Side Hustles For Dummies. Alan R. Simon

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enough, you may start a small cryptocurrency advisory service on the side.

      Now ask the questions again in light of your expanded approach to cryptocurrency.

      Investment? Still a resounding “yes.” Side hustle? Well, because of your videos and ideas for making money above and beyond trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the answer is also “yes.”

Wait a minute: Doesn’t it sound more like Jack is taking on a part-time job than starting a side hustle? Well, just like real estate (see the nearby sidebar), there’s a big gray area when it comes to part-time jobs and side hustles.

      In Jack’s case, you could argue that his teaching gig fits the description of a side hustle:

       He’ll make some money from his efforts.

       He needs to balance the time he spends on his teaching gig with the time requirements for his full-time job, being careful to avoid any conflicts.

       He can adjust his teaching load to more or fewer classes as his time and energy level permit (with enough advance notice to the community college, of course).

      

The one main difference between the software development–oriented side hustles that Brian and Keith are doing and Jack’s teaching is that Jack probably doesn’t need to set up any sort of “side-hustle company” for his college teaching. Most likely, the college will pay him as a part-time employee on a W-2 basis; in the United States, that means Jack is a part-time employee rather than a 1099 independent contractor. (See Chapter 7 for all the details about how to form the legal structure for your side hustle.)

      But other than this W2-versus-1099 distinction, Jack’s teaching features all the characteristics of a side hustle.

      Drilling into your side-hustle topical area

Remember Sandy, who rediscovered his childhood sports memorabilia? He noticed that baseball cards, football, and basketball cards, along with all sorts of sports memorabilia, suddenly became wildly popular at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people were working from home, and many others unfortunately lost their jobs (but fortunately, millions of them started side hustles!). Overall, people were at home much more than before and had a lot of time on their hands, as well as surprisingly flexible work and personal schedules. For whatever reason, lots of people either discovered sports cards and collectibles for the first time or, as with Sandy, rediscovered their long-forgotten collections.

      So, it’s settled: Sandy has selected his topical area and is going to start a side hustle related to baseball cards primarily, but also including other cards from football and other sports along with other types of sports collectibles.

      But exactly what kind of side hustle is this?

      Sandy could, under the general umbrella of “sports cards and collectibles side hustle,” focus on any of the following:

       Just baseball cards

       Baseball, football, basketball, and soccer cards — but basically only sports cards

       “Game-used” memorabilia, such as uniforms and hats, or balls and baseball bats

       Autographs

       Old sports books, almanacs, yearbooks, scorecards, and similar items

      

But wait! Sandy isn’t even close to being done with his narrowing down and filtering. He decides to focus on baseball cards. But what kind? The baseball-card world is divided into different eras:

       Vintage (basically, older cards from before around 1980)

       The so-called “junk wax” era from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s

       Modern and ultra-modern cards that came after the “junk wax” era ended

      Sandy decides to focus on vintage cards. However, stop me if you’ve heard this before, he still has some more narrowing-down to do! He could specialize in:

       Individual cards

       Cards for specific baseball teams

       Unopened packs and cases of old cards (yes, they still exist)

       Complete sets for a given year

Even if you don’t know the first thing about baseball cards and sports collectibles — and don’t care in the least about them, either! — you probably get the idea. Of course, Sandy isn’t limited to only one particular subcategory, or sub-subcategory, or sub-sub-subcategory, or…. But Sandy’s chances for side-hustle success go way up if he hasn’t cast too wide of a net. Whether he plans to buy and then flip (sell quickly) vintage baseball cards, start a podcast about jumping back into the sports collectible hobby, or provide advice to other returning collectors to help them get the most value when they sell their collections, the more focused Sandy is, the better off he’ll be.

      

Sandy can also head right for the techie world for his sports collectible–related side hustle by focusing on non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a hot new area in the sports marketplace (as well as the art world and other areas of society). An NFT is a unique “digital asset” (basically, an online image, audio clip, or video) that uses blockchain technology to essentially make that digital asset behave as if it were a physical “piece of something” that is actually owned by someone. Sandy obviously doesn’t have any NFTs stashed away in those cardboard boxes up in his attic, but as he jumps into a sports-collectible side hustle, he absolutely could find something interesting and potentially lucrative related to NFTs.

      

If you don’t have a clue about blockchain or NFTs and you’d like to learn more, check out Blockchain For Dummies, 2nd Edition, by Tiana Laurence (Wiley) or NFTs For Dummies by Tiana Laurence and Seoyoung Kim, PhD (Wiley).

Sandy began his side-hustle planning the right way: by first selecting some area of interest and then narrowing that area down. No matter what your side hustle is going to be, you’ll almost certainly find yourself following the same narrowing-down steps. Table 2-1 shows a few different side-hustle topical areas and then, for each one, some of the underlying narrowed-down subcategories.

TABLE 2-1 Side-Hustle Topical Areas and Example Subcategories

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Side-Hustle Topical Areas	Example Subcategories
Beauty and appearance	Haircutting and hairstyling, women’s haircutting and hairstyling, hair blowouts, manicures and pedicures, eyebrow microblading, laser hair removal
Health and exercise