Six ways you could earn an extra income

Let’s face it, our economy has seen more glorious days – all the reason why I thought I would put together a post with six ways you could earn an extra income. Sometimes, you have the will to start, but just don’t have the right ideas. Whether you’re married, single or a-stay-at-home-mom; formally or self-employed, there are always bills or worn-out savings accounts that need our attention.

 

The reality is that most of us don’t have the luxury of just quitting our jobs to go into business full-time, so these ideas are around things you can start while you are working full-time. Here we go:

Virtual assistant

This is a role that you could do on a full-time or part-time basis. It usually entails duties such as responding to emails, shipping orders, taking calls, booking travel etc. for a busy individual or company. There is lots of flexibility and only requires a few hours a day, so you can still do your regular job. Contact a reputable recruitment agency, like www.recruitmymom.co.za which specialises in roles for mothers or those who list on Career Junction / Pnet. This is a fairly new but growing option in South Africa, as a lot of businesses are cutting down on full-time employment costs.

 

Sell ready-made healthy meals at your office

I’m often so envious of the healthy lunches that some of the girls at my office eat. With limited time in the evenings and mornings, I would be more than happy to pay for someone to bring me a healthy meal, than spend my money on carbs at the canteen. When you become a pro – you can move onto selling at pop-up stores and markets. PS: Packaging is everything!!

Register companies for individuals

Our generation is geared towards entrepreneurship. Young people are grabbing opportunities like they’re freebies! To tender for new business, one needs to have a registered company. Registering a new business is an admin-intensive role that is overwhelming for a lot of people, so herein lies an opportunity to offer this service (if admin is your thing!). Which leads me to my next point…

Learn a new skill and offer a service

With so many new bloggers and start-up companies on the market, there are lots of opportunities to offer services like photography and graphic design. There is a huge demand for logo designs, website development and photography services. By the way, if you are already into photography and have great rates, please email me, I’m always looking 🙂

 

Other services that you can offer:

Cake-making

Travel bookings

Book keeping for small businesses

Baby-sitting / tutoring students over the weekend. Our tutor works full time during the week and comes over to help my lil man out on a Saturday morning.

Book Keeping and filing tax returns for professionals. If you have strong financial/Tax acumen and know your way around numbers and e-Filing, it may be worth registering as a practitioner and offering a service. Some of us are clueless in the numbers department and would rather pay a small fee to get it done correctly.

Love working out?

Start a You-Tube channel, record work-out videos and put together your own workout and meal plans. Start small workout classes in your community and charge a small fee or offer virtual wellness coaching. I’m loving the fitness-craze I’m seeing on social media.

Wedding / Party planner

If you’re creative, super-organised, are able to work well with difficult people and have some experience in event planning then this is another business I would recommend. Yes, organising a few fab baby showers for your friends counts 🙂

 

Next steps:

Research research and research your idea

Start building your business while you work full time

Don’t give up – things will never be perfect

Keep a vision board to keep you motivated

 

You may not make millions from these ideas, but I strongly feel that each of these have the potential to offer you better financial prospects. Who knows, maybe you’ll discover a new passion along the way?!

Let me know what you think of these ideas, or if you have other great suggestions for making an extra income that could help someone.

If you enjoyed this post, don’t be shy to click the share button 🙂

 

Love,

Modern Zulu Mom