Part-Time Side Business Ideas

The best side business ideas are easy to start, have low startup costs, and you can do it in your spare time. They also allow people to learn new skills, pursue passions, and create more financial security for themselves. This article features part-time business ideas from experts, plus tips on how to get started.

Here are 15 inspiring side business ideas from the pros:

1. Running a Subscription Site

Sylvia LeRahl, CEO, Membership Fix

The best side business someone can run is a membership or subscription site business. Recurring income, having the ability to scale, flexibility with time and place, and an awesome way to capture a person’s passion and/or interest are just some of the benefits of this type of entrepreneurship. Many of the people who are gravitating toward membership sites are those that want to escape the limitations of a 1:1 business model so they can increase their impact and income as well. Find someone who can help you lay a successful business foundation. All too often, people leap right into membership site ownership, thinking that it will only take a passion or interest to make the business successful. However, there are so many considerations — retention, engagement, marketing, content creation, and more — that are imperative for success.

2. Online Transcription

Chloe Brittain, Owner, Opal Transcription Calgary

If you’re skilled in grammar and punctuation, then you might consider starting a local online transcription service as a flexible way to earn income. Startup costs are very low — all you need is a computer with an internet connection, word processing software, transcription software, headphones, and a transcription foot pedal. Many local businesses prefer to work with a smaller local service rather than outsourcing to a large agency, because the quality of the transcripts tend to be better. The quickest way to get started is to set up your Google My Business profile and launch a simple website. You can promote your service with local advertising or search engine optimization.

3. Craft Party Hosts

Ryan J., Personal Finance Blogger, Arrest Your Debt

The days of Tupperware and MaryKay parties are coming to a close as craft parties are starting to emerge onto the scene. If you are great at making crafts and enjoy throwing parties, you could start a craft party business in your spare time. This business can be easily marketed through social media and through referrals. By having customers register ahead of time, you can avoid product waste by purchasing only the items necessary to accommodate the guests. You know your expenses and can charge enough to cover expenses and extra for your time. The laid back social atmosphere of the parties tends to attract regular customers. My one tip to help start this business is to start small with family and friends. Direct referrals are the best source for customers and you could create a dedicated following through this method. Growing a business takes time so don’t be discouraged by a slow start.

4. Dropshipping

Daniella Flores, Creator, iliketodabble.com

The side business idea I think would be perfect for someone to be able to do on the side of their full-time job is dropshipping in a certain niche like T-shirts using Etsy and a third party fulfillment service like Printify, Printiful, etc. The best thing about dropshipping is the third party fulfillment service you end up working with ships the products directly to the customer so you don’t have to ever manage any physical inventory. There is a small learning curve but it is quick to get over as those two fulfillment sites integrate directly with Etsy and do most of that work for you. You just have to come up with what you want to design and sell and of course any keywords for tags. Pick a niche and do your research on that niche beforehand using a free tool like Google AdWords to find those keywords (for example search for terms like “neon T-shirts,” “graphic T’s,” etc.).

5. Selling Digital Downloads

Maggie Aland, Marketing and Review Editor, Fit Small Business

Online selling is not only limited to physical products. There’s also a large market for selling digitally downloadable products like online courses or templates for special crafts. Having your own website is key to starting this online side business. Use Shopify for a quick and easy way to create your very own online store with beautiful, responsive themes. It requires no back-end upkeep and delivers a full set of multichannel sales tools making it one of the most popular, user-friendly ecommerce platforms around. Try Shopify for free.

6. Bookkeeping

Rick Orford, Co-Founder, Surplus Academy

My top side hustle for 2019 is a bookkeeper. The barrier to entry is easy, and does not require a degree. Bookkeepers can earn a significant income by employing a subscription-based billing model. You can offer to track income and expenses for small businesses. The bookkeeper creates a system that organizes the otherwise disorganized client data, and it takes less than three hours a month to maintain, per customer, and charges out $99 per month. That’s $1,200 per year, per client. In this model, the bookkeeper can slowly scale up. Twenty customers a month would be three weekday hours of part-time work on the side, at $23,760 per year in revenue. With full-time hours, this can triple to $71,280.

7. Clinical-Grade Skin Care Distributor

Abby Messner, Skin Care Specialist, Ever Skin

Being a skin care distributor is unique for a couple of reasons. First, there is no barrier to entry. Someone can start a clinical grade skin care business for as little as $49 or as much as $599 with access to PayPal credit with no fees for six months. In addition there is no inventory to invest in or manage. Consumers are starting to demand chemical-free products and are not buying products in brick and mortar stores as they used to, and instead are leaning on the amazon.coms of the world for subscription services and paying membership fees for added perks like free shipping. The sales force is mainly women but there are a handful of men doing extremely well. The business can be run both digitally and offline or a combination of the two. It’s one of the few businesses that can be run solely from a smartphone.

