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- [00:01]
Nick Loper
Here are 30 ways to make Extra Money for the Holidays the average American spends close to a thousand dollars on Christmas gifts and that probably doesn't even include any holiday related travel, any extra food expenses. Which is why I wanted to do an episode on ways to make extra money for the holidays. What are some of the relatively simple low startup costs, fast to see results Types of side Hustles to help soften the blow of that upcoming bump in your budget and to help me out with these is someone who took her side Hustle into a full time business and knows a thing or two about budgeting as from inspired budget.com and the inspired Budget podcast. Allison Baggerly welcome to the Side Hustle show.
- [00:39]
Allison Baggerly
Thanks for having me Nick. I'm excited to talk about these 30 ways and I have to say I love the idea of presenting people with ways that you're not signing up for this full time commitment for months and months and months on end. A lot of these you can do once or twice, get some cash in the bank and spend money on what you want and then call it a day.
- [00:58]
Nick Loper
That's right. I don't know if you'll find podcasting on this list because there's always another Thursday coming around. You never know what you committed to when you signed up for this, but now you've got over a million downloads on the Inspired Budget show. Encourage people to check that out after you're done with this episode. But these, this is one of my favorite formats because we're just going, we're going to throw out a bunch of different money making ideas. I know I promised 30 at top of the show. We'll see how many we end up with. Might be more, might be less. That's the peril of recording a live intro without knowing what's going to happen next. But I want to start off with one that has been fairly consistent for me to the tune of, you know, a few hundred dollars a year and that's this paid market research side hustle. I just get a kick out of doing online focus groups or even one on one interviews. Hey, would you demo this, you know, new software for us, Tell you, you know, tell us what you think about it. I've got a whole list of different companies that you could sign up for to facilitate this type of thing. We talked about a few of them before. Like recruit and field. Maven is a new one for me. Kind of like with a more business to business focus, Product report card, user interviews, respondent. I'll link up all those, link up the Big list that I have. But do you ever participate in this kind of thing? I don't know. I just get a kick because it's like, you know, usually 50 to 100, 150 bucks an hour sometimes just for telling your opinion about stuff.
- [02:10]
Allison Baggerly
I have never personally participated in it, but it does interest me. And I like the idea that I don't have to go anywhere to do it. Right. Like, that's my big thing as a mom, as a busy person. I don't necessarily want to do you have to go anywhere to do it.
- [02:24]
Nick Loper
Most of these are nowadays, are remote. When I first started doing it, it was in person. There was this woman in the parking lot of my condo in Atlanta. She comes up to me after work one day. Do you like to drink beer? Like, okay, tell me more. Do you have any other white friends that like to drink beer? Like, I'm sure I could recruit some friends.
- [02:42]
Allison Baggerly
Oh my gosh.
- [02:43]
Nick Loper
And then they paid us 70 bucks to go taste this thing. So we, but we had to go in person to do that. And that was like one of the first, you know, paid market research. I was like, this is pretty cool.
- [02:51]
Allison Baggerly
Yeah. Getting paid to hang out with your friends and drink hopefully good beer. Not bad.
- [02:56]
Nick Loper
Yeah, not, not bad at all. You don't give your feedback on that stuff, but that's, that's one way to do it. The challenge is it's not going to be not necessarily something that you can bank on happening every week or every month. So you kind of have to cast your screener surveys out there and hopefully you get picked once or twice. But you know, generally a few hundred bucks a year for that. Which helps offset some holiday gift cost.
- [03:16]
Allison Baggerly
Exactly. Can I throw one out that I really like?
- [03:19]
Nick Loper
Go for it.
- [03:20]
Allison Baggerly
Okay, so number five on the list here is Christmas light installation. And I say this because I'm big on Christmas lights. At our house, I'm also big on Halloween decorations, but not any other holidays. But anyway, my husband thankfully is equipped to get on a ladder and go hang Christmas lights on our two story house, which can be a little terrifying. But my friend down the street is not. And she actually paid my husband to hang lights one day. And I was like, no, don't do it. But she ended up giving us a gift card. And I was like, this is a great option for people who want to go out and do that, have a ladder. People usually buy the lights, they provide the lights themselves. And you just go up there, hang them, come back after Christmas, take them down, you can get a Couple hundred bucks that way. For sure.
- [04:04]
Nick Loper
Yeah. I was looking at. Because we have kind of a high peak on our, on our house. Not, not the world's fanciest house, but just has like a point where my ladder would not reach. And so I was like, well what, what would it cost to get somebody? I think it would look cool to have lights up there. And it was hundreds of dollars. But I remember the tagline on this person's site. You know, they're standing out drenched in rain. It was a great bit of marketing because it's like the northwest and it's wet and cold. He's like, you really want to be up on the, on the ladder, up on your roof doing this? I didn't think so hire me instead. And I was like, that's, that's pretty good marketing right there. So Christmas light installation. Absolutely. A holiday themed side hustle. What else, what else has stood out to you here?
- [04:42]
Allison Baggerly
I also really liked pet sitting. I know that you mentioned Rover.com I have a dog and a cat. We do travel a lot, not just for the holidays, but just other times during the year. And it is very expensive to board a dog at a facility in a kennel. They could get sick. I don't always know if they are getting enough energy out. So having a pet sitter come to my house would be amazing. To be able to check on my cats, walk my dog, feed him all the things. I think that's a really great way for anyone who likes animals, but not necessarily people. You don't have to like people to do it, which is a plus for some people. It's really great way to earn extra cash.
- [05:24]
Nick Loper
We traveled last year over Thanksgiving and had a friend of a friend watch our dog. And I forget what she charged, but it was not inexpensive. It was like 50 to 70 bucks a night, I want to say. And for a six night trip or five night trip, however long we were gone, I was like, oh, it was, it was noticeable. It was significant. So it was like a great deal for her. She was hanging out at home, doing her thing. Hanging out with the dog and making some money.
