5 Side Hustles that Generate a Great Income for Me
By: Mark Blogs
Tags: DIY, Self Improvement, Projects, Entrepreneurship, Side Hustle

5 Side Hustles that Generate a Great Income for Me

Photo by Carlos Lindner on Unsplash

Waking up to annoying alarm clocks and commuting to work were stressors that I aspired to eliminate from my life ever since I joined the workforce. I inevitably achieved this feat through a simple life change. With this change, I transformed from an unhappy employee that dreaded Mondays to someone that is now happy and looks forward to Monday mornings. This depressing predicament is the unfortunate reality for many people who hold day jobs to enrich corporations instead of themselves. This also used to be my reality until I ventured into the entrepreneurial realm, which eventually allowed me to kindly pass my day job to the next person in line. I would like to share some of the side businesses that I built that enable me to remain free from corporations’ balls and chains.

Before we dive into the side businesses, let me briefly introduce myself for context. My occupational background includes construction, Oil and Gas, and farming. The practical knowledge I gained from my past jobs helped ignite my success. I acquired an extensive amount of knowledge related to woodworking and animal care. I do not have just one or two primary sources of income or side businesses. My income is generated through an array of side gigs that collectively equate to a full-time income. Some side businesses, however, create more revenue than others. The common denominator among all my projects is that they are carried out of my garage. While not an exhaustive list of everything that I do, I would like to share five gigs.

I want to mention that this article’s photos, with the exception of the first photo, are my own photos of products that I created or built. The images are not professionally edited as I suck at photography (another side business idea). Still, it is important to me that I use my own photos of products that I have created as a means to back up and validate my claims. I also want to disclose that I only mention side gigs that I have personal experience with and have done or are doing well for me. Without further adieu, let’s dive into five gigs that afford me freedom and happiness.

Woodworking

If I was forced to terminate all my side businesses except for two, woodworking would be the second side gig that I would keep (the first choice will be revealed a bit later). Woodworking is the very first gig that I started, and my success has always been consistent. It is not my most significant source of income, but the pay has always been consistent. Carpentry skills are advantageous in many other areas of my life.

Woodworking is a side business that can be started in your garage. With just a few hand tools, you should be able to generate an income. Your income, as small as it may be in the beginning, should be reinvested into your business and used to grow your tool collection.

Wooden log table lamp (my photo)

The first thing I ever built to sell was a picnic table. They can be made in about three hours after you know what you are doing. Another item that has done exceptionally well for me is log table lamps made from dead tree logs. If this topic interests you, check out this article where I explored woodworking in greater detail.

2. Growing fruits and vegetables

When I had to rake up all the apples that kept falling from my apple tree in the yard, this idea came to me. For years, I just threw most of the apples into my compost bin (see topic #3) because I could only consume so many apples. I decided to start utilizing this unrealized resource instead of composting all the apples. I started making apple pies and applesauce and created an ad on a few buy n sell websites, including Facebook marketplace, and my delicious pies and sauce sold within weeks. It paid for my grocery bills for a few months.

Fresh Apple pie (My photo)

This simple concept can apply to fruits and berries. I am currently expanding my raspberry patch to make and sell jams in a few years. If you are great at growing plants, you can grow plants from seeds and sell them in the spring once the plants are a few inches tall. Once my raspberry patch is filled out, I will be digging up any excess raspberry shoots and selling them for half the local garden center’s price. This will help cover my already small gardening bill. If you have space in your backyard or know someone who has a garden that is not being utilized, you could contact the person and make them an offer to use their garden.

In addition to making money, you will save yourself some cash by consuming what you grow. There are gardeners in my area who lease backyards that are not being used by the homeowner. The gardener turns the whole backyard into a garden. The homeowner, in exchange, receives a box of fresh vegetables weekly as payment for the lease.

It is a win-win-win for the homeowner, the gardener, and the planet. Robin Richardson, an Associate Professor of Sustainable Development at Michigan State University, claims that we are currently depleting the planet’s resources faster than the earth can regenerate. This is a frightening statistic, but we can do our part by recycling food scraps and growing more of our own food.

