The Counter-Intuitive Way to Side Hustling
How different prioritization can help you grow online more efficiently and meaningfully
What if I tell you that building a side hustle, in its widespread sense, might hinder your true potential online?
Well, this is an ambitious claim, I know. But in this article, I show you an underrated alternative growth method you don’t want to miss, whether you have just started or are yet to see the progress you expected.
Nowadays, working hard is not enough anymore. The hustle culture has extended from putting all the effort into your “main hustle” employee career to working hard on your “side hustle” after work hours.
Today, it seems like almost every other person has some sort of side hustle. A hobby to be monetized, a freelance gig, or a content creation business that evolves aside from work.
The overarching goal is clear — to spread your word, expand your skills, earn several bucks, and maybe, someday, at some point, earn a full-time income from your thing.
So, yeah, sure. The idea of starting your mini business on the side makes sense. It’s a fun hobby to get you some extra cash over time.
That’s all good, but I want to focus on the “side” part of the hustle. I break it down and reassemble a potentially more efficient hustling method, so stick around.
The Responsible Approach
Side hustling was coined based on developing your thing while preserving your primary job. If you are already in the game, I bet you can relate to some of the following routines:
You come home tired after your busy day, yet push yourself to write list ideas or a passage for your blog, Medium stories, or record a short video for your channel.
Or maybe you devote your weekends to the side hustle, leaving less room to meet friends, relax, and have fun. And that’s fine, too, and impressive, I’ll add.
Many people follow that lifestyle, and well, they are correct from a financial standpoint. This is the secure way to establish your thing — the rents won’t pay themselves in the meantime, right?
However, the issue with this responsible approach is that it might reduce the chances of getting momentum. Each side hustle endeavor requires mastering certain skill sets and a deep understanding of your niche and platform.
That’s essential, especially in the content creation business. You need to publish loads of content until you get the level of expertise. In most cases, it takes time for your blog, channel, or social accounts to provide significant value to the viewers and take off.
Moreover, working religiously on your side hustle only in your free time is long-term challenging and might eventually lead to burnout.
I’m trying to say that, like everything in life, every decision you make has pros and cons. In this case, following the responsible approach will protect you financially but might also limit the endeavor’s potential.
So, what is the alternative?
The Counter-Intuitive Way
Well, imagine giving your thing a more consecutive amount of time in the beginning.
That could be as part of living as a digital nomad freelancer, working part-time, a prolonged vacation from work, between jobs, or during some other period that life brings you to immerse yourself into your thing.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling you to prematurely quit your job for your side hustle, not at all! My argument isn’t about acting irresponsibly under your current financial state.
Instead, I try to illustrate different priorities while starting your thing. You can find responsible ways to leverage your business’s starting phase.
Establishing the Foundations Properly
Especially in the content creation business, you must establish a solid foundation before seeing any result. For example, with blogging on WordPress, you must find a niche, research enough low-competition keywords, and write at least 30–50 long-form articles of 2000+ words to let Google even notice you. That is a must to establish topical authority.
I spent a lot of time and effort researching and writing that size of content on my blog, which I couldn’t afford while working full-time.
Then, after finishing the foundation phase, you can better know how to move on with your brand smoothly and how to produce quality, valuable content, both substantially and technically.
You also get the initial traffic from the platform’s algorithm and feedback on your work to know if you are going in the right direction. Then, finally, you can move to the fun maintenance mode — keep publishing content but less excessively while working on monetization, such as ads, affiliate links, email lists, and so on.
This is where the side part of your hustle comes into place. Once the basis of your content project is established, it makes sense to push again full-time on the main hustle until, hopefully, the side hustle takes off.
Instead of starting your thing on the side, you begin all in, and only after setting the fundamentals, your thing becomes a side hustle.
Creating Momentum
Another aspect of the same principle is mastering the skills. Learning to write well, tell stories interestingly, and produce high-quality videos takes time and experimentation.