- [05:49]
Allison Baggerly
Exactly. And people are going to be traveling for Thanksgiving. People are going to be traveling for Christmas, even just one night away. I don't want to board my dog for a night. So having someone that can either stay at my house or even just check in in the morning and evening, super easy way. I'd happily pay someone $50 a day to do that.
- [06:08]
Nick Loper
Yeah, absolutely. Rover.com is worth a look. This probably the Biggest pet sitting site out there. Wag is another one. Meow Tell is on the cat sitting side. If you don't want to deal with dogs at all. Some different marketplaces out there that we can link up in. In the show notes for you. I want to tell you the story of, you know, our neighbor was having this garage sale. So another one on our list is this, you know, product flipping or reselling side hustle, where, you know, your startup costs are just limited to whatever inventory risk you're. You're comfortable making. Like, what. What deals can you find? And we just did this whole episode with Rob, the flea market flipper and how he finds these crazy unique items he could sell for $1,000 profit or more. But this guy, our neighbor, had this like, 1980s style, like, Team USA Olympics starter jacket. And it was like, just amazingly retro vintage. Had this crazy cool, you know, really awkwardly aggressive, like, bald eagle on the back of it. And I. So I. And naturally, like, well, you know, what is, what is this thing going for on ebay? And it's like, oh, you know, a hundred bucks. And then by the time I went back to see what he wanted for it, so, you know, somebody else had taken it, I was like, oh, shoot, that would have been an easy thing. I had to go and flip because I think he was, you know, everything must go like $5, $5 bin type of thing. But that's definitely one that. That could be on your list if you like that treasure hunt type of side hustle.
- [07:20]
Allison Baggerly
Yeah, I'm not a big treasure hunt person. I don't know. There's something about, like, my time. I don't want to. Maybe I've just gotten lazy in old age. Like, I'm like, I don't. I don't want to ne necessarily, like, be out and about running around doing treasure hunting. And I feel like my laziness has shown because one of the things on the list you have here is tutoring. And Nick, I have to tell you, I'm a former teacher, okay? I taught for 10 years, and I hire someone to come in my home every single week and tutor my son in seventh grade math. It's not that I can't do it. It's just that there is a natural battle between parents and children. I, like, I could say it's. And then the guy who comes in to tutor him can say it, and it clicks. For my son, I pay him a dollar a minute, so he comes every single week, and I pay him cash, $60 a week. And I cannot tell you knowing all of these other parents in the area, people want tutors. It's a really great way for anyone who is a teacher or even if you're not a teacher, working with some of the younger students, even with just reading. It's a really easy way for you to go into someone's home tutor. If you don't want to go into their home, you can meet them at the local library. So you have some groups listed here. Wiseant. But honestly there's so many different online tutoring services. But even just getting out in your community and talking to people and just even like if you have children in school, letting those teachers know, hey, I'm open for tutoring doesn't have to be a super consistent thing if you don't want it to be. But as a parent, I will happily pay for tutoring for my child if it means I don't have this big back and forth argument.
- [09:01]
Nick Loper
It's a good time of year to get into it too. Those first report cards have come home and like the wake up call like, oh, maybe we need a little bit of help.
- [09:07]
Allison Baggerly
Yes.
- [09:08]
Nick Loper
My son was asking us on a hike the other day, well, why can't we do homeschool their friends in the neighborhood or homeschool. And I was like, well you know, you need two ingredients to homeschool. You need, you know, at least one parent that's not working and you need a kid that's willing to listen to instruction from that parent. And like I don't think we have either right now. You know we've been telling you to put periods at the end of your sentences for years and it's still like no, just world's longest sentence. But that's, that's actually my brother's full time business is a tutor. And so he's built this book of business up and does really well. I think he's got, you know, 30 something students a week that he sees he's got his schedule filled up. So it can definitely be either a side hustle or something that can parlay into a full time business. Now the next one that I've got for you is one that you got to promise to use responsibly. But if you're going to be spending money over the holidays anyways, my take is you might as well get some free money from a bank for doing it. And what I'm talking about is, you know, credit card signup bonuses. I don't think I'm allowed to name specific offers because they change all the time. But take A look at what sign up bonuses might be available. It's like hey, if you're going to spend 500 bucks, some cards will give you $200 cash back. To me that's a no brainer. It's like something that's easy to do. And then there's travel rewards cards with even more. Sometimes they have higher minimum spends but if you know you're going to spend the money anyways, you might as well get some of that free cash back. And the holidays are a good time to do it because expenses rise and it's easier to hit those minimum spend requirements.
- [10:31]
Allison Baggerly
Yes. I've actually known some someone that uses her credit card responsibly. Right. Keyword responsibly all year long and then uses those points for cash back for Christmas gifts because she knows that okay, all year long I'm going to use it. And this is my essentially my Christmas budget which works for her. So I'm also a really big fan of credit card sign on bonuses. I also love I'm looking for it on your list. Maximizing cash back. I'm a big fan of fetch rewards and rakuten. My husband, I've been very lucky. He kindly does the grocery shopping in our house. When the pandemic hit he was, he said okay, I'm going to take over this responsibility and wipe the groceries. And he just has never stopped. He continues to go and every single time he gets back he hands me that receipt. I scan the receipt with my fetch app and build up those points to get back for gift cards. And if this is something that you're looking to do, you can actually use those gift cards to buy gifts or heck give those gift cards away as gifts themselves which will save you money on your Christmas spending.
