Many side hustles are business opportunities that offer extremely low pay, require a significant financial investment to get started, involve unethical business practices, or are genuine pyramid schemes. Even when the business is legitimate, some purported side hustles should be avoided unless you’re willing to be fully committed.
Here’s a list of 3 business opportunities often promoted as side hustles that won’t work without a full-time commitment.
- Buying rental property
You’ll find plenty of content on YouTube explaining how buying rental property is a good side hustle for generating passive income through rent. Unfortunately, that’s not the whole story, and those content creators don’t typically have experience with real estate.
Investing in rental properties can cost quite a bit of money up front for the down payment, and you’ll need significant financial resources for maintenance, repairs, and emergencies. The expenses associated with rental property are too vast for it to be considered a side hustle. That’s not to say you can’t start investing in real estate on the side, but since it requires a lot of your time, money, and attention, you’ll only be successful if you go all-in.
If you are interested in real estate, a professional property manager will be your biggest asset. Managing rental properties – especially tenants – is exhausting when you have other things to do with your time. A dedicated property manager will take over all your landlord duties and take great care of your physical property and tenants. For instance, Houston property management company, Green Residential, manages properties for Texas investors, allowing them more freedom to pursue additional investments and/or other ventures. Although you’ll still need to be involved, hiring a professional is the best way to make owning rental property somewhat hands-off.
- Print on Demand (POD)
Print on Demand (POD) is often promoted as one of the most promising side hustles around. Truth be told, it can be extremely profitable, but only under specific circumstances. To be successful with POD, you’ll need to sell products that will generate a decent profit margin in your market. This requires choosing products that don’t cost too much to produce so there’s room for your markup. You want to aim for at least a 20% profit margin to be sustainable, but that’s the bare minimum.
You can set your retail prices however you wish to offset the cost of production, but most people won’t pay high prices for certain items. For example, it’s easy to sell a t-shirt for $35, but mugs won’t typically sell at that price. If you want to sell specialty items that have a high production cost, you’ll need a solid marketing plan to demonstrate the value to your market. Generally speaking, the only way to charge high prices is to create a movement or center your brand around a relatable cause. People buy dreams, lifestyles, and ideas — not products.
On top of all that, you’ll need to spend money on paid advertising to get traffic to your website. If you don’t have the time or money to invest in regular PPC ads, you’ll never get started. As you can see, it takes a lot of effort to run a POD business, and it’s not a side hustle. You can start a POD business on the side, but it will require your dedication to turn a profit.
- Driving and delivery gigs
Many people take on side work for companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart, but since there are so many people signed up, it isn’t as profitable as it was in the beginning. If you sign up to work for these types of services, the work will be unpredictable and sparse. You’ll have to make yourself available just about 24/7 to make decent money. The people who earn money from these gigs tend to be the only ones available at odd hours, or they’ve been doing it for so long they naturally get more gigs. Plus, delivery apps aren’t profitable for the business, and it’s only a matter of time before the current business model crumbles.
Although you will get paid and it’s not a scam, driving people around and delivering food and groceries isn’t a profitable side hustle unless you give these apps most of your time.
Avoid high-stakes, draining side hustles
While there are plenty of opportunities out there, not every business model works as a side hustle. The allure of passive income is strong, but it’s important to resist opportunities that require more time and money than you’re willing or able to give.
