[Finance] Has anyone got a succesful side hustle?

[Clive Walker]

I used to work in a well known nightclub cloakroom in the 00’s. Couple would come in and ask for their items to be placed on the same hanger. No problem. Put through the till once for £1.50 and charged them £3.00 with the profit going into my pocket. Working 5/6 nights a week and on top of my wages I was making a killing.

 

[zefarelly]

I used to do quite well buying and selling MK1 Cortinas and parts, until flea bay cooked the golden goose. Have done quite well out of vintage bass guitars, and amplifiers although largely just improving my personal stash for free when you add it up.

The whole vintage market has been skewed by online market places and the tide of badly copied repro tat. From the purely aesthetical sign end of the scale to literally the safety critical race component market. There have been batches of seemingly bargain priced FiA tagged race harnesses on the market, all dodgy copies and extremely dangerous.

 

[thedonkeycentrehalf]

I was moonlighting throughout the summer, so kind of a side hustle. More jobs than chefs at the moment.

As so many people seem to have been lost from the business, were you tempted to switch to one of your 'moonlighting' jobs permanently and then just Chef as a side line?

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

 

[1066familyman]

If we're going down that route. I'll not pass up the opportunity to spam the board with yet more classic reggae

 

[The Fifth Column]

I sell second hand flasks and bottle tops, big source of stock locally, I'm thinking of branching out up in Newcastle to offer classes in self awareness.

 

[Gabbafella]

I used to buy beaten up Technics 1200/1210's and rebuild them. New circuit boards, new LEDs, new cartridges, new slipmats, strip the shell and respray them (colour coordinated with the LEDs and cartridges)
The most profitable was I bought a pair of 1210's for around £200, absolutely battered, cost around £250 to bring back to life and sold them on for £1800.
Unfortunately, digital "DJs" and their laptops mean that the market just isn't there anymore. Really enjoyed doing it though.

 

[The Clamp]

Yes.

Buy oil cans/petroliana from the US and have it shipped out here to sell to the rather big Garagenalia collectors market.

At a minimum doubling money on each item, sometimes profit margin is 4-5 times what was paid.

Thinking about expanding it to purchasing from the UK as well now.

No previous knowledge of it, just watched the facebook auction groups selling it and got an idea of what was popular and just took the plunge.

That’s pretty savvy. I like that.

 

[The Clamp]

I get paid to help with medical OSCE exams a few times a year. Role playing patients and the student doctors have to assess you, observed by a qualified Doctor.
Don’t do it enough to make that much. Used to be about £400 per day, now it’s about £250. Still, all helps toward the boat fund.

 

[zefarelly]

I used to buy beaten up Technics 1200/1210's and rebuild them. New circuit boards, new LEDs, new cartridges, new slipmats, strip the shell and respray them (colour coordinated with the LEDs and cartridges)
The most profitable was I bought a pair of 1210's for around £200, absolutely battered, cost around £250 to bring back to life and sold them on for £1800.
Unfortunately, digital "DJs" and their laptops mean that the market just isn't there anymore. Really enjoyed doing it though.

Nice, I did similar with some early 60's Selmer valve amps, bought several, restored them, kept the best one and sold the others . . . . End up with a free amp.

Best bit on the side isn't a hustle as such, but I did 2 gigs last weekend, 2 free nights out having great fun and finished the weekend £100 up.

 

[The Maharajah of Sydney]

When the Premier League kicked off almost 30 years ago, unless you held an account with a bookmaker in the Northern Territory there was no outlet to bet on the matches here in Australia.
At the time I was a trader on the floor of the SFE (Sydney Futures Exchange) working alongside a ready made clientele of 1,000 young highly paid employees and individuals, many whom were up for the thrill of the punt.
I'd holidayed in the UK & Europe in the Summer of 1992 and before I left I'd arranged with my brother-in-law to fax me the prices when Ladbrokes and Hills released their coupons on the Wednesday.
It was an extremely successful operation, lasting for around 4 seasons until eventually the pool of willing punters dried up.
Towards the end of the decade the Australian gambling laws eventually freed up and sports betting restrictions across all states were rescinded - my timing had been spot on.

 

[studio150]

I used to work in a well known nightclub cloakroom in the 00’s. Couple would come in and ask for their items to be placed on the same hanger. No problem. Put through the till once for £1.50 and charged them £3.00 with the profit going into my pocket. Working 5/6 nights a week and on top of my wages I was making a killing.

And concludes the case for the prosecution Your Honour.

 

[Happy Exile]

That does sound like quite a bit of work though for little money. I'll look into that too though, cheers.

