Even My Side Hustle Has a Side Hustle (Alissa Grosso)

Some days I feel like quite the hustler or side hustler as the case may be. That's because pretty much all my income comes from what many would consider side hustles. I suppose writing itself is a side hustle for me, but it's pretty low down there in terms of the income it generates for me at the moment.

Some people have day jobs, but I have a day business. It's like a day job, but I'm my own boss and there are no health benefits or paid vacation time. My day business is selling stuff on the internet. When I tell people this, they usually say something along the lines of "Oh, you sell on Ebay, then?" But the truth is I've never sold much on Ebay. I used to sell a fair amount of vintage stuff on Etsy and even wrote a book on it, but these days I do all my selling on Amazon.

It's nice because Amazon let's me (well, they charge me plenty of money) store my stuff in their warehouses and handles all the shipping and customer service. All, I have to do is get the inventory, list it, label it and ship it off to them. It's a lot of work, but with the exception of the month of November and the very beginning of December (when the UPS driver has to play a game of Tetris just to get all my boxes in his truck) it still leaves me with plenty of free time to write and work on my other side hustle.

Besides selling all manner of physical products on Amazon I create some designs to sell on print-on-demand items. So, I guess this still falls under the general heading of selling stuff on the internet, but in this case there is no physical product until a shopper actually purchases an item and it is printed and shipped to them. So, again no need for me to store physical inventory or ship stuff since I work with some different print-on-demand websites who do all this work (and take a percentage of the sale for their efforts.) I spread out this side hustle among a few different websites: Amazon again via their Merch by Amazon program, Redbubble and Zazzle.

Finally, although it's not an active side hustle that I'm involved in, I still make money from YouTube each month. When I was running my Etsy business I created a reselling channel on YouTube and would post regular videos about it as well the other reselling stuff I did. I made a few videos about how to create shipments for Amazon's FBA program, and even though they are a few years old they are still popular with others who are trying to ship stuff off to Amazon's warehouses, so thanks to the ads on them these videos still generate a little bit of monthly income for me.

I actually do still regularly post videos on YouTube on my Awkward Author channel, but since there are far less people interested in the weekly ramblings of an as-yet-not-very-profitable author this channel is far less popular and doesn't generate any income.

So, for my fellow writers out there or anyone who is looking for ways to bring in some more income, let me assure you there are plenty of ways to do that. It may take some trial and error to find a side hustle that works for you. In the past I've tried to cut it with various freelance writing gigs--not for me, Ebay--not my style and daily blogging--couldn't keep up with it. So, don't despair if your first, second or third attempt at a side hustle doesn't work out. There's lots of ways to make some extra dough and one of them is sure to be a good fit for you.

Alissa Grosso is the author of 7 books, which she works on when she's not making money from one of her side hustles. She chronicles her writing life including how little she earns from her writing in her Awkward Author vlog and podcast.