5 Side Hustles You Can Do In Retirement (To Supplement Income)

These are five side hustles that you can do in retirement that actually work based on your unique situation. This is coming from someone who specializes in side hustles. I have a YouTube channel with over 1.5 million subscribers, and I have a bunch of YouTube clients that have tried all kinds of different side hustles, so I am in a unique position to see which ones are best, especially for the older clients, which, by the way, I will be showing you a bunch of examples of those in this video, so stay tuned for that. But I have gotten requests for this video from my older viewers over and over again, and the truth is, I'm 32 years old, right? I'm not exactly who you'd expect to teach this, but let me tell you why I am the right guy to teach it. Before YouTube, I was a pharmacist, and most of my patients were 50-plus, and I developed real relationships with hundreds of older folks over the years, and I genuinely like working with older clients, and when those folks come into my coaching program now, I already understand them. But here's the bigger reason, though. My 50-plus clients typically get results faster than my younger clients, almost always. Why? Because you have an unfair advantage that younger clients can't replicate. You have wisdom, experience, and trust, and you can't look that up on ChatGPT. You can't generate it on Clod, and you can't fake it on TikTok. So the five side hustles in this video are the ones where your age is a superpower, not a limitation. So if this resonates with you, and you want me to make more content on it in the future, then let me know by gently tapping that Like button, and let's jump into it right now. All right, side hustle number one is one of the easiest ones to get started with, and that is affiliate marketing, and I call this one the trusted hookup. Okay, so here's how it works. You recommend a product or a service that you already like and use. Somebody else clicks your link and checks out that product or service. Then when they buy it, you get a cut. That's it. You're not selling anything that you made. You're not shipping boxes. You're not building an inventory. You're not running customer service. You're literally just being the person that people come to for honest recommendations, and getting paid when they take your advice. And here's the thing. If you're 50-plus, you already are that person in your friend group, right? You're the one that your daughter calls when she's buying a car. You're the one where the neighbor asks about what vacuum cleaner you use, or what lawnmower you recommend, right? You are probably a trusted voice in some sort of area, right? You know a lot about some sort of area, whether it's machines or computer parts or something like that. You're just not getting paid for it yet, and I call this one the trusted hookup because that's literally what's happening. You're hooking your friend up with something that you already like and something you already know is really good, and the company is paying you for doing what you would have done for free anyways. So it's a win-win-win situation for all three parties. Here's the analogy. Think about the last time you walked into a restaurant that you'd never been to before, and the host said, oh, you have got to order the steak, trust me. So you ordered the steak, and was it good? Probably, because that host wasn't selling you on the steak, they were just recommending the steak, and there's a huge difference between those two things. Selling makes people put their guard up, but recommending breaks it down, and that is affiliate marketing. You're not selling, you're just recommending, and the company is paying you to send them a customer who's already inclined to trust you. So let me tell you about my brother, Zach. He's 50 years old, and he's self-described as technologically challenged. Now, I love the guy, but he barely even knows how to use his phone half the time, and we get in little mini arguments about the phone sometimes, and it's kind of funny, but that's Zach, and about a year ago, I told him, Zach, you've got to start a YouTube channel, and within 29 days of starting his channel, literally 29 days after posting his very first video, he made $214 in a single day from AdSense, and that is just YouTube ads alone, and by month three, he had a $450 day, plus he was getting lots of affiliate commissions from the company Coarse Careers, and this is all from a guy who barely knows how to use his phone, and here's the thing about affiliate marketing for someone like Zach. He did not have to invent Coarse Careers, right? Coarse Careers is already a great company that has a great reputation and has helped thousands of people get jobs. All he had to do was just send customers to Coarse Careers, right, he didn't have to run customer support, he didn't have to manage inventory, he didn't have to do anything except recommend something that he already liked to people who already trusted him because he'd lived through the same career struggles that they were going through, and that is the play. Now, you might be thinking, but Shane, I don't have a YouTube channel, I don't wanna be on camera, I'm not techie. Doesn't matter, you don't even need YouTube to start affiliate marketing. You can do this in a Facebook group, you can do this in your email signature, you can do this when your friend asks, hey, what laptop should I buy? You literally just send them the link to the laptop, but you use an affiliate link for it. They get a great laptop, the company gets a customer, and you get a five to 10% commission. It's a win, win, win, three different times. Three winners and zero losers. And honestly, whenever I'm about to sign up for a new service, I always blast my friends and say, hey, do you have an affiliate link for this? Because I always want them to be able to get a little bit of the cut, right? Now, here's how to get started with affiliate marketing. Pick one product or service that you already use and love, or something that you think is really good. Could be a software, a book, a kitchen tool, a coaching program, an app, anything. Then go to Google and type the product name plus the words affiliate program. Nine times out of 10, they'll have one. If not, go to