Oct 7, 2024

October 7, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. Americans watch nearly three hours of television a day. That got us wondering how much they’d earn, if they were participating in some of the activities that they were otherwise merely watching. So, we took a look at side gigs inspired by popular TV shows and analyzed their income potential. Bottom line? You could make a lot of money if you made better use of your TV time. In no particular order, here are seven side gigs inspired by popular TV shows. And we include estimates of how much you could earn if you spent your three hours a day working like your favorite TV characters. The Bear: Chef In  The Bear , a talented young chef named Carmen Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) inherits his family’s sandwich shop and decides to turn it into a Michelin-Star restaurant. But as the show illustrates, chefs don’t really have the option of working in simple three-hour increments. After all, shopping, prepping and cooking an elegant meal can take a full day. But cooking is still a great part-time side hustle. You simply need to take the 21 hours that you’d otherwise spend watching TV each week and concentrate that time into two or three days — ideally weekends. SideHusl.com ‘s analysis found that a talented chef could rake in some serious dough offering meals on just Friday and Saturday nights. Consider what could happen if you offered meals through  EatWith. This international foodie site helps chefs market meals that they host in their own homes. You design the menu, determine the days and times, how many guests can attend each meal and the price. One New York chef offers Asian Seafood dinners for $111 a plate on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, for instance. (That’s a food-only price. But diners are welcome to bring their own alcohol.) With a 14-guest maximum, a full table would gross this chef $1,554 per night. If you assume that ingredients cost one-third of the per-plate price, this chef earns roughly $1,000 per meal. Do that two nights a week and you’ll earn $2,000 weekly and roughly $8,000 per month. Not bad for a weekend side gig. Ted Lasso: Coach A college football coach is enlisted to coach a professional English soccer team in  Ted Lasso . Despite knowing nothing about soccer, Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) turns the team into a contender. And Lasso’s boss offers to make him the highest-paid coach in soccer. Coaching is a great side gig. But there are some not-too-subtle differences between a sitcom and reality. First, your chance of getting a coaching gig with no relevant experience is remote. Secondly, even though you generally do get to set your own rate of pay with coaching side hustles, you’re not going to make millions. The typical part-time coach charges $40 to $60 per hour. That said, if you play a sport and/or have coaching experience, this is a time-flexible side hustle with plenty of demand. Several sites, including  CoachUp ,  TeachMeTo  and  Athletes Untapped , enlist experts to coach almost any sport — basketball, baseball, pickleball, golf, surfing, la crosse, soccer, and the list goes on. You decide what sports to coach, when, where, and what to charge. Assuming you charge $40 an hour — on the low end of normal — and coach the full 21 hours that you’d otherwise be watching TV, you’d earn $840 per week, or roughly $3,360 per month. Slow Horses: Assistant There probably are freelance positions for spies, but they’re not booked through the type of online work platforms that  SideHusl.com  rates. So instead, we focus on one of the sleeper characters in the room — Catherine Standish, the smart but often overlooked assistant in Slough House. Like Catherine (Saskia Reeves), personal assistants are enlisted to do a wide array of work, from arranging meetings to filing. In today’s digital world, they’re also often enlisted to update websites, handle email, book travel and manage social media posts. The wider the assistant’s skillset and deeper his or her experience, the more likely their pay will exceed the $15 to $25 per hour average. Some virtual assistants, in fact, earn $75 to $100 per hour. However, most commonly, pay ranges from $20 to $25 per hour. At 21 hours a week, that works out to $420 to $525 per week, or about $2,000 a month. High Potential: Consultant and Cleaner High Potential is about  a cleaner, who becomes a part-time police consultant. Like many of the highly-paid consulting positions we write about at  SideHusl.com , all this job requires is unique experience that gives you insight into a niche topic. Here, Morgan (Kaitlin Olson) uses her organizational skills to solve crimes. In real life, consultants are used to help companies understand consumer preferences before offering new products or services. They’re used to evaluate consumer experiences and impressions. And, those with deep backgrounds in various areas are tapped to provide practical advice on accomplishing vexing tasks. Pay ranges from $50 to more than $250 an hour. Companies enlisting part-time freelance consultants include  Maven ,  Respondent ,  UserInterviews ,  WinnWinn Research  and  RarePatientVoice  (for health-related consulting). But there’s one big caveat when talking about how much you’ll earn in any given week. Namely, consulting gigs are highly paid but extremely irregular. You might get offered one or two a month — or none at all. Thus, if you want to use all of your 21 hours weekly, also consider Morgan’s other job — cleaning and organizing. Deep Cleaners, who list their services on  Taskrabbit , commonly charge $25 to $50 per hour. And really dirty jobs — like cleaning barbecues and baby gear — can command more. For estimating sake, we’ll figure you get one consulting gig per month at $100. And you spend the remaining 83 hours each month cleaning at an average rate of $35. That nets you just over $3,000 a month. Abbott Elementary: Teacher Plot line: Eternally optimistic Janine Teagues (Quinta Brunson) pushes through underfunding, administrative incompetence and inexperience to educate a group of low-income second graders. This sitcom deals lightly with many serious issues that send teachers packing — as they do regularly in Abbott Elementary . However, you can avoid many of the frustrations of teaching in public schools with teaching side hustles. First, administrative interference is negligible or non-existent in the side gig world. Secondly, where teachers are notoriously underpaid, you set your own rates with the best teaching side hustles. There are two platforms here that stand out — Wyzant  and  Outschool . Wyzant is a tutoring platform where you set your own rates, availability and specialties. Common rates vary dramatically based on the subject and level that you teach. Where higher math instructors often command $100 or more per hour, those teaching reading, writing and grammar tend to charge rates ranging from $35 to $80 per hour. With Outschool, instructors teach classes online for 3-to 18-year-olds . Instructors determine the curriculum and whether it’s one class or a series. They also set their own rates, determine when classes will be held, and set the maximum number of children who can attend each class. The amount you earn depends on what you charge and how many kids sign up for your course. Popular instructors can easily earn $50 per hour. Assuming that you do earn $50 per hour, using your 21 hours this way grosses $1,050 a week, or roughly $4,200 per month. Grey’s Anatomy: Medical Doctors and nurses make pretty good money in their main job, but as any number of the current and historic medical shows — from  Grey’s Anatomy  to  House  — can illustrate, it’s a stressful job. Fortunately, many medical side hustles are less so, but they’re still highly lucrative. These side hustles range from caring for individual patients in a home-based setting to medical writing or serving as an expert witness, advising in medical malpractice and medical device trials. What do these side gigs pay? A licensed nurse can make $25 to $50 an hour through  Care , looking after a single patient that needs skilled nursing. Medical writing jobs , which involve explaining medical research, treatments and drug side effects, typically pay $90 — $150 per hour. Meanwhile, the pay for being an expert witness varies from about $250 to more than $750 per hour, depending on your credentials. Since medical writing and skilled nursing jobs are far more common than being called as an expert witness, we’ll assume you could earn $75 per hour, on average, with this side gig. For 21 hours, that makes the weekly pay $1,575 and the monthly pay $6,300. Succession: Heir Succession follows the highly dysfunctional Roy Family as media magnate, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), considers who to name his successor to the vast Waystar Roy Co. When it comes to side gigs inspired by TV shows, this one is all about jockeying for position to be the main heir. Frankly, it’s a modern version of Game of Thrones. And, like Game of Thrones, you can easily conclude that waiting for the family patriarch to die and leave you rich is way more trouble than it’s worth. Kristof is the editor of  SideHusl.com , an independent website that reviews moneymaking opportunities in the gig economy.