Skip boring side hustles and monetise your hobbies

Side Hustles have become all the rage in the last few years. Whether it's caused by stagnating wages, lack of attachment to our careers, a desire to earn more, or dipping the toe into self-employment, the rates of side hustles are rising. To go with it are rising stress levels are we find ourselves working eight hours a day at our regular job, and another 2-3 hours on our side hustles.

For many people side hustles equal burnout. It means less time on our hobbies, less time with our friends and family, and less time recharging doing nothing.

Still keen to side hustle? The trick is in your choices.

Everyday I'm hustlin'

I have a crazy idea. I think that every single person reading this is already doing something they can make money from. That something might not be the next Google (heck, it probably isn't) but it is worth $20 a month, you just need to slap a price tag on it and do some quick advertising. 

If you want it to be the next Google, then you're going to have to put in some serious effort and thinking about what your market niche is, how to price it, and how to advertise it. 

However, if you want to start today, all you need is a lick of courage and a dash of inspiration.

Okay, sales pitch aside - I'm not going to sell you anything - here's a list of ways that I could be making money from things I already do. 

Hustle life

The Great Outdoors

Do you like hiking? Do you like dogs? I love both of these things. There are people out there who have built businesses out of taking peoples dogs on hikes! This isn't your regular boring 20 minute jaunt around the neighbourhood. We're talking adventure!

You can make a few dollars walking dogs around your neighbourhood if that's your jam, but you can do even better with adventures. Tom and his dog Captain do adventures for $29 an hour per dog, and take up to six dogs on each adventure. That's $174 per trip! In his case, the dogs are collected in the van, then taken walking (off-lead!) through national parks, playing in fields, and jumping in lakes.

You could get started with minimal outlay, get some seat covers for the car, a bag full of treats, some collapsible water bowls and you're set. The dog owner can supply leashes, and any walking harness their dog might use.

Maybe you aren't comfortable taking that risk with other peoples dogs - you could be a tour guide instead! Finding dog friendly spaces can be difficult, so people will be willing to pay for you to lead a hike through dog friendly places, especially if you can show them your favourite watering holes.

Don't like dogs? Do it without them. National Parks run their own hiking tours, but there is nothing stopping you advertising yourself as a guide and making some new friends along the way - just make sure you aren't misleading people about your qualifications.

Of course, not everyone likes other people. If exploring the great outdoors is your alone time, and you don't want to interrupt that, maybe you could capture it instead. Videography and Photography aren't easy, and they definitely won't give you the same cash-in-hand experience, but it's an avenue you can explore.

Create It, Sell It

If you're already creating things, odds are you could sell those things. I don't just mean bead bracelets on etsy (although that can be lucrative if that's your jam). There are many many forms of creating, and many different ways of doing it.

If you like drawing, you don't need to draw photo-realistic art on commission to make money from it. Perhaps you like doing goofy, snarky cartoons? You could list those on RedBubble, offer it up as a sticker, on a mug, or a t-shirt.

If you love photography, it's not all wedding photography and maternity shoots. You can list your snaps on Shutterstock, Alamy or iStock. While you'll get paid more to go to an event, or do a specific shoot, you can generate passive income through sales - just list it and wait for the royalties to roll in.

I won't pretend selling art is easy, but if you already create these things just for fun, there are ways you can sell them. 

Growing a money tree

The obvious one here is to grow and sell fruits and vegetables. However since that's obvious, let's skip to some other ideas.

If you have half a green thumb, you can propagate plants and sell the sprouts. Let me open by saying I am terrible at gardening. I cannot grow anything from seed, ever. My chickens are better at growing seeds than I am (in fact, half my plants come from the seeds they didn't eat that have sprouted).

However, even I and my lack of seed raising skill can propagate plants. If you have a tomato plant, you can cut off all the sucker shoots when their 10-15cm, stick them in a pot of dirt and have another plant in a couple of weeks. The same trick works for most perennials herbs, raspberries and other vine plants. If you're growing strawberries you can split out the runners. 

Anything that you can propagate, you can sell and since it didn't cost you anything, it's all profit.

Of course, if you're terrible at plants you can still turn a profit from and empty patch of dirt. Chickens are wonderfully easy to raise and lay an egg a day. You can cut down the feed costs by collecting kitchen scraps, or even collecting scraps from your local cafe. At the moment four chickens cost me less than $15 a month to feed, and lay over 80 eggs a month. If I sold all the eggs I could turn a $20 profit each month, but I like eggs and I tend to eat them myself.

