Creative Side-Hustles for Your Artistic Side | The Beat Asia
CAREERS

7 Creative Side-Hustles To Start in 2023

Starting your own venture doesn’t always have to come with a plan measured in decades. Sometimes, it can be a way to explore personal skills and interests that you’ve always wanted to try.

Work culture these days tends to put more value on the ‘grind mindset', which is contingent with sleepless nights, hard work, and sacrifice. True, most things don’t come easy, but part of what makes nurturing your creativity so great is that it can help you adapt better to solve new problems.

If you feel like getting in touch with your creative brain in 2023, check out our top picks for low-entry skills to expose yourself to a fresh perspective. From there, you can slowly introduce other elements of entrepreneurship to your newfound hobby, such as monetisation and marketing!

Knitting and Crocheting

7 Creative Side-Hustles To Explore this Holiday Season 1
Website/Unsplash

As two of the most popular yarn arts capable of producing warm winter wardrobe staples, there’s no better time to learn either one (or both) of these garment-making skills.

Hong Kong has many yarn-obsessed communities with the resources and knowledge to help you start your first project. Almost every local knit store has an online presence, with patrons often exchanging photos of their projects, patterns, and offering advice.

If you prefer self-study, knitting and crocheting is the perfect creative hobby to pick up. There are thousands of free resources floating around on YouTube or passion-funded blogs with step-by-step instructions. As intimidating as it is to commit to a new project, you’ll soon find each stitch looking better than the last.

A quick starting point for saleable items is Etsy, and you can also get down and dirty with video-creation if you want to document and share your passion for knitting for the world wide web to see.


Photography

7 Creative Side-Hustles To Explore this Holiday Season 2
Website/Unsplash

People are quick to steer away or completely dismiss photography as a worthwhile skill to learn, oftentimes citing the steep cost of professional grade cameras to “get into it”. But the truth is, photography is one of the best creative outlets to learn through practice – whether you have a high-power machine or not. You already have the tools to take the picture, all that’s left is to learn how to use it.

Carrying your camera with you as you play around with what looks good and what doesn’t is the best way to learn how to convey exactly what you want to convey. It’s also an excuse to learn photo processing tools like Photoshop or other editing software – which is a handy skill for most industries. You can also join Stockphoto websites, such as Envato or Shutterstock, to make money through photography, or even help others capture special events or portraits.

Clay and Pottery

7 Creative Side-Hustles To Explore this Holiday Season 3
Website/Unsplash

Hong Kong’s arts and crafts scene has been booming in recent years, spurring artists and creatives to delve into art classes dealing with more challenging media.

Clay-making was and still is all the rage on handmade online market places. In the beginning of 2021, TikTok saw a wave of polymer clay chunky rings, which evolved into cute little clay mascot frogs and other knick-knacks.

With Hong Kong boasting a surprising amount of clay studios, decked with rows of turning wheels, multi-colour glazes, and kilns, you can be rest assured that you will not be alone in trying out this unique hobby. Showcase your creations of social media, teach others how to achieve a certain look in their crockery, or perhaps sell your own creations on Etsy or Instagram.

Event Planning

7 Creative Side-Hustles To Explore this Holiday Season 4
Website/Unsplash

Event planning for the serial organiser is a dream come true, especially for those who are bored without a little chaos in their lives. Whether it’s a birthday, corporate holiday party, or a high school reunion, the event planning business is bound to keep you on your toes all day long.

If you wish to get into this business, it’s best to volunteer your time to help with event planning wherever you can find it. A friend’s kids’ birthday coming up? Ask if they’d like some help planning! Get your foot in the door fast, and learn as you go – remember, event planning travels through word-of-mouth, so get familiar with faces and names.

Once you’ve got some experience under your belt, it would be a good idea to get a portfolio to showcase all the events and parties you’ve helped bring to life.

Cooking and Baking

7 Creative Side-Hustles To Explore this Holiday Season 5

Lots of food and beverage businesses start at home, which should be to no surprise to anyone, because everybody gets hungry! If you like to decompress in the kitchen, baking or trying out new recipes, and have on more than one occasion heard, “You know, I would pay for these”, you’re already half-way there.

Testing out recipes and feeding friends and family is no doubt a joyous feeling, but imagine if you could bring your cooking to a larger circle. With more mouths to feed, you no doubt get a little faster in kitchen, and get a little more caught up in the details, which will require you to develop organisational skills.

You could select a niche, such as baked goods, or go all-out with full meal catering and offer your services and bites on Instagram and Facebook – see what’s on the market for some inspiration! Don’t be afraid to get your family and friends to help you with marketing, taste-testing, and getting their hands dirty in the kitchen – this isn’t a one-man job.

Illustrations and Writing

7 Creative Side-Hustles To Explore this Holiday Season 6
Website/Unsplash

For the creative who prefers to put their ideas down on paper, whether through hand-drawn illustrations, digital art, writing, or other variations – there are multiple ways to make money off your talents.

Copy-writing is an invaluable skill in the digital media industry. Openings at Upwork, Freelancer, and Guru offer a great starting point to sharpen your advertorial writing skills.

Creative prompts with a little more freedom in writing can be started at home, provided you have a portfolio where you can showcase all those writing prompts turned short stories. You can also turn to Fiverr to charge for your writing, or monetise your own blog and build a loyal readership of your own.

Illustration follows similar avenues, with platforms such as DeviantArt providing a large space for artists to share and collate their own creations. If you’d like to monetise your artwork, be careful about releasing images without a watermark, as crummy internet surfers can steal your art and profit off it as an NFT. Check out Fiverr for unique art requests, constructive criticism, and buddy up with fellow writers who may wish to employ your talent to accompany their writing.

Subscribe to The Beat's newsletter to receive compelling, curated content straight to your inbox! You can also create an account with us for free to start bookmarking articles for later reading.