5 Side Hustles That Worked for Me

Many of us has heard how to make money on internet and seen lists of ideas, but it's not that easy to actually start and sell something. Here are some of the side hustlest that I have found working for me earlier - I'm still not saying that it's for everyone.

1. Building Websites

I started building websites back in the days while I was still in the middle of my studies. During the last 18-years I have made and sold many websites, designs and setup way too many wordpress installations.

From my experience this can be easy money, but it's not always that easy and absolutely not without stress. It depends on the clients you get and the price you are asking for how well it actually goes.

I am happy for my current situation, that I don't have to make websites any more as a side hustle.

2. Fixing Computers

This must been my earliest hobby I got money from. Fix computers for relatives and neighbours first, sometimes I build computers and sold those on profit. It's easy money - but the hourly rate isn't that great if you get slow and sluggish computer with a lot of things to fix and uninstall.

Lately I have focused mainly on Apple computers and that has been more fun, and easy to make profit from. Sometimes you just buy used computer, clean it and sell it with profit - this is fun and gives me a joy.

3. Job Search Mentoring

I have experience of working for ~10 different companies as an employee and many more as a freelancer. Interviews are something I especially like - almost like going to amusement park as a child. I really like the cituation and I have been in many job interviews.

Maybe because I have so much experience, and success in interviews I ended up helping and prepping my friends before they had interviews. That led to me starting to mentor also others on how to find a job and how to get into an interview. Contract and salary negotiations are also something I have been mentoring for and about.

This is quite fun thing to do, but not as well monetized yet as I would like.

4. Bug Bounty Hunting

For me as a software developer it's quite given that I would try to find bugs from a software I use. A year ago I found out how to get data from Slack Pro without paying the subscription fee. I was just happy with that already because I needed the data for something I was doing, but a friend of mine told me to report the bug for Slack and see if I could get a bounty from them.

So, I registered to Hackerone and found Slacks bug bounty program there. I reported the bug I found and in three weeks I got 500$! After that I found one other similar kind of bug and got another 500$.

Bug hunting is fun and not always that easy, but it could lead to nice extra money.

5. Being a Headhunter

This is much harder than I ever thought, but it's fun and well paid when you get some success with it. This doesn't mean that you have to start a company or agency and start to sell like crazy. Networking on the other hand is a must. Especially on IT companies are willing to pay huge bonuses for the tips ending up a hire.

What I learned while doing this was that the comission can be everything from the applicants 1 months salary up to 35% of the first years salary the applicant will get.

It's well paid job to do, but it's super hard and since no one likes to be ghosted or forgotten in anyway, this needs a lot of time and thought.

I'm still doing this, but not with as much activity than before. My best success was when I saw an advertisement that company would pay 2500€ for anyone who tips them developers they would hire. So it was an open competition and I got both my candidates hired!

Summary

Here was some of my experiences and side hustles that worked for me, if you are like me and would like to make some extra money, my best advice for you is to start trying out things - it doesn't have to be perfect and you don't have to do it long if you don't like it, you are free to change what you offer - just make sure that you like it, you are well paid and it doesn't affect on your main job.