Every Wednesday, we will look into different side hustles as a way to make more money. Today we will see how you can make a little cash from parties.
Help plan the party
This is pretty self explanatory. Your friend is throwing a party and lamenting she is overwhelmed with the planning and running all the errands. Offer to take that burden off her hands for a fee. Your help can be targeted, printing the invitations, booking a clown, taking care of the food or hiring a caterer, or if you know about the different aspects of party planning, you could offer to plan the whole event. Your price should take into account the time you are saving the person, and the quality of the service you will deliver. For $100, no one will expect a state of the art party, but for 10% of the total costs, they will have higher standards. Start low, build your clientele and raise your rates as you go.
Finding party planning gigs: You can ask the moms at school once your kid is invited to a birthday party, or if they just had another child and are talking about baptism. Baby showers, weddings and Bar Mitzvah are also typical events that will welcome extra help. Maybe they already got a quote from a party planner that was too expensive for them, lower it by 30 or 40% and you should still get ahead, since you have no staff, no office, and no marketing fees.
You can also find party planning gigs on Taskrabbit.
Bake a cake
I have previously talked about my friend who started to bake cakes for kids after she baked an awesome Spiderman cake for her kid’s birthday. All the kids who attended came back home to tell their parents they wanted the same for their birthday. She bakes the cake and covers it with a custom glaze, like a cupcake. Her clientele grew from birthday cakes to wedding cakes and now she even makes training sessions to teach the moms how to customize their cakes.
You can start with a cake from a bakery that you just decorate with the person’s name and number of years he or she turned, and learn from there how to do more elaborate decorations. Another friend even bought a cake topping printer and ships the toppings so you can put them on top of your own cake or cupcake.
Finding a baking gig: Again, most of your customers will come from word of mouth. As most events are held on the weekends, this is an easy side hustle to start on top of a day job. Go the extra mile for your first customers and try to attend the party if possible, so you can give your number to potential clients.
Rent your space
Is your house set on a beautiful piece of land? You could consider renting the garden for events. Even better if you have an empty barn that can host the meal in case of rain. Many people do not have the space for their big gathering and are ready to rent one. You can either rent your place as is, or team with a company that will provide chairs, tables, and other party gear. They may take their share of profit but can also refer some of their customers to you, increasing your business.
Finding a renting gig: Put an add on Craigslist, and try to take beautiful pictures, even better if you have pictures from a personal event you already hosted there. Give details about the rate per night, whether you offer rooms for the wedding party to sleep afterward, and how much cooking they will be able to do on site. You can also try to list your site on Airbnb, some luxury mansions rent for company events at a rate that is almost that of a monthly rent.
Make a show
If you have any artistic skills, you could try to find gigs at parties. Magicians, clowns, balloon artists, makeup artists, story-tellers… the list goes on. There will be some setup time, even some preparation at home if you are required to perform in a specific way, but you can make good money out of your passion skill.
Finding a show gig: The local school is a great place to start from. If you manage to organize a show at the school, the children will talk about you to their parents and you could get hired for a birthday party. Having your own little website can be useful too, with a name like magiciankansascity.com, you can be sure parents will find you easily. Lastly, Craigslist is once more the go to place, as well as the local ad board.
Play music or DJ
Professional DJs and bands are pretty expensive. If you have an iPod, you can rent amps for the night and with a couple of playlist plan the music for a whole event.
Same thing if you enjoy playing with your band, many couples will be happy to have live music at their weddings if your rates are reasonable. As the wedding party often travels to attend the wedding, it can be more complicated to score recurring business from the event but any exposure is good to get.
Finding a music gig: Offer around, to your friends getting married or throwing a party. Even if it is a small gathering, people don’t want to be bothered by changing the playlist and may be happy to pay you a few bucks to take care of it. One of my friends was a DJ at his brother’s wedding, and lamented not being able to enjoy the event. Take that off their hands, and offer your services. Once more, it would be good to have your own personal website so people can find you online as well.
Cater
Catering doesn’t have to be a big deal with the finest finger foods, it can be a simple meal of burgers and salads, but you are making people’s life easier by doing it yourself. Edward got married for less than $200 including food, that is proof that you can setup a meal for the guests with a low budget. If your cooking skills are ok but not amazing, especially in the plate decoration department, offer to set up a buffet. With a few salads, cold cuts, maybe roasted chicken and mash if they want something hot, or something fun like a DIY burrito bar where the guests can assemble their burritos out of several fillings.
You can charge the price of a local buffet, say $10 per person, and if you shop carefully, make a decent profit. Find recipes that can be prepared at home the previous day and eaten cold, or easily heated on site. When I have a group of people over, I often make quiche, or Spanish tortilla, and cut it in small pieces on toothpicks. You can buy a cauliflower, keep it whole and put dice of mozzarella and cherry tomatoes on it.
Finding catering gigs: You will need to check the food regulations of your councils, or work for friends and family first if you are unsure. You don’t want a customer with food poisoning ruining your business. If you cook Mexican, you could go to a nearby Mexican restaurant and add catering to their food options. Have a photo set ready to send via email if you get inquiries.