I've done a bit of this in the past. If you know your way around search engine optimisation and have one or two areas of specialist knowledge or practical experience it can help. Read reviews of companies you sign up for. There were, and possibly still are, some cowboys about. If you like writing then there might be an opportunity to help international students with their essays too, proofreading, grammar checks etc.

For side hustles that are successful I know a bloke who goes round charity shops and car boot sales looking for DVDs and clothes he can sell for a profit on ebay. You have to find your niche so you know what you're looking for. For him it's mostly Disney DVDs, and for clothes it's football kits and vintage adult sportswear. All things shops and car booters tend to undervalue.

 

[nwgull]

Side hustle? I'm not interested; I'm making shit loads out of computers.

 

[Miximate]

Deleted

 

[m@goo]

I've done a bit of this in the past. If you know your way around search engine optimisation and have one or two areas of specialist knowledge or practical experience it can help. Read reviews of companies you sign up for. There were, and possibly still are, some cowboys about. If you like writing then there might be an opportunity to help international students with their essays too, proofreading, grammar checks etc.

For side hustles that are successful I know a bloke who goes round charity shops and car boot sales looking for DVDs and clothes he can sell for a profit on ebay. You have to find your niche so you know what you're looking for. For him it's mostly Disney DVDs, and for clothes it's football kits and vintage adult sportswear. All things shops and car booters tend to undervalue.

I do enjoy writing and I also have a knack for spotting mistakes so this may be a direction for me.

The buying from charity shops and car boot sales sounds like a bit of a retirement hobby to me. I don't think I can be arsed to hold stock and then package it and post it.

 

[Happy Exile]

I do enjoy writing and I also have a knack for spotting mistakes so this may be a direction for me.

The buying from charity shops and car boot sales sounds like a bit of a retirement hobby to me. I don't think I can be arsed to hold stock and then package it and post it.

You can try the universities for supporting less physically able students too. You used to be able to get a good hourly rate taking notes or dictation for those who couldn't do it quickly themselves. If you've got the patience / desire to put yourself through learning sign-language this can bring in a decent amount too on the side, so I'm told. Not just students, being on call for emergency services and similar too.

 

[GingerBeerMan]

When the Premier League kicked off almost 30 years ago, unless you held an account with a bookmaker in the Northern Territory there was no outlet to bet on the matches here in Australia.
At the time I was a trader on the floor of the SFE (Sydney Futures Exchange) working alongside a ready made clientele of 1,000 young highly paid employees and individuals, many whom were up for the thrill of the punt.
I'd holidayed in the UK & Europe in the Summer of 1992 and before I left I'd arranged with my brother-in-law to fax me the prices when Ladbrokes and Hills released their coupons on the Wednesday.
It was an extremely successful operation, lasting for around 4 seasons until eventually the pool of willing punters dried up.
Towards the end of the decade the Australian gambling laws eventually freed up and sports betting restrictions across all states were rescinded - my timing had been spot on.

Did you lay bets for people with a margin, or offer the odds yourself and act as the book maker?

 

[The Maharajah of Sydney]

Did you lay bets for people with a margin, or offer the odds yourself and act as the book maker?

I acted as bookmaker.

It was an extremely lucrative sideline - neither myself or my wife had any need to draw cash from the bank during those 4 years.
With it not being legal I didn't keep any records but I do remember distinctly one of the early bets I laid was Arsenal at 5/6 at home to Blackburn.
He asked me to Lay it for $1200 to win a $1000 (£550). I briefly hesitated as that amount was 10 times more than I'd envisaged being hit for.
Anyway I took it, Blackburn won 1-0 and I kicked on big time from there - biggest ever winning week was just under $10k.

 

[Knocky's Nose]

The buying from charity shops and car boot sales sounds like a bit of a retirement hobby to me..

Long story but I sold my car back to Eastbourne Mercedes this week and I got talking to the group used car buyer who has over 30 years of meeting people and buying their (expensive) cars, dealing with successful business people from all walks of life. Shame I'm not one of them.

Anyhow... he told me of a guy who started buying books from charity shops by WEIGHT. Not volume, not the titles, just weight. Charity shops get shit loads of books, bags and bags of them, more than they can sell.

80% of the books are junk - for landfill, 10% are almost saleable and worth a little, 5% saleable and worth something, 4.5% very saleable and worth decent money, 0.4% are worth good money, and 0.1% are worth a lot...

The guy works on numbers.

He turned over £7m last year. Vans all over the UK collecting books.

Started as a side hustle, ended up a big business.... Some of the books (medical ones, rare titles, first editions and so on) are worth hundreds of pounds, sometimes thousands.