Side Hustles for Women: (26 Life Changing Ideas)

To be honest a list of side hustles for women isn’t that different from a list of side hustles for men, other than the obvious that we’re clearly awesome at so many more things so there’s more choice! 😉

The simple fact is we girls can do anything we set our minds to! When you start to add in all the other responsibilities we have, however, like raising the kids, keeping house, caring for elderly parents, holding down a job, staying fit and healthy, and coffee with the girls, adding in a side hustle can seem like a big ask.

That’s why in this article I’m focusing only on side hustles for women that can be done completely online and from anywhere in the world whether that be your kitchen table, the local coffee shop, your car while waiting for school to finish, or even a beach in Thailand!

The goal is for you to be able to turn any one of these side hustles into a full-time, location-independent lifestyle business that gives you complete freedom to work your own hours, from wherever you like, whenever you like and with whom you like!

Why Turning Your Side Hustle Into a Lifestyle Business is Ultimate Freedom

As I write this I’m sitting in a cafe in Phuket, Thailand, supping an Americano before picking up my daughter, who’s just finishing up exams at an International school here, and meeting a friend for lunch at the beach.

Tonight I’m heading off to see another friend (female) compete in a Muay Thai boxing match in Patong and this weekend we’re off to Singapore for a few days.

My life, my time, and my location are my own and I generate an income via several unique side hustles I talk about below.

Check out these posts to read more about my story and how to start a lifestyle business like mine.

In the meantime, let’s dive in!

26 Potentially Life-Changing Side Hustles for Women

1. Start a Blog

No matter your interests or passions, these days you can start a blog and generate income either through advertising on your site, affiliate marketing or even selling your own products.

To get started, simply choose your niche/topic that you want to blog about, set up a hosting account, create a simple site using WordPress or Wix, and start writing!

If every weekend you could churn out 3 – 5 articles and schedule them all to be published through the week, it won’t be long before you start to build up your content and views.

Popular blogger Adam Enfroy generated over 7 figures in just 2 years of blogging. You can get more info about his blogging strategy here.

2. Become a Freelance Writer

Do you love to write, but don’t fancy starting your own blog?

If so, start a new career as a freelance writer.

Simply sign up and create a profile on upwork.com, fiverr.com, or writersaccess.com. Setup the latest job alert and start bidding for weekend and remote jobs.

Pick topics and subjects you’re interested in and are confident you can do a good job with and earn anywhere between $0.04 – $0.15 a word depending on your skill levels.

Elna Cain started as a freelance writer and now runs her own freelance writing academy.

Another super popular freelancing role is that of a virtual assistant. Let’s talk about that next.

3. Sell Your Skills as a Virtual Assistant

One of my fave side hustles for women is the job of a virtual assistant. We’re experts in multi-tasking and this versatile role requires a high level of organizational capabilities.

There are multiple freelance sites online dedicated to the role of virtual assistants including onlinejobs.ph specifically for Filipino virtual assistants, and Zirtual for US-based virtual assistants.

However, Upwork.com, Fiverr.com, and Freelancer.com are among the largest job sites for freelancers and you’ll find plenty of work that suits your skills on those sites.

As a virtual assistant expect to be covering a variety of tasks including posting social media content, answering emails, creating basic graphics in Canva, researching stats, laying out blog posts in WordPress, managing product listings in Shopify, and loads more.

Businesses are looking for versatile, committed virtual assistants who can help save time for the business owner. This role is particularly suited for women because of course we are masters at multiskilling with exceptional organizational abilities!

4. Become a Published Author

Sticking with the writing theme, it’s never been easier to publish your writing. No agent needed or publishing house required. You can manage the entire process from your laptop and have your book available to the world for under $100.

E. L. James, one of the most famous self-published authors, has a net worth of $150 million from her Fifty Shades trilogy, which started out as Twilight Fan-fiction. James’s success demonstrates that you don’t have to be established (or even a good writer!) to make it as an author.