their website, scroll to the bottom, and see if they have the word affiliate, or referral, or partner, or something along those lines at the bottom of the website. If they do, click on it and sign up. Then get your link. And then start mentioning the product in your normal conversations. Text it to your friends, share it in your Facebook groups, throw in your email signature. Start with one product and get your first commission, then add a second, then a third, and that's it. Now, this is effective for making a little bit of money on the side, but it's almost certainly not gonna make a full-time income. The way you'd wanna do that is by starting a YouTube channel, and that's exactly what my brother did, and that's how he was able to make a full-time income. Because any side hustle on this list works incredibly well, but you wanna know what makes it 10 times easier? Having a YouTube channel. And if you're wondering what niche to pick or how to get started on YouTube, because it's honestly really easy, and it's even better for older people to get started on YouTube, older people are blowing up left and right, then go ahead and attend my live training by clicking the link in the description in the pinned comment below. YouTube and building your personal brand just got 10 times easier, and nobody's talking about it. And the reason it got 10 times easier is because of AI, and specifically, Cloud AI. And that's what we're gonna be talking about in this week's live training that we're doing. Click the link down in the description in the pinned comment below. I will be there, I'll be answering questions before, during, and after. We'll also be giving you an AI that's been designed to help you pick your niche if you don't have one in the first place, or if you already have one, it's gonna help you make it 10 times better. So we worked very hard on this AI, people absolutely love it. We've literally gotten hundreds of comments from people that love it, so you do not wanna miss out on it. And if you're watching this in the future for whatever reason, or it's already past the time of the live training, still click on that link, because we will be having more live trainings in the future, and you will be the first person to know, because it'll put you on a wait list for that. But with that being said, it's completely free, no reason not to attend. Click that link in the description, the pinned comment below, and I'll see you on the other side. So, side hustle number two is starting a personal brand YouTube channel, and I call this the internet elder. And buckle up, because this is the one where the 50 plus advantage is the most obvious, and the most undeniable, and the most underexploited side hustle on this entire list. Now, here's the deal. YouTube is a content platform, and to make money on YouTube, you don't need to be young, you don't need to be hot, you don't need to be charismatic, and you don't need to be technologically gifted, and you definitely don't need to know how to dance. But what you do need to do is you need to be trusted. And trust is something the 50 plus crowd has in spades. That's something that 22 year old TikTokers can't fake. And there are millions of people over 50 watching YouTube every single day, and the supply of creators serving them is tiny. So, massive demand, tiny supply. That is not a bad place to be, that's a goldmine. And I call this one the internet elder, because that's the role that you're playing. To younger viewers, you're like the cool aunt, or uncle, or grandparent who actually knows your stuff. You're the internet version of the wise figure that they wish they had in real life. To viewers your own age, you're the peer that they've been searching for and can't find. Because almost nobody over 50 is making content. They're starving for someone who actually lives the same life that they live. And here's the analogy that sealed this for me. Think about the YouTube landscape like a town with 100 restaurants. 95 of those restaurants are run by 22 year olds, all making the exact same kind of food. Five are run by 55 year olds with 30 years of cooking experience. And all five of them are making different types of foods. Which ones do you think are going to stand out? Which ones are going to have a line down the block? The five, every single time. So here's some proof, RJ. So RJ's in his 60s, and this was the thing that he knew about firsthand. The thing that he'd been planning for, and researching, and thinking about for years. And most people would have told RJ, you're too old to start YouTube. The platform is for young people. And most people would be dead wrong. And within a few months of starting his channel, RJ made over $20,000 in a single month. Not lifetime, not over a year, a single month from YouTube. And here's why it worked. Almost nobody was talking about retirement on YouTube. And the people that were, were usually younger. So most of the so-called retirement experts were like 30 year old financial advisors in expensive suits. But RJ was the audience. He was living what he was teaching. And he was a trusted voice in a niche full of, at least what a lot of people would think, to be pretenders. And it's not just RJ. My client, Craig, is a realtor up in Montana. And he's been in real estate for years. We helped him build a YouTube channel about Montana real estate. And Craig just joined us, and he posted one video that got over 100,000 views. And think about this. If he even closes one deal from Montana, that might pay for an entire year of YouTube effort. And I promise you, he's gonna be closing a lot more than that from his channel. And he's using YouTube as the world's most efficient lead generation machine for his business. And he doesn't necessarily need to make a dollar from YouTube ads directly. The commissions from the deals he closes for those YouTube viewers, that's where the money's gonna come from. So pick a topic where your age and your life experience makes you uniquely credible. Show up consistently, be honest, be useful, and the internet will find you. Now, when it comes to how to start a YouTube channel, that's a no-brainer. Attend my live training by clicking that link in the description in the pinned comment below. I'll also be giving away an AI that will help you to dial