If you create products or provide services for money independently of any employed work, you’ve got a side hustle. Some people start projects of this kind with a view to eventually making it their main source of income, while others just do it for fun, or to supplement their main salary. Whatever your intentions, there are a number of ways in which you can keep your independent business thriving, no matter what other responsibilities you may have. In this article, we provide a few tips to help you manage your side hustle well, without too much stress or fuss.
Get Yourself Out There
Your business needs an online HQ where people will easily be able to find you, admire your work and perhaps place an order. There are plenty of free website builders available on the internet where you can create attractive, professional-looking pages, or you could just manage everything via a social media account if you’re looking for something smaller-scale. Make sure you include lots of images and avoid too much text – just share the basic information that clients or customers will need to know. Display up to date contact details throughout, and make sure that your website is very easy to navigate.
It’s also a very good idea to make sure that your site works properly on computers, smartphones and tablets. Another great way to get noticed is to add your business to relevant online listings or selling platforms – and to manage your appearance in the search engine results by opening a Google My Business account. This will allow you to add images, descriptions, events, contact details and even star ratings to the information that appears when someone searches for you.
Consider Collaboration
Once you’ve established yourself to a certain extent, you may want to explore the possibility of collaboration. For example, if you create handmade jewelry, you might want to start a project with someone who makes clothing. By sharing details and images of one another’s work and designing items that complement one another, you may influence followers of one member of the partnership to explore the work of the other member – and vice versa. It’s great if you can get yourself and your products or services featured on popular blogs or online journals. This will direct more potential clients to your brand – and it will also help you to build a strong image as a trusted professional within your field.
Set Up a Dedicated Email
It’s a good idea to separate your communications carefully. Don’t use your personal email for business matters – it’s easier to stay organized if messages about your side hustle go to a dedicated place to be dealt with in the right way. Additionally, if your email address contains the name of your business, you’ll look much more trustworthy and professional.
Practice Intent SEO
Once you have an online presence, you need to make it easily discoverable. One of the best ways to do this is to improve your ranking in the search engine results from Granwehr.com through use of intent SEO (search engine optimization). This involves creating original content regularly for your website by way of a blog or other similar features. New content shows search engines that you are active, and may boost your position in the ranks. The copy you produce for these updates should feature popular keywords that are used specifically by relevant internet users when searching for services like yours.
You can research these terms using a number of free online tools. Include the most popular words and phrases organically in your content. This will make it easier for the right people to find you, thereby sending you further up the search results, which will in turn make you more discoverable. This approach is likely to increase relevant traffic to your site and therefore potentially multiply your revenue – helping you to outrank your competitors without having to spend hours on your approach.
Automate Your Socials
Keeping up with social media can feel like a full-time job, particularly if your business is growing in popularity. To make this easier to manage, you can use handy applications to create future posts in batches, then schedule them to be posted automatically at your preferred time on any platform you choose. These tools will also collate all interactions you have across platforms in one place, so you can always keep on top of communicating with your followers.
Set Reminders
If you have a side hustle, the chances are that you’ve got a lot of other things going on at the same time. You need to put effort into staying on top of your schedule so that you don’t miss out on custom or let any potential clients down. Setting reminders and synchronizing the calendar functions on all of your devices will help you to manage your time easily.
Be Smart with Time
When are you going to work on your side hustle? Try to put together a sensible routine that won’t tire you out, but will keep you in the loop about everything that is going on. It’s probably a good idea to create an email signature detailing the hours and days you work in order to manage your customers’ expectations – and include this information on your website, too. If you word it properly, your clients will understand. Just try not to make your business sound like an afterthought.
Stay on Top of Your Taxes
Once you start making above a certain amount via your side hustle, your income from this source will need to be declared and taxed. Be sure to do careful research about this as soon as possible, or you may end up owing huge at tax time. By following all of the advice above, you should be able to stay on top of the demands of any side hustle without getting too snowed under or distracted from the other important demands in your life. You can employ the above techniques to different extents to suit the style and approach of your venture.