That said, it helps if you give yourself a fighting chance. Innumerable authors never strike it rich writing their own fiction stories. But there are plenty of writers making a good living as authors of non-fiction books that educate and solve readers’ problems.

Amazon KDP is the platform that enables you to publish your manuscript and make it available to millions of Kindle e-book readers. You can set your own price, and you keep 70% of the profits.

Know all about Gardening or Yoga? Write down your guidance in a way that solves problems for readers. Kindle books are often impulse purchases, and millions are sold every year.

You don’t have to write a long book, either. Short 70-page books are common in the non-fiction categories.

To make a start a side hustle as a self-published author, check out my guide How to Self Publish on Amazon Kindle & Get Your Own ISBN No!

5. Sell Products on Amazon

Another one of my favorite side hustles for women is starting an Amazon business. The key to creating a successful Amazon side hustle these days is branding and as we have a knack for communication and relationship building, this is right up our alley!

Amazon has a program called FBA (fulfillment by Amazon). This means that they handle all the picking, packing, and distribution of products from their warehouses.

Your job is to source products to sell on the Amazon marketplace, negotiate with manufacturers and suppliers, ship the products to the warehouses, then list and promote your products on and off Amazon.

While this does require upfront investment to purchase stock, it’s a very lucrative business model.

My husband & I generated over 7 figures within a year on Amazon and you can read our story here.

If you like the sound of starting an Amazon business, but would like a way of breaking into the market without significant investment, check out the next awesome suggestion on my list of side hustles for women..

6. Become a Retail Arbitrager

If you love to shop (and let’s face it, who doesn’t), retail arbitrage could be the business model for you.

Plus it’s something you can start immediately for minimal investment.

The goal is to head down to a local garage sale, a thrift store, or a bargain depot and pick up great products at rock bottom prices.

You could even search through the Facebook marketplace for quality products on sale in your area.

Create an account on Amazon as an Amazon seller and once you have a selection of products, take attractive photos and create your product listings on Amazon at a higher but competitive price.

Once someone purchases you send them the product and pocket the difference!

Jim Cockrum from Proven Replen Training is my recommended go-to resource for all things retail arbitrage, so find out more here. He and his team have helped thousands of people to earn over 6 figures a year with this method.

7. Become a Videographer (or Photographer)

If you love to take photos or play with video editing apps on your phone, then becoming a modern-day photographer, videographer, or video blogger could be for you.

So many companies and small businesses want to tap into the image/video-based economy we’re now living in and so honing your videography skills will go a long way to creating a lucrative weekend side hustle.

If you already have a million photos gathering dust in google photos or iphoto, why not start monetizing by selling images to stock photo sites like depositphotos.com or istock.com?

Even better, upload your photos to an Etsy store and sell them as wall art or digital images.

As a photographer, you can even take advantage of print-on-demand sites like Redbubble.

8. Sell on Redbubble

Redbubble is a print-on-demand marketplace, meaning they house a catalog of blank products for you to add your designs to.

Products include t-shirts, mugs, canvases, face masks, clothes, candles, home decor, etc.

Your job is to create your own Redbubble storefront on their platform, add your images to their products and then sell like crazy.

If you’re a natural graphic designer, love playing with apps like Canva, or have a stack of unused images you want to monetize, a site like Redbubble could start to generate regular income for you.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to get started selling on Redbubble.

9. Become a Social Media Manager

Another superb side hustle for women is becoming a social media manager. If posting on Instagram is your jam or editing clever videos for TikTok, you could soon pick up work managing someone else’s account.

Social media management is tricky as you’ll need to come up with creative ways to tell interesting stories around the business and likely spend a fair chunk of time nagging the business owner for content.

But it can be an extremely rewarding job, particularly if you’re spending your days coming up with awesome content ideas, engaging with other social media accounts, and watching that follower account increase!

To make money fast, sign up for upwork.com or fiverr.com today and start pitching for work, showcasing your own social media account as proof of how creative you are!

