With rising cost of living pressures, a single source of income may not be sufficient to meet our daily expenses. Instead, we could leverage our autonomy over our own time and location to unlock monetisation opportunities and create more income streams.
For those of us who would like to bring in extra bucks, here are some side hustles we can pick up while working from home.
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#1 Dog Sitting
If you are an animal lover, this is the dream job for you. Launched in 2013, Pawshake has one of the largest dog sitting network in Singapore. As a pet sitter, you would undergo a rigorous application process before being approved. Once you are verified by the platform, you can prepare a profile and list the cost of services. The timings are flexible as you can block out any unavailable timings on your profile’s calendar. Interested pet owners would then directly schedule a timeslot on your calendar for the specific services they require. You will be provided with 24/7 support in terms of tech, marketing to local pet owners and online payment.
As a dog sitter, you can offer a range of services from dog walking, house sitting to opening your home as a doggy daycare. You can set the price of your own services but there is a typical market range for each service. A half an hour dog walking service can cost about $10 and allowing a dog to stay overnight at your place can cost $35 per night.
To be paid while having fun, this does seem like the dream side hustle.
#2 Use Our Bilingual Skills To Teach A Language Online While Making International Friends
For those of us who still retain our bilingual ability, putting it to use can help us earn some money. We can teach English to foreigners who speak in our mother tongue. For example, we can pair up with a Taiwanese student to teach them English while being able to explain to them in Mandarin. This also allows us to have the opportunity to interact with foreigners and their culture, something that many of we enjoy doing while traveling prior to COVID-19. You may even get to develop international friendships.
Platforms such as italki or Verbling, allow tutors to join and provide 1-on-1 lessons at an hourly rate. The rate per hour varies but we can expect to earn about $30 per hour.
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#3 Providing Online Translation Service For Corporates Or Web Novels
Another way to put our bilingual skills to use is to provide translation services online. Platforms such as Gengo or Fiverr allows us to pick and select the translation pieces we want to do.
For translation works, the prices would depend on the number of characters. A typical benchmark would be $0.06/word and up for more casual content such as social media and email, and $0.12/word and up for more formal content such as presentations and reports. Pricing will also depend on the translator’s quality of work and qualifications.
If doing marketing translation is not interesting enough, we can opt to do translation work for novels. One of the largest online novel platforms – WuxiaWorld, does work-for-hire translation at a rate of US$30 to US$40 for 3,000 characters.
#4 Monetise Your Music Certificates With Tuition
For the musically inclined, you can monetise your musical skills by giving music tuition. Depending on our instrument and qualifications, the amount we can earn varies. Assuming that we are teaching a beginner, we can earn about $65 to $75 for piano and violin lessons.
While the rates are higher than most of the side hustle mentioned, music lessons might be challenging to teach remotely. We may have to make the necessary arrangements to teach in person and it may be more convenient to select a student nearer to home.
For those of us who are interested, we can sign up with ManyTutors or Apprentus to give 1-on-1 music lessons.
#5 Sell Photos From Your iPhone
Lastly, the age of phone cameras has brought out the inner photographer within us. Instead of forking out another sum to buy a DSLR and fumble through it while shooting, we can use our iPhones or any mobile phone with a good camera. With many flagship phones outfitted with great cameras, we can produce picture quality worthy of stock images.
Shutterstock is one of the largest platforms that allow photographers to monetise their work. Shutterstock pays out in tiers based on the number of images or videos uploaded. On average, we get 15% of the amount paid for every image and video downloaded. Pixerf is another leading but Asia-focused visual content platform that provides creators with opportunities to earn royalties from their photographs. You can even take part in seasonal challenges to win cash prizes and secure collaboration with brands.
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#6 Get Paid For Your Opinion
Remember getting asked to complete random surveys while you were walking on the streets? With a rise in online survey apps and platforms, those are a thing of the past. You can now choose to complete online surveys based on your own preference and accumulate points to redeem for vouchers or cash out via PayNow.
Milieu Insight is one of the best-reviewed survey apps with over 100,000 active downloads in the region. You not only earn cash by answering short surveys, but also get to learn about the perspectives of other Singaporeans on trending topics. On average, it might take a month or two for you to cash out $10-20 depending on how active you are in completing surveys.
#7 You Can Be An Influencer Too
It is no longer true that you need a massive social following to get paid for your content. With more emphasis on authentic user-generated content these days, anyone has the chance of becoming an ‘influencer’ especially if you have a clear niche (e.g. fitness, parenting)
With Partipost, you can create an account and choose to take part in campaigns that you think are relevant to your interests via the app. You can take a photo/video based on the requirements and submit for approval. Once your post is approved, you will earn the reward accordingly. The reward varies between $2 to $50 depending on the complexity of the campaign.
This article was originally published on 13 August 2021 and updated with new hustles. Additional reporting by Agnes Goh.
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