decided that others might find value in going through this journey with me. I had the epiphany on one of my long drives for work that I wanted to publicly document this process. I will say that I’m an excellent documenter (I think it’s one of my special gifts) and realized I had tons of notes in Evernote and on Google Docs about my side hustle journey thus far.
Navigating the machine of Merch by Amazon to try to sell t-shirts
I had been hearing on podcasts that Merch by Amazon is a great side hustle but that’s it’s hard to get approved by Amazon and the wait is long. That is why I tested the water on Teespring before jumping into the big leagues of Merch by Amazon with my https://teespring.com/stores/the-ordinary-mom site. After learning how to create on demand print t-shirts on Teespring, I decided I would attempt the big league of Merch by Amazon but I didn’t know how so I once again utilized podcasts for advice.
10 tips to help you start a side hustle
So you want to start a side hustle but don’t have any extra time. As a mom of 3 elementary aged kids, 1 dog (we had 2 but, sadly, one died a few months ago), 2 hamsters, a full time job, tons of kids sports and other kid activities and a busy family life, if I can do it so can you. I set aside 2 hours a week to devote to it. That makes it a slow process but I look forward to that time every week and I have found it gives me more energy instead of taking it away. Part of my side hustle journey is that I want to share my learnings, successes and failures with others to help them on their own side hustle journeys. I want to help create a community of people who are passionate about what they do and have the freedom to follow their dreams.
How To Use Fiverr To Outsource Your Creative Needs
In my ongoing journey to figure out a side hustle (or three or five), I stumbled across Fiverr in a podcast from The Side Hustle Nation: https://www.sidehustlenation.com/how-to-start-a-bounce-house-rental-business/ The podcast episode was about starting a bouncy house business (which I had no interest in doing) but what I am learning that no matter what side hustle someone is doing, even if it is something that you would never want to do, they always have at least one or two nuggets about starting or running a side hustle that I find relevant and helpful. In this podcast, the nugget I found was about outsourcing work to Fiverr. I had never heard of Fiverr so I went to their website to see what they do. They consider themselves “the world’s largest freelance marketplace” and you can outsource everything from graphic design, video editing, business plan creation to astrology readings. It’s pretty amazing and now that I know about it I wonder how I could have lived so long without it (I had the same realization a few months ago when my sister-in-law introduced me to Etsy).
Tweaking The Ordinary Mom Facebook Page and dipping my toes into the t-shirt business on Teespring
As I described in my last blog, I finally took action on something and started a closed Facebook page in August 2018. (https://thesidehustlejourney.com/2019/04/28/taking-action-by-starting-a-closed-facebook-page/) After purchasing the URL http://www.theordinarymom.com from WordPress and all of the extras I thought I needed in case I created a website, I had spent $98. To sign up for your own WordPress account to start your own side hustle journey, click here: https://wordpress.com/alp/?aff=13401&cid=2093430 (FYI- this is an affiliate link and I’ll make money if you sign up this way).
Narrowing down my options and getting close to taking action
After spending my summer binging podcasts on http://www.thesidehustlenation.com during my long drives for business, in August 2018 I decided I need to create a short list and then take action on something-- anything-- to move forward on this journey.
How I spent the summer binging podcasts about side hustles
I’m on a side hustle journey. I don’t know where it will go but I’m enjoying the ride. My first attempt was to think about starting a propane delivery service. See that experience in my blog at https://thesidehustlejourney.com/2019/02/19/the-first-attempt-propane-delivery/. After researching what it would entail to start a propane delivery service, I decided it was too much work with too little margins and I didn’t think I could do it as a side hustle while keeping my day job and my sanity. I stepped back to regroup and realized that I had a blank slate and didn’t know what I wanted to do. I searched the internet for good side hustle resources and came across Nick Loper’s website called The Side Hustle Nation (https://www.sidehustlenation.com/). He has great information on it and tons of podcasts.