Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2019, and the YouTube monetization thresholds it gives, 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours, are the 2019 rules. Its statement that Amazon is the most valuable tech giant reflects early 2019, and AdWords had already been renamed Google Ads in 2018.
We understand how hard it is to start your own business while working full time. The hours you put in at work and the lack of energy at the end of the day sometimes push those business ideas you have in mind down to a secondary priority that can wait. So let’s not kid ourselves: the truth is that if you work full time and want to build a profitable business alongside your job, or simply earn some extra money to top up your income, you’re going to have to make an extra effort.
We should remember that depending on a single source of income can be dangerous in the long run, because if that source disappears, we’re left with nothing. That’s why, however rewarding our full-time job may be, finding the right business idea and becoming your own boss, even if only part of the time at first, ends up being more rewarding and meaningful in the long run.
Once we’ve given shape to our idea and it has turned into a profitable business, all the effort will have been worth it. So let’s look at which profitable business ideas we can start while working full time.
Luckily, there are many ways to start a business and earn extra income even if you don’t have much free time. If all goes well, you could even end up with more than 10 different sources of income, so that eventually the money you earn by brute force at your job is only a small percentage of your total income. At that point, you could even say goodbye to your job and devote yourself to building small businesses.
Profitable business ideas you can start without quitting your full-time job
1. Start your own blog
It’s probably one of the most repeated business ideas. You may even have heard that it’s no longer worth starting a blog because blogs are no longer a valid source of income. That’s completely false!
What you can’t do is start a blog that says nothing new and just copies other articles, repeating what others have already said with a couple of sentences changed. Do that and you simply won’t take off in this world.
I won’t lie to you either. It isn’t easy to build a successful blog today, because you’re competing against giants, so the most profitable approach is to find a niche you know well and attack it with your own style and personality. And it should be a niche where advertising pays well, or where advertisers are willing to pay for sponsored posts because they see you as a reference in that particular niche.
It isn’t hard to reach an income of around 200 or 300 euros a month fairly quickly, from the second month on. And earning more than 1,000 euros a month from a blog through advertising alone is certainly within your reach. Even if it sounds outrageous, it’s not crazy to think you could make more than 2,000 or 3,000 euros with your own blog.
How do you grow a blog?
There are two ways to grow your blog. One is slower and takes more patience (especially if you work full time): publishing little by little and aiming for organic growth by targeting the keywords in your niche.
The other is to invest money to increase the pace of publishing and improve your SEO faster. In other words, if you don’t have all the time you’d like to devote to the blog, you can always hire freelance writers to post on it, and even invest in some social media advertising to drive traffic to your blog.
Either way, if you’re honest, have principles and values, and know a particular subject well, I can assure you that a blog is still a profitable business.
2. Your own video channel (YouTube)
As with the previous point, you’ll have heard some YouTubers say that YouTube doesn’t pay as well as it used to, and so on. But that isn’t true either. Let’s say that advertisers now choose much more carefully the topics and the average age of a channel’s audience.
To put it simply: one of my videos about the stock market or business with just 5,000 views usually generates the same revenue as, or more than, a video on a more trivial topic with 100,000 views. That’s what’s happening on YouTube.
That’s why, when you ask YouTubers how much they earn, you’d be surprised to learn that some with 75,000 subscribers earn more than others with 1 million, simply because they have a higher CPM (cost per thousand views).
I’ll also tell you that a YouTube channel takes much more time if you want to treat it as a business. Any old rubbish no longer works. Viewers now want quality: a good picture, good sound, good editing, and so on.
You need to prepare a short script, record, edit, render the video, upload it, add a description and tags… That’s why I always say that if you only make videos to earn money and don’t enjoy the whole process behind them, you’ll be frustrated by the third video.
Can you still make money with a YouTube channel today?
