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This is the year that could change everything.  Your side hustle could grow into a main hustle which could grow into a multi-million dollar business.  

10 years ago, I was reading the book The Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris (if you haven't read it, you need to!) and it planted the idea in my head that it was possible to make a full time income on the internet without the constraints of working a full 8 hour day.  In fact, in the book there are examples of people who log on once a week, claim their profit, and that's the extent of their work.  I thought to myself, this seems super sketch.  This concept went against everything I was told about working my way up the corporate ladder.  But only working a few hours a week?  It’s worth a shot, right?

If you go to Google and type in “how to make money online”, you're going to be bombarded with a plethora of crazy methods.  It’s actually a pretty dark world.  If you're just beginning your side hustle journey, I want to start by weeding out the methods that could not only waste your time and money, but could jeopardize everything for you.  

While there are many bad ones out there, I’m going to go over my top three that I advise you to avoid.  You may potentially disagree with me — and most times somebody does — but I want you to know that I’ve literally tried it all: Amazon FBA, drop shipping, Etsy, flipping items, affiliate marketing, blogging, YouTube, you name it.

 

 

My 3 Rules

So, why do I avoid these side hustles?  When choosing a method, I make sure they follow my 3 key rules:

• Risk.  How risky is this side hustle?  Do I have to risk money?  Time?  More than that?  Am I risking getting sued?  Am I risking people’s health?  What’s the risk?

• Cost.  How much is this side hustle going to cost me?  Do I need to take out a loan?  What’s the capital?  How much can I afford to lose?

• Time.  How much time do I have to devote to this side hustle?  What am I getting in return for my time?  

 

Now that you know my three rules, let's go over the three side hustles that I encourage you not to do.  

 

 

Day Trading

Day trading has been around since the stock market.  In short, day trading is buying a potential stock before it becomes hot and goes up in price.  Day traders buy low and sell high for a profit.  Sounds simple, right?  Well, a few stats about day trading… 

Only five percent of day traders find success.  Do you really want to put your money into a game with a 95% fail rate?  I’ll admit right now that I’m not smart enough to wager my money on odds like those. 

 

One of the saddest stories I’ve heard regarding day trading was about a 22 year old trader who racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars, perceivably, on a very popular trading app, Robinhood.  After losing all his fortunes and running negative, the young trader committed suicide.  Robinhood, as well as many other similar apps that are coming out right now, make day trading so easy.  All it takes is a couple clicks of the thumb to make a trade.  Thanks to our instant gratification culture, people that use these apps are listening to the terrible, terrible advice given by non-qualified financial advisors.  In the end, day trading is just gambling which I would never advise doing to make a profit.  

 

 

Cryptocurrency 

 

Cryptocurrency has become all the rage in the past couple years.  It’s known for being like a roller coaster that goes up and down over and over.  In fact, it has massive attention at the time of this post.  However, I believe that it will have fail rates even more massive than those of day trading. 

Maybe you're reading this post 20 years into the future and saying “this guy was a fool, he should've been talking about Bitcoin!”.  But for now, in terms of creating a side hustle, you want to create it in an environment that's not so volatile.  Why put all your time and energy into something so unproven at this point in time?  

I do think that there can be value in the crypto world, but building a business off of it while it's still in its early stages is too risky for me.   

 

 

Pyramid Schemes & MLMs

This one might be a bit more controversial but for the sake of its business practices, I advise you to avoid anything that sounds like or is a pyramid scheme.  The modern day pyramid scheme is abbreviated as MLM or Multi-Level Marketing.

 

The business concept in itself isn't bad, but the way that businesses operate in it is shady.  The FTC — which regulates businesses and their practices — is currently actively going after MLMs because they are suspicious.  MLMs are notorious for their ambiguous messages, calls, parties etc. where they end up telling you that you can buy the product or work underneath them.  It’s called a pyramid scheme because once you're in, you hire somebody under you, your employees hire somebody under them, and so on.  The bottom row of people broadens out while the worker at the point of the pyramid keeps making money.  

Like I said, the FTC is after agencies like these and is trying to MLMs and their concepts.  For this reason, they are one of the slimiest business models that you can get yourself into.  It is just a matter of time until they all get eliminated.  

In the end, I want to teach business models that other people can do and replicate.  Let me know if you think I’ve wrongly named day trading, cryptocurrency, or pyramid schemes as side hustles to avoid in 2021.  

A question I get asked often is if I’m going to be teaching people what I’m doing, aren't I creating competition for myself?  One thing that people tend to not understand is how big the internet really is.  It’s so big that each and every one of my followers coils get into the same niche and would never compete with each other.  The market is growing everyday as people increasingly rely on the internet to buy products.  For this reason, the demand is always higher than the competition. 

Now that you know which side hustles to avoid, I’m so pumped for you to learn about some of the business models that have brought me success.  We will talk about affiliate marketing, drop shipping, print on demand, and so much more.  

Until then, peace and God bless. 

For the complimentary worksheets and resources, go to adrianbrambila.com/30days.  

I make new content every single week, so be sure to subscribe to my Youtube and follow my Instagram @brambilabong and TikTok at @AdrianBrambila. I also have tons of resources and courses on my website that you won’t want to miss. Head over to www.adrianbrambila.com to learn more about what I do and how I live a financially free life.