603: What Side Hustles Can You Start if You Don't Have Any Skills?

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1:14What's up, what's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show, part of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, helping you make extra money in your spare time since 2013. One of the more common questions that I get, and this came up in our recent survey this winter is, hey, all these ideas are great, but I don't have any skills. And on the one hand, I totally get that. If you're a teacher, it might seem like an obvious path to start tutoring as a side hustle. Or if you're an accountant, you could start freelance accounting or start a bookkeeping business. But not everybody's skills align as smoothly as we might like into a natural fit side hustle.

1:51So what do you do in that case? What if you don't think you have any marketable skills. Is there still a path to earning extra income? Well, yes, yes, there is. And that's the topic of today's show. Stick around in this one because I'm breaking down your four options to start a side hustle, even if you think you're skill less today. And I want to emphasize that think part because the curse of knowledge is very much a thing. Once you know something, it's hard to imagine not knowing it. Here's a question to consider to test if you might have fallen victim to this curse. If you had to give a presentation teaching something and you had to give it tomorrow, what would you talk about?

2:28For example, I've given talks on podcasting, on SEO, on email list building. None of these were skills that I learned in school or even would consider myself the world's leading expert on, but certainly expert enough to help other people. So if you had to give a presentation teaching something and you had to give it tomorrow, what would you talk about? So give yourself some credit. I have to imagine if you've managed to live on this planet for two, three, four, five, seven decades, you've probably picked up something along the way. Now, another way to uncover these hidden skills is to think about what other people tend to ask you for help with.

3:01That's an area that you naturally have some perceived expertise in. Another way to test yourself here is just to ask a few friends, what would you say I know more about than the average person? And if that's a weird question to ask, you can blame me. Hey, this podcast I was listening to told me to ask. And you might be surprised with what kind of insight that you get. So that's the first step. Recognize you're probably not as skillless as you might think. Now, as promised, we've got four different side hustle frameworks to get you started, even if you're starting from that perceived position of zero marketable skills.

3:34Before we get into that, I do want to invite you to grab your own personalized playlist for the side hustle show. Thousands of listeners have already claimed theirs by going to hustle.show. Once you're there, you'll answer a few short multiple choice questions. And then based on your answers, It's going to build you a custom curated playlist of the episodes that will be most relevant and impactful for you. So you can add them to your device. You can learn what works and you can go make some more money. So that's at hustle.show. Make sure to claim yours over there. So what side hustles can you start if you don't have any skills?

4:03The first option is to plug into what I call plug and play side hustles. These are often under the umbrella of the gig economy. They're often app based and they're usually super flexible and even more important, they They usually don't require any special skills. Under this category, I would include options like driving for Uber or making Instacart deliveries. Simple, quick, easy to get started with, no specialized skills needed. If you can drive a car and you can find groceries, you're qualified, right? The downside with apps like these is the same as the upside. There's no specialized skills needed, so there's not a huge barrier to entry, which means your earning power is going to be limited by the time you have to put into it.

4:44And that's OK. You know that going in. There's no surprises there. You also don't have to do any of the marketing. The app company or the platform does all the marketing for you. So you're basically just filling existing demand. Also under this category of plug and play side hustles, I'd include some of the options that Jackie Mitchell mentioned in our recent episode on her$100 a day for 100 days challenge. A couple she mentioned were paid surveys, mobile game testing through Swagbucks, if you like playing mobile games. And her best paying spot for surveys was a platform called Prolific. Prolific is going to always be at the top of my list.

5:20This is a survey site that researchers use. A lot of times they're post-grad students or medical researchers or psychological researchers, and they're paying pretty well per hour for short little surveys. So maybe it's a 10-minute survey, but it pays like$7. Well, that's really good if you break down... In terms of an hour. Yeah, exactly. Right. So Prolific gives you mostly, I would say, 30-minute and under surveys. It's just prolific.com. Anyone can sign up. I do believe that they are often on a wait list because of demographics, just because researchers are looking for an even pool of a lot of different demographics.

5:56I would say consistently when surveys are available, I can make anywhere from like 10 to$30 a day doing that. Jackie also mentioned paid focus groups, which are kind of few and far between, but can pay between$50 and$200 an hour for those. I'll link up some of my favorite paid market research resources in the show notes for this episode. That'll be sidehustlenation.com slash no skills. Another side hustle that Jackie talked about was data annotation, which I ended up testing out myself as well. Data annotation is one that I would rate a three out of five, just as my disclaimer in terms of accessibility and kind of like, is the work enjoyable to do?

