2 of the Best Side Hustles You Can Start Today

 Starting a blog  

You might hear that blogging is dead but it is actually far from it and can actually generate a healthy amount of revenue for you.

What is a blog

A blog is essentially a website that is run by an individual to talk about a topic or niche that they are interested in. These tend to be either transaction or informational posts where you share your thoughts on a consistent basis and interact with your audience through comments on your posts, or via social media.

What do you need to start a blog

There are a few things that you will need for starting your blog but it not going to need a lot of money to get it up and running, hear the basics for getting started.

Domain Name

First things first you will need to choose your domain name, I chose my name as my domain name as it doesn’t restrict you to one topic if you choose to pivot to a new niche. There are many sites that you can use to find a Domain Name like GoDaddy, this will cost you about £10 for the year.

Website Builder/Host

Once you have your domain sorted you will need to choose a website builder/host to create your new website. There are several out there like Squarespace and Ghost but I went for WordPress as it’s probably the most well know for blogging and you can do a lot with it.

You can start with a free plan or you can go for a paid one depending on your needs. So you can choose whether or not you want to use a paid or free service here in the first instance.

There are also blogging platforms such as Medium so you don’t technically need a website to start a blog.

How you make money

Here are a few ways in which you can make money online through blogging.

1. Affiliate Marketing
2. Paid Reviews/Guest Posts
3. Google Adsense

Affiliate Marketing

This is where you add a link to a product or service that you have reviewed or used. When someone clicks on that link and buys that product or service you will receive a commission.

There are thousands of Affiliate programmes your can sign up for. Amazon is one of the many ones for selling products but you can also join affiliate programmes for brands directly which is like to have a higher commission. You simply search the brand and affiliate programme.

Paid Reviews/Guest Post

Another way for your blog to generate revenue is to create post guests or reviews. This could be you being paid for producing an information post or reviewing a product which will go up on that brand’s website. You are effectively been paid for your time taken and experience in creating that piece of content.

Adsense

Adsense or Google Adsense to be more to the point allows bloggers to earn money from their online content by displaying third-party Add on their sites. Google Adsense will match Ads to your site based on your content so that they will be relevant to your content. When someone on your blog clicks on an Ad you will get paid.

Start a YouTube Channel

Similar to starting a blog it doesn’t take much of an outlay to get a YouTube Channel up and running. There is a certain perimeter that you will need to start making money through YouTube e.g. in order to be monetised you will need to have 1000 subscribers and 1000 watch hours.

Setting up your channel

It is so easy to set up a channel on Youtube you just need a google account and sign in to YouTube. Once you are in YouTube just go into the settings and hit create a channel and choose your channel name. You can then update your profile and channel art and you are pretty much ready to start uploading videos.

Gear

Don’t feel you need to spend a fortune on fancy cameras and lighting to get started. You can start with what you have like your smartphone as most have a great camera and decent audio. When you have got some videos under your belt and you are sure you want to pursue your channel you can look at investing in gear that is going to take your content to the next level.

But the point here is that in the first instance, you really don’t need to go out and spend a load of money on Gear.

Learning to Edit

I wanted to add this as I think there is a learning curve with YouTube that might be a bit more than blogging. You will need to learn to edit and therefore you will need some editing software. You can use free editing tools like Da Vinci Resolve or iMovie or you can spend some more money on something like Final Cut Pro.

Again you might want to start with free editing software and move to paid software when you are ready to fully commit. There is also the time you will need to invest in learning how to edit your videos. There are plenty of free resources out there but this can be time-consuming.

How to Make Money

Like with blogging, there are 3 main ways in which you can make money online from Youtube

1. Google Adsense 
2. Affilate Marketing 
3. Sponsorship

Google Adsense

Your channel will need to have been monetised which in YouTube terms means that you need to have 1000 subscribers and 1000 watch hours. Once you have this it works in a similar way as with blogs. Ads will be embedded in your videos and you will receive revenue share when someone watches or clicks the ad.

Affilaite Marketing 

As with blogs you are essentially promoting a product or service in your video and providing a link in your description for your viewers to click on. You in turn will receive a commission if that click on the link turns into a sale.

You can make money straight away from Affiliate Marketing all you need is views and those viewers to click on your link in the description so don’t forget to make sure you add them.

Sponsorship

This is something that will come as you gain a decent number of subscribers. Brands will pay/sponsor videos in exchange for specific promotions of their products. Brands may reach out to you or you can reach out to brands that you would like to work with, but as mentioned your channel will most likely need a decent number of subscribers.

Final Thoughts

In terms of a low barrier/cost to entry, these are two of the best side hustles in my opinion that you can start today to start making money online.

With little to no money you can have these up and running in a matter of hours and get on your way to creating and sharing content that will in the medium to long term generate an income stream for you.

Now I would like to point out that these are not passive income side hustles as with the title you are going to have to hustle. But with determination and consistency, you can reap the rewards from these 2 income generators.