- [11:37]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I've got a bunch of these and it seems silly because each receipt is worth like 1 to 10 cents. I mean sometimes a little bit more if you hit the right product. I guess some of them on Ibotta if you buy the right thing it's like be five bucks or more. It's like shoot for taking a picture of your receipt. Cool. Who cares if I bought spindrift and peanut butter? What they're doing with my data, it doesn't really bother me. But receipt hog is one fetch like you mentioned Ibotta, you got a whole list of these. There's just it's easy like free money type of thing and absolutely take advantage of that. We have another one. We hope to have more details on this later this month. Actually that's a gift wrapping service and sometimes a mobile gift wrapping service. Because, you know, part one, the pain of Christmas is, you know, coming up with gift ideas and doing the shopping and everything. And then the second part of the pain hits when you're like, crap, now I gotta wrap all this stuff. So maybe there's an opportunity to take that pain away and provide that service for other people or for corporate clients who are doing gifting for their customers or for their employees.
- [12:34]
Allison Baggerly
That's brilliant. The corporate clients, like you go all in on one corporation, one company that's going to pay you big money to wrap everything. They'll probably give you the wrapping paper or give you a money for the wrapping paper. I did this as a teenager.
- [12:48]
Nick Loper
Oh, yeah.
- [12:48]
Allison Baggerly
I'm one of those weird people that enjoys wrapping gifts. Every holiday season, what I do is I lock myself in my bedroom, I put on some sort of like, cheesy Hallmark movie, I drink wine and I wrap the presents. It's like a. I don't know, it's a special time for myself. I look forward to it every year. But I have family members who do not enjoy it and literally would pay me money years and years and years ago to wrap their presents that I was, you know, a teenager not drinking wine. But the entire process was still the same, minus the alcohol. And there are some people out there that really do love this, which is crazy to other people. But, you know, when life is busy, sometimes you're willing to pay to have someone do those things and you could be the person that gets the benefit of that.
- [13:30]
Nick Loper
Yeah, absolutely. That sounds like when we're addressing the Christmas cards, we have the kids, like draw something Christmasy on the, on the envelope. Eat a mint M and M. Okay, do the next one. Address the card. Eat a mint M and M. Go do the next one. And it's a lot of fun. You kind of have a family activity related to that. We've got more money making ideas with Allison coming right up after this, including my wife's holiday side Hustle. And we'll be right back with that and more in just a minute. What if you no longer needed five separate apps for your business? Bank account, expense tracking, invoicing, contractor payments, and tax planning. I'm excited to partner with our new sponsor, Found for this episode because Found is business banking designed specifically for side hustlers, solopreneurs and small business owners like you. Under the hood, you'll find one easy to use app to help manage your money, track your spending, invoice clients, and even handle your taxes so you can focus on more important things like running your business. There's no minimum balances, there's no account maintenance fees, and there's no paperwork or credit checks when you sign up. One cool feature, Found Calls in Pockets, lets you allocate income to certain categories like marketing or taxes or profit, which is really handy if you want to practice the profit first methodology, but you really don't want to set up a bunch of different accounts. Over 500,000 small business owners like you chose Found as their banking solution. So stop getting lost in countless finance apps and try Found for free@found.com Sidehustle Sign up for Found for Free today at F o u n d.com side hustle. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Piermont bank member fdic. Found's core features are free. They also offer an optional paid product Found Plus. Here's a quick side hustle you can do today. It's called the Substitution Game and it's an easy way to score what I call reverse passive income. In your life, that's money you're no longer spending every month. That goes straight to your bottom line. How it works is you find lower cost alternatives to the things you're already spending money on. For example, I made the SW to our sponsor Mint Mobile back in 2019 and haven't looked back. Mint Mobile offers Premium Wireless for 15 bucks a month when you purchase a three month plan and all plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and keep your existing phone number along with all your existing contacts. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month go to mint mobile.com sidehustle that's mintmobile.com/side hustle cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mint mobile.com side hustle $45 upfront payment required equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only speeds slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. All right, but we're back with Allison Baggerly from inspiredbudget.com and the next holiday money making idea that I want to throw out is a Christmas card photos. So my wife does wedding and family photograph photography as her side Hustle and two to four hundred dollars per session. Everybody wants that nice family picture for their Christmas cards. So for her season Starts a little bit earlier. Starts probably September, October. You know, the weather is still nice. Ish in the northwest. And then it kind of tapers off a little bit. But if you're in a warmer climate, you can go into November in some cases. But people, you know, want that nice looking. Everybody looking at the camera, everybody smiling, happy. You'd say, hey, look, here's a snapshot of our beautiful family. And. And this is one that can really pay off pretty well if you have the equipment and know how for it.
- [17:11]
Allison Baggerly
I love it. I see one on your list that I almost wish I knew about years ago so that I could have utilized it. Not like, I don't want to do this. I want someone to do this for me. And it's drive by Grinching. Nick. I had never heard about this until I read about it. Can you please talk about it? Because it brings me so much joy as a mom, and I'm like, I'm already thinking of ways to level this up.
- [17:34]
Nick Loper
Yeah, how could I hire this guy? So this was a story that, you know, got some media attention a few years ago. This is Ethan Heckler was the guy featured. He was a teenager at the time in Colorado, dresses up, you know, buys the Grinch costume off of Amazon, 100 bucks, maybe 150 for, like, a really nice one, and then starts going around people's yards. You know, the parents would hire them to do this. Messes up the decorations, you know, starts throwing snowballs at the window or something. You know, the kids are watching and they're like. Like, the Grinch is here. You know, we better be good for Christmas. I mean, you could do the same thing, you know, hire a Santa to drive by or, you know, have. Have Buddy the elf, you know, walk by or something. I think plenty of opportunity to recreate this in your local neighborhood and make it kind of a thing.
