The term “side hustle” or side gig has never been more popular than today. According to Google Trends, more people are searching for the term side hustle than ever before. Thanks to a confluence of factors, it makes sense that more people are becoming interested in starting their own entrepreneurial project. It has never been easier to build a website, establish an ecommerce store, or begin a consulting company.
This article will provide those interested in starting a side gig a few startup ideas about what is possible when using WordPress. For reference, nearly 75 million websites are hosted on the WordPress platform, this accounts for 18% of all websites online. Thanks to the company’s large scale, entrepreneurs have access to a host of add-on features that can take a standard WordPress site to a highly customized foundation on which to build a successful small business.
Establish yourself as a thought leader by creating an industry resource
Tomasz Tunguz is a thought leader in the SaaS (software as a service) industry. Not only is he a successful venture capitalist, but he maintains an incredibly helpful personal website that is frequented by all sorts of members of the tech community. Thanks in large part to the great content Tunguz has published on his personal website, he has been invited to speak at leading business conferences like SaaStr and the Grow Conference.
Brian Balfour is the former VP of Growth at Hubspot. Balfour is considered a leader in the field of growth marketing not because of his work at Hubspot, but because of the insightful content he shares on his personal website. Balfour was able to quickly amass a following of passionate digital marketers, and because of this he was able to found and scale Reforge, a training program for those interested in improving their growth marketing skills.
By establishing yourself as a thought leader within your industry, or niche specialization, you can eventually translate this standing into a profitable side business. The key to doing this is to start by sharing highly valuable content that serves the needs of a dedicated but underserved community of people who are interested in learning.
WordPress is a great platform for those interested starting a side gig based on thought leadership since the platform’s CMS (content management system) makes it easy to upload new articles and to optimize those articles for search engine discovery and social media shares.
Create an ecommerce store that specializes in niche items
Nearly $400 billion was spent via ecommerce stores in the United States last year, constituting 15% growth compared to the previous year. Ecommerce sales are showing no signs of slowing down, with retail giants like Wal-Mart and Amazon investing more money than ever before in expanding the footprint of their ecommerce businesses.
But ecommerce is not just for gigantic organizations, it is also a business model that is well-suited for those interested in a side gig. Entrepreneurs interested in starting an ecommerce business should consider choosing a niche specialization. This will help to protect the business from larger organizations that can offer lower prices, and faster delivery. By focusing your ecommerce business on a passionate but underserved audience, you’ll be able to quickly create a successful online store without needing to worry about burdensome competition.
To test the community and the appeal of merchandise, consider creating an MVP (minimum viable product) that you promote to a target audience via Facebook ads. Creating a simple WordPress based ecommerce store that features a few well-presented products, and then targeting a niche audience via Facebook’s targeting options, can help you to quickly identify if the community in question is willing to buy your products.
Those interested in starting an ecommerce store should also consider drop shipping merchandise. Drop shipping is a type of fulfillment process whereby the manufacturer, and not the retailer, sends products directly to the customer. As the owner of the ecommerce store, drop shipping products helps to lower your overhead, and makes it possible to offer a wide variety of products without needing to warehouse them.
Conclusion
Whether you are a life insurance adjuster in New York, or a serial entrepreneur in California, it is possible to start a successful side gig. Today, it has never been easier to get started thanks to flexible website platforms like WordPress.
One way to start a revenue generating side hustle is by establishing yourself as a thought leader by producing high-quality and helpful content. Then you can parlay your industry standing into a profitable consulting business or media company.
Another way to start a successful side gig is by creating an ecommerce store that caters to a niche industry. WordPress integrates well with ecommerce tools like Shopify and WooCommerce so that entrepreneurs can focus on growing the business, rather than on small technical challenges related to starting an ecommerce site.
Whatever you decide, remember that it is more than possible to create a successful business. All it takes is the ability to identify and serve and underserved audience with content or with merchandise that speaks to them.