How to Earn Extra Dough with a Home Based Business

Blogging about personal finance for the past five years has taught me many things. But the most important lesson I’ve learned was completely unexpected–the power and freedom of earning extra income. Some call it a side hustle. Others call it a home based business. I call it life-changing.

A side hustle is anything that makes you money outside of your full-time job. It’s something you can do for extra money or even for your own enjoyment. It’s a way to experiment with business ideas, without all the risk because you still have a full-time income that pays the bills. You get to build a business around something you are passionate about while having the luxury of being your own boss and following your own schedule.

Side hustles create a parallel career track for you, giving you the potential to jump ship and make it your full-time job. In the current economic conditions, you can think of it as a back up in case things don’t go as planned with your career. In addition to the side income, a side hustle can even add to your resume and quite possibly help you land your next gig.

Now, we’ve just hit some of the high points side hustles offer. But in all fairness you have to consider the entire picture. Once you find your perfect side hustle (we will get to that) it still involves work–a great deal of work if you want it to be successful. Here are a few things to consider:

1. You basically have two jobs.
2. It becomes even more difficult to create a balance between your work and life.
3. Depending on your hustle, it might require some out of pocket expenses.

If these realities haven’t scared you away, keep reading.

Over the next five days, we’ll publish a series of articles focused on Side Hustles. These articles are full of information, tips and resources to point you in the right direction so you can find a Side Hustle that works for you. Here’s the schedule of side-hustle awesomeness:

Monday: What A Great Side Hustle Looks Like – The first step is to consider what makes a side hustle worth perusing. For example, is it important to you that there is potential for taking it full-time? If so, that should be considered right from the beginning. In this article we highlight key points that can make a Side Hustle a great one for you.

Tuesday: How To Find Side Hustle Ideas – The web is packed full of blogs and websites that can help you find ideas, and this article reviews some of them. Of course, we could just give you some ideas (actually, we do on Thursday), but you know the old saying–“give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Wednesday: 75 Side Hustle Ideas – Coming up with ideas on your own can be difficult, so we came up with them for you. This article features our list of 100 (yes, 100) Side Hustle Ideas.

Thursday: 50 Resources for a Freelancer – Once you’re committed to your hustle then you are going to need some help. We’ve put together a list of 50 online freelance resources for you to reference.

Friday: How To Take Your Side Hustle Full Time – If your Side Hustle takes off and you are thinking about making a career change we have a few ideas to help you plan your move.

And finally, we have a bit of surprise in store for you with this series. If things go as planned, we’ll end the series with a super cool infographic about side hustles. I’ve always enjoyed infographics, but never published one here at Dough Roller headquarters. It’s still being tweaked, and I’ve yet to even see it. But it’s in good hands and should be ready to roll by week’s end.

It’s my hope that this series will help you take your life, your finances, and your dreams one big step in the right direction. So if you ever have any questions, don’t hesitate to email me at dr [at] doughroller [dot] net.