in your niche, and we'll be focusing on picking the perfect niche for you in the live training. Plus, we'll tell you step-by-step exactly how to start, how to monetize your channel, and at the end, I'll answer literally any questions that you have for me. So do not miss out on it. Click that link in the description in the pinned comment below, and I look forward to seeing you there. All right, next is kind of obvious, but it's done-for-you services. And I call this the Career Encore. Now, there's a lot of other services you could sell, but I've just noticed over and over again, it's really easy for people to sell this particular type of service, which is a career service. Now, this is one for people who spent 30 years getting really, really good at something, right? Accounting, HR, marketing, project management, engineering, sales, IT operations, whatever. And now, they're staring at retirement thinking, wait, am I just gonna throw all that knowledge away? Don't, okay? Don't throw it away, don't waste it. You can take what you spent 30 years learning, you can turn it into a service, and then you can offer it to other people who need it, but don't have it. They pay you, you work part-time, on your own terms, from your kitchen table, or your patio, or your trailer at the lake, wherever the hell you wanna be, right? And what's obvious to you after 30 years in a field is not obvious to anyone else. You spent so long doing this thing that you forgot it's a skill. You forgot that it's valuable. You forgot that people pay good money for it. Just as a really obvious example, resume reviews. Someone who's trying to get into a career oftentimes makes very obvious mistakes on their resume that for somebody already in the career would be incredibly easy to see. And I call this the career encore because that's exactly what it is. Your career doesn't end at retirement, it evolves. You go from being a nine-to-five employee, getting a fixed salary, to being a freelancer charging premium rates for the same expertise. So same brain, same skills, but better hours and different pricing. So here's the analogy. Imagine you spent 30 years learning how to make the world's best lasagna. Like, you loved lasagna, right? You know the cheese ratio, you know the temperature curve, you know the exact noodle, you know how long it needs to rest after it comes out of the oven. You know everything. Then you retire and you just stop making lasagna. That's insane. There's a whole world of people out there who can't make a decent lasagna to save their life. People who would pay you to make it for them or people who would pay you to consult for them. So you don't have to open a restaurant. You don't have to franchise it. You don't have to do anything dramatic. You just make lasagna on the side, sell it to five families a week and charge $50 a pop. And that's a thousand dollars a month for a skill that you already have. Now, career skills work exactly the same way, right? You don't throw away 30 years of expertise. You can sell it part-time to the people who don't have it. So a great example is Bill Hanna. This is one of my clients and Bill spent decades in accounting and finance, climbing all the way to the financial controller level. Now, if you don't know what a financial controller does, that's the person that companies hire to keep the book straight, audit proof the numbers and tell the CEO when something is about to go sideways. And it is a serious job. It takes serious expertise. And when Bill came to me, he was looking at retirement and wondering what was next. And I helped Bill grow his channel, The Financial Controller, and he teaches other accountants how to do what he spent his entire career figuring out how to do, which is become a financial controller. So he sells coaching courses and done for you advisory services to companies and individuals. And here's the thing about Bill that I want you to really understand. Bill didn't invent something new. He's not curing cancer. He's literally selling the exact knowledge that he was getting paid a salary to use. The only difference now is he is not trading hours for a fixed paycheck. He's leveraging that expertise across hundreds of people who pay him for access to it. And there's so many different ways to get paid doing this. You don't necessarily have to do career coaching or resumes. You could do consulting for companies and just do it part-time. There's like so many different things that you can do. And the more boring the industry is, I've kind of noticed the better. And this brings me to the next one, which is coaching and tutoring. I like to call this the one step ahead play. So coaching and tutoring is where you teach somebody one-on-one or in small groups how to do something that you've already figured out how to do. Now, here's the misunderstanding that most people have about coaching. You do not need to be the world's greatest expert. You don't need a PhD. You don't need a fancy certification unless your specific niche legally requires one like therapy or financial advising. You just need to be one step ahead of the person that you're coaching, right? Just one step ahead. You don't have to be at the summit of the mountain to help someone hiking up it. You just have to be further up the trail than they are. So if you're 55 and you've successfully managed your own retirement portfolio for 30 years, you can coach 45-year-olds who are just starting to think about it. You are one step ahead. If you've raised three kids successfully, you can coach new parents how to do a better job raising their kids. You're one step ahead. If you've run a small business for 20 years, you can coach people who want to start one and formulate their LLC in the right way or get a business on. Again, you're one step ahead. If you've stayed married for 30 years and you actually like your spouse, you can coach couples on a fraction of that, right? How they can stay married as well. Again, you're one step ahead. Additionally, let's just say you've gotten divorced. You could coach people who are recent divorcees how to do it gracefully. Again, you're one step ahead. No matter what has happened in your life, whether it's really good or really bad, that is reference experience that you can use to help other people either do really