- [18:15]
Allison Baggerly
Yes. And it's fun. I mean, it's fun. It seems like it's. It has an end date. So if anyone's looking for something that says, you know what? I don't want to commit to something long term, this has a clear end date. Right. Christmas Day or Christmas Eve. And I think it probably is something that just spreads. Jo. And it's good to do that and earn money at the same time.
- [18:35]
Nick Loper
Yeah. According to this article, he was charging 20 bucks apiece and probably got tips on top of that and booked over 100 jobs. So a couple thousand bucks over the period of a few weeks as a teenager, Not a bad gig.
- [18:47]
Allison Baggerly
Yeah. I'm like, okay, In a couple years, I'm going to have my son do that. That sounds easy. You can even just put it on like a signup genius. Just some easy way to sign up, pay and show up at whatever time you're supposed to do. I love it.
- [19:00]
Nick Loper
Yeah, Another one that kind of maybe piggybacks off the top of that, doing corporate events or company parties, either as a photographer, as a part time bartender, as entertainment at the event. We Talked to Brian McGovern on the show a few years ago, who was a kind of like a sleight of hand magician slash comedian type of performer. And what he says, like, look, you want to book me, you know, a Tuesday in July, you know, I'm, I'm selling cheap. But if you need me at a Friday evening or Saturday evening in December, like the rates go through the roof. It's just supply and demand. And you know, he was making, he's like, I always loved magic. He's like, I'm making that thousands of dollars a month doing this started as a side hustle, then kind of became his full time thing as he was easing toward retirement.
- [19:42]
Allison Baggerly
I love that. That's, that's cool. Because it's something that is almost like a hobby. That morphed into a solution for him to make more money, save money, quit. You say quit his job? Like, that's, that's incredible. I love it. Okay. I saw one on here that is also. Definitely has an end date. And it is a Christmas tree decorating service. Says Amanda Ware quit her job as a teacher to become a traveling Christmas tree decorator where she only works a couple months a year, takes off the rest of the time. And that is amazing.
- [20:17]
Nick Loper
Yeah. She charges an average of $1,000 per tree, which is great. Some households have multiple trees. Like, to give you a sense of the types of clients that she's. That she's targeting. But we had. Somebody sent me this. It was like a porch pumpkin decorating service. And it was like, you know, these niche holiday, you know, people are spending money on this kind of stuff. If you can kind of establish a name in your local area and build a little bit of a social following and take beautiful pictures of your work, you end up getting booked up. What would stress me out is like the seasonality. I mean, I guess you just have to get over that mindset of like, well, I'm going to sit around and well, I guess I got the other 11 months to do almost nothing. And then I'm going to bank on making everything in this really quick rush of A period. But you know, everybody, those interior decorator jobs are like, have a high appeal. Same with like event planning. Like, it seems like, oh, that seems like such a cool job. But here's an example of somebody getting it done, making a living, doing the Christmas tree decorating thing we had. Well, actually, Andrew Ginkola, our friend from fincon in the personal finance podcast, told me the story about starting a Christmas tree stand himself. Like, I think it was, you know, church parking lot, busy intersection, you know, having a contact in North Carolina or wherever you got the trees from, ship them down to Florida. And I remember he said, you want the guy who walks up the lot, where's the biggest tree you got? Right? It's like, okay, I know that's going to be like a $400 sale or something. Had more overhead, more time required. I guess you could hire staff to go and do this. But there's a stand down the road from us. It's just kind of a little pop up vacant lot in the corner of this busy intersection. And I got to imagine that they do a killing over the course of five or six weeks.
- [21:50]
Allison Baggerly
Yeah, I bet they do. And it's always fun. People enjoy it. They'll go out as a family, grab a tree. I did that growing up and I have amazing memories of being able to do that. And so I don't know, I guess I'm always, I'm also thinking like, you get to provide that for people. You get to provide that joy and make some money in the process. Another one on the list is baking. Now, I'm not a big baker, but if you do enjoy baking, this can extend beyond those just cookies, like the really beautiful cookies. I'm even thinking of like toffee. Even if it's like gourmet popcorn that you make, imagine selling that to companies that are going to be hosting a party. And so everyone walks away with a bag of the. Your gourmet popcorn that's homemade. There are so many options during this season. People are busy, they might not have time to bake, they might not want to bake, but they want to show up to parties with something in hand that tastes delicious, looks beautiful. And so this is a really great option for anyone with an oven. With an oven and a love of baking.
- [22:51]
Nick Loper
Yeah. And if you kind of want to expand that, you're probably going to need to go through some commercial kitchen license or, or cottage kitchen kitchen license registrations and stuff. But you know, our friend was doing this in Livermore and she would sell out 50 bucks for a dozen cookies. You know, she got really good at the custom decorations, and that was a really significant source of income. And it kind of became a little bit of a. Of a party, you know, on pickup day. Right. So she'd batch process everything and then have people come by the driveway and pick them up. She's like, I can't ship. I can't do delivery. And maybe she would do local delivery, but just the way that their license worked. But if you come by my place and pick them up and Venmo me and we'll be good.
- [23:29]
Allison Baggerly
Yeah. I've known people personally that have done this, and they've even done the cookies that are already in the box. And it goes home to the kids, and the kids decorate it. Or even a cookie decorating class where you can go and bring kids, or it's just people who want to learn how to decorate cookies. So there's. There's some ideas of ways to expand that, leaning into that. There's also, like wreath making classes. I've actually gone to one where we made a beautiful Christmas wreath. I showed up, all of the supplies guys were there, and some very creative person, more creative than me, guided us through how to hand make our Christmas wreath. I still use it to this day because it's something I created. And I probably paid 60 or $70 to hang out with some of my friends and do this. I saw it as an opportunity to have a girls night and walk away with a beautiful Christmas wreath.