6:35I would say most likely no, but, but it pays well and it's an interesting site. So Data Annotation and I'll group another site, Remo Tasks, are both in the business of training large language models. So AI, think of things like Google Bard, think of things like OpenAI, ChatGPT. So a lot of it is kind of veiled to the workers in terms of like which ones you're training. And some of that is just because you're signing different disclosures. You're essentially freelancing for one of these major companies. But the majority of your work is going to be editing and classifying and fact checking large language model responses.

7:13So maybe you're given two responses from two different versions of a language model, you're fact checking it for accuracy that it's not making up information, you're looking at if it was too verbose, did it run on and just give you way too much information that it didn't really need to give you? Was the grammar okay, stuff like that. So there's a lot of different subsets within both REMA tasks and data annotation, you can get put on a lot of different tasks. There's more specific ones for people who code, which I know pay a ton, which is amazing. If you code, I don't. Every time I see a qualification pop up for that, I wish I did.

7:47But typically, these will pay anywhere from$15 to$25 an hour, in my experience. Okay, it's not bad. It's not nothing. I don't think so. No. What's the primary site that you're doing this through? Data annotation is the name of the site. Yep. Data annotation.tech. Yeah. Okay. The one that I signed up for was remote tasks to try and check it out. And I was almost deterred. It was like, I got to do it for the blog post. I got to stick through this. But like the onboarding process took probably a couple hours worth of training the things like you had to do an editing task. Like that's easy enough.

8:21Like, okay, I would cross out this sentence or this is the way I would phrase that instead to be more concise or whatever. But then you had to come up with a prompt response on your own. And there was one that was factual, like make an argument for X, Y, Z. I forget what he's like. Why should we cut NASA's budget or something? Like, oh, okay. Well, people are starving. So the money would be better allocated. Like you can make that argument. But the other one was like a fiction response or like a creative response. And that one was like, dang, I was really proud of what I came up with in the end, like about 500 words.

8:52It was like pretty decent sized, what I considered like the opening of a book. But it was like almost through the towel. It was like, this is pretty time consuming. Yeah, I feel that way. Data annotation is super similar. And to my understanding, they really do screen out a lot of people through that test, which is not to say that you pass because you have XYZ. It is heavily geared towards people who enjoy long form writing, who enjoy fact checking and editing, who have very strong grammar skills. I think data annotation says something like grammar and writing skills and critical reasoning are the things that they look for.

9:26So you don't have to have degrees, anything like that, but it is grueling work. So I don't know how far you got into remote tasks after that, but people who come to my page and say like, I took the data annotation test. That was awful. I can't wait to get in. I'm like, well, that's all that it is though. That's exactly what you're, if you take the test and you don't like it, that's all the prompts and all the work. Once I got into remote tasks, I earned 15 bucks for my first hour of the actual annotation work, which it's not bad if that's something that you might like to do. So I'll link up my full remote tasks review in the show notes for this episode as well.

9:57And I just got a kick out of this whole episode with Jackie. So make sure to go back and check that one out if you missed it. Episode 594 in your podcast player app on her$100 for 100 days challenge. So we've got the gig economy apps, we've got paid surveys and focus groups, we've got game testing, you've got data annotation, and the last plug and play side hustle I want to offer up is a service like ShareTown. No special skills required, but you will need a strong back and a big enough vehicle to transport big bulky items like furniture and mattresses. This is the reverse logistics resale side hustle we've talked about a few times.

10:35ShareTown partners with these direct to consumer mattress and furniture brands to handle their return requests, but the brands don't really want the inventory back. So they work with local ShareTown reps, side hustle show listeners in a lot of cases, to pick it up from the customer and then resell it and possibly recoup a little bit of the cost. And what's interesting is, while you will need a place to store this stuff until it sells, you don't actually have to pay for that inventory until you sell it. As a ShareTown rep, you profit on the spread between your sales price and what you ultimately owe for that item.

11:10Here's Chris Torres on how it works. Right. And some people don't like it. Maybe it's the wrong color, buyer's remorse. And sometimes it's brand new in the box, which is great. People like that when we resell it on Facebook, Marketplace, Craigslist, OfferUp, things like that. So it works. It's really created lots of flexibility for us. And the money's great too. For example, you sell a mattress for five or 600 bucks and the mattress retails for two grand. People online see, they're like, what's the catch why is this mattress so cheap so i tell them in a nutshell this is a trial error it's up to you they do get sanitized they do get cleaned a lot of people don't like the idea of mattress as being used i totally understand that but people don't care to to lay on a mattress when i go away on a vacation that somebody's using every other day or every other in a hotel so if it's a trial error at least you realize the mattress gets inspected you make sure it's not damaged make sure there's stains on it if anything's crazy share town shows you how to go through it and they communicate with you and you communicate with them and it's not a big deal.