The answer is yes, but it won’t be quick, because the rules have changed. To monetize a channel you need at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. However, if you enter a niche with an active trend at the moment, you can get there with 3 videos. In my case I got my first 1,000 subscribers in just 3 days with 2 videos. Of course, I already had readers from the blog, so I’m not a valid example in that respect.
Still, earning 100 or 200 euros a month within 6 months is an achievable goal. From there, it all depends on your dedication and effort.
3. Online courses
This is one of the trendiest business ideas, because selling your skills is profitable. If you’re an expert in something, or if you carefully put together a course that gathers all the information on a specific subject in an orderly, easy-to-follow way, there are certainly people willing to pay for it.
There are different platforms where you can sell online courses. Perhaps the best known is Udemy. Some time ago we published the story of a 25-year-old who made more than $120,000 selling a course on this platform. There are many more cases of people who earn more than $15,000 a year in passive income from selling their course.
In this article we explained step by step how to create your own online course (an info product) and sell it successfully. There are different ways to do it and quite a few platforms with different terms.
4. Sell your own ebook
If there’s one thing we’ve noticed about the ebooks sold on Amazon, it’s that even the worst book you can find has been downloaded. It’s another very profitable way to earn passive income, especially if the material is good. And since we’re talking about business ideas while you work full time, it’s a matter of writing a few pages of that book every day, and before you know it you’ll have it finished.
Bear in mind that it will be easier to sell your ebook if you’ve already built a community through a blog or a YouTube channel. It’s certainly an excellent way to strengthen your personal brand. As you’ll know, nowadays anyone can self-publish their own book, both as an ebook and in print, without going through a publisher.
This has its good side and its bad side: while anyone can publish a book, the market has also become saturated with a lot of rubbish, so you have to write a good book.
5. Instagram marketing
Building an account with thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers takes time, but once you’ve done it, you’ll have a real chance of being contacted by brands willing to pay you considerable sums to promote their product or service.
We’ve already covered the case of a couple who charge up to 9,000 euros per Instagram post. Perhaps that’s an extreme case, but it’s not crazy that, once you reach a certain number of followers, brands will be willing to pay you 200 or 300 euros to promote a product. And it all adds up.
6. Photography as a business
There are many ways to make money with photography, from taking your own photos and selling them on stock image sites to creating and selling photography courses. Another good way to turn photography into a side business alongside your full-time job is to do shoots on your days off: models, landscapes, weddings and christenings.
Selling your photos on stock sites is a slower process, and clearly the more photos you have available for download, the better the chances that they’ll sell. In the end it can become a far from negligible secondary source of income.
7. Your own podcast
Although monetizing a podcast may seem more complicated at first, the truth is that you can make money from podcasts both directly and indirectly. Here we explain the ways to make money with a podcast.
Some podcasts have more listeners than traditional radio stations, so there’s a lot of money at stake waiting for you. The advantage of podcasts is that they don’t need as much editing work as a YouTube video. Otherwise, it’s more of the same: create interesting content, provide value or entertainment, and monetize it in the ways we’ve already explained.
8. Freelance writer for others
Can you earn up to $1,000 an hour writing from home? The answer is that some people do. Media outlets need writers. Good writers. Some companies also need creative people who can produce an article or a few lines for their publications.
We published the story of a woman who earns up to $950 an hour as a freelance writer. She gave some advice on how to go beyond being a freelance writer and have your own profitable business writing for others. Definitely a good business idea.
See also: 3 ways to make money online without investing (there are no others)
9. Consulting for small local businesses
If over the years you’ve developed valuable skills or certifications in your industry, consider selling those skills in your free time by offering consulting services to local business owners. This can be a potentially lucrative business idea.
There may well be more than one small shop owner willing to pay to solve a setback or a small problem. Other small shops want to sell nationwide over the internet, and others are looking for someone to handle their local marketing with online advertising.
If local businesses took advantage of online channels, they could increase their sales considerably.
When we talk about the profitable businesses you can set up in small towns, we shouldn’t forget that the internet can make the difference in expanding a local business in a remote village. This niche can be very profitable.