If you're really truly terrible in the garden and don't want to raise animals, you could still make money from compost. Simply mound up your kitchen scraps and throw your shredded newspapers and bills on top. Flip it over once a month, and when it's nice and crumbly throw it in a bag.

Okay, admittedly that last one won't make you much money. But this isn't a list of the Most Profitable Side Hustles. This is a list of all the ways you could make a bit of money from things you're already doing. If you're already gardening, there are ways you could be making some money from that. If you hate gardening... don't pick this.

Video Games

Lastly, just to prove there is potential money in everything, you could be making money from playing video games! With either YouTube or Twitch you can stream yourself playing video games for the whole world to see, and to pay you for! In terms or start up costs, all you need is a microphone and (optionally) a webcam. As an easier option, you can just buy a gaming headset, or use one you already have. All the software you need is available free online to set up, stream and edit videos.

While you're starting out you won't see much success, but even small youtube channels can make $5-$10 for a 20 minute video with minimal editing. You can have a look at the (estimated) numbers here: https://influencermarketinghub.com/youtube-money-calculator/

Hustlin' smarter, not harder

Maybe some of these things resonate with you, maybe they don't. The point is that to launch a side hustle you don't need to fire up Google and search for a listicle of the 'highest paying side hustles', or '20 coolest side hustles'. Your time is valuable, and rather than trading time for money, I encourage you to find a way to make money with the things you're doing for free.

Admittedly you can make more money with a dedicated side hustle. But you could also fail and flop terribly at a side hustle that cost you money to set up and you didn't enjoy.

Worst case? You don't make any money. When you were already knitting, playing video games, hiking, drawing, snapping photos... what have you lost?

Maintaining Motivation : New Years and Beyond

Credit: Lazy Photo Dad

The start of a fresh new year fills everyone with energy. We make plans, set ambitious goals, and say we'll do better than last year. We'll go to the gym, we'll save more money, we'll spend more time with friends and family, and less time brainless on the couch watching reruns.

For the first couple of weeks, we stick to those goals. We're filled with fire, enthusiasm, and energy. The excitement of something new keeps us going. But as the weeks pass, and we return to work after the Christmas break, our fire burns out. It's easy to fall back into a rut, and our goals fall by the wayside.


With motivation flagging it's easy to put your goals aside, to tell yourself to that you dreamed too big. The good news is, motivation is only part of the puzzle. At first we do well at our goals because we're motivated. We're excited and we push ourselves to succeed every day. But we aren't full of endless energy and it's irrational to think we are.

In fact, we are lazy creatures of habit. Even the most exciting things can become dull if we do them day after day. As human beings, we get excited about variety, but when we run out of energy we fall back into routine. Rather than expecting this to lead to failure, it is in fact the direct path to success.

Get excited

In 2017 I was recovering from an ACL reconstruction. The injury itself happened in 2016, but it is such a large injury that I was not fully cleared until a full year later. After my last meeting with the surgeon I was excited to get fit again.

I picked up an exercise program online, as well as heading back to roller derby and I decided to get back into running. Two nights a week I went a running, every morning before work I busted out a 15 minute exercise routine (different each day) and when I got home from work I'd do another 10 minute garage workout. On top of that I was back at roller derby - I wasn't playing contact, but I was skating twice a week.

I was in the excitement phase of new goals. Every moment I had to spare I was stacking in new exercises, and I was feeling great. I even started changing up my diet.

Your financial health works just like your physical health. Many people would have started 2019 with goals to save more money. At the start of the year you're excited. You skip buying coffee, brown bag your lunch, and cut off a magazine subscription. Maybe you start Meatless Mondays and analyse the Dollars to Fun ratio of every activity you do.

Just like every who sets goals at the start of the year, I was keen to do my absolute best. I devoted time and energy, physical and mental, to making myself the fittest I could be. Even on a 40degree day I would work out in my garage upon arriving home. I quickly double the length of that get home strength routine.

Unsurprisingly, this wasn't maintainable.

Battling boredom and burn out

After just a couple of weeks, I dropped the running program. I was already riding to and from work each day, doing a strength routine at night, and balance / strength in the morning. To add to that, I was still doing Yoga as a recovery method for my knee - which was repaired, but fatigued easily.

