Work a Full-Time Job? Here's How to Start a Side Hustle Without Burning Out
4 Steps to Creating Income Outside Your 9 to 5 Job
Got a full-time job and still wanna stack extra income?
Most people think they need to quit their job first. That's a mistake. You can build other income streams while you're still clocking in 9 to 5. The trick isn't working more hours. It's getting your offers in front of people without burning your evenings.
The solution is simple. Post about what you're good at. Then let ads do the heavy lifting while you sleep, work out, or just relax.
By the end of this, you'll know how to turn any skill into a service, who to sell it to, and how to run tiny $5 ads that test if it's worth your time, all in your time after work.
Lesson 1: Start with a valuable skill
To get a second source of income, you'll need to sell something. The first step in selling is to gain an audience, and posting online is how you build an audience. So here's are 6 easy steps you can use to start posting on social media today.
Pick one skill you're good at. Just one thing you can teach or do for someone else. If you aren't sure what your valuable skill is, use my quick guide to decide what to focus on.
Go to an AI app and ask "what do people on reddit most ask about or have trouble with around the topic of (insert your skill)?"
Write down or screenshot the biggest problems and questions you see mentioned. Then pick one topic from your list
Next, take out your phone and record a video of yourself talking through an answer to the question or problem you picked for a topic.
If your phone doesn't have enough storage, use a laptop.
If the camera quality on your laptop is bad, you can use your phone's camera as the webcam with a free website called Iriun.com. Just search "Iriun webcam setup for pc" or "Iriun webcam setup for mac" on YouTube. I use this site myself. It just takes about 10 minutes to setup and you'll instantly be able to record videos with high camera quality.
Edit the video. If you only have a phone to edit with, I recommend using the "Capcut" app. This is my go-to when I am editing on my cell phone. But when I am able to edit using a laptop, I have found it infinitely easier to use a website called "Descript". You can edit with Capcut for free with limited features. Editing with Descript will cost about $40/month. If you find video editing grueling or unenjoyable, just use Descript. It's 100% worth the money and will make your life a lot easier.
Post the video. Good places to post your short form videos are TikTok, Facebook Reels, and YouTube Shorts.
Lesson 2: Package your skill so people actually want to buy it
Once you have some posts on social media, you'll have to answer the question "What do I sell to people?"
In short, the answer is this: You'll sell your skills to people. So the skill you choose to make content around is also the skill you'll sell. But first, you'll need to package it into something people want to buy. Typically, "packaging" something looks like making it into:
A product(a book, course, game, merch, something more creative)
A service(giving people your time)
A subscription(someone pays you for monthly access to your skill)
To start, you should sell your skill as a service. That means you do the skill for someone(you cook, they eat. You sell, they get the customers. You design, they get the logo). A service is the fastest way to start because you learn what your customers actually want while getting paid for your time. The two easiest ways to charge people money for access to your time(or service) are to:
Create a sign-up for paid 1 on 1 meetings through Calendly.
Offer your service as a "gig" on Fiverr.com.
After you've done a few services, you can make a product. That would probably look like a short book, a template, or a mini course(something people can buy once and keep forever). I personally started by self-publishing an e-book through Amazon Kindle.
In addition, you can offer a subscription for people who want more help than they got from using your product or service alone. That could be monthly coaching, weekly tips, or ongoing access to you. This works great for skills that can be taught, like painting lessons or fitness plans. If you don't know how or where to setup a subscription service, the best way I've personally found to do this is setting up a free website through Substack. If you want an example, checkout my Substack called goaldoctors.com.
Tip - Sell to rich people. If your service costs money, sell to people who have money. Rich individuals, small businesses, large companies, or schools are good places to look. Someone who's struggling will think about every dollar because it's necessary. But a business owner or someone with a lot of cash will say yes faster because they feel their time or results are worth more than your fee.
Lesson 3: Nobody can buy from you if they don't know what you're selling.
Now that you have some content online and a product or service, the next step is to make people aware of what you're selling. In other words, you'll need to do some marketing.
There are some different options for marketing your product or service. You can send cold emails. You can also cold call. But those take time, energy, and frustration. If you already have a full time or part time job, you might not have the time and energy after work that's required to do cold calls and emails consistently.
If you want a more efficient way to delegate the marketing, run ads. If you don't know how to run an ad online or haven't done this before, don't worry. I'll explain how to setup your first social media ad in the steps below:
Remember the video you posted in Step 1? Post 20 to 30 more of those videos talking about the problems and questions around your skill that you saw online.
Of your 20 to 30 total videos, look for any that got 2x your average views or more. So if the majority of your videos got 100 views, look for any videos with 200 views or more.
Download those high-performing videos from TikTok.
Post the same videos again on Facebook. But instead of posting them organically, make each post into an ad by pushing "Boost Post".
The "title" of the post should talk about whatever you're offering in the ad. So if you're offering a cookbook with over 100 recipes, the title should say something like "Get my 100+ recipe cookbook".
Finally, add a "learn more" or "click here" button to your ad that sends people to your product or service.
To start, set your budget to $5/day for 7 days. The first 7 days is just to see if the ad works well enough to put more money into. For the audience, just let Facebook pick it for you.
After a week, look at the results. If the ad made you money or broke even, run it again. If it lost money, tweak the headline or try a different video.
Lesson 4 - Give Them Free Stuff First
A problem I personally came across was that people clicked my ads, but they never bought my product or service after they looked at it. The biggest reason was that people don't feel safe buying from a person or brand they don't know is credible. And on Facebook, I was an unknown guy with no following and no reviews from someone who had already bought from me.
I needed a way for the people who clicked on my ad to know I was credible and could actually produce results around my skill. I needed them to feel safe that they'd get their money's worth if they bought from me. To do this, I stopped advertising my paid products and services. Instead, I started offering people free stuff that leads to my products and services.
For example, I sell an e-book on Amazon that teaches people to set their goals in a way that guarantees they'll reach the finish line instead of giving up early. It sells for $4.99. However, I took one of the chapters from the book and made it into a 7 page pdf. On the last page of the pdf, I added a message that says "Want more tips on the best way to hit your goal? Get the full book". Below that, I added a button that says "Click Here for More Goal Tips". It links to my book on Amazon. Since the pdf is so much shorter than the book, I'm willing to give it away for free.
Now, instead of making ads that talk about the book for $4.99, I make ads that talk about(and send people to) the free pdf. The pdf is short, so it's easy for people to consume. Best of all, it gives people a valuable snippet of the info they'd get in the paid book. So if they get to the end of the pdf, see I'm competent, and want more, they'll be a lot more likely to buy the book without feeling risk.
Tip - Don't put all your eggs in one ad. Run two different $5 ads at the same time. After a week, put the full $10 toward whichever one performed better. That's how you test without going broke.
And here's the part most people skip. After someone buys your service, don't disappear. Send a gift a month or two later. Not food. Not a gift card. Something they'll use five times or more. A nice mug with their name on it. A handwritten note. No logos. Send it unexpectedly, not right after they bought. That's how you turn a one-time buyer into someone who sends you referrals for years.