Happy New Year! With a new year come new resolutions. People want to stop smoking, eat less, shake off the weight they took on during the holidays, be more productive… you name it. And you made a new resolution of being more diligent with your side income pursuit and make more money this year? Perfect, let’s go get some!
Personal trainer
One of the first resolutions people make is to get in shape, and for that, they are ready to spend their Christmas bonus and then some. Many join a gym, only to drop off after the first week. Other opt for a personal trainer. If you like to run, play volley-ball, or practice yoga, why not turn it into a side hustle?
You can teach formally or simply offer to serve as an accountability buddy, to go running three times a week with the person and help prepare a 5k run or something.
Tutor
When I was a tutor, January was one of my busiest time of the year, right after September. January is the time parents realize their kids may be behind in school and after giving them a break over Christmas want to start with tutoring sessions. Like the gym people, they tend to overestimate their offspring’s capacities to have a lesson thrice a week, so expect less gigs from Easter until June, then it will almost dry up during summer.
Spruce up your online ad, mention all the grades you can teach and the extras, like I would teach the piano or give French lessons.
Learning a new language is also part of New Year’s resolutions so I would get a good deal of ultra motivated French students in January, then lots of dropouts in April. Piano and guitar teachers, enjoy it too while it lasts!
Diet trainer
Losing weight is another strong resolution. I have seen people on Fiverr selling diet plans for $5, it may not seem like a lot of money, but no work is required once you created the diet plan, you can email it to 100 people and make $500.
Like the personal trainer, you can offer your time as accountability buddy, cook healthy meals for a neighbor or arrange for a healthy big cook session with your friends.
Since you research all the recipes and put together the shopping list, let them buy the groceries, and you would cook at your place enough meals for a week, a month… whatever you have time for, and all below X calories per portion. You would not get paid but would get free food for your family for a while.
Virtual assistant
New Year is also a time when people vow to be more productive and organized in their daily lives. You can offer your services on Elance, Odesk and similar platform to help them with a multitude of tasks they have on their to do list.
Going from web design to productivity coach to spreadsheet training to filing and archiving, make sure you list EVERY single task you can perform and chances are someone will hire you.
For example, I was looking for someone to make an interactive map for my land development website. After a lot of searching on Fiverr, only a couple of people offered “interactive maps” in their ad, so I had to widen and write to a few more who knew about PHP and Ajax or HTML coding. Most were not familiar with maps. I found out later that it is called an “image map”, and looked for that instead, there were only four people who listed it as a skill. I am sure the demand it not huge either but it is always better to be one of four than one of thousands who can code a website.
How else can you take advantage of the New Year to make more money?
This post was featured on the Financial Carnival for Young Adults, Carnival of Wealth, thank you!
I reckon if you became a personal trainer just for January and February you could have enough work to pay for the rest of the year off. The amount of people that make new years resolutions to get fit or lose weight means that there is plenty of people looking for someone to help them out.
Glen @ Monster Piggy Bank recently posted…Saving Money an Extra Dollar at a Time
Very interesting. I’ll be launching my financial planning practice soon and hadn’t really thought about it’s timing at the beginning of the year and relating it to resolutions. I’ll end up being a little late, but I can definitely see the marketing value here, as long as you actually have something of value to offer.
Matt Becker recently posted…Traditional vs. Roth IRA: Some Unconventional Wisdom on Which is Better for Young Investors
I think setting goals at the beginning of the year can be really motivating. Great example about the image map! If you specialize in a skill that most others don’t have or don’t pursue, you can probably charge a lot more, even if demand is far lower than something like coding a website. Hmmm I wonder if I can specialize in something related to Microsoft Excel and cash in….
DC @ Young Adult Money recently posted…15 Ways to Improve your Finances in the New Year – Part 1
I just have to get myself out there more in order to make more money. I want to staff write on more websites and am thinking about creating some tools that will bring in some income!
Grayson @ Debt Roundup recently posted…How To Make More Money – Ways To Earn Extra Income
Interesting ideas! There are a ton of ways to make a bit of extra money based around new years resolutions. On a kinda similar vein, if you are the one making the resolution you can do something similar. If you want to work out for instance, you can join gym pact and earn a little bit for each workout you complete. There are always possibilities!
Fig @ Figuring Money Out recently posted…Bits & Pieces 1/5/14
I’ve been actively looking to take on more side hustles- specifically freelance writing and virtual assisting. I’ve already booked one new job this year and a few others are pending. Lots of work, but very exciting.
Stefanie @ The Broke and Beautiful Life recently posted…Automate to Save
Good for you! Especially when the competition is harsh now with websites offering 1 million other people. I find lots of bloggers hiring from within the PF niche which is great for all. High quality and decent wages.
Thanks for including my link about how I made side income! I think all your ideas are great! I’m getting more requests for random things now than I can handle! Like building websites now. I’m having to start to hire people to help me! Good problem to have I guess. 🙂 My slow time comes in the summer, and since school is out it’s a great time for me to take advantage of kids who want volleyball lessons. It’s all about how many children’s attitudes I can handle though. lol!
Tonya@Budget and the Beach recently posted…Adventures Around the World: Life as a Travel Club Organizer
Most of the kids I tutored were under 12 and pretty sweet. Teens are more complicated to handle indeed!
If you are going into it blind, it can be difficult to make money through the Internet. Use this article to put yourself in the right direction. It’ll get you on your way to making money right away.
Hi Pauline.
You are so right about the influx of new students in January, only to find that as school becomes more demanding, my guitar students end up cancelling or dropping off all-together around March. And it’s true, come summer time, I may have one student left who is not going to camp, or juts taking the summer off from “learning”!
You can always tell who really loves learning if they keep up their private lessons into the summer months!
Take care and all the best and thanks for the link shout-out 🙂
Lyle
lyle @ The Joy of Simple recently posted…2014 – Time To “Git ‘er Done!”
Hi Lyle, I don’t think I took a summer class as a young adult but as a kid we were going on holidays anyway so the extra curricular activities were always September-June. Most of my friends who teach music use summer for master classes, music festivals where they get paid to play, and improving their own skills.
The freelancing option is gaining more popularity
among people of all walks of life as an achievable work from home idea that
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to your pace and adaptability. It is a personal decision and one that should not be tken lightly.
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I believe starting a new year with a new goal is important no matter what it relates to. If it has to do with making extra money, even better. I have considered doing some virtual assistant work, but never got myself to follow through with it so currently I’m working on cutting back on spending until I find the right thing for me.
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