8. On-Demand T-Shirt Printing

Stacy Caprio, Founder, Her.CEO

One business idea you can run on the side is a print-on-demand T-shirt business. The unique selling proposition of this type of business is all you have to do is find or create copyright-free designs and post those designs on different online marketplaces while the marketplace takes care of the marketing, user acquisition, printing, shipping, customer service, and returns. You get a percentage of each sale as pure profit and don’t have to worry about any of the costs either. The huge upside potential with minimal risk makes this a great side business for 2019. My tip to start would be to apply for a Merch by Amazon account, which is one of the biggest print-on-demand T-shirt marketplaces out there.

9. Real Estate Wholesaling

Ed Zulyevic, Owner/Manager, West Coast Property Group

Starting a real estate wholesaling business is pretty easy with very little money invested. I suggest locating a local mentor or wholesaler and learn the ropes and lessen the learning curve. Much of what wholesaling requires is online and offline marketing, trying to drive motivated house sellers to your website. From there you can qualify them as a lead, interview them on the phone and capture as much information as you can about the property. You can then set up an appointment to view the property and estimate repairs. If all goes well and you determine it’s a good fit to buy the property, you settle on a purchase price and proceed with the necessary paperwork. Real estate wholesaling takes about 10-15 hrs./week of your time.

10. Website Design

Joseph Shields, Owner and Lead Consultant, Social Media Expeditors

For the creative minded, I really believe website design is one of the quickest and easiest side businesses to create in 2019. Unlike many businesses that require extensive equipment, inventory, or training, web design is a skill you can learn fairly quickly and inexpensively in your off hours. Also, with a little sweat equity up front, you can be designing basic sites within a couple of months — and charging good money for them. Now more than ever, businesses are looking for websites to get attention, build community and sell their products and services. With a little discipline and study (I highly suggest Udemy as a source for quality online courses), you could be the one who builds their sites for them.

11. Online Gift Shop

Karla Singson, Serial Entrepreneur and Business Owner, www.karlasingson.com

If you put together an online shop through Shopify, or even on Facebook or Instagram (where it’s free), you can buy and sell items at a profit, ship items during the weekends or lunch breaks, or even use errand or delivery services to deliver the items the same day. You can niche down your ecommerce venture to gift items like flowers, chocolates, bears and jewelry, and start an online-based gift shop. Margins are better, and also easy to manage. I did this with a full-time job for one year and did the delivery myself during my lunch break.

12. Real Estate Investing

Daniela Andreevska, Marketing Director, Mashvisor

Real estate is one of the best investment strategies as it allows you to make some extra money both in the short term (through rental income) and in the long run (through appreciation). Contrary to popular opinion, investing in rental properties can bring about passive income if you hire a professional property management company to take care of all aspects of owning and renting out a property. Moreover, you don’t necessarily need a lot of money to buy an investment property. You can invest in real estate with very little money if you go for a creative strategy such as a real estate partnership, syndication, or crowdfunding. The key to success with a part-time real estate investment business is to buy a profitable property in a top market, which requires careful market and property analysis.

13. Online Affiliate

Peter Bronstein, Founder Bizness Growth

The easiest and best side business when you are working full time is becoming an online affiliate. An affiliate receives a commission that averages 10-20% of the sale. You obtain a domain, create a website and get a web hosting account. Then you need to get traffic to your site about the product or service that you are an affiliate for. Each time someone clicks from your website to the company and buys a product you receive a commission. You need to send potential clients to their website. Affiliates have been around for years. It’s expensive to start a business and you want your money going to marketing instead of a full blown website or a physical location. You can stop anytime with little cost and there’s little cost to begin. Sometimes Facebook advertising works for the product or service. A product that provides a residual income is even better such as web hosting.

14. Wedding Minister

Michael Motylinski Chaplain, Wanderlust Bay Ministries

Get ordained and become a wedding minister. Getting ordained is wonderfully easy online and only take a couple of minutes. Once ordained you can legally perform weddings. Officiants charge between $200 to $800 a wedding. Once ordained, do two things: First, create a free account on Wedding Wire and second, tell all your family and friends you’re ready to make dreams come true.