While it’s possible to attain these skills while working full-time, it’ll be much easier to reach during a dedicated free period. Dedicating enough time for the start also reduces the chance of quitting your side hustle prematurely, which is one of the most common reasons for failure in blogging.
You are more likely to gain momentum when consistently learning and producing content in a specific platform and niche. That’s crucial to let the algorithms notice you.
It’s also a must to stand out from the competitors in an oversaturated creator market, whether it’s YouTube, Medium, Google web ranking, or other platforms.
Interestingly, momentum is not only attained through a healthy balance between your main hustle and side hustle but also between the different creation arenas. For example, if I work on my blog and then move to shoot a video and then go back to writing, my work won’t be as good. On the other hand, if I write consistently the whole month or instead record videos and edit them all that month, I’d get better outcomes on each platform because I hone my skills more efficiently.
So, getting momentum in your content creation business is essential regarding your topical authority and skills.
Finding Meaning Through Uncertainty
So far, I have depicted the practical benefits of changing the priorities of your side hustle. Now, let’s see another advantage of such an unconventional approach.
As you probably imagine, going all in your side hustle from the start comes with uncertainty. Not only financially, as you don’t get paid yet, but also socially.
Being misunderstood by those around you while becoming a creator is common. Friends and family members might not understand what you are doing and whether it is worth your efforts.
It’s difficult to explain yourself to the community, but this dedicated creation period lets you know yourself better. No boss, no working hard for someone else, just you, your ideas and plans, and what feels right for you. Your intuition gets improved this way, which is an essential creator skill.
This is my experience as a creator and what I learned from the book “The Pathless Path” (Amazon) by Paul Millerd. In this inspirational book, he tells his shift from a high-paying role as a strategy consultant employee to a full-time solo creator.
He left his job as he got bored from what he calls “the traditional path” and turned to the “pathless path,” where he explored himself as an independent creator.
While he was privileged to march on such a path with his savings from a successful employee career, he still faced uncertainty. He discovered that unpaid creation projects, like podcasts, are the most fulfilling. They let him explore his true interests more freely.
In hindsight, it was also a good choice for him from a practical standpoint. He has become a successful creator and author with 14 thousand subscribers on Substack, a podcast host, and the owner of two businesses.
I can profoundly relate to Paul’s story and insights, yet we embraced the uncertainty differently. While Paul has chosen the pathless path out of an abundant employee career, I got to this path out of my low-income back office career. Yet, the result was similar — an existential crisis resulting in a full-time, uncertain creator path.
Last year, I reinvented myself as a blogger and YouTuber, and I keep refining my niche today.
My blog has yet to reach the number of page views I wish, and so has my channel, but some of my posts have already ranked number one, while a few videos reached thousands of views.
I work as a freelance writer to make ends meet and, on the side, get tens of dollars a month from affiliate links from my blog.
It’s challenging to march on a pathless path with an unclear future, but this is where the magic resides. It lets you explore your dreams, hone your craft, refine your brand, and find meaning in what you do.
Meaning can also raise the value of your content as you enjoy your craft and fully connect to what you do.
Which Approach is Better?
Unfortunately, there is no one-fit-all answer to that burning question. Some people like to take the time, are more of an all-in type, or have an explorative nature, while others can handle multiple hustles in an intensive schedule.
Another consideration is how much you’ve saved from your employee work. The higher the savings, the more time you can allocate to work on your thing fully. Some can afford a prolonged period, while others cannot even a month.
Either way, if you bear the importance of giving enough time and energy to the beginning phase, you can find reasonable solutions without risking yourself financially.
Providing a service as a freelancer, like writing, copywriting, and video editing, can help you out in the start. You don’t need to overwork on that front if you are okay to live more modestly and spend less. I take only a few freelance projects a month and try to keep my expenses to the bare minimum.
There is not enough awareness of the starting phase of a creator business. I hope this article raised that awareness and inspired you to explore new ways to grow online efficiently and meaningfully.
Disclaimer: The information presented herein is for educational purposes only and does not replace professional advice. Results may vary. The link to the book is an affiliate link, meaning I earn a commission from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate.