Waitress
I have been a waitress at several weddings and enjoyed it because it pays quite well (I got about $150 per night) and is held on Saturday night so you can perfectly do it on top of your day job. It will leave you tired, and will end late so don’t plan anything ambitious on the next day.
Finding waitressing gigs: I worked with a catering temp agency. The organized the whole food catering and staff, and you could choose what dates you were available or not. If you know a friend of a friend who is getting married, it doesn’t cost anything to ask, since you will not be invited, if you can work as staff.
It is also common to have a baby-sitter at weddings so parents can enjoy the party without their kids. You get paid a fixed rate for the whole night, but make sure you agree on a time limit, so you don’t end up with hyperactive kids still dancing around at 5am.
How else can you make money with parties? Have you ever tried?
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Hospitality is one of the largest job sector in the world :0) I guess depending on what kind of party it is you can sell corndogs, hamburgers or other street foods if it’s outside. I like the rent your space idea because it doesn’t take a lot of pre-requisite training or education lol. Actually most of your ideas here are simple for anyone to do if they have the time and are willing to do them.
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Yes, that’s the idea, spot the opportunity, and get in. We have lots of fairs in summer in the French countryside, you can easily get a stand to sell food or drinks and the margin is quite good.
I think this post applies to weddings really well. People spend a ton of money on weddings so if you can get in on the wedding biz you likely can make a decent amount of money. My wife and I would love to own a wedding venue one day.
DC @ Young Adult Money recently posted…The Spender and The Saver
Wedding planner charge about 10% of the whole wedding cost, at the $20K average, if you have a wedding per week from May to September you can make pretty good money. I wouldn’t want to have to deal with bridezillas though 🙂
Definitely some good, simple ideas here. I really like the general premise that there are always slightly unconventional methods available to us to make some extra money. It’s sometimes just a matter of being a little creative.
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One of my side hustles is an Etsy business. I create custom cards, announcements, and invitations for all sorts of parties and events and even business and personal needs. I love doing it!
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I’ve been hired a couple of times through task rabbit and outside of task rabbit to help pass out wine, keep things tidy, pass out appetizers. Pretty quick and easy way to make money…and fortunately the hosts have been nice. I’ve heard some horror stories too. 🙁
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I love these ideas! I have waitressed in the past, and I really liked it. I intend to go back as a side income soon to help pay down my debt quicker.
My husband is talented enough to make some great cakes, and he has been successful in earning some side money for some creative birthday cakes, such as a Rapunzel tower, and XBox groom’s cake, and a huge cupcake pull-apart cake. Beyond bringing in more money, it’s also a great bonding experience as we work together on some of his more ambitious projects.
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wow sounds like he is quite creative with his baking! I want to try it once, those cakes are so awesome. Will need to check if I can get the ingredients for colored glaze around here. It is cool that you can do it together, and better spend time over money making projects than spending haha!
One of my friends is an event planner. She doesn’t actually bake cakes or anything but she does make good money organizing large events and making everything goes smoothly.
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That sounds like a dream job to many but I couldn’t deal with the stress. Usually they charge about 10% of the cost of the event so it can be great money for little work once your processes are always the same.
You are coming up with some great ideas Pauline. Some of these I would have never thought about but they make sense and are easy to do. But as usual the hard put is getting the gigs in the first place. I have a friend who is an event planner/cake baker. She started just baking cakes for friends weddings and birthdays for free and people where always asking who made the cake. From there she got more clients and went to do the whole events. She says she really doesn’t like doing wedding even though they pay well. Guess just too much headache for the money.
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yes, the bride can be hard to deal with. That is exactly how my cake baking friend started too. For most of those gigs the easiest way to get them is word of mouth. Sometimes people think a wedding planner would be too expensive but if you save them an afternoon of looking for providers and charge them a low fee they’ll be happy to pay. If you have a providers list it will take you 20 minutes when they would spend 5 hours.
Party planning and cake decorating are excellent business ideas for creative people.
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I saw a cake decoration printer on amazon, now you don’t even need to be creative, that thing will print the glaze decoration for you!
Thanks for the mention. People may balk at the menu we had at our wedding if you were to offer it as catering, but catering businesses do seem to be a popular home-based business these days.
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I guess it all depends on the price, some places offer a basic snack menu and people are happy to pay for the convenience at $5 or $8 per person rather than having an expensive three course meal at $40 per head.
What an amazing cake! I wish I had talent like that. This would be a really fun way to make money. It’s almost like event planning (bits of it).
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Yes, she has tons of fun doing it. I am not very talented in the baking department either but love looking at her creations.
This is such an awesome side hustle! I’d love to plan little kid birthday parties…cakes, decorations, favors…I’ll have to look into it!
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You should! Rock a couple of parties (your own, nieces and nephews, friends’ kids) and you should get customers easily.
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I always wanted to start a party favor business. If any business is having a vendor event or party, I will make party favors for their guests. I supply the bags, they have an option to put promotional material in the bag or we find favors for them. We create the bags and then present them to be given out.