15. Professional Magician

Andy Peters, Professional Magician, Andy Peters Magic

I think a Magic business is great to start in 2019 because magic is in demand and is more popular than ever, especially with Shin Lim winning “America’s Got Talent.” There is a huge demand now for women magicians. It is also easier than ever now with gig websites to start a magic business. Just knowing one trick that you can do well will set you apart from everyone else for the rest of your life. There is absolutely no inventory to monitor and you are your own product. On a good month a magician can make over $10,000 from your side hustle. Making over $200k a year is a complete reality if you have a day job and do magic on the side. The thing that is great about doing magic is that 90% of the gigs in the beginning are on the weekends or at night, which makes it super easy on your day job. There are not many jobs that start off paying $200 an hour.

Tips for Starting Your Side Business

The Hartford survey reports around 57 million American entrepreneurs are running their own businesses in 2018 and for good reason. Some side businesses are more successful than others because the owners got the basics right. We curated a list of tips for starting a side business from expert online sources to make sure you’re on the right track.

Here are seven helpful tips for starting a side business:

1. Find Your Competitive Angle

There are so many side business ideas out there, but the ones that succeed are those that are able to stand out from their competitors. It’s important that you develop a unique selling proposition that will convince potential customers to pick your product or service over the next brand.

Follow your passion: Side businesses will take your free time so it’s important that you’re still doing something you’re interested in.
Check for demand: Your unique business won’t be successful if there is no demand for your product or service. Start by conducting surveys on friends, families, and co-workers, then do some online research.
Check for keywords: Having an online presence improves your chances for getting more clients. Make sure you choose competitive keywords that can help customers find you easily online.
Know Your competition: It’s important that you get to know other businesses that offer the same product or service. This will help you design ideas to stand out.

2. Start With a Plan

Side businesses require investment of your time and money so it’s worth developing a solid business plan. You will need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business idea by doing your research on existing businesses that offer the same product or service. Outline your steps on how you will manage this venture while holding a full-time job. What are your long-term goals? How much time do you need to run this side business? How much help do you need? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you manage not only your time but the cost for running this venture.

3. Know Your Strengths

Some successful businesses were started by individuals whose skills don’t match their idea. However, knowing your strengths can help you start your side business with ease. For example, if you’re great with negotiation skills, you can work deals with suppliers and hire experts while staying within your budget. If you’re great with kids, you can start creating your own e-books for children. Leveraging your strengths can open more opportunities that you would have never imagined.

4. Set Realistic Goals

Like any other business, it’s important that you build realistic and measurable goals for yourself. You should start with daily, weekly, and monthly goals that work toward accomplishing a long-term goal you have identified in your business plan. Begin a list and add deadlines to keep you motivated. Measure your goals regularly so you’re always aware of how much your business is improving.

5. Outsource Your Tasks

Outsourcing is a game changer for small businesses. It gives you an opportunity to access expertise and skills without making a huge dent on your budget. Side businesses benefit from freelance experts because it helps make time more manageable. Start by making a list of tasks and identify which ones you need help with. Some business operation task you can outsource are the following:

Web design: Join websites that will connect you with a pool of freelance web designers who would gladly work with you to create a website at a fraction of the cost.
Branding: Freelance websites can help you find the perfect design for your business logo, letterheads, and business cards.
Content marketing: If you decide on having your own blog or writing an e-book to help establish your expertise, you can outsource this task with freelance writers.
Lead generation: Lead generation is a crucial area of a business which side businesses can easily struggle with. Outsourcing will not only get you the technical skills, it will also help you avoid the huge costs involved in hiring a team to do cold calls and run ads for your business.
Customer service: You can choose from having an AI chatbot developed for your website or hire a virtual assistant to handle customer emails and calls. Either way, this will make you available for your customers even while working your full time job at a fraction of the cost to hire a full time assistant.

6. Build Your Own Website

Having a website for your side business is a great way for making your product or service available to potential customers even while you’re working on your regular job. Make the design simple so it’s easy to navigate. You will also need to consider that people are now more connected to their mobile device so a mobile first or mobile friendly website will help you reach more customers. There are website builders that offer templates to help you easily get your website up and running in hours.

7. Leverage Social Media

If you’re on the fence about creating your own website, you can choose to run your business from your social media account. Facebook and Instagram are designed with business features so you can sell your product or service on the platform. This will also mean that you can run your business from your smartphone and even get a chatbot working to answer potential customer questions to help close more sales.

Bottom Line

The best part-time business ideas are the ones that don’t feel like a second job while still providing you with more financial freedom. With the right strategy, it has the potential to earn you serious income in the future. We hope our list of side business ideas and tips inspired you to start your own.

Start your side business the right way by creating a website that’s supported by a professional web host to impress your customers. We recommend using Bluehost for reliable web hosting service to make sure your website is always online. It also offers domain registration and a business email address, all for just $2.95 per month. Check out Bluehost hosting plans here.

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Would you like to share your best side business ideas? Let us know in the comments.