Next on my list of side hustles for women…

10. Sell Your Skills as a Web Designer

These days it is easier than ever to become a web designer.

With easy WordPress page builders such as Elementor or the Kadence or Astra themes and plus full-service website builders like Wix, if you’re creative and love tinkering with WordPress and websites perhaps this is the side hustle for you.

Prices vary wildly in this niche and depending on the types of clients you pitch to depends on how much you can charge.

For example, online business owners who know their way around platforms like WordPress, but don’t have the time to tinker with their own site will expect to pay far less than a small off-line business with no website experience.

Looking on Upwork, developers are charging anywhere from $15 – $200, with the average fee being around $20 – $50/hour.

11. Create & Sell Online Courses

Another fantastic side hustle for women is to create and sell an online course to your audience.

If you create a $200-$500 course, packed to the brim with expert guidance on a very specific topic, you could stand to earn tens of thousands of dollars a month, even though you may only receive a few thousand visitors to your site.

As you’d imagine, building and promoting a course doesn’t happen overnight.

Use your blog to demonstrate your expertise and build your email list. Then create a sales funnel leading people to your course sales page.

For a better breakdown of this process, check out my guide on how to create a six-figure course.

Key takeaway: Focus on building your email list from the outset. That way, you have a list of people you can potentially sell your course to in a few months’ time.

12. Sell Digital Printables on Etsy

Another one on the list of awesome side hustles for women is to sell digital printables on Etsy.

Simply head to Etsy and research a niche you’d love to be in. Weddings are big business on Etsy as are downloadable coloring books, printable wall art, printable stickers and labels, greeting cards, games & activities, planners and journals, and loads more!

Choose your niche and look at the best-selling items within that niche.

Head over to Canva to see if they have any pre-made templates you can use to quickly and easily create your own version of some of the best-selling products.

Create your Etsy store, add your downloadable digital printables, create keyword-rich listings, add super attractive images of your products and jump on social media to let the world know your products are live!

You may need to invest in some Etsy ads to help promote your products to get things rolling, but as you start to generate sales and reviews any new products you launch will likely take off much faster.

13. Build & Flip Blogs

Did you know that you can sell a blog for roughly 40-60 times its net monthly income?

If your site is only making a measly $500 per month, you could sell it online for $25,000!

Depending on the niche, how you currently make money from it, as well as future growth potential, it could be worth much more than this.

Building and selling blogs is a huge industry. Many people build dozens of websites each year with the sole aim of selling them in 6 to 12 months’ time and making a huge profit.

There are a few major marketplaces out there, where you can see this exact process in action. Check out Flippa and Empire Flippers.

Each of these services charge a small fee in exchange for helping bring together buyers and sellers of blogs.

These sellers often specialize in building profitable blogs within a certain niche, that make money online in a very clear way.

For example, say you were very good at promoting affiliate products.

You could build a small blog, receive just a few thousand visitors a month, and still make in excess of two or three thousand dollars by promoting very specific affiliate products.

If you have no desire to take the blog beyond this point, you could sell the site for $25- $35,000.

Building multiple blogs at a time, with an aim to sell them on, is a scalable and great way to build a side hustle online.

flippa.com

14. Become a Social Media Influencer

It can take time to build up a big enough following to be seen as a social media influencer, but this is a fantastic side hustle and way to generate a consistent income for a long time.

Plus if you focus on TikTok or YouTube shorts you could be making money in just a few weeks.

If you love to create content, have no issue with being in front of the video camera, and have a natural creative lean, becoming an online influencer will probably suit you to a tee.

These days you don’t even have to get in front of the camera to make super engaging and popular videos.

TikTok and YouTube shorts are currently putting everything behind launching new creators and rewarding them for their views and engagement. TikTok celebrities have reported going viral within a few weeks and the more views you get, the more money you make!