A few weeks after that, I wasn't doing yoga anymore. After getting home from work, doing my get-home-routine, making dinner, and watching a TV show with Mr. FIRE, it would already be 8:30pm. To do yoga as well, we needed to start by 9:30 - which meant a measly hour each night to relax.

Burn out hits all of us because when we're excited we do too much. When something is new, it's easy to want to spend all our time on it. Unsurprisingly, when something is done for hours every day it can lose it's excitement value, but it also muscles out other things that are important.

When we start tracking our finances, and saving money it's exciting. Especially if you were an overspender and suddenly find yourself with all this money you didn't even realise you were wasting. But quickly we start to miss the things, and despite all the tricks in the book, saving and watching numbers becomes boring.

When struggling with your new years goals, it's important to understand that burnout is normal. Rather than giving up entirely, let burnout show you how much you need to scale back.

Success through systems

While the initial excitement of a goal will help you come up with ways to chase it, burnout will help you throw away the excess. However, we don't want to throw our goals out entirely.

After a few months, I was still riding to work daily. I kept up the morning workout - having gotten it down to just ten minutes - and I kept doing the get-home-routine. The part that kept these alive was habit. 

I had a system. I didn't stop to think about whether I would work out in the morning - the alarm went off, I got out of bed, and I did it. Generally yawning the whole way through. Every day when I got home from work, I dropped to the ground and started doing pushups in my garage - I didn't even step in the house.

The triggers for chasing our goals can't simply be motivation, but a system. 

If you are trying to save more, don't keep trying to motivate yourself to spend less. Instead, set a system when you immediately transfer money into a savings account on payday. Make sure it's an account where you can't immediately access the money. Even better, invest it directly into something like Raiz (previously known as Acorns) or RateSetter where you can't immediately get the money back for impulse buys.The system does the work for you, and you reap the benefits.

Want to spend more time with a partner, or friends? Don't say 'we'll catch up once a week' - tell yourself that every Friday is date night. The first Thursday of every month is Friends Night Out. Then make sure everyone else knows this to - build a system and stick to it. If no one can make it to Friends Night in January, make sure they know about it for February.

Habits are formed, and success is easy 

Once you have these habits and systems in place, you don't work at your goals anymore. They happen on their own. In January and February in 2017 I was working out constantly and thinking and planning about getting fitter all the time. Through March and April, I got bored, I put my systems in place, and I did things without even thinking. In September I glanced in the mirror and noticed I had the best muscle definition of my life. 

Success didn't happen when I was chasing it, but when I'd built a system that had me nurturing those goals every day.

In the same way, I opened a First Home Saver account in my teenage years. This was an Australian Government incentive where they would pay you a 17% bonus on any money invested, up to a certain amount. To get the full incentive you needed to deposit $5,000 a year, or $96.15 a week. I set up an automated transfer and forgot about it until three years later, when I withdrew almost $20,000.

Learn your systems, and don't break them

I leave you with a word of warning - every system needs maintenance. Most importantly though, every system has an on-switch. Your systems for success aren't a perpetual motion machine, and they won't keep going if you neglect them.

Skipping a day or two may seem harmless, but each skip weakens the systems. If you stop exercising because you have a cold, when you start again it's almost (but not quite) like building the habit from scratch. Thankfully systems are easier to revive than to build, but reviving them is work, which is frustrating when you had a no-effort system in place.

Secondly, learn what the go-button is for your system, and don't break it. My afternoon workouts were done in the garage, using weight plates and a yoga mat for comfort. In early 2018 Mr. FIRE decided he also wanted to get fit, and moved the workout gear inside the house where they were easier to use. Within a week, my routine was gone - rather than working out when I got home, I would come inside and greet Mr FIRE. Somehow, time would whirl away, and I wouldn't get to my workouts. I didn't pick up the routine again for another 6 months.

Lastly, tie your habits to something you can't miss. For example, if you tell yourself you will exercise at 6pm, and get home at 6:15pm then the moment is gone. However if you're workouts are tied to 'when I get home from work' then you can guarantee you'll exercise every day - at least until you take holidays, or hit the dream of Financial Independence.

Adult Goals: December 2018

2018 is done and dusted. The last six months of setting adult goals and trying to make better habits
was, well it was interesting.

