Side Hustles for Introverts

You want to make more money. Invest your funds, get more income streams, start a business. But every time you think about that, you feel uncomfortable.

When you hear the word Entrepreneur, what do you think about? Most people think it looks like this:

Of course, that’s only how non-entrepreneurs see them. That may or may not be true. But what are you going to think of when everybody sells you this reality?

If you search “make money online” or “start an online business.” you’ll eventually meet online celebrities like Gary Vaynerchuck, Grant Cardone, or Casey Neistat.

These guys are making eight figures minimum, usually nine figures. Millions of people have asked them for advice on how to live a better financial life. Their answer? You have to be everywhere.

There’s nothing wrong with this mentality. Do you know how hard it is to get in front of people these days? It’s very expensive. You’ll probably need to do some marketing.

Now, this is only ONE way to approach business. It doesn’t mean you must do it this way, or you won’t succeed. Fame usually is correlated with success, but there are thousands of millionaires who have never shown their faces, never made a sales call.

Say you’re a customer and you find a great product online. The site is reputable, and there’s no one else selling it online. Would you care about who the person is, or what their social media looks like? No, you buy because of the product. When your product is good enough, it sells itself.

Everybody tells you about marketing because it’s the fastest way to grow. But you don’t need to do all that work if you don’t want to. We’re going to show you the perfect route for introverts to start a side hustle.

Introvert Entrepreneurs: What Business Is About

Whether you’re looking for a side gig or a business, the basics don’t change. It all starts with one question:

“Why should I give you money?”

The answer to this question is what defines a business. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, here’s what the process looks like:

You now have a profitable business. That’s it.

You don’t need to post your life on social media. You don’t need to create “live webinar events.” You don’t even need to introduce yourself (although that would help for credibility). You create an epic product, and others just buy it.

You can make millions as an introvert without having to do anything uncomfortable. Plus, what’s the point of making money with a system you don’t like?

By the way, if you don’t know what type of personality you have, you can do the Myers-Briggs test here.

We’ve found at least three side hustles and four businesses any introvert can start. All of them consider these preferences:

You’re in luck. You can make millions of dollars with all those conditions. And if you just want to make a few bucks more in your spare time, these side hustles work just as fine.

Side Hustles For Introverts

You may think that introverts have to make an extra effort compared to extroverts. But in reality, you have the same advantages as everyone else: you just play the game differently.

Others may communicate better, but as an introvert, you’re better at problem-solving, organizing, and offering consistent results.

The following side hustles play to your strengths, so you can make money and have fun doing it:

#1 Content Writing

You may not like talking to people, but you like spending time with yourself. Well, writing it’s almost like “talking to yourself,” except that other people read that content later.

Writing has invaluable benefits:

Ironically, skilled writers eventually become good at talking to people. If you’ve been writing for years, you’ll find it’s easier to share your ideas with others, just like an extrovert.

This side hustle is simple. You understand what the client wants, you write the topic, you get paid. You move onto the next project.

You may wonder: “How is an introvert supposed to find clients with no communication skills or experience?” You can still do it, although it’s less profitable:

If you write well, you unlock new quality levels where clients pay more for your words.

These options will earn you credibility, but they don’t pay you much. As soon as you gather some reviews on those sites, start submitting requests to actual clients (on Upwork, PeoplePerHour, or Freelancer.com).

You communicate via freelance platforms, email, Slack…

#2 Marketing Gigs

If writing isn’t your strength, there are many other tasks people will pay you to do. It could be as simple as white-background photography.

Marketing services are in high demand because people will always want to sell goods and services. Some of those include:

All you need to do is start small. Offer a great service for a ridiculous price. If you’re good, you will start ranking and gathering reviews very quickly. Because it’s cheap, it’s easy to get the maximum rating.

The more reviews, the better. But as soon as you have about seven, you can set the fairest price.

People will naturally find your profile, and some of them will message you. But if you want to make things happen, try reaching out yourself. You can promote your services on forums, Youtube, even Facebook groups.

Clients prefer making a video-interview, especially if they want to work with you long-term. If you don’t want to, that’s okay, but it may make things more difficult.

#3 Virtual assistant

Businesses are great, but it takes time to make money. When your business works, you’d rather pay someone else to do it than run it yourself. Some of these tasks are super-simple:

In essence, you’re sharing your to-do list with someone else. The difference is, you delegate the tedious tasks to a VA (which you can easily do) to have more time to do the important stuff.

So what makes a virtual assistant valuable? It may seem like they do dozens of different activities. But clients like working with someone who already has base skills. Because it saves them a lot of time on training.

A big plus of working as an assistant is, you learn more by doing. If you want to start a business in the future, but need money, you can earn it as a virtual assistant. While you do all those tasks, you learn firsthand how other people’s businesses work. And because the owner wants you to manage it well, they will gladly explain why they’re doing what they do.

You’re getting free training.

Best Business Models for Introverts

Now that you earned some cash, you can start a (successful) business and never worry about money again. These side hustles may take more work up front, but once you set things up, they become passive sources of income.

But first, here’s a remark: As an introvert, that doesn’t mean you should avoid extrovert ideas or traditional business models. Once you’re earning enough, you can pay someone to do the extrovert work for you. If you want to go beyond eight figures, you’ll need a team.

You can still earn up to that amount by yourself with any of the following models:

#1 Marketing Agencies

I wouldn’t even call this a business. It generates passive income just like every other model, and it doesn’t include any new concepts. If you know how to freelance, you know how to run an agency, period.

Imagine this. After working for long months, you eventually become successful at freelancing, whatever your side gig is. You charge high rates and have lots of clients. You wish you could earn more, but there aren’t enough hours in the day for that.