- [24:20]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I really like that one. We'll call it the experience economy, where it's like, hey, it's. It's an excuse to get out in the real world, hang out with friends, do something creative, crafty with your hands. Like the sip and sip and paint type of places. You paint this picture or make this pottery thing, and you got the appetizers and the wine going. We did an episode last month with an episode or with a woman who was doing these craft workshops. Started out, I'm making earrings. I'm trying to sell them on Etsy. I'm trying to sell them on, like, you know, local market markets and stuff. She's like, wait a minute, I can teach other people how to make these ear rigs. You know, it takes the same amount of time. And all of a sudden Now I got 20 or 40 people paying me to come to this class. And that was her thing. But I really liked the idea of putting a Christmas spin on it. The gingerbread decorating class, the cookie decorating class, the wreath making type of class. She specifically Said I want to go after the, you know, community center type of venues because they were really cheap to rent. And you bring in your own supplies, materials, do your own marketing and get some people in the door.
- [25:15]
Allison Baggerly
Yeah, that's great. I, we just did ours at a friend's house. A friend knew this person and said, hey, can you get, I can get 10 women to come in and do this. And so then it costs you nowhere. It costs you no money to host it. I think that the person whose home was in like she got to do her wreath for free.
- [25:31]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [25:32]
Allison Baggerly
So not bad.
- [25:33]
Nick Loper
Yeah, very cool. You know, one of the kids additions that we've added this year has been a 3D printer. And so sometimes we go to these events like we had salmon days. Issaquah is all about, you know, the return of the salmon. Like this a big thing you learn about in elementary school. But there was this booth selling like 3D printed dragons and other little figurines. And you know, now having the printer, you know, the cost of the filament is, you know, there's like maybe $2 worth of, worth of material into this $25 thing that they're selling. And like, oh, I Wonder if you could 3D print some Christmas ornaments or other decoration type of items and try and sell those too.
- [26:07]
Allison Baggerly
Well, Nick, my son, my 12 year old son also has a 3D printer. When you said the dragons, I'm like, I could probably walk in the next room and grab one. He sells those at school. In middle school he walks around with a backpack full of 3D printed dragons and other things. He takes special orders and he's literally selling them. And someone came in and started selling them for a lot more. And then Evan got more business because everyone was like, you're expensive. We're going to go to Evan because he's cheap. And so, so yeah, and I mean he's selling these dragons. And then I said, what are you doing with your money? And he said, I'm buying candy. So we have some work to do for using that money for good purpose. But you would be surprised at what a 3D printer can print. I was surprised to see the type of quality things that he's coming out with. And like you said, the cost of filament and then obviously the 3D printer to start up is another cost. But if you have one already, that's awesome.
- [27:01]
Nick Loper
Yeah, yeah. And I don't know, it's really cool. It's creative to see what they can come up with in terms of the design, in terms of the designs that are even already out there that you can go out and create. We created the like the razor scooters are always just all over the garage. And so we ended up looking first on Amazon. Is there like a little stand you could stick that front wheel in? And then of course the thing like, shoot, that looks like something we ought to be able to print. Sure enough, like, oh, it works pretty well. So it's become a practical addition rather than just a fun educational type of thing as well. The next idea that I want to throw out is maybe a little bit more practical hours for dollars type of thing. And that's to pick up just additional shifts. There are a bunch of like odd job apps or shift work apps or gig apps that you know, as companies look to ramp up retail staff, restaurant staff, warehouse staff during the holidays, it's an opportunity to come on board and pick up some extra hours if you have the capacity to do that. Wonolo is one that has been reasonably high rated. I think it's work now locally wonolo.com but you can check that out. We've got a few others that we can link up in the resources there. Generally, you know, hourly rates going to vary based on where you live, but usually in the 15 to 20 dollars an hour range. So not super, super high earning power, but definitely an option for low, low barrier to entry. And I got to make money quickly.
- [28:18]
Allison Baggerly
Another one for a low barrier to entry and I think guaranteed money. When we talk about all of these creative ideas, sometimes you're wondering is that actually like how am I going to find people to pay me for this stuff? You will not have trouble for is donating plasma. Have you ever donated plasma, Nick? Yeah, I haven't either. I was tempted to in college, but I didn't actually cross that barrier. I have known people who did, but that's one of those ways of doing it once getting, getting 20 to 50 bucks in your pocket and being able to say, okay, this is going to help just offset the cost of some of those expenses for Christmas. Like you said, people are spending about $1,000 on average. And, and any way that you can just make a couple $50 here, $200 there, just helps offset that cost so that you don't end up in credit card debt and dreading the day after Christmas when you have to deal with all these financial choices.
