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Why we should seriously consider Side Jobs Earning Extra Money?
If you are in your mid-career and deeply seated in a private service chances are you may not be satisfied with either your job or the paycheck or both. Barring a very few companies, we are always hit by any downturns – job overload, minimal family life, and reducing leaves and perks all lead to frustration.
If this rings a bell somewhere within you then I request you read on and discover how you can reinvent your career and your financial wellbeing while still working at your full-time job.
This article is not a step-by-step guide on how to create your side income (which I will address separately) but an awareness drive to bring forth the many pitfalls of depending on a single source of income for our living.
For some, it is a pink slip away from bankruptcy.
What is a Side Job or a side income source?
Is a side job a gimmick and a fad? Or is it a lifeline and a shield to ward off poverty and being broke given the present economic crisis?
History has repeated itself multiple times. Years of prosperity have given way to years of poverty.
Throughout history wars, pandemics, epidemics, natural calamities, inventions and discoveries, and advancements in technologies have created havoc in our lives time and again. Our livelihoods were disrupted and altered beyond our imagination.
Enemies plundered the richest cities like Babylon, industrialization eliminated hundreds of jobs, volcanoes, tsunamis, and earthquakes destroyed flourishing businesses, the internet, and the mobile revolution almost wiped out the radio, television, music systems, and the desk phone.
The pandemic forced us to adapt to a new way of living, working, and earning. Remote work and online jobs have opened up new vistas unimagined till now.
Hundreds and thousands of people lost their jobs due to downsizing during COVID 19 or were forced to accept lower pay, no perks, no raise, and forced to light the funeral of their dreams.
Barring a few companies, nearly 80-90% of the salaried class across the world feel exploited by their management according to a Quora survey. Reddit users are also vocal about being exploited at work.
Job security has become a myth. Those who have built a contingency fund had to dip into it for survival. Debt and poverty embraced those who didn’t.
A few people across this spectrum, who had started a side gig or a side income earlier could manage to survive. Some took it to the next level and completely removed their dependency on their day jobs and became unretired – as solopreneurs.
Here we will try to explore how an online side job along with a regular job can help create a parallel source of income that can replace our regular 9-5 job after our retirement without dipping into our reserve corpus.
The Shocking Truth about Job Security
Whenever such recession in any form hits us the first to bear the brunt are the contract workers, then the axe falls on the employees in the last leg of their career. They are the worst hit. Newcomers and trainees do not have many responsibilities in general and they also have time on their side.
But those employees in their last decade or less in their service lives have none. Added to the burden of running a family, multiple debts in the form of loans and mounting medical bills play havoc with any reserve funds that may have built up. And without a secondary or replacement income the future deep dives into a survival crisis.
The scenario in India is equally bleak with no government support for those losing jobs like in many European and American nations.
Side Jobs for Earning Extra Money
This sudden change of fortune has forced us to look for alternate ways of earning to keep the show live. The situation is so desperate that people jump for any opportunity to earn anything sometimes getting cheated out of their meager backup in the process.
A little bit of future planning, a dream, a goal and a sustained focus on deliberately creating a parallel source of income on the other hand helps overcome these setbacks with confidence.
I believe it makes good sense to start developing a side gig while in service. There is no risk or desperation involved here and we can experiment with different models to understand which suits us best and build our business around it.
Why Consider Side Jobs for Earning Extra Money?
Side jobs or side hustle as it is popularly known is developing and making income from an active source by working on it on a day-to-day basis.
Side Jobs Earning Extra Money
However, with the wide-open outreach of the internet and multiple platforms available for providing our services, the online highway offers us to outreach to the global market with a variety of opportunities limited only by our imagination and capabilities.
The online route also offers much flexibility in terms of low initial investment with future scalability. The digital arena is ever-expanding and every day various new opportunities are cropping up as a result of the creative solutions our minds can conceive.
It makes sense to develop a side gig that can generate revenue while still working on a regular job is an ideal condition to test the market and rework our offering without any risk of going bankrupt.
If we really want to convert our side job into a revenue-generating avenue this must not be taken as a hobby but nurtured like a business.
