I earned £700 in my first month from side hustles – but I wish I’d known these three tips beforehand
WITH the cost of everyday essentials going up and up, most of us have considered getting a side hustle.
Though you’d probably enjoy a bit of extra cash right now, one woman has shared the three things she wished she’d known before trying to boost her income.
While most influencers might sell you the dream of never working again, Alice has been more realistic about what it’s like to have multiple side hustles.
Better known as @alicesidehustler on TikTok, she initially set out to earn £500 from multiple streams of income – including an Etsy print business and filling out surveys.
As well as selling clothes on Vinted and digital products, the influencer made the majority of her money from working as a freelance digital marketer.
Having worked with two clients and looking to gain more, she told her followers that realistic goals are essential – especially if you don’t want to get overwhelmed.
Though she still wants to earn as much as she can from her side hustles, the businesswoman confessed that she had to scale back some of her plans.
“The number one thing I’d say I’ve learned is that you just can’t fit everything in and I think at the beginning I set some really unrealistic goals,” she admitted, adding that these had made her feel ‘very overwhelmed’.
The influencer then urged fans to plan out their weeks and have realistic weekly goals, they can aim for.
With so many side hustles on the go, the entrepreneur also said that people needed to prepare for hard work and dedicate enough time to make sure their side hustles were a success.
Despite endless creators making videos about ‘easy side hustles’, the reality was very different for Alice.
Even with her spending hours working on prints to sell on Etsy and digital products, neither of the businesses had made any money in the first month.
She also made just £12 on Vinted and £1.48 from feeling in surveys, later realising that the forms were much more time-consuming than she’d expected.
With the time she’d had left over, she had managed to make £686.29 from her digital marketing, saying she’d had to put the ‘hard work in’ to gain clients.
This included posting on TikTok daily, with her saying that this had massively boosted her business.
“It’s actually been so useful as it’s made me show up, it’s made me do the work and basically, I’m held accountable for the progress that I’m making,” she revealed.
With fans tuning in to see how her side hustles had been working, she’d felt more motivated and she wanted something to share.
It might not be an obvious business tactic and was ‘super scary’, Alice encouraged her fans to do the same – not matter how many followers they had.
“Just start posting the videos, you don’t need to have a plan worked out,” she added.
If only we’d thought of this before starting our side hustles.
Do you need to pay tax on items sold on Vinted?
QUICK facts on tax from the team at Vinted...
- The only time that an item might be taxable is if it sells for more than £6,000 and there is profit (sells for more than you paid for it). Even then, you can use your capital gains tax-free allowance of £3,000 to offset it.
- Generally, only business sellers trading for profit (buying goods with the purpose of selling for more than they paid for them) might need to pay tax. Business sellers who trade for profit can use a tax-free allowance of £1,000, which has been in place since 2017.
- More information here: vinted.co.uk/no-changes-to-taxes