Photo By: Hannah Wei

The last post explored the first category of income production, your primary/traditional job. Now I explore the closely related second category.

Category #2 - Additional Job/Moonlighting/Side-Hustle

As you can tell, there are many different ways to describe this category. An additional part-time job, moonlighting, a side-hustle, side-gig, working in the gig economy. These examples are similar to your primary job in some circumstances such as a consistent and dependable hours work-income earned ratio. What do I mean? You typically get paid, at least some, for the work that you perform.

This category covers a fairly large range. For example, you could have an additional part-time job on the weekends which would give you same limited control over your rate without the typical benefits that most traditional full time jobs provide (e.g., health insurance) and often a hard-set schedule to abide by even if only part-time hours. This is considered the fairly old-school approach to earning additional income.

Or you could take advantage of many of the jobs/side-hustles of the gig economy such as ride sharing, food delivery, and other small jobs facilitated by some overseeing company (e.g., Uber, Lyft, DoorDash). But once again, in most cases, you still have limited control over your rate but more control over your hours of work. There are many blogs online where authors claim to make a substantial living simply from this gig economy. It all depends on your location and the amount of hours that you work. Also, you are at the mercy of the policies and protections of the company that facilitate these transactions.

Or if you have a particular skill set that is in demand and the experience to reinforce your knowledge and skill set then you could open up your own freelance and consulting business. This approach is ideal because you can really bend the hours worked-income earned ratio in your favor; you can control both your rate and your hours worked. The catch? Unlike the previous two examples, where the company provides possible clients or the employer ensures that you have a consistent stream of income, freelancing ensures neither and is very difficult to get started.

Freelancing is difficult to start, primarily because no one’s beginning experience is exactly the same. Some freelancers begin with clients from a pre-existing job, other freelancers started with friends, family, colleagues, other freelancers simply found ways to outbound market their services to potential clients, and others had already built a reputation that generated its own inbound leads. Either way, it’s difficult to get started though many would describe the beginning as a gradual snowball effect that simply takes both time and work.

Also, you must wear many different hats as if you’re a one-person business (because you are). You must be able to market yourself. You must be able to handle your bookkeeping, tax burden, and accounting. And, of course, you must be able to deliver on your services. This doesn’t even include the possible conflicts with clients not paying, unreasonable requirements, and stiff competition on price from others advertising similar services.

OBut of all the examples in this category, I would argue that freelance and consulting work holds the most earning potential and the greatest possibility of freedom and control. But you have to actually get that snowball rolling at first, which is much more difficult than most experienced freelancers would have you believe.