Our Top 7 Best Side Hustles UK! [Earn Extra In 2023]
Harry Jeffery – Uploaded 02.01.2023
Looking to make extra cash on the side, or get out of your 9-5 job?
There has never been a better time than right now to break free from the restraints that are 9-5 jobs, which is why we have created a list including our favourite hustle ideas for you to try!
Before we start we should probably mention, you will not be successful in any of these side hustle ideas unless you have an incredible amount of devotion, motivation and of course intelligence within the sector, in which your side hustle resides.
Before you click off this blog post expecting some of the already diluted hustle ideas, these are up-to-date ideas, that are fresh, have plenty of room to grow in the future and can become a very sustainable income source.
And no, I’m not here to sell you my online courses, we just want to see our readers progress in life and become evermore successful!
The only true condition that may hold you back, that you cannot actually control from being successful ventures is your age…
If you are under the age of 18, I would wait and enjoy the last few years of childhood as you only experience it once and when you enter the world of business, there is no turning back.
However, if you are set on getting started young you can always set up accounts for some of the following side hustle ideas through your parents (if you have permission). If you are feeling creative you can also visit weekend car boot sales, where you can flip reduced items for more money online. A dog walking business can also be a good solution if you live in a busy neighbourhood where a lot of busy families may reside.
Our Top 7 Best Side Hustle Ideas:
Affiliate income through social media management
Graphic design
Social media influencer income
Dropshipping online store
Vending machines
Clothes reselling
Digital Marketing
The main objective of a side hustle is to eventually make it your main hustle allowing you to drop out of work and pursue your own business, on your own terms and work hours that suit you. All of the side hustle ideas above are capable of this if done correctly, and aren’t in any way diluted in 2023!
Let’s dive deeper into each individual side hustle and learn how you can make some extra money online and in real life.
1. Affiliate income through social media management
Although a tongue twister to pronounce, this side hustle is pretty straightforward in the sense that you don’t necessarily have to be highly intelligent to be successful here but actually be willing to put in hours of work and be super resilient even if you aren’t seeing success in your early days.
I have actually done this in the past where I gained 220,000 followers and was regularly making money from it. However, I recently sold it for a great amount of money to a media company…
Benefits of this Side Hustle:
- Very low-risk method, and if done correctly there is a high reward.
Can take only around an hour a day to run, however, the longer the better.
Only requires a good-quality phone and a few apps in order to master it!
The accounts created can be used as assets in other business ventures.
If I’m going, to be honest, this is one of my personal favourite side hustle ideas, mainly due to the fact that there are so many ways you can make good money from a popular Instagram, Tiktok or Twitter account. Whether it’s affiliate marketing, paid promotions, merchandise, sponsorships or even selling the account once you have amassed a healthy amount of followers and activity.
I would recommend an Instagram account over TikTok or Twitter due to the quality of conversions being much better.
You are going to want to make this page a ‘meme page‘ in whatever topic you enjoy. For example, I called mine football culture and as you can guess based it on humorous football content and the latest news. I also implemented a follow strategy which is incredibly efficient which I will explain in full.
Instagram Follow Strategy:
Find a big page, that posts similar content to you.
set a notification every time they post.
Spam follow as many people as you can as soon as it’s posted.
Think about it, these people are clearly interested in the same type of content that you are posting, they are active accounts and are more likely to follow you if you follow them seconds after they like a post from a similar account.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to do this forever, just to get you off the ground to around 20k followers.
You may start to get approached by small businesses and pages who want to promote themselves on your page, you can charge as you please, as well as set up affiliate links with Amazon for example, and create advert-style posts to promote them. You should be posting around 10 times a day, this can be very tedious but very rewarding as the more you put in here, the more you gain.
As for the content, you can easily reuse posts from other accounts, Twitter, and TikTok as long as you give the original creator credit. The more you grow, the more brands will approach you and you can charge more for adverts.
This is such a great way to build a platform and increase your monthly income as well. Social media accounts can be tough to get started, and you may lose motivation as well if you aren’t seeing results, but if you can push that then you are going to be successful.
2. Graphic Design
Graphic design is such an underrated side hustle idea as this skill is essential for pretty much all brands! Just think about it, every company needs a logo, brand guidelines, and infographics for their website, socials and brochures. A great way to advertise yourself to clients is by becoming a social media manager for your account or creating your own website to showcase your work.
