I Doubled My Income (Using Side Hustles)

I doubled my income in the past month. Every time I post about my online income, I get what seems like a thousand different comments and emails asking how I did it. 

To answer that question up front, there is no one, singular way that I achieved this. I can tell you that I work hard, and I work almost every single day. I am creative in how to expand my portfolio and I am driven. I embrace my motivation when I have it. You will not be successful in making extra money if you do not work hard at it.

Now that we got that out of the way, onto the meat of what you actually came for:

Those who know me know I have a lot of side hustles. I like making money, because I like to spend money. During this past month, despite being on vacation for at least half of it, I doubled my income.

This is a goal that I’ve been hovering around for a couple of months but have never quite hit. In fact, at the beginning of the year I posted my yearly plan that had indicated that my goal was to make only $1000 above and beyond my income each month. I updated on that goal (and how I was usually surpassing it), and I had to bump up my goal to $1500 in extra income per month in order to challenge myself. I’ve surpassed that in the past month by over $1100 online alone. 

My online side hustle income alone (excluding my day job and any money from passive income streams) was $2651.61.

Add the money I got from other passive income streams, my babysitting gig, and a couple of other little stints, I made an extra $3509.18 over and above my day job. I did this a few different ways:

– Online work (commenting, staff writing, ghost writing) for various bloggers and websites – $1,222.38

– Blog activity (Adsense, advertising, affiliate, blog consulting, etc) – $1129.95

– Passive income- $750.00

– Babysitting – $200

– On/offline referrals/affiliate – $206.85

Will I be able to keep this up next month, and the month after? I’m not sure. I hope so. If I want to, then I’ll have to ramp up my online income by taking on even more clients, as I am working on quitting my babysitting gig.

As much as I love the kids that I watch, I feel like there’s more potential in growing affiliate income and working on building my consulting portfolio than there is with babysitting. I only charge $12/hr which is a fraction of what I make online, and I’m sure the parents will let me watch them occasionally when I need my cuteness kick.

I’d also like to start up a niche site eventually. I have a lot of fun with blogs and growing them, and I want to be able to do what I’m passionate about when I hang my hat from my day job each day.

To make extra money, especially in the competitive online landscape, you have to reach out. Develop coalitions. Approach potential clients. There are so many people out there that do what you do, that you have to convince them that you do it best. Work hard, and, yes, work for free for the first little while. Nobody is going to trust you to do a great job if you don’t have something to show them to prove that you’ve done a good job in the past.