Have a look at the kind of content that’s currently doing well on both platforms and start to test your own ideas. Be prepared to post consistently and often, to test as many strategies as possible and see what resonates.

15. Sell Your Services as an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Consultant

There is an old joke in digital marketing that goes something like this:

Q. What’s the dark web?

A. Page 2 of the Google results.

It illustrates a point quite nicely that for all the searches performed on Google, nearly two-thirds of the clicks go to the websites ranked in the top three positions. If you are ranked in the tenth position, then you can expect only 2.5% of the clicks.

The businesses not on the first page of Google for their chosen keywords are practically invisible, which causes much frustration.

As someone who’s recently been studying and attempting to implement SEO strategies, I can understand their frustration!

As an SEO specialist, you reduce this frustration by helping to rank web pages on page one of the Google results for a target keyword. You would use a variety of methods; keyword research, content marketing, and link-building outreach to improve a website’s ranking.

There is plenty of demand for capable SEOs. (I know I’ve been through a few in the last few weeks!)

To enter this arena, you would need to demonstrate that you can rank web pages.

One route would be to build a live portfolio by setting up a webpage – a simple blog would do – then rank it for a chosen keyword.

Of course, it would need to be a short 3 or 4 phrase keyword to prove you have what it takes. But this is the benefit of these new digital roles. You don’t need a degree or have to know the right person. If you can demonstrate your capability, then you can find work.

SEO is not only a great lifestyle business idea but something everyone working in the digital world should know about and understand. If you are a total newbie to SEO, then Yoast, a popular WordPress tool, runs a free course that covers the basics.

There are many routes to find work as an SEO; use the freelancing job boards like Upwork and Fiverr. But for less competition, get on the phone and call local businesses. Show them your ranked pages and pitch them keywords to rank their web pages for.

16. Dropshipping

A low-cost and fairly simple side hustle in the e-commerce world is dropshipping.

Dropshipping simply means that you as the seller create a store and brand and source and advertise products relevant to your niche.

Once a customer makes a purchase, the product is shipped directly from the manufacturer to the customer.

You make the difference between the price you charge the customer & the price the manufacturer charges you.

For example, let’s say you’re in the jewelry niche. You find a lovely silver bracelet you want to sell on a dropshipping marketplace.

The manufacturer is charging $10 per bracelet. You might advertise that bracelet on your site at $30. When a customer buys, the bracelet is shipped directly to the customer & you generate a $20 profit minus other costs.

You never actually own or see the bracelet (except if you ordered samples). You’re effectively getting paid for good advertising!

The goal is to build a strong brand and use dropshipping as a way to test your market before shelling out for private label products yourself.

For more details see my article on dropshipping here.

17. Start a Podcast

A fun and potentially lucrative side hustle for women is podcasting!

If you like talking to people to entertain, educate, or inspire, then consider launching a podcast.

There are podcasts for literally all the topics under the sun from starting a business online to crypto, history, book reviews, parenting, weight loss, cooking, mindfulness, relationships, you name it!

To launch a podcast that has a chance of success, first listen to other popular podcasts to see what kind of content they produce, and how they structure each episode.

Many podcasts follow a few common formats. There is the interview podcast, the solo monologue podcast, or the conversational podcast where the same presenters host the show each week and talk about a niche topic in detail.

To monetize, as your audience grows you can attract significant sponsorship to your podcast and build an entire business using just your podcast only.

However, there are a variety of other ways to make money podcasting including; affiliate offers, selling courses, using it to talk about your physical products, networking, and building relationships to get speaking gigs or publishing deals, or building an online following for another digital asset, like a website.

If you get to the top, you can charge your most adoring fans for exclusive content. And, if you’re lucky, land a deal with a top podcast publisher like Apple and Spotify for millions of dollars.

18. Launch a Print On Demand Ecommerce Store

Earlier I talked about selling print-on-demand products on Redbubble.

Another awesome side hustle that requires minimal upfront investment is to launch your own print-on-demand e-commerce store.

