Side hustlers aren’t born overnight – in most cases.

In my opinion, they’re often birthed out of frugal overload and even then, it can take a lot of tries to get it right.

After I hit my frugality limits trying to pay off student loans, it was time to figure out how to bring in more income.

I’d say my first ever side hustle was mystery shopping. When I’m living in a big city, it’s actually not so bad. If the shop is on my way home or to work or to wherever I’m going, I might wind up with a free meal and $5-15 for 20 minutes of my time. If that time was going to make me $0 before, then I found that to be a good use of it.

I even picked up a few gigs that were worth more off Craigslist – essentially doing “mystery shops” in office buildings where I would report to the company how well the front desk or security staff did upon my arrival. Those would net closer to $75 a shop and the entire thing would be over in 30 minutes, including my verbal report to the office manager.

So, in a way, I did manage to grow that side hustle. I believe you can grow most side hustles as you learn about the ins and outs of any industry. But the first step in the journey is just to start.

Actually, if any of you are interested in mystery shopping, Sinclair Customer Metrics was where I first signed up (and if you like Auntie Anne’s pretzels, I promise you it’s a rare day that they don’t need a mystery shop with that company). And while it’s easiest to do in big cities, they need mystery shoppers everywhere and I constantly get emails that they need folks near these cities (which means those shops pay more):

• Pampa, TX
• Dumas, TX
• McAllen, TX
• Roma, TX
• Elgin, TX
• Hillsboro, TX
• Palestine, TX
• Uvalde, TX
• Victoria, TX
• Mansfield, TX
• Hereford, TX
• Avalon, NJ
• Corolla, NC
• Hobbs, NM
• Cottonwood, AZ

If you live near any of those spots and want to start your side hustle journey with some mystery shopping, head over to Sinclair Customer Metrics and ask for Lauren to be your scheduler – tell them Mel from brokeGIRLrich sent you (and yes, that’s totally an affiliate link, I get $15 if you sign up, but I’m not lying, I shopped for them for about 2 years and still pick up the occasional gig when going through airports – another higher paying area).

However, over time, I find that mystery shopping didn’t really fit my needs for a side hustle. Especially since I travel so often and NYC was definitely the easiest place to work it into my daily schedule. It was time to look for an opportunity that was a better fit.

You quickly find once you start a blog that most older bloggers have monetized their blogs and use it as side income – or full time income. So I set up several of the things they tell you to do about 3 months after I started writing brokeGIRLrich. I switched to self-hosted (and made it a goal to make back that initial $300ish investment within 3 years). I put Google Adsense into my sidebar. I made a media kit that listed sponsored post and sidebar ad space prices. When I wrote about a subject, I’d try to find a connected item on Amazon and put an affiliate ad into my post.

In about 6 months, I’d made $0.01 (and I was pretty excited by that first penny – because internet money seems kind of like fake magic at first).

I was chatting with a friend recently who also works in the arts who knows about my blog and he asked for an update on how it’s doing and I told him I was pretty happy it was essentially bringing in an extra paycheck a month pretty steadily these days – which was more than I expected for the number of hours I’m willing to commit to it.

So that’s where I am 3 years later – primarily through sponsored posts and side bar ads. Though I have managed one Google Adsense payout during that time and a few Amazon payouts.

I also occasionally get offers to freelance write for places because of this blog. I don’t usually search them out, but when they just happen, I’m usually pretty excited to pick up some extra income.

And all of that is based off of roughly 10-15 hours of work a week that I can do whenever and wherever I want.

This isn’t to say I don’t love my blog and put effort into it – it’s just to say that I also think part of the side hustle journey is finding the right scale of a project for you. Some people want side hustles that can replace their 9-to-5, so they need a pretty large commitment. Personally, I want a side hustle that replaces like…. waitressing on weekends. Solidly part time, but if I really need to, I can pick up a few extra shifts and bring in some more.

I’ve been thinking of that aspect of the journey lately too. I started this blog in August 2013, a few months after another blog written by a New Yorker who works in the arts (yes, Stefanie, I’m talking about you). These days, I’m 100% satisfied with my part time income and my awesome little community and she’s pretty much a super star (because she worked her ass off and earned it). The choreographer I’m working with right now who wanted to know what show I worked on with Stefanie, which lead to a bumbling conversation of how we’ve never worked on a show together, but we’re both personal finance bloggers. The choreographer got really excited and launched into growing your business and your brand speeches – and while it was an awesome and fun conversation, it solidified for me that I’m in the right spot for me right now.

Ain’t nobody got time to stage manage and build a brand. As matter of fact, there is a direct correlation between me being booked for solid gigs that grow my stage management career and brokeGIRLrich being put into survival mode – get the posts out, run Financially Savvy Saturdays, the end – and easy filler stage management jobs and growing my blog – guest posts, having more time to be a part of the community, reading other blogs, creating stronger content, upping my social media game.

I think that’s the real magic to the side hustle – something we lose sometimes in our conversations. You really have total control of a good side hustle and when it hits the size you want it to be, it’s fine to rest there and enjoy what you’re doing.

What’s your side hustle journey story?