How to Make Money Before a Recession (5 Side Hustles )

Intro.

Isn’t it annoying and disappointing when you hit a recession, and you wish you had learned to make money before it hits. The same goes for a pandemic which we’ve just been through, which has impacted the economy even worse than a typical recession.

So, how do you make money BEFORE a recession to keep you and your family afloat. Are there any tips that can help, and things we can learn from the coronavirus pandemic. Sure there is, and I’ll touch on a few things you can do to protect yourself for the next recession.

Here are 5 side hustles you can implement now before another financial crisis impacts our lives. Although these are online methods on making money, at the end I’ll explain some tips for those that are not so conversant with online tools.

#1 Affiliate Marketing Blog

My favorite method for creating an online income for yourself is by building your own profitable website. I often get asked how hard this is, and this is a two-fold question.

The process of affiliate marketing is simple, and can be learned by anyone with an internet connection. The second part of the question relies on your own personality, and how determined you are to succeed. That’s because if you want to start as cheaply as possible (which can be done very cheaply), you will be relying on Google to rank your website and blog posts. This can take time.

The amount of money you can make online determines solely on the website traffic you can get. The more people see your website, the more potential sales can be made. So, the alternative traffic method to search engine traffic is paid advertising. This can get you web traffic quicker, but will cost money and there’s an extra learning curve.

Now, because we’re talking about making money BEFORE a recession, it would have been ideal to have started at least several months before this latest pandemic started. Although it’s possible to make affiliate commissions within weeks of beginning, affiliate marketing from scratch will typically take you a few months to see any results.

The great aspect about this model is that once you’re starting to see rewards for your efforts, there’s no stopping. This is an income generation model that is sustainable for the long term. The older your website becomes, the more authoritative Google sees it, and ranks your articles and reviews higher in search results. Obviously the higher rankings you have, the more sales commissions you make.

For those that don’t want to get too deep into an eCommerce site that takes transactions, affiliate marketing is my No.1 solution to make money before a recession or other financial crisis. Oh, and Kyle and Carson’s program is the No.1 platform in the industry to learn.

#2 Create a Dropshipping eCommerce Store

The dropshipping craze has been popular for several years now, and there’s some great courses that teach this. However, I’ve also come across some really poor courses that are attempting to cash in on the phenomenon.

I’ll guide you to the better courses shortly, but let’s talk about how the dropshipping process works.

An eCommerce website starts with your own store that can be created through Shopify, BigCommerce or a handful of other online shopping dedicated hosting providers. The idea is that you source cheap products via sites like AliExpress or DHGate, and add them to your website.

You may be able to source a product for a great price, and mark it up quite significantly. For instance, jewelry is very popular to add to an eCommerce website, so you may find a suitable bracelet for $8. You can advertise this bracelet for $12-$15 and make a nice little profit. When you’re making hundreds of sales per day, this can add up significantly.

There are loads of products to choose from depending on your niche, and big profits can be made if done well.

The dropshipping aspect comes when somebody makes a purchase from your site. When this happens, your job is to purchase the product/s from where you’ve sourced it, and have it shipped directly to the customer.

This way there’s no reason for you to store inventory yourself, which saves you the trouble of purchasing in bulk and being stuck with left over stock if you can’t sell it.

There is a lot to learn in the eCommerce space, but it’s an extremely profitable venture if you follow the exact methods outlined by either Adrian Morrison or Ricky Hayes.

If you can have a consistent income being generated by your own online store the next time a recession comes around, you will be in a great position to NOT be financially affected.

#3 Sell on Amazon

Oh yes, another extremely good opportunity to be earning an income before the next recession hits the world economy. If you can be producing your own wage through online pursuits, you’ll be ideally placed when a crisis hits.

In a similar fashion to running an eCommerce store, you can purchase products and sell them with a decent markup. However, here you’ll be using the Amazon platform to sell your items. Not only that, it’s possible to have them all labelled with your own branding.

Amazon has their own fulfillment service which helps with organization of products and inventory. As with the other eCommerce option above, there are extra costs involved with selling on Amazon, and you’ll be relying on making sales relatively quickly. This is why both options encourage online advertising.

There are also more tools that you are encouraged to use, and these will help you choose the best performing products and get your products seen on Amazon. But, the more useful tools you use, the more money you should be able to make.

