In 2010, I started a side project outside of work, because my job sucked my soul to the size of a raisin. My side project back then was a blog, back when blogging was still something you did purely for fun and only your mum read it. A few years later, I started earning extra income from it, and I started to realise that earning money on the side felt really good.
Fast-forward to now and so many of the skills I learned outside of my then-job (basic coding, analytics, pitching, design) are very relevant for my self-employed life, and there's no way I would have learned them at my 9-5.
There are so many stats out there to suggest that a side project is a good idea; GoDaddy research says a huge percentage of people with side projects earn an extra £500-£5,000 a year, which is obviously great. But it’s also important to realise that the benefits of a side project go way beyond the additional money — having creative side projects can also lead to mental self-care, making new friends and learning new skills. In a world where literally none of us can answer the question "Where do you see yourself in five years' time?", side projects can give us a new layer of confidence and direction.
However, the "side hustle", as no one likes to call it, can take a fair bit out of you. And so it's important to be prepared before you take the leap. Click through to see what you need to do before you strike out on your own.
Create Your Own Unique Elevator Pitch
It’s okay to have different projects going on at the same time but we do like to be able to sum up what we do very easily to others. To let go of the temptation to downplay your side project, I recommend working up your own elevator pitch that succinctly sums up your ‘job’ and side things, drawing links between them. Write down what you do, including all the hyphens. (Example: At the moment I’m doing X, but I’m also working on X.) Sum them up all together as one spear-headed mission (Example: On the whole, my mission is to X). Speak about why you love or do what you do (people like to hear the why in career scenarios). (Example: I love these jobs/this mixture of careers because X and it allows me to do X.)
Organise Your Money Streams
The great thing about the internet is we now all have direct access to a load of people across the world. The gatekeepers are gone. We can receive payments via Paypal, orders via Instagram DMs, and sell tickets to things on our own websites. Even if you are making seemingly insignificant amounts from a random sale here and there, set up a separate bank account and a page in Google Sheets to track your extra income from your side project. It’ll help you realise what is bonus money and what is money you need to get by. You can then make better decisions and see how much you could start investing in growing your side project into something bigger. You also start projecting additional income when you start seeing patterns, and start planning for when you might want to quit your full-time job.
Steal Time
Time is one of the biggest setbacks for so many people. After a 12-hour day at work, how could you possibly want to sit down and work on a different project? Of course it sounds ludicrous. The only way I managed to do it after a day in the office was to a) think small, and b) steal pockets of time. The daydream of having hours and days free to write your debut novel, for example, might never happen. But if you get yourself an egg-timer and write for 20 minutes while you wait for a film to download, or write in notes while at the bus stop, or tell your friends you might be 20 minutes late to watch the football at the pub one Sunday – these moments can really count towards something concrete that your future self will thank you for.
Grow A Small Community
I call a small online community a "micro-audience". It is really important for the longevity of a side project to have a community. To get our idea/product/workshop out there, and we only need a small number of interested people to attend or spread the word. Social media is just word of mouth, after all. Your numbers online have to be real, which is why it’s good to aim small. Having a smaller, more engaged audience for your work is important and ideally it would be made up of mostly people who are interested in working with you (aka potential customers or friends). Numbers don’t matter any more. Because who cares if you have one million followers if only a tiny proportion of them care about what you’re doing or saying? Newsletters have risen in popularity because of this very reason. Having one hundred people genuinely interested in hearing from you in their inbox is much more powerful than having millions of Instagram followers.
The Icky World Of Self-Promotion
Self-promotion might make your skin crawl, but no one is going to randomly stumble across your project, or find your website on page six of Google and contact you. The first rule of promoting something is to create something you like or would be interested in yourself. This seems obvious, but if you make/build/launch something that you like, promoting it will feel natural and you’ll be excited to share it, not embarrassed. Use your voice. The most distinctive way of promoting your work is by speaking in your voice. Write in a way that feels as close to your speaking voice as you can. Forcing yourself to be overly ‘authentic’ can end up being a false version of authenticity. It’s best to imagine you are speaking to people IRL and telling them in a conversational way about what you’re doing.
Emma Gannon’s new book The Multi-Hyphen Method: Work less, create more, and design a career that works for you is out 31st May 2018, published by Hodder & Stoughton
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