[Specialty Post] Community Poll: Side Hustle Results

If you had told me back in April when I was slaving over recreating the best of my old blog on this new site that there’d come a time not even a year later where I’d be publishing my third article in one week, I would’ve crawled back under my quarantine covers and paused my Squarespace membership. And yet, here we are.

Thanks to 133 survey respondents, we have an interesting breakdown of what this community does to make a little extra cash (if you answered, God bless you – know that your transparency will likely assist another reader to ramp up the #HotGirlShit and stack it even higher).

One quick note in support of side hustling

We don’t side hustle because we like to work more. We side hustle so that, in the future, we can work less.

That, to me, is a crucial distinction to make at the outset. You’re not doing this (at least, I hope not) so you can generate more spending money. You’re doing it so you can generate more investing money.

If you’re sitting there like, Well great, then I’m definitely not giving up my after-work wine-fueled Real Housewives binges for that, hear me out. I’ll even use our community data to support my case!

The largest percentage of respondents (26%) make between $100 and $250 per month from their side hustle. Even if you take the mid-range of that lowest bucket, at around $200/month of side hustle income, you’re still looking at the potential of ending up with about $15,000 after side hustling for just 5 years if you invest your earnings (assuming a 7% average return).

$15,000 is nothing to sneeze at, especially when you remember that it’s your result from just a few extra hours of work per month.

$200 per month in side hustle income is the equivalent to a $2,400 raise at your day job, put another way.

And hey, maybe after five years, you decide to give up the dog-walking and fitness instruction and Etsy shop sales, and you’re going to let your $15,000 ride for the next decade while you work your “main” job in the background. Maybe you don’t even contribute another dollar to your $15,000.

10 years in the future, and your 5 years of side hustling at a modest $200 per month (invested) has grown to $30,000 on its own, without you working another minute on your side hustle.

When you side hustle in order to invest more, you shave years off your retirement timeline. And that was the conservative example.

Let’s look at the numbers, shall we?

How this community hustles

What do they do?

The biggest chunk, 17.3% of our respondents, are fitness instructors (including yours truly). 23 people fell into this bucket.

15% (20 people) do freelance social media consulting, copywriting, or content creation.

Nearly 10% (11 people) babysit, and 6% (8 people) are tutors. Those were by far the most popular answers, as you can see by the pie chart above, but there were some interesting write-in candidates as well:

• Real estate (buyer’s agent)

• Travel agent

• Etsy

• Calligraphy and design

• Instacart shopper or Doordash delivery

• Rover

• Dance teacher

• Online boutique owner

• Vending machine owner

• Day-of assistant wedding coordinator

• Shipt

• Virtual personal assistant

The mark of a good side hustle is one in which you don’t have to trade as much of your time for money – in other words, if your salary at work is $60,000, your “hourly rate” (looking just at your base pay and ignoring the many, many lucrative benefits of corporate employment like good healthcare, 401(k) matches, etc.) is technically $30/hour.

(To figure out your hourly rate using your salary in a #QuickAndDirty calculation, take the first two numbers and divide by two. $60,000 = 60, and 60 cut in half is 30. $30 is your hourly rate if your salary is $60,000.)

In my side hustle life, I’ve always tried to find things where I can do better than $30/hour – maybe it’s freelance work for which I charge $50/hour, or a 45-minute fitness class that’ll pay $75 or $80. You get the idea. All side hustles are not created equal, and it may take a few tries to find one that can compete with (or even beat) your “corporate” rate.

But there are creative solutions here, too. Consider dog-sitting. If someone will pay you $40 per day to allow their dog to hang out in your apartment, that’s pretty easy money. And hey, even if you worked from their apartment to watch their dog, you’re really not trading any additional time beyond taking Skip around the block for fresh air and keeping an eye on him.

How much do they make side hustling, on average?

These answers made me proud, as did the correlation between side hustlers and high earners. I figured most of my side hustling audience would be folks who had relatively low full-time incomes, but I was surprised – turns out people who earn a lot in their day job just really like earning.

Our largest group, at 26.3% or 35 people, make between $101 and $250 per month.

24.8% (33 people) make between $251 and $500 per month, and 22.6% (30 people) make between $501 and $1,000.

The last largest percentage (in purple above) represents the 15.8% (21 people) who make between $1,000 and $2,000 per month.

These four groups make up about 90% of respondents, and you’ll see above that the remaining 10% are in the $2,000 to $9,999 bucket. If I were you, I’d look at this and think, “All right, I’ve got a 90% chance of making between $100 and $2,000 per month.”

And for fun, let’s figure out how someone in our $1,000 bucket (the 22.6% chunk) would fare if they were to invest their side hustle income over a five-year period.

After five years of investing their side hustle income, they’d have – ready? – $71,000.

And that’s just five years! If they were ready to call it quits after that five years and return to Netflix couch serfdom indefinitely, they’d have a $71,000 head start completely separate from their full-time income. Over the next 10 years, that $71,000 would grow (on its own!) to $140,000.

$140,000 from five years of side hustling and 10 years of chilling. That’s the power of investing meeting the power of creating extra income.

How do their side hustles compare to their full-time work?

3 in 4 people do something different for their side hustle than what they do in their full-time job, and I was surprised by the following response:

Only 36.8% of respondents said they categorically enjoy their side hustle more than their full-time work.

