Side jobs aren’t just for struggling or newer agents. They can be great for entrepreneurial agents who can’t sit still.

Or, experienced agents might look to monetize their professional success with coaching or teaching.

In the technology age, having multiple income streams can help insulate you against disruption in this industry. Studies suggest that millionaires, on average, have seven streams of income, instead of just their day job. Stock, real estate, bonds, and, of course, side hustles!

Here I will brainstorm with you some good side jobs for real estate agents!

List of Side Job Ideas

The Gig Economy

Related to side hustles is what I call the “gig economy”. Driving for Uber, renting out a room with AirBnB, selling services on Fiverr – these are all the kinds of things you can do to make some extra cash.

Here is a great list of jobs that might fit your skills and availability.

Top options that might suit a real estate agent?

• Bellhops or Dolly (moving service)
• Fancy Hands (virtual assistants)
• Hop Skip Drive (ridesharing)
• TaskRabbit or Thumbtack (homecare services)

Real Estate Adjacent Jobs

Many side hustles are connected to what we do as real estate sales professionals.

Landing ones of these kinds of roles can help make additional income while also growing your normal business. For example, the above estate sale company works with Realtors to list probate homes for sale.

You also have lots of professional connections in the local industry ready to be your customers. Do you suck at cold calling but have a knack for organizing closets? Partner with agents in your brokerage to offer current or past clients a professional organization as a closing gift!

If you have great attention to detail and prefer sitting behind a computer, perhaps you would be well served to work as a transaction manager for other agents in the office, charging them $300 per closing. Or maybe your broker could use you to help manage their properties!

Consider which pieces touch the real estate transaction and how that might turn into success for you.

• Notary
• Home Organization
• Estate Sales
• Home Staging
• Home Maintenance
• Appraisals
• Inspectors
• Property Management
• Transaction Management

Real Estate Virtual Assistant

Put your real estate skills, training, and perhaps even license to use as a real estate virtual assistant.

There are numerous companies to choose from in a sector that continues to grow.

Some companies focus on employees in the Phillippines. But others hire exclusively US-based VAs (especially for licensed or unlicensed ISA roles involving the telephone).

Alternatively, you can become an on-site assistant for your brokerage, perhaps as an ISA for top agents in your office.

Real Estate Photography and Videography

If you have a talent and taste for photography, video, or drones, there is money to be made doing that part-time or full-time for other agents!

There are numerous and growing real estate photography companies that are looking for photographers to hire in-house with all the support.

Or you can just browse your local MLS or Zillow for listings with lousy photos. Those are the agents worth reaching out to!

You can even sell your local real estate photography online on stock photography websites!

Real Estate Entrepreneurship

Benjamin Beaver in San Angelo, TX has managed to turn his real estate passion into several small business ventures.

While doing listing photoshoots and videography, he linked up several local photographers and videographers and eventually formed their own media company, doing not only listing photos for agents but commercials for local businesses in numerous industries. Benjamin Beaver is still an agent – in fact the top-producing agent in San Angelo.

You can perhaps do something similar.

And it doesn’t have to be video. A few real estate services you might consider include:

• handyman / contractor
• moving company
• digital marketing
• tax assessment appeals
• property management companies
• short sale expert

All of these can be spun off into businesses of their own, serving other agents and businesses in your community.

Coaching and Training

Agent Training

If you are really good at a particular aspect of real estate, you can make money teaching it! That’s what the agents who founded the Paperless Agent did – a real estate industry consultant program all about becoming a tech-savvy agent.

Some agents have monetized their networking and online community-building skills, like the folks at Lab Coat Agents, who manage one of real estate’s largest and most active Facebook groups.

You’ll often find agents like these landing speaking gigs at state and national conventions, presenting on their topic.

Coaching

If you’ve met with some success in real estate, and perhaps had some coaching yourself, diversifying your income and time with some coaching is a popular way to go.

You can join one of the major outfits around the country that will link you up with clients. A partial list of some of the top coaching agencies include:

• Mike Ferry
• Brian Buffini
• Verl Workman
• Tim and Julie Harris
• Kevin Ward
• Tom Ferry
• …and more

Course Instructor

Relatedly, you might look at becoming a trainer in your state. You can teach the real estate license courses, or teaching accreditations, designations, and continuing education courses with State and local associations.

