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- 🐧 10 remote side hustles to earn $1k/month (part 2)
🐧 10 remote side hustles to earn $1k/month (part 2)
INSIDE: Protips and Real Side Hustle Examples
Dexter Zhuang
December 17, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes
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How money and taxes work while living abroad as an expat 🌏
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💪 10 Remote Side Hustles to Earn $1k/Month (Part 2)
Last week, we deep dived into remote side hustles #1-5 like consulting and newsletters.
Let’s keep the ideas flowing:
6. Investing in Dividend Stocks
What is it: Purchasing dividend stocks, like the Dividend Aristocrats, which pays a dividend to its shareholders every month or quarter
Platforms: Interactive Brokers, Saxo
Pros: Potential for passive income, consistency
Cons: Market risk, requires a bit of investing knowledge
Example
Morten Sorensen teaches full-time at a Danish university while passively investing in dividend stocks and running Dividend Club
I’ve held REITs like OHI and SRC since 2020 when the market cratered due to Covid, which led to both dividend returns and healthy appreciation since then.
Protip:
Morten recommends using research tools like Stockrover, Investor’s Business Daily, Seeking Alpha, Finviz, Dividend.com, and Dividend History to get started. (I personally like Stratosphere.io too)
7. Investing in Rental Property
What is it: Investing in residential property to rent out for income
Platforms: Airbnb, Zillow, real estate investment groups
Pros: Potential for passive income, property value can appreciate
Cons: Requires significant capital, may need to manage property
Example
Robert Hoving invested in Bali villas and rented them out on the side, while still working for his previous corporate employer before he turned it into a company
Protip:
1. Find a property that you think can be good for investment purposes.
2. Search Airbnb, bookings.com or any other OTA to find the listing to see the current pricing, occupancy and reviews to date. This will give you an indication if the property is investment-worthy.
3. If yes, speak to the selling agent and request a historical rental income report. Which can then be compared to the Airbnb listing. The selling agent can also give more insights into the property.
4. Study the area in which the property is built, to understand what the neighbouring properties look like and charge and look out for construction that may impact rental income.
8. Creating an Online Course
What is it: Creating and selling online courses on a topic that you have some expertise in or that you’re passionate about
Platforms: Maven, Teachable, Kajabi
Pros: Scalable, passive income after initial upfront investment
Cons: Time-consuming to create, market is filled with competition
Example:
I taught a Growth Strategy course for Kurios (YC21), which provides B2B cohort-based training for LATAM companies
Elena Verna, interim Head of Growth at Dropbox, teaches courses on Product-Led Growth and Growth Leadership on Reforge
Protip:
We are often asked “How do I build an email list?" "How do I generate interest in my course?" and "How can I make sure I've got course-market fit?"
A survey is the best way to:
Find out if there’s demand for your course idea. Get your first leads in your waitlist
Almost every successful instructor on Maven has done this step.
9. Blogging
What is it: Writing and publishing articles on a personal or niche blog
Platforms: Wordpress, Medium.com
Pros: Flexible schedule, low starting costs, helps you establish authority
Cons: Time-consuming to write, takes time to build traffic and monetize
Example
Steve Chou started his blog, mywifequitherjob.com while working a full-time Silicon Valley electrical engineering job (and proceeded to grow it to 7-figures of revenue)
Protip:
Be patient and showcase your personality.
I didn't really start making decent money with the blog until three years out. And I know there's a lot of people who do it a lot faster, but really it's a slog, just to be honest with you..
You got to just gather email addresses […]. Basically it's about putting out good content and then just keep presenting that content out to your people. And get people to just jump on your bandwagon. And the more your personality comes through, the more people will just like you for you. And then once you have their mindshare, then you can start worrying about making money.
I feel now that I have the mindshare, it doesn't really matter what product I put out, I feel like I'll be able to make sales. Not necessarily because of what I'm selling per say, but because of my personality.
10. Creating a Digital Product
What is it: Creating and selling online templates, tools, and other resources for various platforms
Platforms: Notion, Google Sheets
Pros: Leverages existing content, scalable
Cons: Time-consuming to create a high-quality product
Example: Bachata Library from my talented dancer friend Tam Pham
Protip:
My pro tip is to just ship something. People value learning new things in a structured/compact way from someone they like. I thought no one would buy but random people who I've never met were buying my product. I felt like I had hit the jackpot (even though I only made a few hundred dollars jaja)
So ship the thing. It's ok if your landing page or demo video or pricing isn't perfect. I sold Bachata Library for $15 and once I had ~25 sales, I upgraded the product massively and sold it at $49, which was still a bit low. Now it's at $97. I'm still experimenting with pricing, improving the product, and pondering about what's next. But I can only do this because I'm constantly taking action and getting direct feedback.
🌐 Beyond your borders
🇮🇹 This entrepreneur couldn’t buy a home in American, so she bought in Italy for $62,000. Loved Steph’s energy (her lunch line made me chuckle). My view is that retiring abroad is going to become a huge trend over the next decade (link)
🇦🇺 Australia to triple fees on foreign homebuyers of existing homes. While property prices have started dropping in the US, the opposite trend is happening for our friends in the Land Down Under (link)
🇺🇸 How Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. One of the most insightful deep dives from this past year on the whole SVB crisis and what went down. This one gets a bit technical, so read this if you’re a nerd like me (link)
🧳 Best travel insurance for digitally savvy travelers in Singapore. Tired of your trips getting canceled or baggage getting lost? Get the right travel insurance coverage so you get reimbursed no matter what happens while traveling. Learn more now → (link)*
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