Side hustling is rarely as easy or as glamorous as TikTokers and social media influencers make it out to be, but that doesn’t mean they’re not a legitimate way to make extra money. Also, considering that 45% of working Americans have side hustles, this likely means that there is some kind of opportunity associated with them.
With that in mind, the first task any budding entrepreneur should take on before starting something new is to decide whether your big side hustle idea is actually worth it.
How do you do that?
Simple:
Read this guide.
Related: 10 reasons why you should start a side business
Below, I’ll share with you five critical and crucial questions you can ask yourself to weigh up the pros and cons of any potential new side gig and determine whether or not it’s worth pursuing.
Is Your Side Hustle Worth It: 5 Questions to Help You Decide
1. Is There a Market for This?
Even your most innovative and inspired side business ideas won’t be worth anything if nobody wants the products or services you plan to offer.
As such, the absolute first step is to validate that big idea.
Here’s how to do that:
A. Understand Your Target Audience
Who are the people who would be interested in buying what you’re selling?
What are their needs and pain points?
What demographics (age, gender, location, etc.) are your ideal customers?
What are their values, interests, and beliefs?
The more you know about the people your side business is targeting, the easier it is to discover whether enough of those people exist to make your idea worthwhile.
B. Talk to Your Audience
Once you’ve identified your audience, the next step is to go out there and talk to them about their needs and wants.
Use free tools like Google Forms to create surveys or conduct interviews and focus groups to discover useful information such as:
What are the biggest problems your audience face?
Would that problem be solved if they had access to your product/service?
How much would they be willing to pay for it?
If your product or service already existed, is there anything they would want it to do (or not do) to make it easier to use or solve the problem more effectively?
Related: 10 Of The Best Side Business Ideas To Start
C. Evaluate The Market
Another easy way to determine if there’s a market for your product is to research whether people are already looking for the kind of solutions you’re planning to offer.
Using Google Trends, for example, can reveal valuable insights about the number of searches made for terms relating to your business.
The more searches there are, the more interest and demand there is.
Elsewhere, platforms such as Statista serve as an excellent source of data on everything from consumer behavior to market trends and industry performance.
D. Look at the Competition
We’ll discuss your potential competitors in more detail later, but for now, you simply want to look at how many other businesses exist that serve the same (or similar) audience as yours and how well they’re doing.
Keep in mind that if there’s little to no competition, that could be a sign of an untapped market, or it could be that there just isn’t a need for your business, hence why nobody else is doing it.
It’s for this reason that it pays to combine competitor analysis with other market research tasks, combining a mix of qualitative and quantitative data sources for a more comprehensive understanding of your target audience and market dynamics.
2. Can I Make a Profit?
Answering this next question is simply a case of determining three key things:
- How much will it cost to deliver a service or create and sell a product
- How much you’ll need to charge to cover those expenses and still make a profit
- Whether that amount is something that people are willing to pay.
Doing the Math
Let’s say one of your biggest hobbies is baking, and you’re hoping to turn that hobby into a money-making venture by selling your delicious homemade pies at farmers’ markets and similar events.
The typical seller’s fee for the farmer’s markets you want to attend is $50. You plan on taking 20 pies to market, with each pie costing $3 to make.
$3 x 20 = $60.
Add that to the $50 seller fee, and your total expenses for one event are $60 + $50 = $110.
So, in order to break even, you would need to make $110 by selling 20 pies at $5.50 each ($110 in costs divided by 20 pies = $5.5).
Of course, you don’t just want to break even, you want to put some extra money in your pocket, so you set a goal to make a $40 profit.
The math now looks like this:
$110 expenses + $40 profit = target goal of $150
$150 divided by 20 pies = $7.50 sale price.
Related: Side hustles you can start with no money
Validating Your Cost
Next, you need to confirm that people would be willing to pay $7.50 for a pie, which is where your market research comes in.
Here, the easiest approach is to find some free time in your schedule to visit the markets where you plan to sell your goodies and look at how much others charge for similar products.
If everyone else is selling their pies at $5, you may not get too many customers unless you can convince them that yours is the best pie they’ve ever tasted, meaning the whole venture may not be worth it.
On the other hand, if $7.50 is around the going rate, then there’s proof that this is a worthwhile investment.
3. How Long Will It Take to Profit?
Some side gigs start providing extra income within days, while others can take months to become profitable.
For example, if you decide to join the gig economy and drive for the likes of Uber or Doordash, or even completing online surveys in your spare time, you could make a little extra money in your bank account within a matter of days.
If, on the other hand, you’re planning to make money with a YouTube channel, blog, or social media content, it could be up to six months or more before you make any serious money.
In general, neither option is necessarily better than the other, though your current financial circumstances may mean that some ideas may not be worth pursuing at this particular point.
If you need that additional income as soon as possible, then creating YouTube videos probably isn’t a great side hustle for you right now.
That’s not to say you can’t go back and do it at some point, but all that time spent creating your content is time you could be spending hoping in the car as a Lyft driver so that you can get your earnings in a much shorter amount of time.
Conversely, if you’re building for the long-term and don’t mind waiting to reap the rewards, starting your second career as a YouTuber or blogger could well be worth it as the content you create today can keep generating passive income for months, if not years, after you first post it.
3. Is The Biggest Obstacle Surmountable?
Any good side hustle has its own unique challenges to overcome.
The question you need to ask is whether it’s worth investing the time, energy, and effort to overcome it.
Your answer to that question will all likely depend on a combination of your circumstances and values.
Let’s say you want to start a side business as a freelance writer, but you have limited time to find clients and write articles outside of your 9-5 day job.
