We recently did a poll in the Classy Career Girl Network and found that the top goal most of you are setting is financially related. We’ve done a lot of posts here on how to get out of debt but we wanted to focus this time all about making more money. The truth is, we need to do a little of both. In 2019, there are so many opportunities to make more income.

I challenge you to pick one of the below ways and really take action. Create a 90-day plan around this extra side income and create a goal income that you’d like to make by the end of the year. You can do it!

Start a Side Hustle

Want to start a side hustle and make extra income? Here’s a couple of questions you’ll want to ask yourself first: What could you do for hours and hours and not get bored? What do you LOVE doing outside of work? What would you do if you wouldn’t get paid? 

After you ask yourself these questions, the find a problem that you can solve doing that thing you love. Or create an experience for a customer by doing that thing you love. This could be a product or a service. Make a long list of ideas and list of problems you solve or experiences you provide. Choose one and start with it. Carve out at least one hour in your day to work on your side hustle. I suggest mornings to work on your own goals before your company’s goals.  It will be tough but worth it in the long run!

1. Consulting or coaching. What do you know that you can help others do better?

2. Teaching others. What do you know that you can teach others?

3. Sell your own crafts. What do you love making?

4. Start a blog and sell affiliate products. Did you know you don’t even have to have your own product to make an income? You can sell other people’s products online and earn a percentage.

5. Start a blog and partner with brands to create sponsored posts. A large portion of many companies’ marketing budgets is now being spent on working with bloggers. You can take advantage of it by growing an audience and writing articles with brand products in your posts.

6. Grow your social media profiles and become an influencer. Yes, you can make a living doing this! A lot of work is required up front to grow your social media followers, but once you’ve established trust and a relationship with your followers, you can start posting on social media and earning a paycheck from brands with sponsored social media posts.

7. Start a blog and create your own products. Don’t want to rely on brands to make an income? No problem! Create your own products, like a book, and sell it yourself on your blog.

8. Open an Etsy shop. Design products that are personalized for people or sell what you love to create.

9. Start taking photography for people or brands. With the rise of social media today, photos are everything to a brand, and there’s a large market for this side hustle if you love taking photos. Know how to do a flat lay? Even better! You are hired!

10. Start speaking about what you love. You can earn income as a speaker if you love to speak to large crowds.

11. Create an online course. If you love helping others, creating a course online in your pajamas is a great side hustle. You can do this in the evenings after work when your students are available or record your class on the weekends, and your students can watch them during the week while you are at your day job.

12 Teach at a local university as an adjunct professor. Many universities are looking for professors with real-life experience.

13. Uber or Lyft on the side. You can make your own schedule and only work when you have the time to!

Make More Money at Your Current Job

Right now, start documenting everything you are doing at your job and the results you are getting. Save result emails. Save good job emails. Ask others for recommendations now. Save awards. Start learning outside of work and add certificates and new skillsets. All this will go into your make more money strategy when you…

14. Ask for a raise. Once you have all your files ready or a presentation with talking points, ask for a meeting with your boss and present your findings. Present the results (make sure you have dollar amounts that you have saved the company if possible).

15. Start networking within your company and get a referral. Most positions come from referrals. Don’t wait until jobs are posted to start networking and trying to get a position.

16. Do informational interviews with people who you want their position someday. Identify jobs you want within your company. Someone might already have the position now, but get to know them and tell them you’d like to have their (or a similar) position someday, then ask if there any advice they can give to you. Do informational interviews with people in all areas of your company. Interested in HR? Go to that networking event. Get to know people. They will remember you when a position opens.

17. Make your company more money. Then, you can request some of the additional income you made.

Change Jobs

Want to change jobs and make more money? Spend your time networking online and offline rather than online job searching.

18. Always, ALWAYS, negotiate. Never be afraid. Recruiters expect it!

19. Find an internship on the side of your day job and work your butt off. Many internships can lead to paid opportunities.

20. Create your own personal brand online and build up your resume. You’ll be able to look for a new job and list your personal brand as your website for hiring managers to check out. This can add to your pay when it comes time to negotiate if you demonstrate you know your stuff!

21. Learn something new. Gain new skills to add to your resume so you can increase your salary request when you change jobs.

22. Do your research and always know your desired salary before the interview. If you walk into an interview without doing the research and being prepared, you will not make more money.

23: Informational interviews are key here. They make you stand out and show you are proactive. Also, by just learning one little thing in an informational interview that you didn’t already know, it could potentially increase your pay by thousands of dollars. 

Household

24. Rent out a room in your house. Yeah, it’s probably not sounding like that great of a plan, but how fun would it be if your best friend moved in?

25. Sell your items on eBay. Decrease that clutter and get organized. Then, get rid of your junk by selling it.

Overall, it’s great to make more money. But don’t forget to save more money, too. Often, the more you make the more you spend. This is NOT what you want to do. Remember to save those dollars as your income increases.