Lost your job? Pinched? Do a side hustle

If you have a “regular” job or small business, you might think of “moonlighting” or a “second job” as a side hustle for temporary financial relief. The job might even become permanent if the ax recently fell or a pink slip landed on your desk.

Take Jonathan Alonso (www.jongeek.com) of Orlando, Florida. Always one to seize or create opportunity, he realized that the empty schedule he was facing now that he wasn’t working was exactly that — opportunity. His marketing job had been in engineering, but he knew his skills would transfer.

What were his options? He didn’t want to face the highly publicized potential dangers of being a Lyft or Uber driver. He might as well do something at least tangentially related to his field.

The side hustle he chose was re-selling. On Craigslist and Nextdoor, “free” sections listed items consumers wanted to discard. “I volunteered to take some of these items off their hands and re-sell them via Facebook Marketplace or eBay,” he said. “It could help fund gas money to go to interviews,” his top priority now.

“I was able to get three broken laptop computers, considered trash,” he remarks.”I fixed them and turned a profit of $250 re-selling them on Facebook Marketplace.”

Tom Nathaniel, owner of Phoenix’s

LushDollar (lushdollar.com), thrives on seeing people earn money in a variety of ways, from helping with tasks (TaskRabbit and Craigslist’s “Gigs” section) to mystery shopping. He likes earning it, too.

“As a mystery shopper, I’ve made anywhere from as little as $9 to go to a grocery store to as much as $75 to test drive a car,” he said. He wanted to earn money to avoid dipping into proceeds from a big sale.

“Personally, I’ve had some great luck with JobSlinger.com (no affiliation), which gives you an idea of what kind of jobs are available in your area as well as what they pay,” he advises. “You can also click on those job descriptions to find the company name and what they’re looking for in a shopper.” Nathaniel indicates that your starting time in many of the companies may be as little as 24 to 48 hours.

As an independent contractor, he mentions, you aren’t usually asked for a time commitment. “I’ve been idle with some companies for more than five years and they still contact me with jobs. “I don’t do it as much now, but I could earn $300 a month with ease.”

“I’ve shied away from mystery shopping and just do food delivery apps (DoorDash and Grubhub) on the side now,” he reports, “as it’s much more lucrative. I can easily make an extra $1,000 a month just doing weekends.”

If you’ve escaped an 8-to-5 job or want to break out of your small business, find a side hustle. You might like it.