As a quick recap, print on demand says what it does on the tin.

You advertise a blank product from a print-on-demand marketplace adorned with your designs. When a customer purchases, much like dropshipping, the product is shipped directly to the customer.

You pocket the difference between what you charge the customer & how much the product costs you.

You’re unfortunately limited to selling only the products available on your print-on-demand marketplace of choice, but these days sites like Printful & Printify offer hundreds of options.

I personally love this business model & even though profit margins are lower due to the high costs of print-on-demand products, if you attract enough sales, it’s a great way to make money.

See more details here in my print-on-demand article.

19. Become a Content Marketing Guru

Content marketing is the collective description for raising awareness of a product or service via blogs, video, social media, and other mediums. Content marketing is a dynamic and varied field.

Your primary responsibility will be attracting online traffic to all parts of the sales funnel, so you’ll need to know about marketing and the sales process.

As a content marketer, you can work for a single organization or contract out to many at the same time. Your role will be to plan and execute a content strategy to fulfill the goals of the organization.

Content marketing requires you to have all-around abilities. It helps if you know how to write, or at the very least have strong editing skills, and be able to co-ordinate other freelancing content creators.

Depending on the requirements of the client, you may need to know SEO, Social Media, Paid media, understand branding, and have strong research methods – all skills you can learn.

There is a free course at Hubspot To learn content marketing. But, if you only buy one book, then Content Chemistry by Andy Crestodina is considered by many as the bible of Content Marketing.

Content marketing is a growth industry as many organizations wake up to the need for a coherent approach to their overall digital strategy.

20. Become a Coach

While I’m loathed to generalize, women make fantastic coaches!

Our natural ability to listen, empathize and encourage lends itself to this amazing side hustle.

The fastest route to getting your coaching career off the ground is to choose your platform, ie., blog, podcast, youtube, TikTok, etc, and start posting every single day.

Build your audience and add in webinars or live streams.

Give as much value as you can over an hour-long presentation or workshop and tell people where they can sign up to get one-on-one or more specialized group coaching at the end of the session.

Once a potential client has spent an hour or so on a webinar with you they’re far more likely to sign up for more coaching than off the bottom of a blog post or your ‘link in bio’ on IG.

You can also join coaching organizations such as The Life Coach School, where you’ll receive training and certification.

For more steps on becoming a coach, see my post here.

21. Become a Canva Graphic Designer

If you have an eye for design you could become a graphic designer or a specialist Canva graphic designer.

Selling pre-made Canva templates is big business online these days (potentially making $1000 a day) and you can sell them directly on social media, on Etsy, or on your own site.

Sell your graphic design services on sites such as upwork.com or fiverr.com anywhere from $5 an hour to $35 an hour.

Or sell bundles of templates like the awesome bizsister.

22. Star as a YouTuber

Anyone can set up a YouTube Channel free of charge, all you need is a Google account, and YouTube can become a very lucrative side hustle for women.

We’ve all seen the stories about YouTube stars with millions of followers earning astronomical sums of money. But there are thousands of others who make a full-time living with smaller channels.

Vanessa Lau’s channel, for example, is dedicated to helping people become coaches online. She posts videos about every aspect of building a following and earning money from becoming a content creator and coach. She has been able to leverage her success into lucrative consulting gigs.

If the thought of showing your face on camera makes you squirm, then there are lots of different types of videos you can make instead.

• Unboxing videos
• Animated explainer videos
• Cooking videos with a top-down camera
• Screen-recording videos showing how to use software
• Motivation videos using stock footage clips
• Travel videos

You are only limited by your imagination.

23. Become a TikTok star

If you don’t fancy YouTube, these days TikTok is the place to be.

Founded at the end of 2016, TikTok is perhaps the most successful business to evolve out of Coronavirus.

With more people spending a lot more time at home, the app seems to have exploded in popularity, with roughly 1 billion active users acquired to date. This number is growing, and it’s currently one of the hottest and fastest ways for you to build a huge following and monetize your audience.