12:06You move on to the next item. They'll even pay you for picking it up. Say if you find something once in a blue moon, like very rarely. And since we've been doing it since July, there's only been three occasions where we had to discard the product. Is there a typical weekly sales volume in terms of the pickups and the orders that you're receiving? On a good week, you could easily make about$1 ,500 a week,$1 ,000 a week, in that frame. How many items is that? Three to four or five. Yeah, because that's not bad. So I try to sell something at least one or two a day. That's my goal. It sounds like it's similar to these other gig economy, the door dashes of the world, to it's an app interface.

12:47It just didn't have the name recognition. It didn't have the huge venture backing that a lot of these gig apps had to go out and recruit this army of independent contractors on the ground level. Yeah, exactly what it is. What's cool about the app is it'll tell you the retail price it'll tell you what share town wants from you and then it tells you the minimum what you should sell it for what they recommend the minimum if there's a two thousand dollar mattress share town may only want like 350 for it or 250 or even sometimes less sometimes it's like 175 and you jump on marketplace people want to deal so that's why people are like wait a minute you're selling a two thousand dollar mattress for 600 bucks or 500 bucks so share town I don't get like what they're asking for.

13:26Like I said,$250 or$175. And I keep the rest. So sometimes I may make$300 or$400 a day. I may make$500 a day. So it all depends. And that's just on one item. Mattresses are great because I never realized how many people, I didn't know I was going to be in the mattress business. I didn't realize how many people need mattresses on a regular. Become the mattress dealer in the local neighborhood. We love it. We meet them at the storage unit. The storage unit's only 10 minutes up the road. It's great for people who live in metropolitan areas, urban areas, cities. I know there's people in certain rural areas where they may not get as much flow like this, but you could do it part-time.

14:01It's also great to do part-time if you live in those areas. Be sure to check out our full ShareTown review page for more info on how it all works or hit up our referral link, sidehustlenation.com slash ShareTown to learn more. The full interview with Chris is up on our YouTube channel and it's episode 580 in your podcast feed if you want to go check that out. We've got three more no-skill side hustle frameworks coming up right after this. Did you know there's a disease running rampant among side hustlers and new entrepreneurs? It's called superhero syndrome. Symptoms include a feeling like you got to do everything yourself, thinking you're the only one who can do it right, and struggling to let go of certain tasks.

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15:12There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. Side Hustle Show listeners get a$75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash side hustle show. Just go to indeed.com slash side hustle show right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash side hustle show. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring. Indeed is all you need. As a business owner, you worked hard to make that phone ring, but missing a business call, it's like watching money fly right out the window. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O.

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16:33More than 90 ,000 businesses are already running on Quo, from solo operators to growing teams. Try it free when you go to quo.com slash side hustle. that's q u o.com slash side hustle you can even keep your existing number quo no missed calls no missed customers the next quote-unquote no skill side hustle framework i want to introduce is what i'm going to call business in a box side hustles they're not as simple as the plug and play options we talked about a minute ago you're going to have to put in a little more effort on the marketing front it's not like signing up for uber and getting ride requests pinging your phone but let's work through some business in a box examples.

17:13I think the recent vending machine episode is a good example of this. Find a location with 100 residential units or a workplace with 100 employees, get a modern machine, keep it well stocked, and you've got a semi-passive income stream that didn't require any advanced skills or degree on your part. The equipment rental side hustle might be another example. We had Lenny Tim on the show about his mobility scooter rental business in LA, And in his case, he did have some online skills to build the website and get it ranking. But there was a listener who took that model and just created a listing on the rental marketplace cloudofgoods.com.

17:48Didn't have to create demand, didn't have to do much marketing at all, just went where the cash was already flowing and offered the product. Since then, with the idea validated, he went on to expand the fleet and build out his own platform. Hey, Nick, Brian Routenberg here in Minneapolis with Minnesota Mobility Rentals. I want to share an update with you on my mobility products rental business. Late last summer, I listened to your mobility scooter rental episode, and I thought I'd do some research on the market opportunity here. While doing this research, I came across a company called Cloud of Goods.

18:18They basically rely on individuals in markets to own and deliver products geared towards travelers. It's a rev share model where they do the Google, Facebook marketing, handle the rental transaction payment, and then post the order in an app for partners to accept or decline. The largest portion of their product offering is in the mobility space, think scooters, wheelchairs, power chairs, and some other various medical equipment. I decided to partner with them, bought a scooter, and then had my first order the very next day. The order frequency continued to be steady and requests were coming in on a regular basis, sometimes three or four per day.

