The holiday season is always expensive, but the rapid increase in inflation makes this year even more daunting. That leaves nearly a quarter of Americans looking for a vacation rush.
If you’re in that group, the good news is that there’s a lot of extra work to be done during the holiday season—things like shopping, cooking, crafting, wrapping presents, and decorating for the holidays.
The holidays are also peak season for pet sitting, grocery delivery and janitorial work. And, if you don’t mind waiting tables, stocking shelves, or working in a retail store, those jobs also proliferate from October through January.
Wrap, decorate or hang lights
If you want to help people wrap gifts, decorate their homes, or hang holiday lights, your best bet is to print flyers and launch your own website.
Although creating a website can seem daunting, simple website builders can have you up and running in an hour for less than the cost of lunch. Do you have photos showing the beautiful decorations and lights you put up last year? Got pictures of perfectly wrapped packages under your tree? That, plus some contact information and pricing, is all you need to build your site.
Be sure to use your website builder’s search engine optimization tools to designate what you do and where. This is as simple as entering a few keywords such as “holiday lights,” “package wrapping service,” or “holiday decor.” Also plug in your city or service area. This helps potential customers find you when they search on Google.
Finally, link your site to your Instagram and Facebook accounts and any other social media sites you frequent. If you are not yet activated following door, be sure to register and post an ad about your service there as well. Contractors say this neighborhood-focused social media site is a great place to find referral business. So, if any of your past clients rave about your past work, get them to praise you there.
Holiday kitchen
Those with the passion and skill to make perfect Christmas cookies or gingerbread houses can offer a seasonal cooking class at Made to taste Tastemade invites chefs, professionals and amateurs, to sign up and offer culinary experiences.
You decide when, where and how many people can participate. Classes can be face-to-face, live or recorded. You also set the price and capacity of your class. And you decide whether you give students a shopping list or include the cost of the ingredients in the price of your class. If the class sells, Tastemade takes a commission from your earnings.
Make crafts and gifts
If you have ever purchased an item from etsy, you probably know that the site is already on vacation. This platform sells anything home-made, including clothing, jewelry, and decorations. And winter decorations, welcome mats and gifts are everywhere. In fact, the biggest problem new sellers have when listing their crafts and gifts on Etsy is breaking through the crowd of other sellers.
The key here is to look closely at the competition in your niche and find a way to make your product unique or less expensive to drive sales. Obviously, being the lowest priced seller can only be justified when you’re still selling for more than your costs and when it’s a short-term fix to build a following. If you are new and need sales and reviews, go ahead and sell at slightly higher costs. Otherwise, differentiate your product with design, customization and imagination.
Keywords are also important here. Direct is better than clever. Use words that accurately describe what you’re offering: Santa’s wreath; Christmas stockings; Hanukkah menorah; Kwanzaa decorations.
Pet daycare
Two-thirds of Americans also travel during the holidays to visit family or enjoy a winter vacation. If you don’t mind looking at houses and pets, you can include this service in Rover.
Pet sitters typically charge between $25 and $100 per night. If you are new, it makes sense to list your rates on the low end of this range until you have enough reviews and endorsements to highlight your pet sitting service. But you should also know that many people at Rover have higher holiday rates. So visit the site as a consumer before setting up your own profile. This allows you to see how your competitors describe themselves, their specialties and the prices of their services. If you can make your offering unique and relevant to you (high energy dog specialist, cat whisperer, boa boarding, exotic animal lover) you can get a premium price and still get lots of business
Buy and deliver
shipping, Instacart i GoPuff keep very busy during the holidays, but a better bet is to create an account with dumpling Dumpling is also a shopping service, but the service provider is in charge of where they shop, when they shop and what they charge. Shipt, Instacart, and GoPuff simply send orders to their network, where shoppers/drivers determine whether to take the gig.
Dumpling charges shoppers roughly $30 a month to set up your own shopping business, providing you with a credit card, personal web page, and business cards. This allows you to schedule shopping trips around your life, not someone else’s. And it allows you to develop a regular clientele and regular routes. For example, you can run Costco every Monday. You can tell customers to receive their orders by Sunday, allowing you to plan your trip, purchase multiple orders, and deliver them all in one trip. You set your own service fees. Dumpling charges customers a 5% site fee on their grocery order.
Cleaning up
Holiday gatherings often spur a rare but necessary household scrubbing to remove months of grime from everything from light fixtures to ovens to bathrooms. People willing to do this kind of deep cleaning can make good money to come in and make homes shine before the holidays. The best place to offer deep cleaning services is TaskRabbit.
Wait tables/staff events
If you have experience bartending, waiting tables, or working at a concession stand, you can sign up with a site called Qwick, that recruits freelancers for staff events. The position pays between minimum wage and $30 an hour. Instawork also offers waiter and server jobs in 30 cities across the country.
Stock shelves
As holiday shoppers empty store shelves, warehouses and retailers need help stocking shelves. If you want to do these jobs part-time, BlueCrew it is the best option in California. To comply with the state’s strict self-employment law, BlueCrew hires workers and allows them to pick and choose between available shifts and clients.
Retail in store
The best place to look for shop jobs is Indeed, a comprehensive job search site that lets you search by position, location and other factors. The site currently lists over 11,000 retail job openings in Los Angeles alone. Most jobs are listed with a salary range and basic requirements.
A nice feature here is that you can limit your search to jobs nearby and pay what you want to earn. So instead of looking at all 11,000 open jobs, you can narrow your search to jobs within 15 miles of your zip code and pay, say, $17+ an hour to narrow your search down to a reasonable number.
Kristof is the editor of SideHusl.com, an independent website that reviews money making opportunities in the gig economy.
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