Eric Evenstad
Read Time: 4 Minutes
It's the start of the new year and if you're like most people, I'm guessing you've set some new ambitious goals to better your life.
But have you set a goal to better your financial situation?
If not, I want to encourage you to take a leap of faith and start a side hustle in 2023.
It doesn't matter if you're a broke student, an overwhelmed parent, or a stressed out 9-5er. No matter what your situation is, I promise you have the ability to create a profitable side hustle in 2023. All you have to do is show up and dedicate 5-10 hours of work per week.
That's it. 5-10 hours per week.
One year of waking up an hour early each day. One year of watching one less hour of TV each day. Just one hour of consistent effort for a year and your financial situation will look vastly different at this time next year.
I want this for you because I know how impactful a second income stream can be.
To help you get started, I've put together a list of 4 super simple side hustles that anyone can start in 2023. Read through the list and see if anything resonates with you.
Did you know that most of the products you buy on Amazon are not actually sold by Amazon.
They are sold by people just like you and me.
There are many ways that you can make money selling on Amazon, but here are a few of the most common:
This is where you purchase products from retail stores and resell them on Amazon for a higher price.
For example, let's say you find the clearance section at your local Walmart. There, you find a product that costs $10 but when you look it up on Amazon, you see that it is selling for $20.
Wouldn't it make sense to buy all of the $10 products that you can afford, sell them on Amazon for $20 and collect a cool $10 of profit per unit (minus fees for shipping and selling on Amazon's marketpalce).
That's retail arbitrage, and it's a great place for beginner Amazon sellers to learn how to make money with Amazon.
But here's the thing. It isn't a very scalable business model because you have to physically visit retail stores. So at the end of the day, you'll always be exchanging your time for money - and that's not the type of side hustles we build here.
Online Arbitrage is similar to retail arbitrage, but instead of finding your products in physical retail stores, you find your products online by searching manufacturer websites, wholesaler websites, or other online retailers.
Online arbitrage is much more scaleable because you don't have to drive to physical retail stores. Instead, you have the ability to eventually hire a virtual assistant to search the web for your next great buying opportunity.
The biggest drawback that you have to consider with online arbitrage is the fact that clearance items will eventually sell out. So in most cases, you are always hunting for the next item to sell.
Wholesale selling is where you purchase your products in bulk from a supplier or manufacturer. When you do this, you're able to buy at wholesale prices and then resell those products on Amazon for retail price.
With wholesaling, you're able to create predictable income because unlike buying clearance items, you will be able to buy wholesale products for the long term.
But wholesaling does take a little extra work because you not only have to search for quality products that you want to sell, but you also have to establish relationships with suppliers before they will allow you to sell their products.
Another thing to consider is the fact that most manufacturers have minimum order sizes for their wholesale accounts. So if you're going this route, you will need to be ready to invest a decent chunk of capital ($1000+) on your first wholesale order.
In my opinion, wholesaling gives you the best opportunity to build an automated business that generates that predictable income that we also desire.
The last one that I want to mention is private label selling. This is where you create your own products to sell on Amazon. Private label has the biggest upside, but it is also the most risky because you have to invest a lot of money upfront in order to have your product designed, produced and delivered.
I would not recommend this method to new sellers but it is something to consider once you master the ins and outs of selling on Amazon.
If selling on Amazon sounds like a fun side hustle, I'd recommend going to Youtube and learning how to do retail arbitrage. This will force you to set up your Amazon Seller account and start learning how everything works.
Do this until you've made a little bit of money and then move onto online arbitrage or wholesaling.
Start a blog, YouTube channel or Twitter account and start creating regular content about a single topic that you are passionate about.
That could be cooking, sewing, gardening, tennis, parenting... anything.
The key is to create massive amounts of high quality content. More high quality content = more eyeballs (AKA money).
Next, you want to think about all of the products that you love. Go to that company's website and see if they have an affiliate program you can join.
Often times you will find a link in the footer of their website. If you don't see it there, you can do a Google search for "[company name] affiliate program" to see if they have an affiliate page on their website.
Every affiliate program is different, but typically you will receive either a flat rate payout or a percentage of each sale that you refer.
All you have to do is talk about that product on your blog, YouTube channel or Twitter account and then share your unique affiliate link.
If anyone clicks on your link, you will receive credit for the sale.
Some of my favorite affiliate programs are for software products because most software companies will pay you a recurring affiliate commission. A prime example is Click Funnels. I think they've lowered the commission recently but when I first signed up for their affiliate program, they were paying a 40% monthly commission for each customer you referred them.
