7 Side Hustles for Project Managers

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Last Updated on October 18, 2021 by Daniella

Project managers have acquired many high income skills from wearing so many hats at their jobs. They can plan, procure, organize, and manage the overall development and execution of the project. These skills can translate over well for making money in a side hustle and small business.

If you’re a project manager and looking for side hustle ideas to start making some extra cash, you will want to keep reading this.

In this article you’ll learn about 7 side hustles for project managers to help you land a side gig that’s the perfect fit for you.

Let’s dig in.

What is a project manager?

A project manager is someone who is in charge of leading a project. This means they’ll take all the working pieces of the project from the people, budget, timeline and other components to ensure smooth-running project execution happens.

Projects are temporary. They can last a few weeks, a few months, longer or shorter.

A project manager will be in charge of managing these projects that come up throughout the year to ensure each one gets completed on time and with excellent results.

Your job title might be project manager. It also might be program manager, project leader, project director, chief project officer, etc.

You can also take on a project management position in jobs outside the office like general contracting or other professions.

To become a project manager you need a background, education and degree in a related field along with experience.

You will have a host of high income skills in your arsenal from critical thinking skills, organizational management, creativity, analytical thinking, time-management, strong communication and other skills.

Now that we’ve covered project management a bit, let’s dive into the best side hustles project managers can take up!

7 Side Hustles for Project Managers

In this list of side hustles for project managers you’ll find jobs that lean on the skills of planning, consulting, and organization.

There’s a lot of variety in this roundup so hopefully you find one or more side hustle ideas you have interest in.

Here they are…

  1. Virtual Assistant
  2. Business coach
  3. Business consultant
  4. Event planner
  5. Product launch strategist
  6. Social media manager
  7. Organizational consultant

For further reading, check out 8 side hustles for teachers. For more help coming up with the perfect side hustle idea for you, take our free side hustle quiz that will match you with your ideal type of side hustle with more free guidance of where to start.

1. Virtual Assistant

A virtual assistant or VA is an online personal assistant. Your role will be to help your client stay organized and be an aid for them to keep their business running smoothly.

The tasks you’ll do will vary based on the help your client needs but it can include:

  • Social media management
  • Data entry
  • Email and calendar management
  • Customer service
  • Scheduling
  • Staffing

You’ll work behind a computer and complete a set of tasks every day for your clients.

According to Payscale, the average salary of a virtual assistant is $16.13/hour however, many virtual assistants earn up to $25 to $100 per hour, some earning a full-time income, up to six figures per year or more!

Working as a VA comes with a ton of perks including the ability to work from home, flexible schedule, and high income potential.

Not to mention, it’s one of the best digital nomad jobs for location independence.

If this sounds interesting to you, learn more about becoming a VA by reading his guide to get you started.

Related: Check out our live interview we did with one of our very own VA’s on how they got started.

2. Business Coach

A business coach is someone that provides some great perspective to business owners, helping them run their company the best way possible.

Working as a project manager gives you a specific skill set and expertise that would work well with business coaching.

You can take an objective approach,helping your clients in understanding their strengths and weaknesses. You can also help them create an action plan to tackle to improve so they can strengthen their company’s position in the market and reach their goals.

Some of your work might include:

  • Conducting a business audit
  • Goal planning
  • Creating a business plan

According to Glassdoor, the average salary for a business coach is $64,773 per year. However, your prices shouldn’t be reflectant on this average salary. When you set your own prices, you have no limit on your income.

Like the virtual assistant job, this is a small business you’ll start for yourself though you can also work for a coaching company as an independent contractor who assigns you clients to work with.

To start your own coaching business, begin with your network. 

Talk to family and friends and reach out to your followers on social media which is a great place where you can get your first clients. You can also search for Facebook Groups in the type of business niche you want to coach in to find clients, search for Instagram related hashtags for potential clients, or pursue paid advertising to attract and onboard new coaching clients. 

After you get your first client, get a testimonial and a referral, if possible. This is the foundation for how you can start to cultivate and grow your coaching company.

For a step-by-step guide, you can read this resource which shows you how to start a coaching business.

3. Consultant

The job of a consultant is similar to that of a business coach. 

Your goal is to help your client improve in their business. You have a valuable outside perspective where you can see all the moving parts as an outsider and provide feedback to help your client achieve their goals.

Business consultants earn slightly above $75,000 per year on average, in the U.S.

This high-earning job requires expertise and knowledge in line with that of a project manager so it’s the perfect side hustle to take up.

To get started building and growing your business, you can follow the same path as laid out for the coaching gig mentioned above.

4. Event Planner

Event planners are in charge of organizing, planning and flawlessly executing an event for their client. This can include weddings, anniversary parties, conferences, baby showers, birthday parties, etc.

As a project manager you have the organizational and planning skills which make this job a likely fit.

It sounds fun to plan a party but if you’ve ever organized a large event of your own, you know it takes weeks, sometimes months of planning and preparation.

And people that are hiring event planners have the budget to do so, so you can expect to earn a higher income in this job, around $50,201/year on average in the U.S.

If you like working with people and you’re good at managing all the working pieces of a complex puzzle like managing vendors, outsourcing, and coordinating meetings then event planning is a good choice for a side hustle to pursue.

5. Product Launch Strategist

A product launch strategist helps business owners plan their product launch.

This could be the launch of a book, course, ecommerce or brick and mortar store, physical or digital product, etc.

A lot of planning goes into a successful launch from managing the email list, building the sales page, marketing, etc.

The product launch strategist is someone who coordinates the entire effort behind the launch to make sure it can be as successful as possible.

I recommend you check out this podcast which shares the behind-the-scenes of a product launch agency including how they managed their own stress-free nearly $300K launch!

Related: 10 Digital Products to Sell for Passive Income

6. Social Media Manager

Social media managers handle the social media interaction of a company on their social channels like Facebook, Instagram, etc.

You’ll do tasks that might look like this:

  • Creating a content calendar
  • Engaging with and responding to questions from followers
  • Building and executing a social media strategy in line with your clients goals
  • Building social media posts and writing captions
  • Keyword research

The average salary of a social media manager is about $52,000/year.

To learn more about social media management, read about how to become a social media manager.

7. Organizational Consultant

An organizational consultant is someone that helps their clients get better organized. You can take this one of two directions or do both!

  • Consumer organization
  • Business organization

First, you can help busy consumers and households get better organized doing jobs like closet organization, kitchen organization, entire home organization, etc. 

People have busy lives and enlisting a professional to help them get organized can help them save time, save money, and keep their sanity.

These kinds of jobs would require one-on-one work with consumers.

Second, you can also do more business organizational consult work, similar to the job duties shared in the consultant side hustle above. This involves going into a company and helping them better organize their processes. 

This can bring a ton of benefits to organizations including cutting out inefficiencies, making best use of their people power, saving time and saving money, increasing production output and other benefits.

This job earns a high salary average of just over $84,000/year for business organizational consultants.

Learn how to become a professional organizer in this free guide.

Final Thoughts

This wraps up our list of side hustles for project managers.

You can see that nearly every title and side hustle idea on our list makes good use of your project management skills and every job is high paying. 

Whether you’re looking for a work-from-home side hustle or job that puts you out into the field working one-on-one with people and companies, there’s a way for you to possibly make this work! Most importantly – make it your own.

What do you think? Which side hustle do you like the most?

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