Benefits of this Side Hustle idea:
- A very enjoyable field of work, a lot more fun than a 9-5!
Can become a very good source of income, the bigger the brands you work with.
We are entering the digital age, where lots of companies are born that will all need graphic design work…
Another one of my favourite side hustle ideas due to the fact that you are essentially working for yourself, creating graphics, which in my opinion is a very fun way to work.
Unfortunately, in order to properly execute this, you will require a laptop at least, that is installed with adobe creative cloud. This gives you access to InDesign and Photoshop, two essential software installations for graphic design. You can also use Canva, which is mostly free but doesn’t have as good design aspects as Adobe does.
Each design you create may only take just a few hours to design and you can charge a good amount of money for the time spent on it. Remember, the client is paying for the quality, not the hours put into it so make sure to impress!
If executed correctly, you could become the main graphic design contact for several brands being their first call for anything they want to be designed. As you can imagine, the extra money that comes with this is insane.
3. Social media influencer income
This side hustle, although fruitful, requires a lot of confidence as you are required to show your face daily on the internet. The internet can be a daunting place sometimes as putting yourself in the limelight can cause bullying. It’s a lot better than a full-time job though so if you’re a confident extravert who doesn’t care what others think, this side hustle is for you.
You must also have a lot of personality to you, the last thing people want to do in their spare time is watch a boring content creator with no stories to tell! You may also want to steer into a certain topic as well such as fashion, travel, or technology just to name a few…
Benefits of this Side Hustle:
- One of the highest-paying side hustles if done correctly.
Making money, from the comfort of your own home.
Comes with fame, if you are into that sort of thing…
Often receive free products from brands to try out.
Whether you make videos in your spare room, bathroom, bedroom, or kitchen, it certainly beats the dreaded day job with travel-filled journeys between home and the office! I wouldn’t exactly call this work at all, to be honest as it is a very fun job, and by fun, I mean literally talking to a camera for a few hours a day.
Your content could come in the form of vlogs, short snippet videos, blogs, images, and reviews. the choices are endless. If you are interested and have a good growth strategy, you are bound to gain a fan base devoted to your every move…
It also helps if you are conventionally attractive, however, this does not by any means mean that you can’t make it as an influencer. The way you make money as an influencer is through sponsored posts, brand deals and creating your own merchandise for fans to buy. There is of course more but these are the main ones! The beauty of this side hustle is that it can eventually become your day job if you are successful enough and will give you a lot more time to spend with family, to go dog walking and of course travel the world!
This is definitely one of the best side hustle ideas if you know what you are doing and take it seriously.
4. Dropshipping online store
Yes, I know what you thinking…
“Dropshipping is so diluted and washed, everybody’s doing it!”
Whilst you are partly correct, I wouldn’t say it’s diluted, rather than the competition within this side hustle has outgrown the demand for the products being sold. So in other words, only the best of the best are succeeding. If you can find the best product that’s about to come into season and low competition, you’re onto a winner, as long as you have the correct strategy…
Benefits of this Side Hustle:
You Learn to sell online, a great skill to have in this day and age.
Can be done from the comfort of your home, on your laptop preferably.
Relatively cheap start-up costs.
You can easily set up shop on Shopify, as for the products, your best bet is through Alibaba. I’m not going to give a full dropshipping tutorial here as I wouldn’t be able to go into deep enough detail however, be smart. If we are entering the winter period, don’t try and sell sunglasses or flip-flops…
Advertising is also key here, Instagram and TikTok adverts and a very good way to go. This process will be completely trial and error in order to find out what’s working the best.
It tends to be worth it though when it comes to actually making money with Dropshipping. You can see orders roll in front of you as the notifications come through.
I should have mentioned this earlier, but if you are completely new to Dropshipping, don’t worry about buying the stock before selling, you make the money by becoming the middleman between the supplier and the customer. Your job is pretty much to advertise and persuade people to buy the product you are promoting.
5. Vending machines
Unique, I know!
Am I the only one who watches youtube videos of vending machine owners going around collecting their profits from their machines?
