If I have a profitable side hustle, why would I make it public?

"If I have a profitable side hustle, why would I make it public?"

That's a common reply I see whenever a new "what's your side hustle" post appears on the AskSingapore subreddit.

And such posts on side hustles are common. Below's a screenshot from 28 Jan 2023:

Look inside those posts and you can see recommendations on trading, food delivery, drive private hire vehicles, invest in crypto, buy and resell items, drop shipping, give tuition, internet marketing and more.

It is a fact that those jobs can make money, except for trading and investments where you can actually lose money.

What's not obvious is those recommendations don't actually make money. The work (verb) makes money. The idea (noun) does not make money. It's the execution of the ideas that makes money.

So even if an idea has the potential of making money, most people can still be hesitant to do the work. There could be many reasons: the work's not something you're interested in, being afraid to step out of the comfort zone to do something new, you don't want to take the risk of wasting time or even money in case things don't work out.

If I have a profitable side hustle, why would I make it public?

There are jobs or side hustles that are incredibly competitive. For those jobs, sharing your knowledge would actually increase competition and reduce the size of the pie for everyone, including yourself. Defending your self interest isn't something bad.

I do make money from this blog, Youtube channels and Patreon. All the work that I do online is highly visible. Technically speaking, you can copy whatever I do and get the same level of success. And I share all my internet marketing tips online. I'm not afraid of competition because I know 99% of people who read those articles won't be taking action. Copy the work (verb) I do and don't be distracted by what I've achieved because what I've achieved are byproducts of the work done.

Coming up with ideas is easy. Working takes time and effort.

In this video below, Bobby Chiu talks about Believing vs Doing. Believing is one thing. Doing is another thing. By the way, check out his Tip of the Day playlist which is filled with gems of advice.

What separates you from the competition is whether you spend more time working or thinking.

I've created more than 1700 videos on Youtube, written countless blog posts and created several online art courses. I still feel the procrastination to do work. It's easy and tempting to play computer games, watch Youtube videos, scroll through Instagram than to work. The main reason why I was able to create so much content over the years is doing the work has become part of my habit. Everything can be done more easily when it becomes a habit.

Getting past the fear of failure

Thankfully, I've already gotten past the fear-of-failure stage at least for the type of work I do which is creating art and content online. The cost of failure is just time spent. For those looking for side hustles, the cost of failure is not high because you're not investing big capital.

For those looking for side hustles, just start. You won't know whether you enjoy doing something or not unless you do it. What have you got to lose? What's the worst thing that can happen? So instead of spending one hour on social media, why not spend one hour doing work, testing ideas? Either way, you'll spend an hour, and when you do work you still also learn more about the work and the industry you're in. The hands-on knowledge is more valuable compared to wasting your time away on social media.

To get past the fear of failure, you can minimise the losses by planning. Put yourself in position to minimise losses. Start small and gain some experience first. E.g. If you don't invest $1000, you can't lose $1000. E.g To start a Youtube channel reviewing tech products, you may have to buy products and failure will result in monetary loses. So the workaround is to borrow products for review instead. But how can you borrow products when you're a nobody? You start somewhere, and that's where you have to think for yourself.

Exploring the potential

I talk often about potential when writing my online marketing articles.

Being able to see the potential is not good enough. Doing is more important than being able to see the potential. Reason being you may not see the potential initially but after doing you may discover the potential.

Today with the internet, it is possible to make a living from creating dominos, blending stuff, crushing stuff, etc. If I told my parents you can actually earn money from doing all those things, I would be called crazy. If I said I want to be an influencer, I would be told to get a proper job.

I hope you know know by now what I'm getting at.

It is not enough to see the potential because seeing is not doing. You have to test the potential. And you have to test the potential over a period of time.

Sometimes the potential may be realised or fulfilled in time. E.g. Blendtec is no longer posting videos online. But that's not the end of the road because using the knowledge that you've gain, you can start something else. What's important is to know that it is possible. If you don't believe, you won't even try and hence you won't even succeed. But if you have tried, you can at least say that you've tried and it did not work.

The world is not ideal

Unfortunately the world isn't as ideal as that sounds. I can see potential in something and try to make it work, but there's no guarantee it'll work solely because I see potential.

Making money is one thing, but making enough money for it to be a sustainable source of income is another thing.

That's the reply to one of my comments online.

Of course the world is not ideal. So? Is that a good reason for you to not try?

I actually wanted to write a lengthy reply to that comment but decided to just write this longer article on my blog instead.

There's no guarantee that something will work even if you try. But it's guaranteed that it will not work if you don't try. You miss 100% of the shots you don't make.

The key is to try and do first to see if it's actually possible. If I had not tried affiliate marketing more than a decade ago, I probably won't have this blog where I reviewed thousands of products, which led me to explore creating Youtube art videos, which then lead me to start another YT tech channel. What you do at the start is incredibly important and sets the trajectory of your life. If you don't do anything, nothing happens. If you have a salary job that does the same thing everyday, do you expect something unexpected to happen? You can get retrenched and that's unexpected.

So once you have one ball go into the hoop, you'll get excited to try again to see if you can repeat the success, and the more experience you have, the better you get. And if you don't get any excitement from the ball going into the hoop, no big deal. Maybe you're not into basketball, maybe try table tennis, or guitar.

Don't be the person that says "I can create that" when you look at some painting or installation art because you did not create that, and it's not like you're going to create that now that you know it's possible.

"But making enough money for it to be a sustainable source of income is another thing." That's true. But that's overthinking because you haven't even got started so how can you make a projection from no results, from no experience?

If you tell me something will not work, my questions to you will be "Have you tried? What did you do?".

I can start a Youtube channel to play covers on video game music tomorrow, and get people to pay me money for that. Oh, someone has already done that.