IN THIS CHAPTER

Identifying top platforms for listing your side hustle

Spreading your bets across multiple platforms

When I started my first side hustle way back in 1982, I offered computer consulting, software development, and tech training services. Thinking back, the most difficult part of ramping up my side hustle was building relationships with computer stores and other businesses to offer my services.

If only the gig economy had existed all those years ago! I could’ve marketed myself through one or more of the leading job-and-task-matching platforms. But good news for you and your side hustle: These job-and-task-matching platforms do exist today, and you can put yourself out there as quickly as you can sign up and either post your services or find someone looking for the type of services you provide.

Take a look at ten leading platforms, listed here in alphabetic order, that you can use right now. You don’t need to limit yourself to just one platform, either — spread your bets across at least a couple!

As time goes by, keep your eyes peeled for new platforms that may hit the scene and quickly become wildly popular. You want to keep your side hustle where the action is!

By the way, looking for help for your side hustle? You can turn to these same platforms to find someone to help you with website design, social-media marketing, blog writing, Shopify site creation, and much more.

Angi

You might know Angi (www.angi.com) more by the platform’s former name: Angie’s List. Angi specializes in physical labor services, both skilled and unskilled. (Note that unskilled isn’t a negative term; instead, it refers to labor services that don’t require any particular training. Think “moving heavy furniture” versus “rewiring a house.”)

If your side hustle falls into one of the following categories, take a look at joining and posting on Angi:

• Electrical work
• General “handyman” services
• Lawn and yard care
• Plumbing
• Remodeling
• Roofing

Fiverr

For your side hustle, are you doing techie stuff such as website design, social-media advertising, or software development? Then take a look at Fiverr (www.fiverr.com) for listing your services.

How about music and audio services such as doing voice-overs or playing background music for commercials or videos? You can list your side hustle on Fiverr.

Planning on helping other people write business plans or draft contracts or write their résumés? You should consider posting your services on — wait for it — Fiverr.

For pretty much any sort of service-related side hustle, Fiverr should be a strong player for listing your services.

FlexJobs

FlexJobs (www.flexjobs.com) specializes in “high-quality remote and flexible jobs” in a variety of career fields: accounting, project management, social-media marketing, supply chain, and many more. Even though many of the jobs listed on FlexJobs are full-time, career-type jobs (that just happen to be flexible in terms of being able to work remotely or to have a highly flexible schedule), many of the listings are contract-based, both shorter and longer duration.

So, if you want to do some project management for your side hustle, check out listings on FlexJobs. Setting up shop as an accountant? Check out listings on FlexJobs. Specializing in social-media marketing? Check out, yeah, you know where this is going.

Freelancer

In many ways, Freelancer (www.freelancer.com) is similar to Fiverr. You can post your services for graphic design, search engine optimization, blog or ad copywriting, legal contracts, and many other specializations. You’re now “out there” for the world at large to find you.

You can also target your services geographically — in India, for example, or only in the United States. Or you can make yourself available to the world at large.

Guru

Guru (www.guru.com) is another site where you can make yourself available for techie work, administrative services, design and graphic arts, accounting or finance, or other specializations.

As with other sites, the major categories are broken down into subcategories where you can more precisely target prospective customers for your side hustle. For example, if you’re a writer, you can be a “writer at large” or you can specialize in editing, copywriting, or proofreading; writing articles or blogs; or providing translation services for already-written works in one language that someone wants to translate into another language.

99designs

Let’s say you provide graphic design services, and you specialize in creating really slick logos. In addition to listing your logo design services on Fiverr, Freelancer, and other sites, you can also watch for “contests” that businesses post on 99designs (https://99designs.com).

You watch for a business to post that they’re looking for a logo, along with some general guidelines and preferences. You fire up your graphic-design software, give it that old side-hustle effort (a cousin to “that old college try”), and submit your best work. If they choose your design, you’ve got the gig!

99designs does contests for website design and other graphics work, and they also support more traditional listings where you post your side hustle, show off your portfolio, and then businesses come directly to you. But the contest aspect of 99designs is particularly intriguing for side hustlers who like a good challenge and are willing to do some design work with no guarantees that they’ll win the contest and the job.

TaskRabbit

If you’re side hustling in the realm of physical labor — helping people move, painting, mounting TV sets on walls, hanging pictures, doing yard work, and so on — then hop over to TaskRabbit (www.taskrabbit.com) and post your services.

You can even offer up local grocery shopping and delivery services just as you would through Instacart.

Toptal

Toptal (www.toptal.com) is similar to Fiverr, Guru, and other sites if you’re offering techie, accounting and finance, and similar business services. According to their website, freelance side hustlers use Toptal to land gigs not only at small companies but also at global corporations such as Kraft Heinz and Bridgestone.

So, if you have business services to offer for your side hustle, sign up!

Upwork

Upwork (www.upwork.com) is another gig-economy marketplace where you can post your availability for work in software development, project management, writing and editing, legal assistance, and other business disciplines.

ZipRecruiter

You may be familiar with ZipRecruiter (www.ziprecruiter.com) because they advertise fairly heavily on cable news, radio, and other media channels. You may think of ZipRecruiter in terms of playing matchmaker for full-time, career-type jobs. But ZipRecruiter is also a great place for freelancers to connect with companies looking for part-time or even full-time — but shorter-duration — contract work.

Filter your job searches by Contract or Temporary under the All Employment Types drop-down to limit your results to contract jobs suitable for your side hustle. Or you could even add “part-time” to your search criteria if you want to broaden your side-hustle portfolio to include longer-term, steady work alongside the ebbs and flows of your other side-hustle gigs.