Anyways, believe it or not, owning vending machines can become a great source of extra income. Of course you will have a lot of start-up costs to account for including the actual machines, the stock, and the area permit to be able to sell drinks and snacks there but the profit margin is unmatched.
Benefits of this Side Hustle:
Not online, for those who aren’t the best at using technology.
guaranteed profit, if the location it resides in is good.
Can be a very fun way to make money…
Yes refilling and checking up on the vending machines can be tedious and time-consuming, but good extra income can be made here as long as it’s in a busy area. You can easily overcharge on drinks on vending machines and still sell out, ask yourself how many times you’ve bought something from one knowing how overpriced it is…
They are in incredibly high demand in urban areas with every city in the whole globe being flooded with them in pretty much every building!
6. Clothes reselling
By clothes reselling, to be specific, I mean designer clothes reselling. Certain brands use brand loyalty to charge incredibly high prices for clothing or shoes that are released in limited stock.
As time goes by, the prices of these pieces, unused and with tags on skyrocket in value and the profit margin can be massive depending on the brand’s status and the design of the actual product.
Benefits of this Side Hustle:
You can create large profits, from pieces with massive profit margins.
Keep rare clothing pieces that you decide you would rather keep.
You can easily turn this profitable side hustle into a business.
The best way to go about selling these rare designer pieces is through eBay, Depop, Vinted, or even through your own Shopify website.
As for acquiring the stock to resell, all you need to do is be in the right place at the right time as most brands have release dates. If you want to take it up a notch, you can even install bots to buy your stock for you.
Onto the last but not least of our best side hustle ideas…
7. Digital Marketing
By far the fastest-growing side hustle on our list, Digital Marketing is split up into some main sectors including SEO, Email Marketing, Copywriting, Social Media and PPC. All of these are incredibly valuable to companies looking to increase traffic and attention leading to their company.
If you can master all of these sectors, not only do you become extremely employable as a digital marketer, you can set up your own company as a freelancer and offer these services to companies who can’t afford an in-house marketing team, for a pretty penny. Remember, competition is high in the world of marketing, so become the best and charge reasonable prices.
Benefits of this Side Hustle:
If mastered, become extremely employable…
Allows you to be able to charge companies for multiple services at great prices.
An evergrowing industry, with new things in the mix every year.
Apart from making extra money from this side hustle, it can quickly become more than that if your clients are satisfied. Honestly, the opportunities are endless here as new marketing streams are introduced.
Off the top of my head, I have created a list of services you can charge for…
Services you can charge for as a Digital Marketing Agency:
SEO
PPC
Website Creation
Website Maintenance
Email Campaigns
Social Media Management
Graphic Design
Videography and Photography
Copywriting
Social media Monthly content calendar
Believe me, companies are killing for these services at the moment, with Digital Marketers being one of the most sought-after job roles in the 2020s…
Points to conclude
At the end of the day, you should pursue whatever takes your interest. As if it doesn’t, you aren’t going to be able to fully devote yourself to that side hustle meaning you will have wasted both time and money.
Yes, one side hustle may be easier than another on this list but that may correlate to the amount of profit you can make from it.
If you would like other blogs on each side hustle individually, let us know on socials and we will be more than happy to, knowledge is there to be shared!
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We offer information about finance, business, investing and saving, however, we do not offer any personal advice or recommendations. If you have questions or any uncertainty around investing or are unsure if investing is right for you, please consult an authorised and professional financial advisor.
Disclosure: Some links in this article may be affiliate links, which can provide compensation to HandL Blogs at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. These are products we have personally used and stand behind. This site is not intended to provide financial advice and is for entertainment only. You can read our affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy.
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Harry Jeffery
Harry is a leading travel writer within the travel niche and is also a co-founder of HandL Blogs, one of the UK’s leading travel blogging websites. Harry has a love of all things travel and wants to share his experiences so you can travel the globe right alongside him.
Initially becoming friends with his other co-founder, Luke, at the age of four years old, they let their love for travel evolve, making it their mission to visit every country in the world!
Today they want to share their passion and experiences of travelling across the globe with written blogs on topics that are most important to them. From travel, cooking, fitness and tech blogs!
Whether that be trying new food in a new country and sharing it in a cooking blog; visiting a new gym in a certain city and reviewing it in a fitness blog or learning about the newest tech within the travel industry.
