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There are many ways to make an extra $1,000 per month, but not ALL will help you earn a consistent $1,000 dollar on the side every single month.
In this blog post, I am going to share with you what you should be doing if you want to have a stable side income every month.
Before we go into the specifics of side income strategies, let’s entertain this thought first.
Imagine that you could make an extra $1,000 per month consistently.
How would that make your life different?
Let’s look at different scenarios.
Scenario #1
If you still have housing loans to pay off, you can easily become mortgage-free YEARS earlier when you use this extra $1,000 to pay down your mortgage. Plus, you can save A LOT in interest.
In the hypothetical example above, you can see that you are able to pay off your mortgage debt (which is $150,000) 9 years and 5 months earlier with an extra payment of $1,000 per month in mortgage repayment.
Scenario #2
If you are living paycheck to paycheck, making an extra $1,000 per month can help you build an emergency fund and take away some of your financial stress.
In just 3 months, you would have $3,000 in your emergency fund.
In less than a year, you would have a sizable emergency fund – more than $10,000.
And that can easily cover at least 3 months of your living expenses.
What does this mean?
If you suddenly lose your job, you have to worry about having no money to pay your bills.
Or if you suddenly need money urgently, you know you have got it covered.
Scenario #3
What if you don’t have a full-time job?
Maybe you are a college student, retiree or stay-at-home mom.
Being able to earn $1,000 per month can help a lot with your living expenses.
And I will show you how you can do this even if you have other commitments like schoolwork or caring for your kids.
Scenario #4
If you are making a decent income from a full-time job, an extra $1,000 per month could allow you to splurge on things that you love without feeling guilty.
Maybe you love to travel and see the world, but flight tickets and hotel stays are not necessarily cheap.
Now with your side income, you can afford to stay at a nicer hotel and even take your family or friends to go on the trip with you.
What NOT To Do If You Want To Make An Extra $1000 Per Month Consistently
You see, there are thousands of ways you can make extra money.
You can drive for uber in your free time.
You can also deliver food part-time with UberEat.
You can also sign up with all the survey apps that make you a few cents per survey.
Yes, it can ALL make you some extra cash.
But, it is really worth your time?
Can it really give you a decent side income consistently?
Now, let’s talk about driving for Uber on the side.
It’s estimated that after paying all expenses, Uber & Lyft drivers make between $8.55 and $11.77 per hour on average.
Let’s be a bit conservative here.
Let’s assume that you can make $8 per hour and you can drive for 3 hours a day for 5 days a week.
How much can you make?
You will make about $120 a week and $480 a month.
That’s not even half of your monthly side income goal.
Now, you might ask, ” What if I double my hours to 6 hours a day for 5 days a week? “
Okay, let me tell you why I don’t think it’s a good idea to do that.
First, it’s going to be difficult to put in so many hours every day if you already have a full-time job.
And I highly advise you NOT to do so because of safety and health reasons.
Second, you might end up losing money.
Here’s why.
A few months ago, one of my husband’s friends decided to sign up to become a Uber driver.
When we met up with him for lunch recently, we asked him if driving for Uber is profitable.
Guess what he said.
He told us that he was LOSING money driving Uber on the side.
Yes, I was just as shocked as you when I heard him.
So, why was he losing money?
Because he got a lot of parking tickets as well as traffic fines and his earnings could barely cover it.
Lastly, if you can put this amount of hours into something, it makes more sense to invest your time and effort in building a scalable and flexible side business because you can make MUCH MUCH MORE.
So, what should do you instead to make an extra $1,000 per month?
To have consistency and predictability in your side income, the best way is to get recurring paying clients.
Let’s look at a few examples first.
We all have a fridge at home.
Inside my fridge, you will always find yogurt and apples.
These are two things that I keep buying over and over again.
In other words, I am a repeat buyer for these products.
By the way, don’t get me wrong.
I am using this example NOT to tell you to start selling consumables.
That’s not realistic.