- [29:12]
Nick Loper
Yeah, exactly. If you can find ways to offset the cost as those costs are coming in. And this is one, you know, from what I hear, relatively painless as long as you don't mind needles too much. And a lot of the new, or rather a lot of the plasma donations centers have this like new donor incentive program where it's like if you make four donations in your first five weeks or something, we'll give you this bonus. And so it could be a good time to get into that. Of course, do your own due diligence on long term benefits. My understanding is your body regenerates the plasma relatively quickly so you can donate more often than you could donate blood or something like that. It's like, well, it takes, it takes a while to recoup that loss, but in this case it sounds like it's pretty quick. So we've got that idea for you and a bunch more coming up right after this. Being an entrepreneur and being able to work remotely definitely has its perks. I've recorded podcasts everywhere from Vietnam to Italy, drafted newsletters from Japan, hosted Mastermind meetings from Spain, ended up being the middle of the night to get to US Business hours and outlined courses in Mexico. The common thread of all of these trips, though, is Airbnb. We love being able to get exactly what we're looking for in a place to stay and have a more local experience than staying in some giant hotel chain. And you know me, I'm always thinking about the next side hustle idea, the next income stream, right? And one that's at the top of the list is hosting our place on Airbnb while we're traveling. That way the house doesn't have to sit empty. We could use the income to help pay for the trip. And we've heard from several successful Airbnb hosts on the show. And what's interesting is a lot of them started with almost that exact strategy, renting their place or even a spare room room while they're out of town. Taking inspiration from that, you might have an Airbnb right under your nose. In fact, your home might be worth more than you think. You can find out how much@airbnb.com host that's airbnb.com host to find out how much your home is worth. All right, we're back with Allison from inspiredbudget.com with more money making ideas for the holidays. We talked about some low barrier to entry types of side hustles. Another one that is to make just about everyone's list is to do the delivery game or the ride share game. This is, look, I, you know, maybe not the most lucrative long term type of side hustle, but it is hours for dollars. It is something that you can start relatively quickly. This of course is Instacart, this is ubereats, this is Lyft. These are, you know, plug and play type of things where if you don't mind driving around and you've got the time and capacity to do that. Absolutely. A way to offset some of those holiday costs.
- [31:46]
Allison Baggerly
One that I will never be doing because I live in Texas, is snow removal. I am not familiar with this, but I am assuming that in areas where it does snow a lot, people have to get to work. And I'm guessing there is definitely a pain when it comes to early morning snow removal. So snow removal, great idea. You can go go in low cost by doing it all manually, I'm assuming. I have no idea how much it costs to, to purchase a snowblower. I don't even know how it works. But what I can say is I know people and I know that people don't necessarily like doing chores like this. And so this is a really great option specifically for the winter. Time for you to go around, help neighbors out, get some, get some money, intern for it. And good old manual labor.
- [32:36]
Nick Loper
Good old man. Yeah. You could shovel the driveway. You could do it the old fashioned way. Or get that snowplow attachment for your truck. It reminds me of like Mr. Plough from the Simpsons. Back in the day we had some friends that lived up in the mountains or had a second home up in the mountains and they would call the guy like on their way up if they knew it had snowed and he'd come make a special trip. I think it was probably 40 bucks per shot to just clear the berm off of the driveway because the city plow would come in and do the road. But then of course they would pile up this like four foot thing of snow so we can't get it to the driveway. And so like, okay, so the other guy would come out and clear out the driveway. And so you get a recurring. Especially if you have that winter climate where it makes sense. You could have 20, 40, 50 bucks a job, I imagine.
- [33:13]
Allison Baggerly
Yeah. And people that want to use you over and over again. You could be just be on speed dial. Be the snow person.
- [33:19]
Nick Loper
Yes. Okay, I've got one that you could do while you're out and about doing your Christmas shopping and might not, might not make a special trip for it. But while you're out about. And this is Field Agent, which is a mystery shopping app or kind of like a, sometimes a product display checking app. You pull it up, they'll give you which gigs are nearby. And, and if you could stack up three, four, five of them in proximity, maybe they're at the same store or nearby stores. And it's like, go check this product display or go test out this product. Sometimes we'll reimburse you. You got to tell us what you think. Most of these are not huge, like, you know, 3 to 10 or 12 bucks a piece. But if you could stack them up on top of the errands that you're already running, the shopping that you're already doing is a fun little, fun little extra side hustle.
- [33:59]
Allison Baggerly
One that I actually came up literally today. I went and got coffee with my friend this morning, and when we were driving back back, she said, allison, I wish I kid you not. She said this. I'm not making this up for the podcast. She said, I want to hire someone to come clean my house just before the holidays, like, do a deep clean of her house. She doesn't want to hire someone necessarily every other week or once a month, but she wants some extra help with getting her house clean, ready for company right before the holidays. So residential or commercial cleaning service, this is a really great, great opportunity because people want to put their best foot forward when it comes to the way their house is presented, and they also want help in the process. So looks like Anthony and Janilka grew their Dallas area residential cleaning service to $25,000 a month in revenue. And I'm guessing they hired out other cleaners to do that for them. But some people like cleaning. I mean, I get myself stuck on, like, cleaning TikTok videos, and I don't even enjoy it, but I definitely would be willing to hire someone to come do that for me.
- [35:03]
Nick Loper
Yeah, they're probably over 100 grand a month now. That was several years ago. And we'll do another upcoming episode on how to start this cleaning business without having to do the cleaning yourself. It's one of these column super fragmented market, where if you think about your local area or even nationally, there's no dominant player that has more than just a sliver of market share. And so that spells an opportunity to kind of create a branded custom. Not custom, but like a professional presence presence that a lot of these, you know, solo operator type of businesses don't have. They rely on word of mouth. They don't have a huge digital marketing presence. And so if you can come in and provide that and then go, go find people to do who know how to do the cleaning, you know, help them, hey, we're going to help you get more business and fill up your calendar, you can. It can be a win for everybody. So that's kind of the game that they were playing. And the way that it has been presented on the show in the past, on the commercial side, it was going after, you know, restaurants and office, and the side hustle appeal there is like, well, it's got to happen in the off hours. It's got to happen after the restaurant closes. It's got to happen after people go home for the day from the office. And so made a good side hustle on that front. And similar, like the people that we talked to started off, I'm going to do it myself, make extra money. And then as it starts to scale, well, I can't be three places at once. So I got to hire a team to go do this. And elevate yourself to that CEO or chief operating person level, and you're managing schedules and everything else.
- [36:28]
Allison Baggerly
And I love how you said when it starts to scale because the people who are doing this, maybe one on one, don't know how to scale, but they want to be able to fill their calendar. They want to be able to have that consistent income. So like you said, if you were to kind of become like the person that's in charge of this area of housekeeping or cleaning services, then you are also providing that opportunity for people to have that consistent income, which I think is great, like within your community.
