From silkworms to sculptures, the strange side hustles are keeping Australians afloat
A record number of Australians are now working a side hustle to make ends meet.
While most pick up an extra bartending, food delivery or carer shift, others have turned to unique avenues to bring home a secondary income.
Kate Reynolds’ voice-over acting side hustle has enabled her to take a longer maternity leave than a 9-5 salary would allow.Credit: Steven Siewert
Kate Reynolds’ side hustle involves voicing albatrosses and koalas from a home studio in Sydney’s suburbs.
The new mother and former radio announcer started her voice acting side hustle via the freelancing site Fiverr almost three years ago, focusing mostly on advertising and narration.
As bookings picked up, Reynolds decided to drop to part-time at her day job at a Telco comparison site.
“Cost of living hugely affected my decision. I’ve always been a big believer in having multiple streams of income,” she said.
In the past financial year, she earned almost as much from voice acting as she has at her day job, making a combined six figures for the first time in her career.
It also offers flexibility: Reynolds is currently on maternity leave with her two-month-old and said without her side hustle she would have to return to work a lot sooner than planned.
“It takes the pressure off,” she said.
Nearly 1 million Australians hold down a second job, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show, with 6.6 per cent of the population employed in multiple places following 12 interest rate rises since May last year.
There were 947,300 multiple job-holders in March — nearly 20,000 more than in December last year.
Taylor Battistella started his silkworm side hustle when he was just 12 years old. Credit: Simon Schluter
Taylor Battistella rears silkworms in his home laundry in Melbourne.
The 25-year-old started his business aged 12 and has an almost passive income stream from selling eggs, books, worm food and teaching resources to schools and hobbyists across the country.
“They practically sell themselves,” Battistella said.
He also works as a community manager for an AgTech company, and as a high school rowing coordinator, and makes almost as much from his side hustle as he does from those two jobs combined.
“My hope is my side hustle turns into a serious venture,” he said.
He recently launched the ethical silk skincare brand Seresilk and plans to expand his silk sales into other industries.
Brisbane-based Nikki Jackson has amassed a fleet of cars for her side hustle, renting them out on car sharing site Turo.
She started renting out the family’s secondary car, a Mazda, in December. Demand was so high, she later bought a second-hand Nissan X-trail to cater to families and recently added her mum’s car to the mix while she recovers from a wrist injury.
“Knowing that if I left $20,000 sitting in an account it would be worth less next year, so it made more sense to me to pay off the [Nissan] and use it as a stream of revenue,” she said.
The three cars have made Jackson $18,000 in profit, with another $5000 worth of bookings for this year.
Jackson spends minimal time on the rental service, timing airport pickups with her husband’s travel schedule.
“We started making a profit from the get-go,” she said.
Sydney-based Zhen Lui also saw his car as a potential revenue stream.
With a three-year-old and the cost of living rising, he is “constantly looking for a way to earn some extra cash”.
So, when he saw he could make money by putting ads on his car via Wrappr, he signed up.
Qantas paid him $600 a month for three and a half months to display a home loan ad on his Tesla and also offered him $75 per hour to park his car outside house auctions on the weekend.
“I didn’t have to commit to anything, I could just drive as normal,” Lui said.
Sam Patterson-Smith’s side hustle of selling sculptures and paintings has become so lucrative it’s now his main source of income.Credit: Wolter Peeters
Sam Patterson-Smith’s side hustle became so successful, it’s now become his main gig.
The fine arts teacher started selling his work online on Bluethumb in 2015. As demand for his pieces grew, his side hustle soon became his main gig – while his full-time job turned into his side hustle.
“With pretty consistent sales I was struggling to keep a balance between two jobs, so I made the decision to step back from being a full-time teacher,” he said.
He now splits his time working as a casual teacher in Western Sydney and working on his art, which sells from anywhere between $150 to $3500.
“I’m busy but because it’s art, and it’s what I love it doesn’t feel like a chore,” he said.
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