10. Selling on commission
Here we really are talking about one of the most profitable business ideas you can start part-time without leaving your current full-time job. If you have sales skills and/or contacts, this business is for you. And it can be really lucrative.
Many companies look for independent sales agents to sell their products part-time, because they don’t intend to hire salaried sales staff. Depending on the product and the type of customer it’s aimed at, we can earn more or less money. It’s as simple as putting the buyer in touch with the seller. All we have to do is “hold out our hand” to collect the commission once the sale has closed.
It may not sound very attractive if we’re talking about low commissions on small customers, but if we’re talking about selling a product or service to a large company, the commissions could be very high.
The good thing about becoming an independent salesperson is that practically no company with sales reps on the street will tell you not to sell its product. In most cases, the company will tell you to go ahead and that it will pay you “x” amount for each product sold.
Other profitable business ideas you can start part-time without leaving your current job
11. Affiliate programs
If you already have a website or blog with traffic, getting started with affiliate programs takes practically no effort. Some people find it complicated to understand how affiliate programs work, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, one of the most widely used affiliate programs is Amazon’s.
By placing the links Amazon gives you on your website, you’ll receive a commission for every purchase made through that link, both on the sale of that product and on whatever else that person buys within a certain period. Other platforms also offer a wide variety of products to promote and earn a commission on each sale, such as ClickBank.
You can earn anything from a few hundred euros to tens of thousands of euros. It all depends on your ability to drive traffic to your affiliate products and get people to buy. It isn’t easy, but it’s possible. And like many of the business ideas we’ve mentioned throughout this article, it can be an excellent way to create another source of passive income.
12. Remote English or Spanish teacher
Do you think it would be possible to earn 10 or 20 euros while you have lunch? Well, it is. Thanks to Skype and some people’s interest in learning another language quickly, there’s a big market of people who are very busy with their jobs and willing to pay for a conversation with a speaker of another language, and in many cases they choose to do it at lunchtime.
This business idea can also be done in person: you meet a client at lunchtime and hold a conversation in your language, polishing and correcting their speaking as you go. It’s the equivalent of learning a language directly in another country, and it’s proving more effective than attending a language school. And it’s certainly a very simple business to start, one that requires no investment at all.
13. Social media manager
As we know, it’s practically mandatory for companies and professionals to have a strong social media presence, and on the other hand, most people spend too much time on social media. So why not get paid for it and build a side business managing the social media of small businesses and professionals?
Many influential people rely on social media managers to reply to comments and publish posts, and everyone assumes they manage their own accounts, but only someone who actively manages their own social media knows how much time it takes. On the other hand, a person’s fans would be disappointed if they saw the artist in question ignoring all their messages.
The same goes for companies. They need social media managers or a community manager. This can be an excellent business idea, one we already included in our article on business ideas for making money while you travel the world. You only need to land a few accounts to manage, and it wouldn’t be crazy to say you could earn between 1,500 and 3,000 euros managing the social media of three companies.
14. AdWords and Facebook Ads expert
Running a company’s advertising campaigns on Google can be a cumbersome task for that company, so more and more businesses are turning to firms and professionals who understand both SEO and SEM.
The same goes for sponsored posts on Facebook: some companies still don’t know how to set up the targeting to get the most out of their ad campaign and reach potential customers at low cost.
That’s why this can be an excellent business opportunity to earn money without leaving your job. Needless to say, it can be combined with social media management and even with freelance writing for others.
In other words, you can offer a company the complete package, and that means more money and more profit for you.
15. Landing page specialist
A good landing page can make the difference between a successful ad campaign and a fiasco. It can also make the difference between hundreds of thousands of euros in profit and tens of thousands of euros in losses.
Although ready-made landing page templates are widely sold, they’ve become so standardized that users have grown used to them, and it feels as if you always end up on the same page. A landing page should be simple, original and optimized to encourage purchases, with a checkout process that takes as few clicks as possible.