If you followed my tips to make time for your side hustle, you might have decided that the only way you can realistically make this work is by working on your business in the evenings once you’re home from work and the kids are in bed.
Is it worth it?
Are you prepared to sacrifice your evenings to make your business goals a reality, or do you value the chance to enjoy some well-earned downtime so much that you’d rather not give it up.
There’s no right or wrong answer here.
It all comes down to you being honest with yourself about whether you’re prepared to do what it takes to make things happen.
Not that finding time is the only hurdle you may encounter in the early days.
To use a different example, it may be that you’re ready to turn your passion into profit by selling handmade arts and crafts via Etsy.
You’ve got all the time in the world and plenty of high-quality products to sell, but what you don’t have yet is any experience in marketing those products.
Is it worth taking the time to learn about how to use Facebook to promote your work?
Is it worth learning about advertising, content marketing, and other means of attracting customers?
If not, is it worth using a platform like
If the answer’s yes, then by all means, that’s a good sign that you’re ready to get up and running.
If it’s no, it may be time to go back to the drawing board.
4. What is My Unique Selling Point?
If you’ve so far been following my advice to the letter, you’ll have started this process by researching your competition.
At that stage, I simply asked you to consider how many other businesses are doing what you plan to do and whether they have enough customers to make a reasonable profit.
That’s a great start.
If there are a handful of profitable businesses all offering something similar to you, it’s a good sign that people are willing to pay for what you offer.
Now, however, you’re going to have to dig a little deeper and figure out what it is that makes those businesses profitable and where your business can fit in.
There are two additional questions to ask here:
A. What is it that attracts customers to my competitors?
Answering this question can help you determine the kind of things customers are likely to expect from you.
For example, if all your competitors are offering free shipping, won’t you also need to do the same?
This alone can help you determine whether your side hustle will be worth it.
If you’re going down the free shipping route, you need to be sure that you can still make a profit. If you can’t, it probably isn’t worth it.
That is, of course, unless you can come up with a Unique Selling Point that is so valuable to your target audience that they’d be willing to do business with you even though they could avoid shipping costs with one of your competitors.
B. What can I offer that my competitors aren’t?
You’ll be in a better position to answer this question if you did the audience research I recommended earlier.
Look specifically for details about which of your audience’s needs aren’t currently being met.
Identify those things your target customers say they would want from a product or service like yours that your competitors aren’t currently providing.
Being able to pick out anything unique you can offer, whether it’s lower pricing, better customer service, or simply a more effective solution to a customer’s problem, shows that this could be an idea worth following up on.
After all, if there’s a need to be met and you can meet it, there’s money to be made.
That is, of course, if you have whatever is required to meet that need.
For example, you might want to achieve your financial goals by renting a spare room on Airbnb.
Analyzing your customers and competitors reveals that there’s a high demand for Airbnb accommodation with private parking, something other renters aren’t offering.
Here, you’ve identified a unique gap in the market that you could potentially fill, but if you don’t already have private parking, is it worth the cost of building one on your property?
As with everything in this guide, this isn’t a question I can answer for you.
You would need to weigh up the cost of creating your Unique Selling Point against the amount of profit you can make and consider whether it’s worth the investment.
5. Is This a Good Fit For Me?
Last but not least, it pays to consider the kind of toll that even otherwise perfect side hustles can take on our physical and mental well-being.
If you’re already working a full-time job, coming home to take care of the family, and juggling a bunch of other commitments on top of all that, have an honest discussion with yourself about whether taking on another gig is worth the extra energy and stress. Burnout is a real thing that will affect your health, so be sure to consider work life balance in this equation.
Related: 11 steps to starting a side hustle while working a full-time job
Elsewhere, think about your personality and the kind of situations you feel most comfortable in.
If you want to start any type of part-time service business, whether that’s graphic design, bookkeeping, or pressure-washing, you’ll need to really put yourself out there to attract new clients and be able to communicate with existing customers.
If you consider yourself an extreme introvert and the very thought of dealing with customers causes anxiety, is it worth putting yourself through that to make some extra cash?
You may decide that it is, seeing your venture as not only a money-maker but also a golden opportunity to practice your people skills.
Or, you may decide that your service-based small business isn’t such a good idea after all, but that there are better introvert-friendly side hustles you can channel your efforts into, such as blogging or selling stock photography.
How to Decide if Your Side Hustle is Worth It: Final Thoughts
If you’ve read this entire guide from start to finish, I hope the one lesson you’ve learned is that figuring out how to decide if your side hustle is worth it comes down to much more than just earning potential.
Even the most lucrative side hustles have obstacles to overcome and challenges to be addressed, such as:
- Dealing with the long wait between starting your side business and turning a profit
- Finding the time to start a side business on top of your main job
- Managing the stress of taking on extra responsibilities without impacting your health
- Identifying a unique way to stand out in a crowded.
Ultimately, the question isn’t necessarily if you can overcome those challenges, but if those challenges are worth overcoming.
Is it worth getting up two hours earlier in the morning to start developing your affiliate marketing blog?
Is it worth going the extra mile to provide a better auto detailing service than your potential competitors?
Is it worth attending networking events to grow your profile as a social media manager if the very thought fills you with dread?
Hopefully, you answered yes, in which case, go right ahead and pursue your passion with gusto, making sure to remember all the reasons why it’s worth it any time the going gets tough, or you consider throwing in the towel.
Related: Turning your passion to profit
And if you answered no?
Don’t worry.
Just because one side hustle idea isn’t worth it right now doesn’t mean that others won’t be. Simply use our guide to the best side hustles to start with no money to find a new idea that’s better suited to you right now.
