In recent years, the rise of the Gig Economy has changed the way many people earn a living. For some, full-time freelance work has transformed into a way of life. For others, having one or more side hustles is now second nature. The trouble is that it isn't always easy to find a side hustle that is worth your time. There are also a variety of scams that pose as lucrative side hustles that aim to entrap ambitious workers looking to earn some extra cash. That's why it's incumbent on would-be side hustlers to do some in-depth research into any potential side hustle before moving forward with it. An excellent place to start is with one of today's most oft-promoted side hustles—remote bookkeeping.
Almost everywhere you look online, you'll see job sites, videos, and social media posts promoting virtual bookkeeping jobs. While the specifics vary, most promise high hourly wages, flexible hours, and relatively simple work. But is any of that true? Here's an in-depth look at whether you can turn a remote bookkeeping job into a valuable side hustle. Plus, we'll go over what you need to know before attempting to do it.
What Can You Earn as a Remote Bookkeeper?
To figure out if a remote bookkeeping job is a good side hustle for you, you'll first need to decide if it pays well enough to meet your needs. According to publicly available data from Glassdoor, the average hourly wage for remote bookkeepers is between around $25 and $35 if you're working for a US-based company. That agrees with most job openings posted on sites like Indeed and ZipRecruiter, too. However, on-staff bookkeeping jobs are only one of your available options.
On freelance sites like Upwork, bookkeepers charge as much as $175 per hour for their work and up to $300 for specialty bookkeeping projects. As a result, freelance remote bookkeeping jobs have more potential as a side hustle. For one thing, if you already have a job with benefits, there's little incentive to take a lower-paying staff bookkeeping position. Plus, there's a great deal more time flexibility in freelance work, making it ideal as a side hustle.
How To Start a Remote Bookkeeping Side Hustle
Of course, just because it's possible to earn a high hourly wage as a remote bookkeeper doesn't guarantee you success. Obviously, the odds of turning a remote bookkeeping job into a lucrative side hustle improve if you already have experience doing the work. That makes finding reliable clients simpler and gives you a justification for charging a high hourly rate. However, it's also possible to start a remote bookkeeping side hustle even if you have little experience in the field. Here's a brief step-by-step on how to start a bookkeeping business as a side hustle.
Learn the Ropes
Believe it or not, bookkeeping isn't a difficult job to master. That's because bookkeepers don't have to worry about offering financial advice or aiding businesses with tax filings and the like. A bookkeeper's job is to record a client's financial transactions, including purchases, sales, employee overhead, and other costs. The job does require a reasonable aptitude for mathematics, but anyone who's organized can master it.
The simplest place to start is by completing one or more online bookkeeping courses. That will give you the basic skills you'll need and give you a taste of the kind of work you'll end up doing. To improve your odds of success, you should also choose a small business accounting software to focus on and take a course in using it. There are multiple options to choose from, but you'll likely find that QuickBooks, FreshBooks, and Xero—in that order—are the most-used software suites.
Choose a Business Type and Register
Next, you'll need to decide how you'd like your new business to operate. If you intend your bookkeeping side hustle to function as only an occasional income source, you may wish to operate as an individual and not as a stand-alone legal entity. However, if you might want to eventually expand your remote bookkeeping gigs into a full-time job, you should create and register as a formal business. If you're inside the US, you will likely choose either a limited liability company (LLC) or an S corporation. This will keep your personal assets separate from the business and simplify your yearly taxes.
Set an Earnings Target
Finally, once you're ready to start finding clients, you'll need to decide how many you have the time to take on at once. You'll also need to determine the rate you plan to charge for your services. As a side hustle, you may be satisfied with a single occasional customer. However, if you intend to bring in a specific amount of income, you have two options. You can either set a high hourly rate and hope to pull in one or two regular customers. Or, you can set a more reasonable rate and amass a roster of smaller customers. Either way, you should research the tax implications involved in your side hustle and realize that your earnings before tax may be substantially higher than what you get to keep. That, in turn, may influence how many customers you try to juggle and how much you charge them, too.
Yes, Remote Bookkeeping Can Be a Great Side Hustle
The bottom line is that a remote bookkeeping job can be a great side hustle, and you can earn significant supplemental income by doing it. It's also possible to turn a remote bookkeeping side hustle into a full-time career if you end up enjoying the work and want to go further. As far as side hustles go, it's hard to do much better than that.
This article was written in cooperation with Philip Piletic