3. Making vermicompost

The next one on the list is vermicompost. I love this idea because it takes care of your scrap foods, dead leaves, and grass clippings. It requires little to no effort and can turn a decent passive income. I started with a pound of red wriggler worms (aka composting worms) and fed them my food scraps. As mentioned above, I have an apple tree and have tons of apples that fall off the tree and can’t be used for human consumption, so I feed them to my worms. They turn them into vermicompost. Once a year, I screen out the compost and sell it as pure organic vermicompost. I will get anywhere from $5/lb to $12/lb, depending on where I sell it.

Vermicompost (my photo)

I should also mention that these worms double in quantity every 3 months under optimum conditions. It does not take long to turn a pound of worms into a couple hundred pounds of worms. Red Wrigglers eat half their weight of food scraps daily. In other words, one pound of worms can eat and compost half a pound of food scraps. If you are an avid gardener like me, you may choose to keep it yourself and enrich your own garden soil. I will release an in-depth article that focuses on vermicompost and the different ways I make money with my composting worms; keep an eye out for that post.

4. Repurpose of materials

This idea popped into my head when I worked on a ranch farm. The farm housed ten horses, and the horseshoes had to be replaced every six weeks. The used horseshoes were tossed into a barrel and sold as scrap metal. This got me thinking that if I harvested the horseshoes, with permission, of course, I could repurpose them. I obtained permission and had a whole barrel of used horseshoes to do whatever I wanted. I cleaned them up and built décor with them. If you can get your hands on used horseshoes, you can make rustic wall hooks, coasters, key holders, etc.

You will need a few hand tools for this, but they will pay for themselves very quickly. Another item that I have repurposed in the past is railroad spikes. I was given a 5-gallon bucket of railroad spikes, and I made rustic shelves using the spikes for hooks on the bottom of the shelf. The railroad spike shelves were gone in less than a month.

The last resource that you can acquire for free and repurpose to sell are wood pallets. I have a pickup truck, so I used to get loads of pallets, bring them back to my garage, cut the wood into desirable lengths, and built an array of items out of the wood. I have a few decorative wine racks hanging on my wall that was made from wood pallets.

Pallet wine rack (my photo)

Items like these are quick and easy to build, cost you little to nothing for materials, and generate some income. If you are unsure what to create out of these cheap or free resources, use google or Pinterest for inspiration on DIY projects.

5. Breeding rodents

The final side hustle that I will mention here is breeding rodents for pet food such as snakes. I know what you are thinking, but hear me out. First, I want to say that this is, hands down, my number one pick for side businesses to keep. If you have ample room, this side business can be scaled to the point where you wouldn’t need to rely on any other side businesses to generate an income.

Rodent breeding rack (my photo)

I chose not to go down that road because I did not want to fill my garage full of rodent breeding racks. I need to allot 75% of my garage space to woodworking, vermicomposting, etc., leaving the remaining 25% for my rodents.

This has been my most lucrative side hustle because, just like most of you reading this, 99% of people are turned off by the thought of rodents. This is excellent news for the 1% of individuals who are not afraid to try breeding rodents and turn it into a small business. In fact, if you click here, you can see what my set up looks like.

I contemplated writing about this topic because I don’t really want to create competition for myself. However, I realized that most of you probably still won’t do it, so I wrote about it. The pet industry is one of the biggest niches, and it will only continue to grow. Instead of breeding pets, you can be the pet food supplier (mostly for snakes in this case), and your customers will be repeat clients.

I personally cannot keep up with the demand in my area. I have had the same clients since the initiation of the business. I do not need to advertise and turn down clients daily as I am limited in space. I cannot assure you the high demand in my area translates to high demand in your area. Still, if you have access to unused space, it would be worth your while to do a bit of research on feeder rodent supply and demand.

It is worth mentioning that there are several different rodents you can start breeding, lab mice and fancy rats being the most popular types. Each species has pros and cons, so you must research what species will sell well in your area and what species you are comfortable breeding.

This wraps up my five side gigs. In conclusion, the five topics that I introduced in this article all have great potential to generate an income stream for you. You do not need to be experienced to make these gigs work for you.

Success can be captured if you formulate a plan and follow through with it. Experience and knowledge will be gained very quickly, and success will follow. Once you find your niche that you would like to pursue, compose a plan and activate it. Do not give up on yourself, your abilities, or your ideas. Always look at ways to enhance your craft and skills in your chosen field or business. Who knows, these skills might just hand you the cutters needed to break free from your boss’s inescapable balls and chains!