There are thousands of budding solopreneurs making large amounts of money on TikTok. Some of them are already successful influencers, and others are newcomers to the game and it’s not just youngsters making it big on the channel these days!

Check out Grandma Droniak who’s amassed some 4.3million followers at the grand old age of 92!

If she can do it, so can you! Here’s how to monetize an audience in order to make money on TikTok.

1. Donations – TikTok actually has a built-in capability for viewers to send their favorite creator’s money! They first buy “coins” and then send these to their creator who then converts them into “diamonds” and withdraws them to their PayPal account.
2. Selling products – Much like any other influencer platform, if you have a large following of loyal viewers, you can launch products for them to buy.
3. Growing and selling accounts – This has been a common practice for years across social media platforms (even if it goes against some guidelines). Brands will pay decent amounts of money to purchase a channel that already has a large following.
4. Sponsorship – Just like Instagram, companies pay creators to sponsor their products in videos on their account.
5. Ad revenue – In June 2020, TikTok launched its Creator Fund, with $200 million to share out between creators. The system is nowhere as sophisticated or advanced as the ad revenue program offered on Youtube, but can still allow creators to earn ad revenue if they get large amounts of views each month.

There are a lot of different things you can do to grow a TikTok channel, but the main thing is to deliver some form of entertainment in as little as 10 or 20 seconds.

Much like YouTube, posting frequent content and appealing to a particular demographic is the key to growing on TikTok.

24. Proofreader

Coming down from the starry heights of TikTok stardom, another excellent side hustle for women is proofreading.

If you love to read why not offer your services as a proofreader/editor for the millions of authors penning books, scripts, ebooks, blog posts, editorials, etc.

Once again list your services on a site such as upwork.com or fiverr.com to get started, and build a portfolio of clients and testimonials to launch your own website advertising your services.

Building your own website will allow you to command higher prices and even build a team of proofreaders if that floats your boat!

Another route for avid readers to make money from their favorite hobby is to…

25. Get Paid to Read Books

How amazing would it be, to start a side hustle by getting paid to read other people’s books!

Well, these days you can.

Either as a book reviewer or as a book narrator.

Sites such as Kirkus Media, Reedsy Discovery, and Women’s Review of Books, all pay for intelligent, well-thought-out, and well-written, book reviews.

Or if you like the thought of narrating books, sign up with companies such as Audible and ACX and start reading books aloud for money!

If you love to read, then proofreading, editing, reviewing. or narrating books are all fun and lucrative side hustles for women.

26. Start an Email Newsletter

Last but not least on my list of side hustles for women, is to start an email newsletter.

Pick a topic or niche that you love to talk or write about. It could be health, parenting, menopause, fashion, finance, crypto, leadership, meditation, yoga.

Any topic you know has a large passionate audience.

Create several weeks’ newsletters in advance so you can get started with a few week’s content in the bank and sign up for an email platform like Flodesk, ConvertKit or Aweber. Or, use a specialist newsletter service like Substack.

Then choose your promotional platform, whether it be Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc, and start to post content daily, always with a link to join your weekly newsletter.

Over time, you can monetize your email list either via affiliate offers, your own products, or if you use a service like substack, even charge for the newsletter itself.

Starting an email newsletter is a long-term, lucrative and consistent side hustle that can absolutely lead to a full-time lifestyle business income, giving you the freedom to work from anywhere in the world!

Side Hustles for Women Summary

We are truly living in a time where it’s easier than ever to start a side hustle, work for yourself and generate an income doing something you love to do!

Have a look through this list of side hustles for women and if you want even more options, check out my post 189 Lifestyle Business ideas.

The most important thing is to pick something and get started. Even if it’s not the side hustle you end up growing, the act of starting and learning will open your mind to new possibilities.

For some help and guidance along the way, sign up for my 21 Day Free Email Course on how to start and grow your own lifestyle business.

Good luck!