Having a side / alternative income

I came across this video released by Channel News Asia on COVID-19 and how it is affecting people's jobs and income during this period.

For one of them featured in the video, he is a makeup artist and has his own company however with the circuit breaker measures and his job being deemed as a non-essential service, he will need to take a break and this means no income for him.



During the circuit breaker, he managed to do a few makeup tutorial videos through Instagram and he felt that it was important to have an alternative income to fall back on that will allow him some income if his main job is gone.

He also mentioned that he will be working to create a side gig from now.

Having a side income sounds amazing and great but you will also need to make significant sacrifices and effort for you to see the results.

The effects will not be immediate and also it will take time. For me, I am also thinking of creating alternative income beside my main 9 -5 job.

Actually, YouTube is a great alternative if you have a talent or want to create lots of visual content for your audience.

Even more so as everyone needs to stay home now, it is a great time to get started and I might really start a YouTube channel soon!


I came across a video that mentioned about the different side income sources:

1. Collate funny TikTok or certain categories of TikTok videos and post it online
   
   This was something I came across recently and to be honest, channels doing this really gets lots of views. Except for videos that have copyrighted music and cannot be monetized, all the rest can be monetized or you can add your own self-sourced ads too.
   
   You can also do reaction videos for example, Graham Stephan has a channel where he reacts to people's video of how they spend their money monthly and he evaluates them or provides comments.
   
   
2. Sell items online
   
   This is what many people do, like using Carousell or Shopee, there are many platforms available. This came to my mind recently because, my mum wanted to buy kimchi and luncheon meat from Korea, like a certain brand and she asked me if I was able to buy it online.
   
   I was able to find the kimchi and luncheon meat on Shopee and purchased it. When it arrived, it came to my mind that this was super cool because what the seller did was to advertise something that was really accessible in Korea and just advertised it online. When an order came in, he could just go to the nearby supermarket, purchase it and mail it.
   
   
   Maybe if you can find something uniquely Singapore and not perishable, you can list it online and when you get an order, you can purchase and send it off at a slightly higher price to earn the margins.
   
   
3.  Blogging
   
   This is currently what I am doing, for me though it doesn't earn much because I am not creating much value to the community but if you are able to build up a support base and add course or newsletter plus merchandises, it can be a good side income.
   
   It doesn't really pay much if you rely solely on adsense unless your views are really substantial and people are clicking on the ads.
   
   
4.  Create websites or manage social media for small businesses
   
   If you have prior experience or very interested in creating websites, you can earn money from setting up websites and selling them to small business who wish to scale up their business online. Your first few jobs you might not be paid high but after having a client base, you can start asking for much more.