Why I Turned Down A $450 Per Month Side Hustle

It’s not all about the money

Normally, I would jump at the chance of earning an extra $450 a month for working just one hour a day. This time though, I turned down the job.

I’ve been running various side hustles for the last 10–15 years, with varying degrees of success. My ideal situation would be to have around 10 side hustles earning at least $500 each, but preferably much more.

At the end of last year, I helped a client build an ecommerce store in the t-shirt niche. It was a fun project and I got to set my own hours and generally fit the work around my other projects. It was a nice extra stream of income.

The same client proposed that I run the whole site, which would have taken me around 30 hours a month. As he was willing to pay $15/hour, that would have given me a cool $450. Last year I would have jumped at the chance.

So, what changed?

I’m happy running a variety of projects for myself as well as working for a client here and there. At the moment I feel like I have enough of my own projects to deal with. As they are starting to pay off, my time is better spent on them. I think they will bring in much more money over the long term than $450 a month.

I also like doubling down on what’s working.

At the moment, I’m really enjoying writing here and my earnings are getting pretty decent. Last month I made almost $700 here.

How I Jumped From $0 And 0 Views To $684 And 28,390 Views

As well as writing here, I’m also writing 3 eBooks, with maybe more to come after that. I’ll sell them on Gumroad, so that will be an additional stream of income that will be on auto-pilot. It’s a better long-term bet than working for an hourly rate.

The books will be released in April and May. Look out for them.

I think my Medium and Gumroad earnings could get to $3,000 to $5,000 by early next year. Maybe sooner if I put in enough work.

Working an hour a day on an ecommerce project would distract me. An hour’s work doesn’t seem like much, but it would take up mental space. I want to save as much of that as possible to concentrate on my writing.

Writing is so much fun right now that I feel like I’m really in the zone most days when I write.

I wouldn’t feel that running an ecommerce store that’s not mine. It would feel more like a tedious day job.

Enjoyment at work is probably more important than the money, so I’m pretty sure I’ve made the right decision.

What side hustles are you working on at the moment?