- [36:55]
Nick Loper
Yeah. And definitely one that has legs beyond just the holiday season, where a lot of the times the bread and butter is that recurring weekly, bi weekly, monthly type of service where it's like, if I get a client and they like what I'm doing and they grow accustomed to having their house cleaned at a regular frequency, they're likely to stick around for a long time. So it can be a pretty sticky business in that sense, too. One fun one that we've done in the past, a little bit less so recently is this print on demand type of side hustle where if you have, you know, a family gathering and you want everybody to have the matching shirt that says, you know, Friendsgiving 2024 or, you know, family reunion, you know, something like that. You know, some fancy Christmas saying, you know, maybe pull something from. From a movie, movie Santa, I know him, or something like that, you can absolutely make this. You do Amazon merch, you do Redbubble, you could even, you know, I'm thinking of just like selling it to your family or, you know, having everybody contribute the cost. But you can also put it out to a much broader market and see if anybody Else likes your design, typically make four or five bucks per shirt. So kind of a volume game, but it's kind of a fun one to play that creativity card. And like, I just, I enjoy people watching, seeing what people have on their shirts, knowing that, you know, somebody on Etsy might have sold that or somebody on Amazon might have sold that, you know, six months ago.
- [38:10]
Allison Baggerly
Yeah. Speaking of clothing, a mobile laundry service, clothing and cleaning, where you run by, pick up laundry for people who are really busy, maybe they don't have an in unit, washer, dryer. If they live in a very urban area, you can do laundry, return it all folded. It's a great way for you to make extra money by literally just washing clothes and doing something else in your off time. Heck, you could be washing clothes and then doing some online surveys and making money doing online surveys while you're making money washing people's laundry and doing this like mobile laundry service.
- [38:50]
Nick Loper
Yeah, that's right. The machine is doing the work for you most of the time. And then, yeah, you got to fold it when it comes out the. Because of course there's got to be a gig app or a peer to peer app for everything these days. The laundry app is called Poplin or one of the laundry apps. They're probably not everywhere just yet, but they seem to be doing a little bit of a marketing push. They sent me, you know, one of these, hey, you know, if you want to cover this story, had some people earning up to $6,000 a month, which is probably a lot of laundry. And I don't know what that works to on an hour, hourly basis. And the wear and tear you put on your own washing machine, but still, like, that's, you know, it's not nothing. It can add up if, if people in your area are starting to use this, this type of app. We had even a, a listener in Australia send me a note. She's like, I, you know, because I think I put on my about page or something. Like, I just hate ironing and I'm very grateful to have a job where this is not required anymore. I was just like, you know, this is a pet peeve of mine. And she's like, hey, I, you know, love, love the show, love your site. I actually love ironing. It actually turned that into a side hustle. And now I get paid to watch movies. You know, I sit here and eye other people's clothes and stuff. It's like, oh, okay, three, 400 bucks a month doing something. So that mobile, mobile laundry service is another good one to Add to the.
- [39:52]
Allison Baggerly
List and it's something you can do after work. So you can have a regular nine to five come home, do that at night and you don't have to be out of the house. Which I think is great too because a lot of people don't necessarily want to do that if they don't have to. So it's another option for that.
- [40:05]
Nick Loper
Yes. Oh, we've got one that the. It's usually like the Boy Scout troop does. It's the Christmas tree pickup service after the holidays. And so $10 donation, $20 donation. They'll come by with this big truck with kind of a flatbed trailer with walls and stuff on the side and they'll, they'll put your. Take your tree away afterwards. It's like, okay, you could do something similar. Or you take a page out of the 1-800-got-Junk playbook. Probably better for after the holidays where people, you know, get new gifts and they're like, well, we got to get rid of this old stuff. You know, what should we do? Maybe you could sell it on consignment. Offer to do that in your neighborhood. Maybe you could do the junk removal service like Brian was doing with 1-800-got-JUNK. But other ways to take advantage of that decluttering trend.
- [40:44]
Allison Baggerly
Okay, I have to do this one. I have to say it. Caregiving. I personally used to make a lot of money as a teenager just whenever parents were wanting to go out to their Christmas parties, friend parties. So caregiving. You don't have to be a teenager to do this. I would actually prefer an adult maybe come into my home and watch my kids versus a teenager. There are so many sites, care.com sitter cities. You can even do caregiving for older, older people who need help. I have a, one of my really good friends, her mom suffered a stroke and she hires a caregiver to come in. And this is a consistent caregiver that just comes in once a day and makes sure she is. Can do her dishes and has taken her medicine. It's a really great way for someone to, who enjoys being around others and has that empathetic heart to make some money in the process.
- [41:35]
Nick Loper
Yeah. And consistent demand for it. You know, sometimes the schools are going to have, you know, their charity auction fundraiser. You need a babysitter for the night. It's again, if you can become the go to person for that family, likely to add up to more than just one gig over time.
- [41:51]
Allison Baggerly
Exactly. I actually, when my kids were younger, my husband and I would go on go to an Event, a church event every Wednesday night and go on a date. And we paid someone $50 every Wednesday. Every Wednesday she came over at 6:00 or 6:30 and it was this consistent income for her and it was a really great way for her to just make extra money. And we were happy to be able to just get out and have a date night once a week.
- [42:13]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it's hard. Whenever we hire a babysitter, or used to, it's like, well, now we got to go to Taco Bell because we pay the babysitter like 70 bucks. It ended up being in an expensive outing sometimes.
- [42:24]
Allison Baggerly
Yes. Yeah, it can get expensive. Thankfully, we were going with a group of people to like a friend's house and we took weeks providing dinner. So our dinner was free. That, that helped.