This is a risk versus reward venture that can be very lucrative if you do it right. That’s the exact reason I’d recommend getting educated to do this. The best courses I’ve reviewed to sell products on Amazon are by Ben Cummings or Kale Abrahamson & Taylor Hiott. Both courses are highly recommended and you can read the reviews by clicking on the corresponding links.

Affiliate marketing, your own eCommerce store and selling products on external platforms like Amazon are 3 of the best forms of online income generation. It all depends how much you want to risk for the returns you’re after.

There’s also other online options like freelancing.

#4 Freelancing

You will find that there are so many different freelancing options to earn money online. Freelancing is where you can outsource yourself, to do online tasks for major or minor companies. Just take a look at this list:

• Web Development and Designing
• Photography
• Teaching and Tutoring
• Writing and Copywriting
• Data Entry Jobs
• Sales and Marketing
• Graphic Design
• Mobile App Development
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Branding and Public Relations
• Admin Support or Assistance
• 3D Modeling and CAD
• Game Development
• Translation
• Web Research
• Legal Services
• Transcription
• Article and Blog Writing
• Customer Service
• Social Media Coordinator
• Logo Design and Illustration
• Audio and Video Production
• Human Resource Management
• Architecture Services
• Proofreading
• Typing

One of the simplest is data entry freelancing which is not only easy, but essential. Companies are always looking for data entry operators and if you put yourself in the best position, you’ll always be called upon when needed.

This is the same for any of these freelancing options, you need to prove yourself as indispensable. Be the best that you can be at a certain freelancing niche, and you’ll be one of the first names that comes to mind.

The whole idea of making money before a recession is to look after yourself financially during the crisis, and part of that is to sustain your income along with utilizing your nest egg.

#5 Surveys & Sweepstakes

I’m not a big fan of surveys or sweepstakes but some people do use these sites to create a side income. Survey and sweepstakes sites may appeal more to those in countries where the few dollars that can be earned is worth more than in other countries.

For instance, if you can earn $5-$10 per day filling out surveys, this will buy you more in Thailand than it will in the US. So maybe those people in Thailand or the Philippines will benefit more from filling out surveys.

I’d refrain from searching PTC (pay to click) sites and the like, because you can find lots of scams this way. Some sites say they’ll pay you to click on adverts, others for playing games or puzzles. There’s also sites that call themselves ‘social influencers’, and they are not legitimate. CashCrates is just one of these, Notion Cash another. There’s even a consumer report from the BBB stating the illegitimacy of these sites.

Some of the better survey or sweepstakes sites are:

• Swagbucks
• Qmee
• Inbox Dollars
• Pinecone Research

These are genuine sites that will pay out their members.

Be careful also with bitcoin faucet sites. These are similar to PTC sites where you can click on adverts to earn very minuscule amounts of cryptocurrency. They will pay you in what’s called Satoshi, which is one millionth of a bitcoin. When you think about how much you can actually earn, it’s not worth your time in my opinion.

Genuine survey sites may make you some extra weekend beer money, but I wouldn’t prepare for a recession on these sites alone.

Typical Jobs That Stand The Test of Time

I’d like you to alert you to the current pandemic, which has basically thrown us into a recession. What employment opportunities have kept going while others have fallen through?

We know that grocery items are essential all the time, which also means any kind of farming is usually sustainable. This includes the dairy industry, crops and meat suppliers are all going to be required.

Much of the construction industry has worked through, although not all. General tradesmen are working through because homes still require things to be fixed.

There’s also some retail stores that have excelled through this pandemic, such as office supplies stores. As everyone has been asked to work and stay at home, people have been stocking up on technology that will help them with their home office environment.

A job that will never stop is primary and secondary school teaching, even if this is done remotely. The banking sector will still continue, but I’d suggest you need to make yourself valuable and not be the ‘dead wood’ that is first discarded in recession.

These are just some examples of traditional jobs that you may consider applying for before a recession hits. Ideally you want to recession proof yourself before any major crisis hits, but knowing you’re in a job that is safe can also help tremendously.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it, ideas that can make you money before a recession hits so that your income remains the same, or even better. I’ve been lucky myself throughout the 2020 pandemic, as I had started this profitable website over a year before that.

I’ve had the fortunate advantage of being paid through my affiliate commissions, even though I’ve been locked up at home. I’ve not had to worry about where my next dollar is coming from, as my earnings are fairly consistent.

If you’d like to learn how you too can start an affiliate marketing website from scratch, or where I learned how it all worked, keep reading below.