Skip to content

7 Side Hustles You Can Start This Year

2022-02-16 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 22:33 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: His own numbers, Sponsor segment present

Ali rates seven side hustles for making money on the internet (video editor for YouTubers, online tutor, website designer, social media consultant, Notion consultant, writer for businesses and creators, paid email newsletter) on how easy each is to start, to reach the first $100 and to keep going, and urges the permissionless-apprentice approach and selling to people who have money.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Intro: more side-hustle ideas after the passive income video

  • ★★ Ali's video of last year (2021) on nine passive income ideas, then making him $27,000 a week, absolutely blew up, and since then he has been flooded with requests for more side-hustle ideas. — 00:00:00 · passive income
  • ★★★ Ali offers seven side hustles for making money on the internet and rates each on how easy it is to start, how easy it is to make the first $100, and how time intensive it is to keep going. — 00:00:00

00:00:28 — Side hustle one: video editor for YouTubers, and the permissionless apprentice

  • ★★★ Ali's first side hustle is to become a video editor for YouTubers: within a weekend you can teach yourself video editing from scratch in Final Cut, Premiere, iMovie, DaVinci Resolve or any other app. — 00:00:29 · Final Cut Pro
  • ★★ Beyond a few tens of thousands of subscribers, around 20,000, basically every YouTuber would benefit from outsourcing editing, Ali says: most can afford it by then and most do not enjoy editing. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • ★★ When Ali and hundreds of his Part-Time YouTuber Academy students looked for editors on Fiverr, Upwork or People Per Hour, about 95% of the responses were trash: people who do not read the brief, communicate unprofessionally and edit badly. — 00:01:27 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ To stand out on freelance marketplaces, Ali says, all you have to do is communicate well and actually read the client's brief rather than copying and pasting a reply. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ Ali's other way is to be a permissionless apprentice: download a video of a YouTuber you like with 50,000 to 250,000 subscribers, re-edit it with lower thirds, effects, titles, transitions and music, and send it to them on Twitter, Instagram or email. — 00:01:27 · Twitter, Instagram
  • ★★ Once a YouTuber responds, Ali advises offering to edit one of their raw videos free as a trial while telling them your price up front, such as $50 or $100 a video. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ The permissionless-apprentice model works for many creator services, Ali says: podcast editor, thumbnail artist, turning an email newsletter into Instagram carousels, or cutting long YouTube videos into 9:16 TikTok content. — 00:02:26 · Instagram
  • ★★ Such creator services need two things, Ali says: skills you can learn free on the internet within a few days, and some creativity and the ability to communicate well by email or Twitter. — 00:02:55 · Twitter
  • ★★ Video editing for YouTubers is pretty easy to start, Ali says, about a weekend of YouTube tutorials; he rates making the first $100 two out of five, through freelance websites or YouTuber friends. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ Ali rates video editing for YouTubers five out of five for time intensity: selling a service like this means charging for your time. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ Most of Ali's friends at university made the bulk of their side-hustle money by tutoring people online. — 00:03:53
  • ★★★ Ali's second side hustle is online tutoring: wherever you are on your journey, there is probably something you know that someone a few years younger could benefit from. — 00:03:53
  • ★★ At about 18 Ali signed up to an online tutoring agency and tutored 15- to 17-year-olds in maths and science; at university, aged 19 to 24, he tutored medical-school applicants for the entrance exams. — 00:03:53

00:04:01 — Side hustle two: online tutoring, including italki

  • ★★ A friend of Ali's, a native French speaker, teaches French online for about 30 pounds, or about $40, an hour. (hedged) — 00:04:22
  • ★★ To start tutoring, Ali says, find people willing to pay for your skill, usually by signing up for an account on online tutoring platforms. — 00:04:52
  • ★ A medical-school friend of Ali's, tutoring through an online tutoring website, ended up teaching the daughter of a family with Nigerian royal connections, who flew him out on their private jet for a whole summer to tutor their children. — 00:04:52
  • ★★ Another option is italki, Ali says: if you speak English, people from abroad will pay you just to have a conversation with them in English over Zoom. — 00:05:21 · Zoom
  • ★★ Teaching on italki usually starts at somewhere between $4 and $8 an hour, Ali says, and you can raise your prices over time. — 00:05:50
  • ★★ A friend of Ali's makes a few hundred dollars a month from just a few hours a month of English conversation tutoring on italki. (hedged) — 00:05:50

  • ★★★ There are no easy ways to make money, Ali says: every way requires an exchange of value for money, and in tutoring the value you provide is the ability to teach. — 00:05:50 · first law of making money