good or avoid doing really bad. So just stop, look at your life, take an inventory and ask yourself, where am I one step ahead of somebody? Because that is a coaching business sitting there waiting for you. So my client Antoine runs a channel called Black Heights Education. And Antoine teaches people how to get into high-paying tech and engineering careers. And he focuses on African-Americans, hence the name Black Heights. And he's been in the field for years. He's lived it, he's mentored people informally in his entire career. And when Antoine started monetizing this, he wasn't selling himself as the world's number one tech career expert. He was selling himself as somebody one step ahead of people watching his channel. And people paid them because they could see he'd already done what they were trying to do and he did it recently. So Antoine got all the way up to over $100,000 a month in the time that he worked with me. And he produced his production time dramatically by leveraging the system that we built together. So he wasn't working harder, he was working smarter. And that's what coaching looks like when it's done right. Both me coaching him as well as him coaching his students. You don't burn out, you don't train hours for dollars. You package your knowledge once, you deliver it cleanly and you serve people who are exactly where you used to be. So a great way to get started here is to pick one thing that you're one step ahead on, right? Could be financial planning, parenting, career transitions, fitness, a hobby, faith, language skills. There's so many different niches out there. Again, if you want help selecting your niche, click that link in the description in the pinned comment below. On the live training this week, I'll be giving away an AI that actually helps you to select it and I'll be giving you extensive training on how to do this, right? So do not waste three years trying to figure this out, just attend the training. Then start offering free coaching to friends and acquaintances who genuinely need help, get their feedback, refine your offer and then start charging money. You can begin coaching by doing hourly. You can charge 50 to $100 per hour minimum and then you can raise your rates every five clients. Or what's even better is to actually just do an ongoing coaching program where you actually sell a bunch of different coaching sessions at one time and charge them much higher prices for it. All right, next is digital products and online courses and I call this the Forever Asset. Now, this could be a digital product or it could be a digital product inside of a group. Now, my favorite platform for digital products and groups is Skool, that's S-K-O-O-L. But we'll get to that here in a moment. The simple explanation is digital products and online courses are the highest margin play on this list. Why? Because you build the months and you sell them forever. Now, a digital product is anything that you create digitally that you can deliver to a customer without shipping a physical thing. So it could be a PDF guide, a spreadsheet template, a workbook, a planner, an online course, a video series, a piece of software, a meal plan, a workout program, a resume template, an AI, et cetera, et cetera. And the beautiful thing about this side hustle is once you built it, your cost to deliver it to your 100th customer is the same as your cost to deliver it to your 10,000th customer. And that is actually really rare. It's basically zero. And that is why this side hustle has the highest profit margin of anything on the list. Sometimes 95% margin. Now, I wanna be honest with you, the reason I saved this one for last is because it's also the hardest to start. You have to actually build the thing first and that is real work upfront. And that's the price of invention. But once it's built, you have an asset that pays you on autopilot for years. And I call this one the forever asset because that's exactly what it is. You're not trading time for money, you're building something that exists in the world after you stop working on it and it pays you while you sleep and it pays you while you're at the lake and it pays you while you're with your grandkids. And that's just the dream. I would say that out of all the different products, once you get this one going, it probably has the best lifestyle. But it's just way harder to get going than most of the other ones on the list. Now, my client Guy, for instance, helps people who have tinnitus. This is constant ringing in the ears and he's created some digital products to help people with this as well. And those are bringing him passive income every month. And he actually made it to $1,500 a month while working with us before he even made it to 500 subscribers. So yeah, tiny audience and he was still making a really good side hustle income, right niche and selling the right product. Now, by the way, quick interruption, if you're interested in becoming my client, listen to this. Quick break, this video is sponsored by me. Most of you don't know that I actually have my own coaching program on personal branding and then growing and making money on YouTube. And this is good for complete beginners, maybe even people who just wanna get a job by growing their personal brand, all the way up to people who are very advanced on YouTube. And they get to work directly with myself and my team to help them reach their goals. Now, we are opening up three to five spots and this is pretty rare. We usually don't have these open. We usually only limit them to select people, but we're opening up three to five spots and you can check those out down the description and the pin comment below. And in this program, you'll get to work directly with myself and other people who are highly successful on YouTube. Just as an example, Sean was able to go all the way from being stuck, not making very much money on his channel to making over $500,000 a month. Now that's an example of one of my more advanced students, but there's lots of examples of people who started off from scratch and they got to 5K a month, 10K a month, et cetera. So check that out down the description and the pin comment below. Now, by the way, check out this video right here to learn more about Antoine's story and how we helped him grow his YouTube channel.