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Ask HN: Best side hustle for WFH guys

12 pointsposted 4 days ago

Item id: 42695321

20 Comments

dankwizard

3 days ago

Cat boarding.

Got privvy to the idea when we needed to find boarding for our cat when going on a holiday. Scoped out a few businesses and they were costly, so explored private. All the private ones we visited were simply a largish cage with 3 or so levels, all with litter + bowls within cage. Ranges from $30-40 per night (Australia).

I have a spare room. I looked up Cat Cages and purchased 3 for $150 each. Then I considered what could happen (Vets, abandonment, etc.) and consulted with a lawyer to help write up a contract for customers. (~$1000)

The bare minimum work required is about 20 minutes per day for breakfast, dinner, water top up & scooping the litterbox.

The 3 cages all are booked out about 200 days of the year each for about $18,000 yearly.

Yes I have had 2 people abandon their pets. This was difficult to go through.

edit: I should add - There may be some business hours work required if a cat falls ill and vet trips required.

schappim

3 days ago

How did you deal w/ the abandonment?

dankwizard

3 days ago

It has happened twice. I outline in the contract if there's no contact 48 hours after agreed pick up time I will look at other options.

Then one went to a vet to rehome, and one went to the pound.

It does feel really bad but if they didn't abandon to me, they would have abandoned elsewhere.

I implemented a minimum booking period (5 days) to try minimise it. People looking to get rid of their pets don't really want to shell over $150 to do it.

milquen

3 days ago

Do you have your own cat?

dankwizard

3 days ago

Yes, it was how I got the idea. I needed cat boarding.

rozenmd

4 days ago

For most folks, focusing on doing your full time job well and getting promoted/finding a better paying job is _significantly_ less effort than starting a side hustle that pays you meaningful money.

That being said, if you feel like grinding and learning a lot about sales and marketing, consider launching an app in a marketplace (Shopify/Airtable/App store/Play store, etc) to get started (hell of a lot easier than starting a SaaS, ask me how I know).

bandinobaddies

3 days ago

> For most folks, focusing on doing your full time job well and getting promoted/finding a better paying job is _significantly_ less effort than starting a side hustle that pays you meaningful money.

I agree that for most folks looking to maximize money, it is better to stay focused on doing their job well.

But not everyone is same. I have a friend who wanted more freedom and spend more time with his kid. He started ecommerce site as a side hustle. He quit his job when his side hustle was making enough money to cover his expenses.

After that he started more ecommerce sites in different niches. Right now, he may have 4 sites but he has tons in work, he doesn't talk about all of them until they are semi-successful. With all those sites, he still works less than 20 hours a week and makes close to what he can make as an engineer. One thing though his wife also works and they get insurance through her work.

I also wanted to do my own thing but I was focused on tech based side hustle. I thought that would be easier but now I think tech business on the side is harder especially with a family. If I do it again, it would be a low tech or old school side hustle.

janalsncm

2 days ago

Definitely. Think about it this way: it’s a lot easier to get a $12k/year promotion over the span of a couple years than to build a side hustle that earns $1k/month.

Money aside, there is still something to be said for doing a side project rather than a side hustle. At least for myself, I learn generalized “get it done” skills (which usually atrophy in a large company) that made me a stronger engineer in my opinion.

dsq

4 days ago

How do you know? Did you try both? I have heard varying opinions on this.

rozenmd

4 days ago

Yes, I've tried both.

I've been operating a SaaS since 2021, and have built several apps across many SaaS marketplaces.

askafriend

4 days ago

Can you write more about your experiences with both and things you'd wish you'd known? Thank you for sharing.

rookie123

4 days ago

by app do you mean like a basic android app? How are the economics of such an app?

giantg2

2 days ago

Eh, side jobs are easier to get than promotions. The job market is crap so increasing pay is harder. In previous years with a hot market I'd agree though.

brudgers

3 days ago

Why not use the time to figure out what you actually want to do?

And if you actually want to do anything at all?

To put it another way, the best side businesses -- and indeed the best jobs -- are getting paid for things that are like the things you would do if you did not get paid.

Things that you are enthusiastic about...and if you are enthusiastic about the idea of making money, the simplest thing is to buy and sell physical goods. Good luck.

paulcole

3 days ago

> To put it another way, the best side businesses -- and indeed the best jobs -- are getting paid for things that are like the things you would do if you did not get paid.

I feel the complete opposite.

The things I really really really enjoy doing with my time are not (realistically) for sale. They are for me.

If you said I could make $250k a year by reading 100 books a year (a bit less than what I read on my own), I’d think long and hard about accepting.

I probably would because it would be interesting to test my assumptions, but I’d imagine it’d be less fun that reading them for free.

brudgers

3 days ago

The things I really really really enjoy doing with my time are not (realistically) for sale

Do you sell your time for doing things you don’t love doing?

There are things I do for me and things I do for money. The two don’t overlap often and I have little interest in them overlapping significantly.

bhu1st

2 days ago

If you speak two languages, you can look into translating books from one to another.