    “there are no easy ways to make money”

  • ★★ Tutoring needs no formal teaching qualification, Ali says: if you have learned something and explain it well, you can teach it, and you can practise on friends, family, children or colleagues. — 00:06:19

  • ★★ Ali rates online tutoring two out of five for ease of getting started, because you need a skill to teach to begin with. — 00:06:19
  • ★★ Ali rates making the first $100 from online tutoring two out of five, by marketing yourself on tutoring websites, but calls tutoring time intensive: a direct trade of time for money, paid by the hour. — 00:06:49
  • ★★★ Ali's third side hustle is to become a website designer and design websites for a niche group of clients. — 00:06:49

00:07:07 — Side hustle three: website designer for a niche, and selling themes

  • ★★ Where web design once meant learning HTML and CSS, Ali says, no-code drag-and-drop builders such as Squarespace and Wix are now pretty reasonable, and WordPress is also easy to learn. — 00:07:18
  • ★★ Learning to make a good-looking website with a builder such as Squarespace takes probably about a week, Ali says. (hedged) — 00:07:18
  • ★ Ali says WordPress powers about 30% of the internet. — 00:07:18
  • ★★★ The trick for a website designer, Ali says, is to appeal to a very niche group of people rather than to everyone. — 00:07:47
  • ★★ A man Ali connected with through his YouTube channel, and met for coffee in Cambridge about two years ago, had taught himself web design and specialised in building websites for orthodontists in one or two states in the middle of America. — 00:07:47 · Cambridge, United States
  • ★★ The orthodontist web designer sent a few dozen cold emails, had a few phone calls and was paid about 500 for his first orthodontist website, then showed it to other orthodontists in the area, who hired him too. — 00:08:16
  • ★★ The orthodontist web designer slowly raised his prices until he could travel the world as a digital nomad, then moved into running the orthodontists' Google Ads. — 00:08:45
  • ★★ Once you have built one website, Ali says, the themes and know-how make the same genre of site easy to build again, changing only fonts, colours and vibe. — 00:08:45
  • ★★ Website design is pretty easy to start, Ali says, about a week to learn, but getting the first client is hard because you must put yourself out there and sell; after that $100 is fairly easy, though the work is time intensive, selling time for money. — 00:09:15
  • ★★ One way to level up as a website designer, Ali says, is to specialise in building themes that other people use to build their websites. — 00:09:15
  • ★★ Ali's friend Dan, who designed and coded Ali's website, builds website themes for Ghost and sells them for about $50 to $100 each, making healthy passive income every day. (hedged) — 00:09:15 · Ghost, aliabdaal.com, passive income
  • ★★ Selling website themes is Ali's perfect example of doing the work once to create a thing and then selling it many times with no further cost. — 00:09:44 · passive income
  • ★★ A new trend, Ali says, is building websites with Notion as the content management system, plugged into a service such as Super (super.so). — 00:09:44 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali suggests creating website themes for Super and selling them to people who want their Notion page to look like a website, though this takes more effort and probably some coding background. (hedged) — 00:10:13 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali's fourth side hustle is social media consulting: viewers under 30 probably know more about social media than people over 30, who run most businesses, and basically every business needs a social media presence. — 00:10:42

00:10:49 — Side hustle four: social media consultant

  • ★★★ After a weekend of blog posts and YouTube videos to learn more, Ali says, advertise yourself as a social media consultant to local businesses with a weak social media presence. — 00:11:11
  • ★★ For social media consulting, Ali suggests a free half-hour call and then a retainer, such as $300 a month for one monthly call analysing the business's social media and giving tips. — 00:11:41
  • ★★ When clients ask a social media consultant to run their accounts, Ali suggests offering a done-for-you management service, such as $2,000 a month for three Instagram posts and one LinkedIn post a week. — 00:12:10 · Instagram, LinkedIn
  • ★★ Joe, a subcontractor who started at 21, charges Ali's team a few thousand dollars a month for social media consulting; asked to do some of the work himself, he built an agency that now serves other clients too. — 00:12:39
  • ★★ Social media consulting is very easy to start if you are under 30, Ali says; he rates making the first $100 two out of five, since businesses make money and need a social media presence. — 00:13:08
  • ★★ A social media consultant should not target individuals who are not making money, Ali says: only businesses want to spend money to grow their social media presence. — 00:13:08
  • ★★ Ali rates social media management only two out of five for time: with scheduling apps such as Buffer and Canva, Photoshop or Figma for assets in bulk, maybe one day a month could manage three accounts. (hedged) — 00:13:38