18:49With that said, I started thinking I could do this on my own, build my own brand and business, and keep 100 % of the rental. I formed my own LLC, Minnesota Mobility Rentals, built my website and started to run local and national Google ad campaigns. Almost immediately, I began to receive requests from local customers, as well as folks traveling into the Twin Cities looking to rent mobility products. Now about four full months in, have about 10 scooters, 10 wheelchairs, both electric and manual, and a few power chairs as well. I kind of thought things would slow down here and come the winter months, it gets a little bit chilly outside.

19:23But November was my best month to date with about$4 ,500 in rentals. August, September, October average right around$3 ,500 a month. Hoping that someday maybe this transitions from my five to nine becomes my nine to five. Thanks again, Nick, for the great content and inspiration that your show so graciously provides to your listeners. Appreciate all that you do. Take care. Business in a box. Take a playbook that already exists and execute on it. Another side hustle you can start today is product flipping. Now, I do think the ability to source consistent, profitable inventory definitely is a skill you can develop over time.

19:57But this is a side hustle that's accessible to almost everyone. Buying low and selling high, that's the name of the game. And we've covered everything from online arbitrage to pallet flipping to consignment sales to furniture flipping and more. Here's Stacey Gallego's advice on how to find items to resell. Never stick to one way of sourcing. I really try to have several ways that I source. I source at yard sales. I go to thrift stores. My big finds are usually on OfferUp, Facebook Marketplace, LetGo, just the local apps. And my goal really is to find those undervalued items locally and then resell them on a larger market.

20:39So I never really stick to one thing. I'm always looking for new ways to source. And my biggest new way, which is I learned from a private coaching group from Rob, and that was to build contacts. I tell people what I do. At first, you kind of keep it to yourself because you don't want to bug people with your new business idea or whatever. And so you don't always say what you do, but I started sharing that with people. And instead of them throwing out their items, they give them to me. I sell them and I can either give them part of the profit or if they're going to dump them in the garbage, I'll take them and flip them and add to my inventory.

21:17And then when I have several contacts, just locally, one guy cleans out houses and then he sells me stuff very inexpensive. And then I have another guy that works at a thrift store locally. And he and I have a really good connection where he basically lets me shop at a store before he puts the stuff out. Okay. Okay. Yeah, it's really awesome. Shoot. Shoot. Everybody else who's like going in there as the door opens, like, all the good stuff has already been picked up. Right. Believe me, there's plenty of really good stuff. There's all kinds of ways to get items and you can just make a really good living doing it.

21:53Is there a reason that somebody listing on Facebook Marketplace or OfferUp or LetGo or Craigslist isn't valuing their item properly or are you coming in with a lowball offer? I'm just kind of curious about the mechanics there. Well, that can be a lot of reasons why people want to get rid of something. Maybe they don't know what it is. I try not to play that game. I don't want to take advantage of anybody in any way. But there's people that are moving, so they may be just needing to get rid of their stuff. Otherwise, they're going to have to pay to have it moved, and they really don't want the item anyway.

22:32There's items, like for instance, I just purchased a piece of equipment for a person that's disabled. And the guy sold it to me very inexpensive because he had family members that were using it that were no longer using it. And he just needed to get it out of his garage. So those are opportunities that basically we can help them by instead of them dumping it somewhere in a landfill, we can pick it up and they get money and they're happy with it. And I just figure as long as they're happy and we can come to an agreement, it's a good deal for both of us. Right. Ends up being a win-win. Like, I don't want to deal with it.

23:09And that's kind of been a lot of our stuff that I have sold or even maybe mistakenly given away or set out in the bulky item pickup for the garbage collectors. Like, I just don't want to deal with it. And I'm willing to deal with it, especially for the stuff that you think might be worth several hundred dollars or more. or so equipment for disabled person, any other home run finds that you care to share? Well, a couple of my favorites are, I found a, it's a town and country vintage skateboard. I found it at a yard sale. And I just looked up the name quickly on eBay. And I could see that some of them were selling for quite a bit.

23:48And this one was a mint condition. I mean, like it had never even been used. So I asked him, well, what do you want? You said five bucks. And I thought, I'll take a chance on five bucks. I don't skateboard or anything. So I didn't know anything about it, which is kind of the fun part of the business. A lot of the things that I get, I have no idea what they are or even what they're used for, but I can figure out how much they're worth and be able to sell them. So I grabbed it. I took photos of it because I was really concerned because it was so nice that maybe it's not genuine or real. So I took photos of it and I sent a message to the company where it was made in Hawaii.