Side Gigs for Night Owls

Everyone has a time of day when they’re sharpest and best able to solve vexing problems. For some, that’s dawn, or, maybe right before lunch. If your best time happens to be in the dead of night, you may want to know about side gigs for night owls.

These are money-making opportunities that are best completed when the rest of your family has toddled off to bed.

What makes these side gigs perfect for night owls? In some cases, it’s simply when the gigs are available. In other cases, it’s dictated by the nature of the job. Jobs that require complete quiet, for instance, are best done when there’s no chance that a neighborhood construction project, dog or gardener will disturb the peace.

So what kind of jobs are perfect for night-owls and where can you find them?

Event and restaurant staffing

Night owls with hospitality experience are the ideal people to staff events, such as concerts, plays, comedy clubs, bars and restaurants. While you can certainly work at events during the day, the bigger events — think weddings, or, say, the Eras Tour — are mostly held at night. And the highest priced meals — and thus the best tips — are usually at dinner, which makes the night shift the most lucrative, too.

Several sites can help you connect with part-time gigs in restaurants, bars and staffing events. Some of the best: Qwick, Instawork and Jitjatjo.

Qwick requires at least a year of experience and pays between minimum wage and $30 per hour, depending on the job and the client. The site mainly operates on the West Coast and South, with the bulk of its 23 market areas in California, Florida and Texas. Instawork operates in 46 cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas and Cincinnati. (Find the full list of cities here.) Jitjatjo, meanwhile, operates in nine states primarily in the MidWest and East Coast.

Teaching English online

Teaching English online to Chinese students, a once-hot side gig that went dormant for years, is revving up again. And that’s great news for both night owls and early birds. That’s because classes are taught on Beijing time, which is 13- to 16-hours ahead of Continental U.S. time.

That means you might be teaching at 3 a.m. in Los Angeles or at 11 p.m. in New York. And, while those hours don’t work well for someone who wants a day job, they’re ideal for night owls working around other jobs and kids.

Where can you find these gigs? A site called Q Kids is actively hiring U.S. and Canadian freelancers. You must have a bachelor’s degree, a certificate in teaching English as a second language, as well as the technology to teach online. (That’s a decent computer with a webcam, microphone and headset, as well as high-speed internet.)

The site pays between $6 and $8 per half-hour lesson and schedules lessons from 7:30 to 11:40 at night Eastern time and from 4:30 p.m. to 8:40 p.m. Pacific. (You can find the full schedule here.)

Other sites, including Amazing Talker and iTalki have even more flexible hours because their students hail from all over the world. And these sites allow tutors to set their own rates.

Voice Overs

Have a melodious voice? You may be able to make good money doing voice overs, which are needed for everything from corporate videos to social media posts. Naturally, voice overs do not need to be done late at night. But, if you don’t have a sound-proof studio, doing them at night cuts the chance that ordinary daylight noises — gardeners, honking horns, barking dogs — will ruin your audio.

Several sites can help you market your voice overs. Two of the best are Voices and Fiverr.

At Voices, artists can sign up for free, create a guest profile, and upload unlimited audio samples showcasing their skills. For example, if you specialize in both animations and e-books, you can upload separate samples for each, allowing potential clients to assess your range. Signing up and posting a profile is free. But the site will try to encourage you to pay a $499 membership fee to get matched to available jobs. Many VO artists say the paid plan doesn’t provide enough value for the cost. But the free plan is great. The site also charges a 20% commission.

Meanwhile, Fiverr is a broad remote work platform that has a vibrant voice-over section. Artists can sign up here for free and pay just a 20% commission when they book work. The benefit of Fiverr is that you set the parameters of the job, spelling out exactly what you’ll do, what it costs and when you can deliver it. If a client wants to book your service, they buy it without further negotiating.

Transcription

Like voice overs, you can do transcription at any hour. But if it’s quiet in your home, it will be far easier to hear the audio that you’re working on. And the better you hear, the faster you can transcribe, and the more you can make per hour.  (Transcription jobs usually pay by the audio minute. So, if you can transcribe a minute of audio in 5 minutes versus 10 minutes, you earn twice as much.) That makes it a great side gig for night owls.

The best places to find transcription jobs are DittoTranscripts, GMR Transcription and Rev.