If you're always on the lookout for a great way to make extra income, there's never been a better time to find your ideal side gig! The internet has made it easier than ever before for people to set up small businesses. Then the past two years have shown how working from home is possible and sustainable. If you're wondering if now is the time to take the leap you won't be the only one!

The easy way to do this is not to make a rash decision but start to create a growing income for yourself as a part-time job or a great side hustle in the evenings or weekends. You can make some extra cash in your free time, or around the kids as a stay at home mum. This will give you an idea of how much you can earn and if it can or needs to replace your full-time job. This removes the risk to your lifestyle and you can get used to who your potential customers might be.

Here you'll find our list of the best ways to create a side hustle or passive income.

Freelance Writer

An easy side hustle is to become a freelance writer. If you have a way with words creating your own blog or portfolio is a great way to earn a little money.

There are plenty of platforms like an online marketplace where you can apply for work helping businesses write content for their own sites. Or pitch directly to online magazines and your local newspaper. Medium is another great site to use for writing practice, building an audience and earning from their Partner Programme.

If you decide to set up a blog you can earn through placing display ads on your site through Google Adsense. This is a way of earning whilst you sleep as when people view your site you will be paid for clicks or views of each ad.

Should you have some products you absolutely love and would like to share, you can join one of the many affiliate marketing programmes for each brand and promote them to your audience. Each time someone buys a product through your affiliate links you will then earn a commission on that sale.

If you're creative try assisting people with writing ebooks and other digital products or create your own. You will have to write the ebook once but then it can be sold many times without any extra work from you.

Virtual Assistant

Do you have prior experience in support roles? If so you could set up your own business offering admin assistance such as answering phones, managing emails and schedules. Booking travel, dealing with home office admin and much more.

Even better you could create your own online course showing your area of expertise and helping others learn new skills. It's easy and quick to create courses now using tools such as Kajabi or Thinkific. Once you've created your course, the process of guiding your customers through the content is done by the platform. All billing is handled by them and you will keep receiving payments each time someone buys your course giving you passive income.

Cryptocurrency

You weren't expecting this one! The truth is cryptocurrency is not going away and any opportunities in this area should be taken advantage of by everyone, not just men!

If you haven't figured out how you feel about this area of finance yet, try signing up to one of the online platforms such as Coinbase. They have a huge library of resources to explain how everything works before you even buy or sell.

Should that be overwhelming you can use DeFi which is decentralized finance to do most of the things that banks do such as earn interest, borrow, lend, buy insurance etc.

The reason this could be a good side hustle is that you can earn interest on your cryptocurrency. If you aren't yet ready to deposit with crypto you can also deposit normal currency and start earning a yield. This could create a passive income from crypto with interest rates higher than in high street banks.

Online Store

A good way to make money on your own schedule is to create an online store selling simple products or clothing.

Selling slogan t-shirts are a great idea which has really taken off and the best part is you don't have to deal with all the deliveries or hold stock in your spare room!

It's possible now to find great drop shipping companies who hold supplies of T-shirts, hoodies and other clothing. You create an account with them and upload your designs to their website. You don't need a website yourself as you can sell through Etsy or other similar platforms. Usually, the drop shipper and Etsy will link together making the whole process very passive.

When a customer places an order to Etsy, they take the payment and send the details to your drop shipper. The dropshipping firm prints the design on the T-shirt and posts it to the customer.

So once you have uploaded your designs there is very little for you to do each time someone places an order. Passive income and something you can do without much spare time

Graphic Designer

If you're quite creative and good with technology, flipping websites could be another way to make money.

Most of us start an online business and have no idea how to create or design a basic website. If you have the cash, to spend thousands on a clever designer that's brilliant. However, most people at the beginning of their business journey, are on a budget and need a well designed but functional template.

Once you get the hang of WordPress or Squarespace you can snap up popular domain names and create basic templates for people to add to without too much difficulty. Adding banner images, sidebars, creating some simple categories and giving a great starting point for them to build on.

Using marketplaces such as Flippa you can sell your starter website for hundreds of pounds and the more practice you have creating them, the quicker you will be able to turn these around.

Adding social media accounts and a YouTube channel can increase the value you're offering as people like to own the same brand name across all social media platforms.

We hope you found this useful and are already buzzing with ideas about your next online side hustle. The good thing is you don't have to stop at just one!

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.