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How To Earn More Money And Increase Your Income Through Side Hustles, According To 5 Early Retirees And Entrepreneurs Who Have Done It

Diversifying your income can be a good way to prepare for an upcoming recession.

Insider spoke with entrepreneurs and early retirees about the lucrative side hustles they started.

Their side gigs range from career and résumé coaching to dog walking.

Just like you can diversify your investments, you can diversify your income. 

Having multiple revenue streams is an especially smart money move to make as the US sees layoffs at major corporations and heads into uncertain economic times in 2023.

Even if you feel secure in your job, having extra cash coming in could help you achieve your money goals quicker. 

Below, Insider rounded up various side-hustle ideas from entrepreneurs and early retirees who found ways to diversify their income. 

Shan Shan Fu started selling face masks on Amazon and turned it into a robust e-commerce business Shan Shan Fu sells socks and tights (including the ones pictured) online. Courtesy of Shan Shan Fu

When the Covid-19 pandemic sent the US under lockdown in the spring of 2020, Shan Shan Fu had a lot of free time after work.

She was living in San Francisco at the time and working at an IT consulting firm, but had been thinking about starting a side hustle for a while. She decided to sell face masks after hearing so many friends talk about how they couldn't find high-quality ones.

She launched her e-commerce company, Millennials In Motion, in April 2020 and immediately started making money. Her timing was ideal, she explained: "It was easy to sell face masks in April 2020. I was very lucky that I was early.

After six months of selling masks, she was earning enough from her own business that she felt comfortable leaving her day job. 

Today, at 34, Fu is a full-time entrepreneur based in Miami, Florida. In addition to running Millennials In Motion, which has expanded to a socks and tights business and brings in up to $42,000 a month in revenue, she does consulting work for an Amazon advertising agency called Trivium and a legal start-up called OnlineVisas.

Sean Allen helped people write their résumés to pay off his debt and buy real estate Sean Allen started a résumé business on the side to bring in extra cash. Courtesy of Sean Allen

Between undergrad and grad school, Sean Allen accumulated $48,000 worth of student-loan debt. He tacked on another $33,000 in credit-card debt after graduating from college. 

He had aspirations to build a real estate portfolio but knew his debt would hold him back, so he put together a plan to get out of the red. It included increasing his income.  

Allen got certified as a career coach and launched a résumé business, Sean's Resume Shop, while working his full-time job as a corrosion engineer. He brought in up to $2,200 per month in side money doing career coaching and helping people write their résumés, he said. 

He continued coaching even after paying off his debt. The additional money has helped him grow his real-estate portfolio. If he needed more cash for a down payment or closing costs, he would put his head down and focus on finding more clients. 

"I'd be like, 'Okay, I'm not hanging out on the weekends. It's going to be all résumés,'" he said. "And I could bring in an extra $600 in a week."

Especially if you have major financial goals, "it's really important to have access to ways that you can make a little bit more money in addition to your job," he added.

Grant Sabatier built websites and flipped domain names to grow his net worth from virtually nothing to over $1 million Grant Sabatier, author of "Financial Freedom." Courtesy of Grant Sabatier

In August 2010, two months after getting laid off from his first job, Grant Sabatier said his checking account hit an all-time low: $2.26. He was 24 at the time and living with his parents.

Five years later, thanks to a seven-step strategy that included getting organized and reining in his spending, Sabatier's net worth surpassed $1 million. A key step throughout the process was supplementing his salary — he got a job at a digital marketing agency making $50,000 — with other revenue streams.

"If you want to reach financial independence as quickly as possible, you're going to need to up your side-hustle game," said Sabatier, who did everything from pet-sitting to selling concert tickets to flipping vintage mopeds. "No job was too small." 

Two of the most lucrative ways he generated extra income outside of his day job included building websites for companies, which earned him up to $50,000 per project, and flipping domain names. He could typically buy a domain for $50 or less and resell it within a year for more than $2,500, he explained.

Sabatier, who details how he achieved financial independence in his book "Financial Freedom," says that the strategies he used a decade ago still hold up today.