When I first began poppin’ off about side hustles on Instagram last week, I got a few messages from people asking how purpose and enjoyment factored in. I answered honestly (for me): If you don’t enjoy your side hustle, it won’t be sustainable.

Granted, I don’t have data around how long these people have been doing these things (maybe I should’ve asked), but I was surprised that so few ranked their side hustle above their full-time role from an enjoyment perspective.

It’s a good thing, if you think about it: You spend a whole hell of a lot more time sitting in front of your work laptop than you do side hustling, I’d imagine. Perfect segue…

How much time per week do people spend side hustling?

By far, the largest group (47 people, or 36.2%) spends about 4-6 hours per week. That’s less than an hour per day, on average.

31.5% (41 people) spend 1-3 hours per week, and 16.2% (21 people) spend 7-10 hours per week.

The 10-15 hours per week group is pretty well-represented; 11.5% (15 people) answered accordingly. For context, 10-15 hours per week is about 1.75 hours per day on average. Only a small chunk spent 16 hours per week or more on their side hustle; to that group, I say, come on in; the water’s fine!

What about full-time work? What types of careers do these people have?

The spread across full-time work was interesting to me: One frontrunner category didn’t surprise me, but the other three certainly did.

The largest group, making up almost a quarter of respondents (32 people) work in marketing, advertising, or public relations full time.

The remaining chunks of 9%ish groups (12-13 people each) worked in medicine, technology (coding, data science, etc.), or finance and accounting full-time. Consulting was a close fifth place.

Maybe that’s why the full-time income graph shouldn’t have surprised me…

The largest group, represented in orange and clocking in at 30.3%, make between $60,000 and $80,000 per year in their full-time positions. 25.8% make between $45,001 and $60,000.

The group that surprised me the most were the roughly 23% – nearly a quarter – that were in the $80,000 to $130,000 range.

I used to think that once I made a certain salary I’d no longer feel the need to side hustle (read: if I made $130,000 full-time, I think I’d be FULLY enjoying my Netflix cave moments), but apparently hustle is engrained in the soul, people!

So how can you apply this information to your life?

Well, for starters, if you (a) thought you made enough money already or (b) didn’t have time to side hustle, you… may be right. I’m not saying this is for everyone, especially if you think you’d just spend your earnings. That’s certainly possible, but it would mostly defeat the purpose.

However, if you’ve got a few hours per week (remember, even 1.75 hours per day will net you an average of 10-15 hours per week invested) and you’re interested in retiring a few years sooner, finding a side hustle might be for you (and to the tiny sliver of people who responded that their full-time salary tops $150,000… are you hiring?). Just kidding.

I asked how much people charged for their services (for those who set their own rate) so you’d have a starting point to work with; I’m including a range below.

Keep in mind this is still a small sample size, so if you feel like you’d rather charge a lot more (or a lot less), side hustles are the wild west. There’s really no risk in shooting for the stars when you set your rate, because even if nobody buys, worst case scenario is you lower it and try again. It’s not like you’re negotiating with your employer for a crazy high raise – you’re setting your market value to the world. If someone meets it? Fantastic.

How much this community charges for their work

Dog walkers/sitters

$35-$60/day dog-sitting and $15-$20/walk

Babysitting

$12-$25/hour

Digital marketing content or copywriting

$30-$75/hour

Private yoga or dance classes

$40-$100/hour 

Large fitness classes

$28-$100/class

Social media content

$15-$25/hour

Graphic design

$20/hour 

Coaching

$50/hour 

Payroll/accounting for small businesses

$25/hour 

Personal assistant work

$22/hour 

CRM Marketing Manager

$100/hour 

Photography

$100/hour 

Tutoring

$60-$90/hour

Final thoughts

When I got my first side hustle as a yoga instructor, I made $90 in a good month.

This past month, my “side hustles” combined made substantially more than my full-time income.

But if I had started with that expectation, I think I would’ve quit (disappointed) a few months in realizing that there’s no fast path to generating thousands of dollars in incremental income.

While you may get there faster than I did now that you’re armed with far more information (and perhaps an actual plan, as opposed to me searching for a legal way to deduct Lululemon purchases from my taxable income), it’s important to remember: Worst case scenario is you make a couple hundred dollars, invest it for a few years, and end up with $30,000 extra in an investment account 15 years from now.

It’s important not to get too caught up in what the side hustle is, and instead assess honestly whether or not you (a) have time in your day to devote an hour to something that could make you money, and (b) if there’s anything you find remotely interesting beyond your day job.

Truthfully, neither of those are very tall orders. I bet you didn’t graduate from college and think, “Well, time to singularly focus and care about this one niche, specific thing I’m being paid to do and give up on all other interests and potentially monetizable hobbies!”

When I started Money with Katie, I just wanted an outlet to tell other young people about money. Six months of free labor later, I had the idea to create a planner that would help me give “specific” advice to people cheaply and efficiently by creating calculations in a spreadsheet that matched the calculations I’d do for them in real life. The Wealth Planner was born, and 800 sales later, I see the power in following a passion and trusting you’ll find a way to create income if you’re willing to create value.

I don’t think I was put on this planet to be a fitness instructor, but I like it, I think I’m pretty good at it, and it pays well. Done.

I’m not the world’s best UX writer and it’s not my soul’s purpose, but do I enjoy setting my own rate to work on other people’s user interfaces on the side so they don’t have to stress about microcopy? Sure.

Don’t overthink it. Just start. The stakes are low, and the potential upside is almost limitlessly high.