I am simply using this example to explain what a recurring paying customer means.
So, what’s a more realistic way for people like you and me to get recurring paying customers?
Sell services with a high possibility of repeat purchase.
Dog walking service is one perfect example.
Why?
Dogs need to be walked every day.
So, there is probably an ongoing demand for this type of service from the same client.
Now, is it possible to earn an extra $1,000 per month walking dogs?
In general, a dog walker earns about $15 to $20 per 20-minute walk and $20 to $30 per 30-minute walk.
And you can walk multiple dogs at the same time.
If you are hired to walk the same dog three times a week at $20 per walk, that’s about $60 a week and $240 a month.
Let’s say you get 5 repeat clients for your dog walking service.
That’s easily more than $1000 per month on the side.
Now, the question becomes what side business ideas can generate recurring income?
To answer this question, you need to think about what services that people will keep buying?
Here are some examples:
- Babysitting
- Give lessons (School subjects, Music, Language, Sports, etc)
- Coaching (Mindset coaching, Fitness coach, Career coaching, Relationship coaching, etc)
- Offer freelance services to businesses (social media marketing, SEO marketing, content writing service, graphic design service, accounting service, etc)
Generally, it is easier to sell to businesses because they are always looking for help to solve their business problems.
And they also have the willingness and the ability to pay for solutions.
Now, what if you don’t think you have any skills that you can turn into a service?
The good news is that you can always learn a NEW marketable skill.
Here are a few marketable skills that are easy to pick up and also in high demand:
- Write To 1K (Recommended)
- 30 Days or Less To Virtual Assistant Success (Recommended)
Below are the most recent writing jobs posted on one of the many freelance writing job boards.
Once you get a paying client, you can expect to get consistent writing assignments from them. (you can check out this Write To 1K freelancing writing course which shows you how to earn your first $1,000 from writing)
How I Made An Extra $1,000 Per Month Selling Services Online
A few years ago, both my husband and I lost our jobs unexpectedly because the company we both worked for suddenly closed down.
So, we needed to make some money quickly to help pay the bills.
After some research, I found out that the fastest way to make money was to sell services.
But, there was one problem – no sell-able skills.
Then, an idea struck me.
Why not sell other people’s skills?
Then, I noticed that there are literally hundreds of thousands of talented freelancers selling their skills online on freelance platforms such as Fiverr & Upwork.
And, a lot of them are always looking for more freelance work.
So, I said to myself, “Why not get clients for the service they offer and outsource the work to them?”
And I call this ” Service Arbitrage”.
So, I went ahead and started my own graphic design agency to offer graphic design services to small businesses.
What I did next was that I found a group of talented freelancers online from platforms such as Fiverr, and asked them to work with me because I always have projects that I want to outsource.
Freelancers need work.
And I need talented people to deliver the work for my clients.
So, it is a win-win situation.
How I make money is that I will charge my clients at a higher rate than what I am paying my freelancers.
As I slowly built a growing base of regular paying clients, I was able to grow this business from zero to at least $1,000 per month without me having to put in a lot of time and work.
Further Reading:
Service Arbitrage Case Study: How I Made $1,000/Month With No Experience
The Secret To Getting & Keeping Your Repeat Customers
If you offer your service with the mindset of always over-delivering and exceeding your customer’s expectations, you will have a long line of loyal repeat customers in no time.
There are only two reasons why customers keep buying from you:
- They like and trust you
- They think you can help them get the results they want or solve their problem
Now, let me ask you a question.
Do you have a favorite good place that you keep going back to?
Maybe you have.
There is this small Japanese restaurant that I ALWAYS go to.
Why?
The food is good, and the price is also reasonable.
More importantly, the people who are preparing and serving the food are great.
You can tell that they really care about their customers.
So much so that they already know what I want to order before I even say it.
And they remember all my preferences too.
The same goes for your side business.
If you want to get repeat clients for your services, then you need to genuinely care about your clients and have their best interest in mind all the time.
Thank you!
Good ideas