The second half of December was a great recharge with Christmas holidays. I fell off the adulting goals bandwagon, but I kept my finances in line and I caught up on my sleep for the first time all year.

Adulting

The December goal was body maintenance, specifically yoga. I did not do yoga. At all. For the first half of December I was on the ball with my physio exercises, then I went on annual leave. I don't think I left my house for the first week. At first resting was wonderful, but then I found myself awake at 2am because I had so much energy and my legs wouldnt stop twitching.

Lesson learned, I spent the rest of the month taking gentle walkies, and going for a ride every couple of days. Sleep was easy to find again.

December Adulting: Fail-ish

For 2019 - I need to start up a whole new set of goals. The share market is doing strange things, I honestly don't know if we're lining up for a bear market, or if the current drop is just shenanigans. I'm well versed in emotional survival for market crashes, but it makes it hard to set goals - if the value is going to drop, then I can't set goals for a huge growth. If it does grow, then I don't want to set my goals to low. If you have any ideas, drop them in the comments, because I'm stumped at the moment.

Savings

Six months done and dusted, goals not met. Oh well. We set ambitious goals for a target to chase.

Let's look at the goal numbers, then the overall pictures. I wanted to add $1,000 to my cash cushion each month. Instead I only managed to put aside $613 per month.

For fun numbers, next to that, I also invested $14,600. For the last half of 2018 I successfully squirrelled away $18,280 per month, which works out to 43% of my income.

I might not have met my goals here, but I'm going to take a moment to step back and look at that. I read articles every day encouraging people to save 10% of their income. Articles praising people for saving $50 a month. Stories of people who are greatful they have saved $5,000 in a year.

I am not going to shame those people and tell them they should do better, or work harder. In the last few months it's becoming clearer and clearer how strange, and how privileged I am to be chasing FIRE. There are many people out there who struggle. I am not going to complain that I only saved and invested $3,000 a month. Instead, I'm grateful for all the pieces in my life that have come together to make it possible.

Expenses

For the sake of curiosity, here's what I spent in December, which includes the save-to-spend amounts.

Category	Spent	Budgeted	12 Month Average
Home	$961.78	$1,318	$1,307.10 (down $20.67)
No bills! Booyah.
Investment Property	$767.60	$1,190.83	$1,315.00 (up $7.46)
Two months in a row of no bills, this is lovely, and spooky. I checked, I didn't miss anything
Personal Bills	$126.60	$126.67	$142.10 (down $1.69)
The stock standard usual.. nothing to see here
Groceries	$192.14	$190	$209.56 (up $3.76)
So last month I spent $100 on a gift card for groceries, and I completely forgot to take it to the store. For a whole month. Shame on me, so much shame.
Pets	$210.43	$50	$62.10 (up $14.62)
My poor FIREcat had an upset stomach. For three days. My little fat fluffball didn't eat for three days, so off to the vet we went. I paid $210 for some antibiotics, an anti-nausea shot, and for the vet to tell me that yes, she is fat. It was worth being reassured that she was okay, and with some gentle coaxing I got her eating again. She's yelling at me for dinner as I type this, so she's a-okay.
Roller Derby	$35	$175	$230.93 (up $2.89)
Basically Nothing! I spent a little money for a shared picnic dinner party, and put money aside for safety gear that I'll buy in January, using Afterpay to get the most bang for my buck.
Travelling	$110	$122.50	$48.33 (up $9.16)
Next year I'm hoping to go to Canada! I figured I better start putting money aside.
Comfort Food	$29.50	$40	$51.15 (down $15.13)
I split this out in November and having this category visible helped a lot. Even with Christmas, I kept this spending where I wanted it. Mostly by buying ingredients and making my own snacks
Other	$242.53	$187.00	$262.17 (up $2)
What can I say, it was Christmas! I bought all the Kingdom Hearts games for myself, and a headset so that I can play games with the volume up and chat to friends without annoying Mr. FIRE. I also spent a bit on presents, but my friends and family have long agreed that presence is a present, so we only give small things - like homemade pickled eggs.
Total	$2,675.58	$3,400	$3,628.46 (up $2.44)
Look at that magic number!! Surely i's a trick? After all, I gifted myself a higher budget for Christmas. The numbers are mostly low because I didn't pay any bills this month, that's always nice.