Different states have different requirements for becoming an instructor. I recommend starting by reaching out to your local association.

Writing for Real Estate

I believe content marketing has a bright future in real estate that will outlive even the traditional sales agent.

With the advent of ChatGPT, it may be tempting to worry that these jobs will quickly be replaced by AI. I am skeptical. Real estate is a very hyperlocal endeavor and AI is unlikely to have been trained on the kind of hyperlocal insights that would make for a compelling article. But we will see!

Writing is a big part of content marketing, and can mean a few different things.

Blog Writer

Top teams and brokerages pay a premium for website content that is customized to them and their conversion needs. Often these companies may hire in-house, or perhaps from a content company that hires the writers for them.

You can reach out to these companies to inquire about writing for them. A few include:

• Verblio (formerly BlogMutt)
• Textbroker
• Upwork

An example is the “Best Real Estate Writer” who just writes real estate content.

Staff Writer

There are numerous online and print real estate magazines that may be looking for writers or editors who understand real estate.

• Inman
• CRETech
• RISMedia
• FitSmallBusiness
• Keeping Current Matters
• TheRealDeal
• National Association of Realtors

I recommend browsing LinkedIn jobs for the keywords “real estate writer”. There are numerous types of organizations that need blog, email, or professional content.

One of the best ways into a job like this is probably doing a few free guest posts. If you have what it takes, you can then perhaps parlay that into career opportunities in the future.

Affiliate Marketing and FIRE

If you are website and SEO savvy, writing content for your own niche website can be a way of making money. It can be on real estate or not.

This technique is a favorite of the “FIRE” community – Financially Independent Retire Early. FIRE advocates evangelize a mixture of pursuing passive and location-independent income while leading an ascetic lifestyle of careful financial discipline.

With affiliate marketing, you can create your own website and earn traffic. Once you have enough website traffic, you can partner with different products in your niche, or even Amazon, to collect affiliate commissions when people click through your site to purchase the items.

Well-known examples of affiliate websites include This Is Why I’m Broke, the Wirecutter, and FitSmallBusiness.

Affiliate marketing is not the only way of making money from these sites. You can enable Google AdSense, create and sell your own products (e.g. an e-book), sell advertising or sponsored advertising, and use it to become an authority in your niche.

If you are interested in a strategy like this, I recommend getting started with Authority Hacker and Income School, both of whom offer a lot of free content about creating quality, long-lived, and profitable online communities.

Real Estate Investing

This isn’t just the obvious “buy a rental property for yourself” and generate passive income. That takes a lot of money! So does buying and selling properties as a flipper.

There are ways to make money as an agent with no money upfront. Partner with a local real estate investor. You can help “bird dog” for them – finding investable properties in your market. Bird dogs, or wholesalers, get fees for the properties they find. And those properties for which selling to an investor doesn’t make sense – well – maybe listing would!

If you are interested in investing, the #1 place to start is the blogs, forums, guides, calculators, and podcasts over at Bigger Pockets. Oh, and networking on Bigger Pockets is an awesome way to connect with local investor clients.

Always be careful when working with investing and be sure you are behaving within the confines of your state’s licensing laws while working both as a licensed agent and investor.

Monetize Your Existing Assets

Whether you’re strapped for cash, or just looking to boost your ROI, look at what you already are doing or have that you aren’t making money from.

Do you have a drone that you use once a month? What if you rented it out to other agents in your office?

Do you have a YouTube channel with 1000+ subscribers? Why not enable YouTube ads?

Do you have an awesome hyperlocal blog that gets 10,000s of monthly views? Why not solicit ads from local businesses?

If you are a real estate broker, maybe it’s time to set up property management and start better monetizing those leads you had been referring out previously.

Realty Austin is an Austin brokerage that creates its own relocation guide they give their buyers and actually get local businesses to advertise in the guide. They make money creating magazines and content for their real estate clients!

Working on a Team or Salary

So, this isn’t quite a side hustle. But especially if you are newer or feel in over your head, you might want to consider joining a team as a salaried agent.

Your share of the split will be tiny. But you’ll have a steady stream of business with the right team, and can learn the ropes of how a high-functioning team is run.

You should already know some of the top teams in your market, but you can also check out Real Tends 1000 for top-producing teams across the country.

