Top Selling Platforms For Your Side Hustle

Not everyone wants to work for someone else. Side hustles are a way to transition from employee to business owner, and there are a few platforms make it easy to get set up and earn money quickly.

In this article, we look at some of the top platforms for your side hustle.

What is a Side Hustle?

Our article on turning your side hustle into a business covers everything you need to know about generating income from doing something you love to do in your spare time.

Most workers are not entirely satisfied with their current role and would prefer to be doing something else.

In the USA around half of the workers are happy with their jobs and with remote working maybe contentment has improved and elsewhere. Work-life balance is one measure of job satisfaction. Working from home has meant we’re not travelling to and from the workplace, which has improved workers mental state, i.e. reduced stress. However, self-employment is what most workers prefer if only they could turn their hobby into a business.

Top Side Hustle Platforms

Let’s take a look at some of the top online platforms that make it easy to get your side hustle found and earning an income.

Once you know what you want to do, i.e. sell products or services, you can work out which platform to use for your side hustle.

Online Services

Providing online services in your spare time can be your side hustle. For example, using your web development skills to build blogs or websites or your digital marketing expertise to manage social media or email marketing campaigns. Some of the best platforms include:

• Upwork
• Freelancer
• Fiverr
• FlexJobs

Specialised online services

Are you a teacher or a web developer? There are services platforms where you can use your skills to tutor, educate or create solutions for a fee. Some niche online platforms include:

• Udemy – sell your digital courses
• Kindle – write and publish your eBook
• Skooli – teach English online

Offline Services

However, your service may not be online. You may want to be a driver or complete tasks like lawn mowing, hairdressing, personal training, so you can choose platforms including

Driving

• Uber
• Lyft
• Ola Cabs

Hairdressing

• Booksy
• theCut

General Tasks

• TaskRabbit
• HireMyMom
• HomeAdvisor

Sell Products by Order Fulfillment

Rather than services, you may wish to make or source products to sell for a profit and have the order to deliver managed by the platform. There are many Fulfillment platforms for this activity, including Amazon, RedStagFulfillment, FedEx Fullfilment.

Order Fulfillment is the process of managing the customer order through to delivery, and no other platform does it and Amazon for small operators.

Amazon

Amazon fulfillment or FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon). See our article on Amazon out-of-the-box selling for a guide on how you can get started with FBA.

How do Amazon and other fulfillment platforms make money from you as a seller? They have a monthly fee, or if your sales are low, their fee is a percentage of your revenue.

Sell Products Platforms

There are platforms to list your products for sale, and you manage the delivery. Sites like Craigslist, eBay, Bonanza, Shopify.

Shopify

With Shopify, you can have a website within their platform, so you don’t have to invest in infrastructure, technology and marketing.

Shopify has the technical side of hosting, development, security covered. Plus, with your own eCommerce website, there are the challenges of adding the emerging tech for UX (user experience), e.g. chatbot, and AR (augmented reality).

You may wish to invest in your own site once you’ve turned your side hustle into a business.

Etsy

One of the immutable marketing rules is to create your own category, and Etsy has done this with its arts and crafts platform. As a side hustle, you may love knitting or painting, and Etsy is the site for selling homemade items.

Etsy also doesn’t have a monthly fee. They take 3.5% of your sale price. So you only pay Etsy when you’ve sold the item – this is a perfect solution to getting all your craftwork found, sold and loved by like-minded customers.

Summing Up

Getting your side hustle operational can be as easy as choosing a platform to sell and manage order fulfilment.  There are many choices, and we’ve only touched the surface with some of the most popular platforms.

Therefore the hardest part of having a side hustle is not where to sell your products or services. It’s working out what you want to.

Whatever you choose, make sure it’s enjoyable, so you’re happy to spend your spare time doing it.