5 side hustles for accountants and bookkeepers

Interested in how your accounting or bookkeeping skills could make you some extra cash? You’re in luck. Here, we discuss some common side hustles to consider if you’re thinking about broadening your income stream. 

1. Create an online course

Sharing your knowledge can be a profitable method of making passive income. Online learning marketplaces, such as Udemy, allow anyone to create their own virtual course, whether it’s focused on bookkeeping basics or advanced accounting. Once you’ve recorded your video, you can attract buyers by promoting it on social media and amongst your professional network. What could be better than making money while you sleep? 

2. Write a book

If you’re a keen writer, you could self-publish a book on a specific area of accounting and bookkeeping. Once you’ve completed your book, you can publish it for free with Amazon Kindle Publishing and set your price and royalty rate. 

As well as making some extra money, you can also use your publication as an example of your expertise, perhaps leading to more clients or speaking engagements. 

3. Start a blog

Another potential side hustle is starting an accounting or bookkeeping blog. If you’re not sure where to begin, it can be helpful to develop a content calendar. Take a look at key highlights for the industry (such as important tax dates) then add in any prominent events such as conferences or holidays. With some blog posts planned in, you’ll also have space to react to trending topics, which can be a great way to deliver traffic from search engines. 

As your traffic grows, you can monetise your blog using Google AdSense. AdSense matches ads to your site based on your content and visitors, and advertisers bid on your display spaces to promote their products or services. The amount you earn will vary as advertisers pay different prices for different ads, but it’s a great way to monetise your content.  And as mentioned previously, if you opt to create a course or write an e-book, a blog can be a great place to promote this! 

4. Create a YouTube channel

With over 2.1 billion monthly active users around the world, YouTube has the potential to be an incredibly lucrative side hustle. From publishing informative videos on topics like accounting, bookkeeping and personal finance to discussing the benefits of using cloud-based accounting software like FreeAgent (just a suggestion, no pressure!), there’s a range of opportunities to generate an income. 

There are some conditions to meet before you can start making money from YouTube. These include having:

• 1,000 subscribers with 4,000 public watch hours in the past 12 months or
• 1,000 subscribers with 10 million valid public Shorts views in the past 90 days

Much in the same way as building a blog, it can require patience to accumulate subscribers. You’ll get notification of your eligibility so you can apply for the YouTube Partner Programme (YPP) and earn a proportion of the revenue from adverts on your videos. Ads aren’t the only way to earn money on YouTube - you can be sponsored to promote certain products or, of course, promote your own. 

5. Sell printables

There are lots of people out there who want to save money. Why not help them by creating a budget or a financial planner? You can use a simple tool like Canva to create digital designs for people to print. A quick search for ‘printables’ on Etsy could help to give you inspiration, understand pricing and what’s already out there.