What can you do? You hire someone to do just what you’re doing. You invest some time to train them (or qualify them better), and they do your work instead.

You may wonder, why would someone accept less money?

Picture this. You’re a skilled freelancer with no experience, no contacts. How do you build your portfolio? Clients may not be willing to take that risk, but agencies will (as long as you can prove your skills).

If you can meet their standards, they give you the job. And once the freelancer gets better, you can promote them, or they leave and work with their own clients. The thing is, there are ALWAYS new freelancers joining the marketplace.

Look, this isn’t an easy way to make passive income. Humans create complexity, and you’ll need to invest some time to double-check the work quality. But after a few gigs, freelancers learn how to work for you. Eventually, you don’t have to do a single gig yourself. Your freelancers do it for you.

Heck, you could even hire a freelancer (someone you know will stay with you for years) to manage and recruit more freelancers.

As an introvert, I know what you’re thinking: “It sounds brilliant. But there’s no way I’m going to find someone like that. I don’t think they’ll work the way I like or my clients expect.”

Fine. Create a checklist, a training script, or something to tell people exactly what you want and how to do it. After two or three attempts— if you qualified them right— your freelancers will deliver just what you want, if not better!

#2 Content-based businesses

Wouldn’t it be great if you could make money by studying something you love? It could be sports, real estate, personal finance, gaming, dating, fitness, anything.

Imagine being the expert in that field. People visit your site because they know you as a reputable source. And because you have so much traffic, Google Adsense will pay you to let others advertise on your website.

Maybe you hate ads, and that’s okay. You can still profit from your website traffic by offering paid content, subscriptions, and more.

Wait. Don’t you know how to create traffic? Lot’s o’ ways:

Bringing traffic is easy. But how do you keep it?

Disclaimer: It sounds easier than it is. Depending on the niche competition, it may take 8+ months, if not years to rank your website. And it requires you to create and update content all that time.

This model is great for you IF:

…Social what?

You know: all your social media followers, group members, and email subscribers. It’s a list of all the active people (AKA leads) who know and value your website.

It’s valuable because you can reuse these contacts whenever you launch a new product/service. What do you think is better?

a. Starting a site with no visitors, spending months trying to rank on Google

OR

b. Starting a site and sharing it with everyone. Overnight, you got a solid 100 views per day

Let’s recap the three ways to profit from a website as an introvert:

#3 E-commerce

Did you know? E-commerce is the most popular option among introverts. For one reason: it’s numbers-oriented, analytical.

With all the tools available, you can know exactly whether a product will sell or not:

It’s so simple (and so hard at the same time):

1. You “find” a product with high demand and low competition.
2. You compare prices with cheaper manufacturers. If the ROI makes sense, you buy
3. You ship the inventory to your warehouse
4. You create and advertise your listing on an e-com platform (eBay, Amazon)
5. You execute a launching strategy
6. You watch your sales, replenish inventory, and update relevant keywords
7. Profit!

How to do it? There are countless variations:

What do they all have in common? You never see the client, not even the package. Suppliers produce it and ship it. You just manage the whole process and promote the listing.

The challenge? Market research is a skill itself. You have to know what factors affect product sales before you consider buying it. And assuming numbers look good, you still need to improve the product to differentiate it from others. If everyone sold the same thing, it wouldn’t be very sustainable.

Skills take time to develop, sometimes months. That’s why beginners seem to fail on every product they try. But after they try enough, they learn how to make $10K+ per product.

It’s worth it, but it’s NOT beginner-friendly. Know what you’re getting into.

#4 SaaS (Software as a Service)

How do introverts enjoy being alone? Maybe it’s because:

If you’re also creative, SaaS businesses could be the perfect fit for you. Why?

You can hire others to do the marketing, but if the product is good enough, it will sell itself with a bit of advertising.

People use some of these products everyday, yet almost nobody knows their founders. Do you know who created WordPress? Samsung? Yahoo, Dropbox, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Shopify, Netflix? All of these are SaaS companies, and you can create one about anything.

You may think you need to be extremely brilliant to come up with these. But really, it boils down to the same thing: pick a high-demand niche you’re passionate about and interact with it. Once you learn enough, you understand what people want (better than they do) and what you can improve. Ideas don’t appear in the shower, but by finding problems, which we all have.

Now, SaaS businesses take more time to develop (two years on average). That requires you to have initial capital for the first year, or you’ll be in the red. So if you could create some passive income streams first, that would be enough to finance your dream career.

Because of scalability, you can expect to make millions with good branding, if not billions.

Why You Should Be an Open-minded Introvert

As you can see, you can work from your garage without ever talking to anybody and still make lots of money. But that isn’t the fastest way to succeed on your side hustle. It’s still worth considering all the options regardless of your personality type.

It’s not true that introverts hate people. They enjoy interacting like any other human being, except that they do it less often. While interacting too much may be uncomfortable, low interaction won’t hurt you.

So you don’t need to remove social interaction completely:

You don’t need to do this forever, but it will help you grow at the beginning. You’ll also upgrade your skills to an acceptable level so that you can run the business yourself. Later with a team, you can focus on introverted work, NOT because you’re bad at talking to people, but because you prefer other types of work.

The best way is to team with extroverted people. It may be uncomfortable to meet them, but not as much as doing the marketing yourself. That person will do all the promotion while only you work on the product.

Introverted by choice, not by default.

The Bottom Line

Introverts make great entrepreneurs, even with minimal marketing. Thanks to the Internet, these people can now run a successful business from anywhere in the world, doing something they enjoy.

It’s okay to do a bit of everything at first until your company grows and you build a proper team.