00:14:15 — Side hustle five: Notion consultant

  • ★★★ Ali's fifth side hustle: learn Notion and how businesses run (standard operating procedures, structure, org charts), then advertise yourself to local businesses as a Notion business consultant. — 00:14:36 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali calls Notion absolutely fantastic for building a business's internal wiki, processes and standard operating procedures. — 00:14:36 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali's team pays a Notion consultant a large amount of money to help revamp its content production pipeline. — 00:15:05 · Notion
  • ★ Ali names Notion consultants on Twitter: Daniel Canossa (as heard), Marie Poulin, Optimization (as heard) and August Bradley. — 00:15:05 · Twitter, Notion
  • ★★ Notion consultants on Upwork seem to charge around $30 to $70 an hour, Ali says. (hedged) — 00:15:35 · Notion
  • ★★ Becoming a Notion consultant is not hard, Ali says: a week or so of YouTube videos and playing around with Notion makes you better at it than nearly everyone not actively improving. — 00:15:35 · Notion
  • ★★ Taking a first client for free or for a small fee is fine, Ali says: you are building a portfolio and testimonials to show the next businesses you approach. — 00:16:04
  • ★★ Ali rates becoming a Notion consultant one out of five for ease of starting: Notion is pretty easy to learn from the many YouTube tutorials and courses. — 00:16:04 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali rates making the first $100 as a Notion consultant one out of five, given Upwork rates, if you communicate decently; how time intensive it is depends on how much time you want to put in. — 00:16:33 · Notion
  • ★★★ Ali's sixth side hustle is to become a writer for businesses, YouTubers, creators, entrepreneurs or anyone who needs things written. — 00:17:02
  • ★★★ Business writing is not like writing an English literature essay or a dissertation, Ali says: it is writing for clarity. — 00:17:02

00:17:13 — Side hustle six: writer for businesses, YouTubers and creators

  • ★★ Ali explains content marketing as having a website and blog with high-quality posts explaining things in your field, so that your posts come up when people search for them. — 00:17:40
  • ★★ If you are good at simple, clear, concise writing rather than fancy writing, Ali says, offer it as a service to businesses willing to pay for it. — 00:18:38
  • ★★★ Ali's team has four writers who research YouTube videos, write articles for the website, turn Part-Time YouTuber Academy videos into text and turn material into tweet threads. — 00:18:38 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali spends all his time writing his book and making videos, so he would rather outsource turning his YouTube videos into LinkedIn articles. — 00:19:07 · LinkedIn
  • ★★ YouTubers big enough to hire a writer are probably hard to find, Ali says, but basically every business with a website would welcome a freelance content writer producing high-quality articles. (hedged) — 00:19:07
  • ★★ To find writing clients, Ali would use the permissionless-apprentice model: pick a local niche such as orthodontists, dentists or private cosmetic surgeons, pitch with a sample article and ask for half an hour a month to mine content ideas. — 00:19:37
  • ★★ Ali rates becoming a writer for businesses two out of five for ease of getting started. — 00:19:37

  • ★★★ For any side hustle, Ali says, target people who have money: there is no point targeting 13-year-olds, who famously have no money, when 33-year-old business owners definitely do. — 00:20:09

    “we don't wanna be trying to target people who don't have money”

  • ★ Ali names starting a paid email newsletter as his seventh side hustle but does not cover it in depth in this video. — 00:20:38

00:20:40 — Side hustle seven, a paid email newsletter, pointed to his writer interviews on Nebula; CuriosityStream sponsor read

00:22:06 — Sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Notion · permissionless apprenticeship

Also: People: August Bradley · Dan Rowden · Francis Scriven · Marie Poulin

Projects: aliabdaal.com · Part-Time YouTuber Academy · Skillshare classes · Workflow series

Organizations: Anglia Orthodontics · Fiverr · Instagram · italki · LinkedIn · Nebula · People Per Hour · Twitter · Upwork

Concepts: cold email · content marketing · digital nomad · first law of making money · passive income

Places: Cambridge · Nigeria · United States

Products: Adobe Photoshop · Adobe Premiere Pro · Buffer · Canva · DaVinci Resolve · Figma · Final Cut Pro · Ghost · Google Ads · iMovie · Squarespace · Super · Wix · WordPress · Zoom

Also centred on permissionless apprenticeship: 7 Side Hustles Ideas to Make $1000/Month

Replies to

Replied to by

← Previous: My Everyday Carry 2022 · Next → How I Ranked 1st at Cambridge University - 20 Study Tips