Not just teams, but you might also explore brokerages that pay agents by salary, like Redfin. You’re still an agent, but you won’t go months without a commission check.

There are other full-time jobs closely related to real estate that might be an easy transition like working for a title company, as a local builder’s representative, or mortgage officer.

NAR and MLS Jobs

If you are looking for something different, but still close to home, transitioning into a role with the trade associations or MLS companies might be a natural move.

NAR posts positions at both the national level as well as lets the local associations advertise open positions on their site.

And of course, the MLSs need staff as well. CRMLS, BrightMLS, MFRMLS, and your local MLSs might all be a source for a real estate job or role.

Joining the Disruptors

Unless you are nuts, you’ve been paying close attention to real estate tech and news. There is a lot going on!

Some agents consider these disruptors the “enemy”, foes who are trying to take agents’ jobs and commissions.

But perhaps if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

These aren’t just software nerds in Silicon Valley running the show. Especially with the Power Buyer, DeFi, and institutional buyer craze, these companies increasingly need boots on the ground and are hiring experienced agents with real estate chops.

Meanwhile, the big brokerages still need employees and help, too. eXp Realty has tons of support staff for their agents, all while working in their virtual world from home. KW, Realogy, Berkshire Hathaway, and Compass are all advertising staff jobs and roles.

These can all offer a stable and rewarding career path for experienced and novel applicants alike.

Side Job or Full-Time Job?

If you’re here, maybe you’re already an agent and feeling the pinch. Maybe the first year didn’t go as planned. A few deals fell through. You’re feeling glum.

We’ve all been there. Real estate is a roller coaster of good times and bad times. It comes in waves.

Hopefully, you’ve planned well and set realistic income goals for your real estate.

But you need to decide early if it is time for a side job, or maybe a full-time job. Perhaps you can land a full job from which you can still do real estate and begin building your business with some security.

Few of these side jobs are guaranteed income.

If you can’t make another six months in the business, I recommend exploring a full-time job that can keep the lights on and the mortgage paid up.

Meanwhile, you can continue with real estate as a part-time gig. That is how I started out, doing real estate part-time for a year before transitioning to full-time.

But if you still have a little runway, or are a real estate professional looking to diversify your income and restless with the usual grind, read on for ideas to make more money than just real estate commissions!

Side Hustle Nation

If it’s a true side job you are after that is flexible, remote, and can be done part-time, the #1 place I would recommend starting is at the Side Hustle Nation.

This is a website and podcast designed for side jobs and gigs – some of them just ideas to make spare change. Other ideas go beyond extra income and can replace your income entirely. I highly recommend it for anyone with an entrepreneurial mindset!

Browse the website and past podcasts for all sorts of ideas on how to make money. Here are a few podcast episodes that might appeal as a real estate side hustle:

• Website Rentals: The Simple Local Websites That Earn $1000/mo
• Rental Arbitrage: How I Made $700k Last Year Renting Out Other People’s Properties
• How This Couple Started a 6-Figure Cleaning Business on the Side
• Rank and Rent: $1000 a Month From Simple Local Websites
• Get Paid to Answer Questions: How I Make $20,000 a Month Online, with Debbie Gartner
• Marketing a Local Business on YouTube: $40k on the Side Hosting Walking Tours, with Rob Pitingolo
• Turning a Service Business into a Passive Income Stream – Part 2, with Matt Bochnak
• How to Become a Loan Signing Agent and Earn $100 an Hour Part-Time, with Mark Wills and Brian Schooley
• YouTube for Bloggers: How One Mom Turned Her “Accidental” YouTube Channel into A Full-Time Income, with Meredith Marsh
• Event Hosting: How to Bring Your Tribe Together and Build a 6-Figure Conference on the Side, with Hung Pham
• A Local Service Business that Scales – From Zero to $60k a Month in Revenue, with Chris Schwab

Conclusion

There are different ways to earn side income for Realtors than just chasing commissions and closings. Or you can even replace your income altogether with a new real estate career! It’s always important to keep your career options open!

I recommend diversifying your income, even if just as a hobby. Take on a side gig! It will keep your skills sharp, expand your resume, introduce you to more people, and better protect you against industry and technological disruption.

Updated April 8, 2024; Originally published October 14, 2018