That’s why professionals whose main business is specifically landing page design are already appearing. It may seem like a very small niche, but when you get a company to sell up to 50% more than in its previous campaign, your reputation precedes you next time and your fee goes up. A good business to start today.
16. Brew your own beer
Making your own craft beer is relatively simple, and since we’re talking about starting a business while you’re working, your workplace can be your first market of potential customers. As long as you make a good product.
You can pick up a good starter kit from sites like Mr. Beer and start brewing your own craft beer. The rest depends on your creativity and sales skills.
17. Freelance editing, proofreading and copy review
As long as there’s writing, there will always be editors. Editing and proofreading pay a good hourly rate. Many publishers outsource this work. And now, with the growth of independent authors, more and more people are needed to review, correct and edit books before they’re sent off for publication. That’s why this is an excellent business idea to start alongside your job today.
18. Buy used electronics and resell them
Once a tech product’s warranty has expired, many people prefer to throw it away as soon as it stops working, without checking what’s wrong. This often happens with PCs, cameras and smartphones. If you have the knowledge and skills to fix them, consider starting this business by buying, repairing and selling these products.
19. Carpet cleaning
Carpets can make your home warm and cosy, but over time they also become a breeding ground for dust, dirt, allergens and insects. You can take advantage of this by launching a business idea that has already proven to work: freelance carpet cleaner in your free time or at weekends.
The only investment you’ll need is the right equipment, such as a vacuum cleaner and a carpet brush, plus cleaning chemicals. You could also consider renting the equipment for the weekend and lining up 8 or 10 customers for that weekend, which would cover the cost of the rental. Once you have regular customers, you can think about buying your own equipment.
20. Independent real estate agent
This is a very simple business idea to start, with the potential for big profits. The best way to get into this profitable business is definitely to do it part-time until you can devote yourself to it fully. It’s a matter of finding homes both for sale and for rent and, on the other side, building up a pool of potential buyers who might be interested in the catalogue of available properties you put together little by little.
If the business works, you could consider moving from independent property broker to running your own real estate agency.
21. Buy an existing website and grow it
Websites are like shares: they’re bought and sold all the time. And just as with shares, some websites are pure rubbish and others are diamonds in the rough whose owners haven’t known how to make the most of them.
The advantage of buying an existing website is that it already has content and age, so it’s already some way along the road in search engine rankings. What you do need to check is its current traffic, why it isn’t ranking well and whether it has any Google penalty.
If everything checks out, it’s selling at a good price and it’s in a niche you know well, you could generate extra money relatively quickly.
22. Private labelling and selling products on Amazon
Amazon is the most valuable tech giant, which makes it a massive global market where anyone can ride the growing wave of e-commerce if they have the right business idea. But this idea does require investment.
Here we’re talking about doing proper research to find generic products from Chinese or Indian manufacturers. These products can be watches, key rings, mugs, shirts, T-shirts, tech accessories and so on.
You ask for the price of the product and the minimum quantity you have to order from the factory, calculate the final cost including shipping, and work out what you’d need to sell it for to make it profitable. Then you do your own search on Amazon to see what similar products sell for and decide whether it’s worth taking the risk. Remember to run a test before placing your first order, as we explained in our article on the steps to start your own business.
With this business idea we’re already talking about setting up a company and devoting time to selling on Amazon under the requirements they set. But if you’re sure about it and it goes well, we’re also talking about making a lot of money with this kind of idea.
23. Voice-over
If you have a pleasant voice and a neutral accent, many digital publishers, including game developers and producers of training videos, often pay a decent amount of money for a good voice that fits what they’re looking for. The time investment isn’t too high either, so you can become a freelancer in this industry.
To find voice-over jobs, you can look on sites like Fiverr or Freelancer. Needless to say, it’s a very competitive industry.
If you’re looking for more business ideas, we have other articles such as 31 business ideas to start in 2019.
See also: Business trends report for 2020
Featured image: Nenad Stojković, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