Life demands a fair price for our success and we should be ready to pay this fair price in the form of time and energy.
This can become our lifeline due to loss of income as well as this corpus can be used for high ticket expenses, travel, etc. The benefits are many. The confidence we get from having a backup revenue stream without having to dig into our reserves is a dealmaker. We can dare to play out the adverse period and wait for the tide to turn.
Identifying your niche
One of the most challenging parts of this journey to get into business is identifying your area of expertise or niche. For some, it can be easy and for some, it is difficult because it is confusing.
For one the very process of thinking for oneself is a task we try to avoid. Doing a job on someone’s instruction is easily done and that too in small silos. For example, we may be working in the accounts, technical, legal, marketing or sales departments but we generally stick to the set boundaries of our functions.
To fix our calling takes some deep thinking. There is a saying “scratch your own itch”. In simple terms, it means identifying what services we ourselves would prefer to have and which are not available. This gap analysis created OYO and Uber and Amazon. These ideas need to be groundbreaking but address the requirements of a decent volume of people.
The teacher, trainer, mentor niche is such a niche. It is vast in itself. But a very large number of people can find their sub-niche within this segment. Remember how many of us used to teach students in a junior class while still in college for pocket money. So our goal will be to cater to a group one or two or three steps below us. That’s all it will take for us to get started.
We have to develop our community by providing value. This is an area of deep work and not a generalist. It will be slow and it will take time and patience. Unless people believe that we know what we promote in detail and they are getting great value in return they will not part with their money. And it is not impossible. Daunting yes. But with focus and patience, it is achievable. We have to zero in on our Ikigai which is the common area among our passion, our area of expertise, market demand, and customers who are willing to pay for our services.
Develop an Unretired Mindset
It is all in the mind. Our success and our failure play out in our minds first before they materialize in reality. From the pages of Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich to the present generation of authors this is the beaten track we have to follow. Whether or not we get into the side job business, our success in any field professionally or personally depends fully on our mindset only.
Entrepreneurship is tough and demanding. It mostly starts as a solo venture where we have to be the all-rounder. Form marketing, sales, delivery, logistics accounts and nurturing and growing the customer base it drains our energy to meet every demand. Especially in the initial years.
Yet for those who dare to persist with focus and determination and a clear plan, the rewards far outweigh the pains suffered.
Entrepreneurs live on the Edge of Sanity – this is an excellent book by Deepak Kanakaraju, a very well-known entrepreneur in the digital marketing field.
What are some Side income ideas in India?
This is the best option to grow our side gig. For one we do not need to invest in an office setup. We also do not need to commute to someplace to work on our idea. We get the time flexibility to work anytime outside our fixed working hours. Another advantage is that our partners can get involved in the process and be part of our journey filling in the gap during our day jobs.
Here is a shortlist of work from home side jobs that can be developed from the comfort of your home.
- Blogger / Reviewer
- Video Editing
- Teacher / Trainer / Mentor
- E-commerce
- Affiliate Marketing
- Graphic Designer
The common factor in positioning ourselves as an authority is a blog. It becomes the starting point in promoting ourselves. From simple blogs to E-books to a full-fledged book being an author gives us authority. I do insist that you read this excellent article on “https://sanjayshenoy.com/become-content-writer-india/” by Sanjay Shenoy to begin your own blogging journey.
The story of our own journey, our struggles and our vulnerability draws like-minded people to us who then savors our success as well.
As we write we need to research our subject, and study-related topics, and in the process help in our own growth and personal development.
We can share these e-books to draw more leads to our community.
One thing I believe is of prime importance is personal branding and sales mentality. Till the deal is not closed and money is transferred it will not create value for us. This will only happen when we have established our personal brand in our field.
Personal branding takes time. A community of followers becoming diehard fans demands patience and dedication.
A side job practically makes us independent of retirement in the conventional sense.
Conclusion
We can depend on the uncertainty of life to drag us along or we can plan our own future. How we plan our life and what choices we make will ultimately determine the economic security of ourselves as well as our families. We are always better off creating a parallel income path for ourselves to fend off any unforeseen events in the future. I invite you to sharpen your digital edge and become unretired.