There are potentially hundreds or even thousands of different side hustles that you can do in your local area. Anything from simple labor jobs to professional skilled work.
Cleaning houses, walking dogs, taking care of elderly and disabled people, taking care of kids, running errands, yard work, driving, handyman work, cooking, accounting, law advice, fitness services, or simply helping someone out as their personal assistant. This is honestly just a tiny list of the potential types of work that can be done.
Working at home on the internet just doesn’t work for some people. The need to be physically active and interact with other people away from your home is simply a necessity for certain people. These types of side hustles cater to those personal preferences. You’ll spend a little bit of time at home on the computer or a mobile app to line up clients and work each week, but the rest of the time you will get to leave your house and work in different environments each day.
This post is going to give you some general tips to point you in the right direction to get started. You’ll also learn about six types of local service based businesses that you could create today.
Getting Started Tips
Figure out what type of service you can offer that compliments your knowledge and abilities. Then plan out individual services, prices and details for each. Once you know what you plan to offer to others, you can begin hunting for clients.
There are actually a lot of different ways to get clients for local services. Word of mouth with previous customers, friends and family can be a powerful driver of new leads, but this can also take time to work.
When you’re first getting started, you can utilize Craigslist, Facebook, and potentially other websites to find new clients. Numerous types of local services are already covered elsewhere in this book, but you can also search Google to find out sites for the specific type of service you want to offer.
Moving & Handyman Services
Helping out other people in your local area by performing a variety of tasks for them is one type of side business that can potentially be very lucrative. A website called TaskRabbit makes it easy for you to find this type of work.
Most cities require a $25 fee to sign up for TaskRabbit. Payouts are done via direct deposit, so you’ll get paid quickly when you complete work. You must live in specific cities where TaskRabbit operates to be able to do work here. Take a look at the page above to find a list of these locations to see if you qualify. Residents of California are also required to have a business license that allows them to operate as a sole proprietorship.
There is rather wide variety of types of work you can do on this site. Some of them could involve using a vehicle like a van or truck to help deliver large items, haul things, or even help with moving. Handyman services are another common one that usually pays well. This could involve repairs around the house, painting, making new additions to home, or simply helping with mounting heavy objects on the wall like a television or pictures. You can also get work to help people move. This could involve packing boxes or simply transporting items from one house to another.
Assembly & Installation
As of July 2022, Amazon Home Services is temporarily closed for new applications to offer services on this site. However, they should open this up again at some point in the future.
Obviously since Amazon is an extremely popular website, they can potentially deliver a lot of customers to your in-home services business so it’s worth keeping an eye on this site in the future. When people purchase certain products on the Amazon website that could potentially be linked with an in-home services, Amazon will attempt to upsell this service.
Third-parties just like you are actually the ones doing these services though, so you can get a lot of business for your company this way if you’re able to get into this program. In general, if you’re operating or want to start a side hustle offering assembly services, home theater services and/or appliance installation this you should bookmark this site and take a look back every month to see if they’re opened applications again.
Shovel Snow
A really unique and seasonal side hustle is shoveling snow on Shovler. This is an app that you download for your Apple or Android smart phone, which makes it a lot easier to manage when you want to start a new job right after finishing another.
This service is available in the United States and many areas in Canada. Some areas won’t see any business at all, such as in Florida, while northern states could offer constant work for roughly half the year. The pay for work can actually pretty decent. The exact amount you’ll earn depends on the clients offering the work though.
You may need to clear roads, sidewalks, driveways or even just get the snow off of a car working for Shovler. Obviously, you need a way to get around town safely when there’s a lot of snow on the ground and you need to be able to handle the physical labor. Even if it’s not winter time right now, if you are interested in this side hustle then you should go ahead and create an account there. There’s currently open for new workers, but it’s possible they may close these spots once they have enough for the upcoming winter season.
Local Tour Guide
Anyone in the world can potentially create a side hustle offering local tour guides to tourists through a site called ToursByLocals.
You’ll have to apply and get approved to be a tour guide on this site. They have high quality requirements and you’ll also have to be able to complete a background check. As a tour guide, you’ll get to choose what services you offer in your city. You also get to set your own rates, so you will ultimately control how much money you make.
There is also a virtual tour guide service on this site, so you can potentially make money by touring local attractions over the internet for people that want to visit but can’t afford a full vacation. This site also partners with cruise ships. If you live in a city that docks cruise ships, you could offer shore excursions and get paid for each tour you complete.
Grass Cutting & Yard Services
A timeless classic, mowing grass to make money, is now an easy side hustle thanks to internet sites like GreenPal and LawnGuru. This type of business can be done part-time if you simply need some extra cash each month. However, these sites are commonly used by full-time lawn care businesses to find more clients.
In general, you’ll want to check each site to make sure that you can find work in your area. GreenPal looks to be the larger and more established site, while LawnGuru is currenly only servicing about 13 major cities in the USA. One of the main differences between these sites is the lawn cutting service being offered. GreenPal seems to focus exclusively on work on a recurring basis every two weeks, while additional services are added to that work.
LawnGuru looks to be more flexible. With grass cutting, both one-time and recurring services can be ordered. There are also a wide variety of other lawn and yard care services that can be offered on this site and sold directly without the need for cutting the grass too. With those differences, GreenPal is likely best for full-time lawn care crews, while LawnGuru could be better suited for a part-time worker.
Freelance Auto Mechanic
Auto mechanics can earn a living running their own business instead of working for dealerships and shops. Without a boss taking a big cut of your earnings, you can actually make 2 or even 3 times as much. A site called YourMechanic makes it easy to connect with paying clients in your local area, and you can get paid up to $70 per hour for this work.
YourMechanic brings mechanics to the customer, so you’ll travel to work on cars instead of working in a shop. You don’t have to do major work like engine overhauls or transmissions. It’s mostly things like brakes, belts, tires, AC systems, and other jobs that can typically be done without lifts or other large equipment found in a workshop.
Most of the mechanics on this site are ASE certified. 10 years of experience is the average here, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t get approved to work here if you don’t meet those specs. You do have to go through a phone interview and background / reference checks to join this site, so it is not open for anyone to create an account. They verify that you can actually do a good job so their site can be trusted to provide quality mechanics.
This particular site only services the USA, and they only operate in a set list of cities. For this reason, your location could potentially exclude you from being able to work here. However, you may be able to search for other sites that do cater to your region.