Oh and by the way, their cheapest plan cost $99/month which means you'd earn a minimum of $39.60 PER MONTH for each person you referred to them.
It's not hard to see how fast that type of affiliate income can add up if you you're able to refer 20, 50, or even 100 people.
Affiliate Marketing Resources
AuthorityHacker.com -- In my opinion, these guys are the best affiliate marketing educators in the space. Start out by reading their blog and tuning into their
YouTube channel.
When you're ready to go all in, I'd recommend their Authority Site System 3.0 course. Its a bit pricey but it will walk you through the entire process of building an affiliate marketing website that generates income on autopilot.
Side note: I have not signed up for Authority Hacker's affiliate program, but the link above to their course would be a perfect example of how you do affiliate marketing. Talk about a course, product or service then include an affiliate link so you get credit for any sales you refer.
Like I said, that is not an affiliate link but if it was, I'm guessing I'd earn a couple hundred bucks for each person that signed up for that course after clicking my link.
That's how you do affiliate marketing!
This side hustle is the one that will be the easiest to monetize quickly but it requires that you work with clients. Here's how it works:
Step 1:
Figure out what type of content creation you want to specialize in. You could offer to manage a company's social media and write all their posts, you could write email newsletters for a business or influencer, you could write weekly blog posts that help drive traffic to someone's website, or you could start a Twitter ghostwriting business.
Step 2: Pick a niche. This will allow you to narrow your focus and become the go-to person. Example pitch: "I write weekly email newsletters for personal trainers that want to add 3-5 new clients each month"
Boom! How many personal trainers are gonna turn down an offer like that?
Step 3: Find out where your target market hangs out online. It could be Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook groups, industry specific forums, or maybe you just have to cold email them.
Step 4: Create a good pitch like the one I mentioned above and offer to do a couple months of free content for 2-3 people/businesses in exchange for testimonials.
Step 5: Do the work and do it well.
Here's a little secret. Use chat.openai.com to create all of the content. social media posts, blog posts, or newsletters. Within seconds, it will spit out well written social media posts, blog posts, or newsletters. All you have to do is go through it and add a bit of a human touch.
This will reduce your research time and your writing time by 95%, allowing you to service more clients in less time.
Step 6: Track your results. How many new social media followers, email subscribers or website visitors were you responsbile for? How much extra revenue did that result in? Track all of the numbers because you are going to create a case study for each of those "freebie" clients that you worked with.
Note: Before you start working with a new client, make sure you ask them for the key metrics that you will be tracking. That way you can do a "before and after" analysis.
Step 7: Bring on the paying clients.
Use the same outreach methods as before but this time offer your services at a premium rate. Use your new case studies and testimonials to show the value of your services.
This is also the time to move your free clients to a paid plan. This should be an easy sell because you'll have the results to prove your value.
Step 8: Create systems and processes for everything you do. If you're not careful a service business like this can turn into a huge time suck, so you want to hire virtual assistants to tackle the day-to-day operations.
Now you have an automated side hustle... and a very high paying one at that.
Are you an expert at something that other people want to learn?
If so, you can turn that knowledge into cold hard cash by selling online courses, Notion templates, sales scripts, ebooks, and more.
A great place to start is Gumroad.com
Gumroad is a marketplace for buying and selling info products. If you go to their Discover page, you will see an endless number of info products across every niche imaginable.
Find an info product that you're interested in and that has good sales then go create a better version of it.
When you're done, simply sell it on Gumorad or one of the many other digital marketplace and watch the sales roll in.
The benefit of selling a digital product is that you build it once and you get to sell it for a lifetime. Plus the profit margins are sky-high since your only costs are credit card processing fees and the fee that your marketplace charges.
But I do have one word of caution if you go this route.
The old saying "If you build, they will come" does not apply to info products.
For best results, I'd recommend building a social media following or an email list before launching your info product. Much easier to sell an info product to an audience that already knows, likes and trusts you.
There you have it. Four super simple side hustles that anyone can start in 2023.
No matter which option you choose, I want you to remember one thing.
Consistency is the key.
You may not get immediate results but it's the people that put in the work consistently over a long period of time that are always the ones that turn into the "overnight successes".
Good luck and Happy New Year!
P.S. I share all of my best side hustle tips in my weekly newsletter which you can subscribe to below. You can also find me on Twitter where I'm constantly talking about side hustles and sharing insights from my own side hustle journey.