Making Do: Side Hustles
People do a lot outside of traditional employment to make extra money. Participants described a range of side hustles, including: surveys/research, second/third jobs of participants or partners, selling things, recycling bottles, platform gigs (e.g., food or grocery delivery), freelance work, donating plasma.
“My payday primarily comes from my full-time job working at a university. I make “too much” money to qualify for assistance programs, but it’s not enough, so I do tutoring on the side for extra money. Even that is not enough. I have been thinking about going back to a weekend job like I had before I gave birth. I’ve always had more than one job to make ends meet.”
—Carlie*
“My phone has been a major tool to generate leads and money especially when I’m making do without enough money as I’m able to […] market my side business […] and sign up for market research or surveys to bring in extra income to get enough food for the household.”
—Omolade, U.S.
Karen, Canada
Ways we’ve supplemented income: Selling things we aren’t interested in/don’t need anymore, like clothes, books, or video games, on Mercari, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace. Technically I’m a freelance translator, but the agency I work with hasn’t sent anything to me in over a year due to my decreased availability as a full time stay at home mom. My husband taught for a statewide literacy program during the summer break and will again this summer. Last fall he tried to donate plasma (which is then compensated) for a couple months, but it often didn’t go so well and took a physical and very time intensive toll on him. I did some grocery delivery side-gigging over the holidays. After the new year my husband was able to take on added responsibilities at work and make some more money for less physical effort compared to blood plasma so he quit trying to donate, but that also meant I had less time to do grocery delivering since our child needed supervision, and on top of that pregnancy started to take a physical toll on me and I don’t want to lift heavy cases of bottled water any distance farther than my own shopping would require. So, to reiterate, his income has increased but at a cost to his free time and ability to relax at all.
—Ariel