- [42:35]
Nick Loper
Yes, that's a good way to do it. Along the those lines of providing some kind of meal service. There are, you know, there's like private chef apps or there's Eat with, which is kind of like a hosted dinner type of app. I think this might be interesting dressing for people, you know, who want to have a holiday party but don't want to do it themselves. Like, is there an opportunity to serve? Those people say, oh, well, I'll host your meal. I'm a really good chef. This is what's on the menu. Find a venue, you host it at your place. We've seen some people doing pretty well with that type of thing. And you know, given the number of holiday parties that happen around this time of year, I think that could be a really interesting one too.
- [43:07]
Allison Baggerly
Okay. I'm looking at this list and I'm like, we've gone through a lot of them and I'm not sure what we haven't covered. Nick and I have been kind of jumping around the list, which makes it both exciting for you to stay on your toes here.
- [43:21]
Nick Loper
Lots of fun. The one that, that I know we haven't talked about yet is this storage rental type of side hustle and the holiday spin on it I see is like, if somebody has Snoopy kids and you're like, I know it's not safe to keep presents around here, so I need them out of the house. But I don't need a full time storage unit. There is a site called Neighbor.com which is like peer to peer stor storage and it is primarily geared at. I need a place to store my rv. I need a place to park this car for a month. I need, you know, like bigger stuff. But in the case of Christmas presents, like, oh, could you keep them in your closet? Could you keep it in your attic? Could you keep them in a corner of the garage? And something like this kind of maybe a temporary thing. But looking around, I do see rates anywhere from like 50 to 200amonth for varying size of storage spaces near me. So it may be another option too.
- [44:12]
Allison Baggerly
I found another one that I have personally paid money to have someone do this for me. And it is handmade crafts or gifts. Obviously, we all know that Etsy is a wonderful place for creatives to get in front of people who want to buy their work. And I have personally purchased from Etsy. Probably every year I buy gifts from Etsy and I will purchase handmade orange ornaments for my children that have their name and year on them. I've done this from Etsy. I've also done it from friends. I had an old coworker that put on Facebook, hey, she does hand lettering. Just beautiful handwriting. And so it was just a very simple ornament that she got from Michael's probably for 50 cents. And she would use a paint pen to write people's names and the year and those things, she would sell them for five bucks. But if you think about it, it took her maybe a minute or two minutes to make it, probably a dollar total in cost. And so that's $4 per ornament. She was selling them like crazy on Facebook to people that she knew who wanted this creative, beautiful, memorable ornament on their tree. So there's likely something that you can make if you're that creative type that you can sell to other people and make some good money around the holidays with that.
- [45:33]
Nick Loper
Yeah, for sure. Somebody. I don't know if this will be visible, but this is a 3D printed thing. You can put it up to the window and it's a picture of me and my dad skiing. And because of the different depths of the of the print, like the light shines through it and it looks really cool. Somebody sent me that a few years ago. But lots of different craft ideas and maybe something that you already know how to make or other people have found value in. It kind of goes back to that, you know, crafting workshops or, you know, cookie decorating type of thing. But lots of opportunity there either to sell locally or through or through Etsy, but tons of fun. Love the ideas on this list. If you have your own money making ideas. Absolutely. You can hit us up by email, hit us up on social media. Inspired. Budget.com is where you can find more about Alison. Check out the book Money Made Easy Subtitle how to Budget, Pay Off Debt and Save Money. And of course, the Inspired budget podcast. Almost 200 episodes to binge on over there if you want to get better with your money. And Allison, what's. What's going on these days? What are you excited about?
- [46:32]
Allison Baggerly
Oh, my goodness. I'm excited about the new year. This. This sounds crazy, but, Nick, I don't know if this is going to be a shock to you, but people tend to not care about budgeting around, like, November, December, until January rolls around. Actually, Nick, one year, the highest amount of traffic ever on my website, inspiredbudget.com was Christmas Day. Christmas Day, I got a huge spike in traffic. And I realized that it's all of these parents. They are sitting there, maybe in the afternoon, they're seeing all of the money that they have just spent spread out right in one place. Because when you're buying gifts here and there, you're not always aware of what you're doing. Cause it's just every now and then, you're buying. Things are coming in at different times. Times it's all in their eyesight. And they look at that and they say, what have I done? What have I gotten myself into? And I'm not here to judge. I have been there. I know that feeling. And so I'm looking forward to the new year when people are getting to that point where they say, okay, I've seen what I've done, and I don't like the way this makes me feel. I'm ready to learn how to write a budget. I want to focus on paying off debt. I want to feel better about. About my money. And I'm excited to be that person to say, like, yeah, let's do it. Like, I'm here. Let's go. We're going to talk about how to make this work without hating your life in the process. So that. That is what I am looking forward to, is just post Christmas, when people are excited about taking actual steps to manage their money better.
- [47:59]
Nick Loper
Yeah, that's like your. Your opening day. You're like, hey, game on. I've been here for years helping people, and. And let's. Let's get a new, new crop of people in here. It's interesting. I see a spike in January as well. And maybe immediately post Christmas, you know, this is going to be the year that I start my side hustle. Maybe it's New Year's resolutions. Maybe it's that similar feeling of like, oh, we just spent how much. Let's figure out a way to offset some of that cost, but definitely interesting, inspired budget.com check her out over there. Check out the podcast. Big thanks to Allison for sharing her insight. As I mentioned, we've got links to all the different resources, all the different, different ideas that we we talked about in this episode in the show notes. You just follow the link in the episode description. It'll get you right over there. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. As always, you can hit upside hustlenation.com deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thanks for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the side Hustle Show. Hustle on.