Side hustles are on the rise. But not all side hustles are made equal.
When most people think of side hustles and secondary jobs, they think of the call center agent that has to drive Uber at night, or the high school teacher that has to clean apartments on the weekends to make ends meet.
But there's another category of side hustles that isn't soul crushing: Monetizing your hobbies, passions and interests that you already have on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and yes - LinkedIn!
Three disruptive changes have made this possible:
- It's getting easier and easier to find an audience on social media even without existing followership due to the change in algorithms around short form video.
- Advances in AI and mobile-based creative tools commoditize access to content creation in unprecedented ways (see Runway and Discord).
- Social commerce platforms like the one we're building – Koji – make offering a digital product, service or engagement dramatically simpler than setting up a complicated e-commerce website.
Whether it's the hobby fan artist selling commissions, the stay-at-home dad selling lunch box stickers or the fitness coach offering private lessons on Instagram, we'll soon experience a dramatic expansion of what we call the creator economy. Millions of people that would never call themselves creators or influencers will start utilizing content creation to 'side hustle' and maybe even turn their whole career around. Exciting times!
