Columnist Alun Newman: Is the side hustle about passion or profit?
In a statistic that I struggle to believe, more than 40 per cent of UK adults have a side hustle - a tiny business that brings in some extra cash.
The relentless pursuit of selling second-hand clothes, or the arts-and-crafts passion running through sites like Etsy.
More than 40 per cent seems like a big number. Who are these mega-motivated people?
If you could make money simply by having ideas, then sure I’m a multimillionaire. If you're able to set boundaries for yourself and get things done? Well, hats off to you.
Working full time and having the energy to create something else is impressive.
I find myself lost in “billable hours”, a reasonably unpleasant term that demands some sense of how much time you’ve spent and how much you’ve made.
Maybe that’s a cynical approach.
I’ve had a side hustle. When one of our children, many, many years ago, wanted to go on a school trip that sounded amazing yet cost a million pounds, we rented out their bedroom to foreign students.
It comes with some tax perks regarding how much you can make. The downsides are the enormously complex, painfully slow, agonisingly basic conversations you have at the dinner table. As someone who can easily fill space, I was often left abandoned by the rest of my family while I spent far too long working out what their parents did for a living or what their favourite sandwich was.
It turns out a lot of Europeans don’t really do cheese and pickle sarnies with a packet of salt’n’vinegar crisps.
Once we hit the money target, that stopped - it was all billable hours and emotional agony.
Students and spare rooms come near the top of the side-hustle table. Teaching online is also doing very well - you side-hustle teachers are a godsend.
We found a fantastic online maths teacher who single-handedly transformed my daughter’s maths skills. Sure, it would have been nice if the school could have done it, but you can’t wait for that if your child’s in a fix.
In fairness, the patience of the “online tutor” deserves a medal.
Homemade crafts are now at the top of the list. Crafting is big business, and I get the feeling that the crafters love having something to do while watching TV or listening to BBC Radio Solent. They potter. They’re busy. They’re happy.
They couldn’t give a monkey’s about billable hours as they’re doing something they love and being paid for it.
Like someone who loves cooking but doesn’t want to eat all the pastries, they’ve found an outlet.
Recently, Sonia bought a lot of mini terrariums for a team-building day - all test tube kits with cotton wool, tiny gravel, tiny seedlings, mini corks, beautifully assembled - for next to no money and all delivered. It can’t possibly have made much profit.
I think I miss the point of some of these hustles - I think they just make people happy.