7 Amazing Side Hustles for Doctors You Can Start Online!

Are you a doctor wanting to start an online business or side hustle but unsure what to start, how to start it and whether taking focus away from your career to work on a side hustle is even a good idea?

Let me give you the good news: there are SO many amazing, profitable side hustles for doctors out there, ready to capitalise on. So many doctors out there have started a side hustle that’s allowed them to earn some extra cash from home, cut down their hours, make a huge career shift and quit their day-jobs even!

The digital world we live in today has made starting a business from home so much more accessible than it’s ever been! I do not say this lightly – there’s never been a better time to combine your expertise as a medical health professional with online business!

Why an Online Doctors’ Side Hustle May Be a Better Idea Than Picking Up Locum Shifts

If you’ve ever needed some extra cash, you’ve likely turned to picking up a few extra shifts here and there. Perhaps you’ve been doing locum on a more consistent basis if you need that income boost regularly. And honestly, picking up extra shifts is great when you need some cash quick. But if you weigh up the pros and cons, you may find that starting an online side hustle may actually be the better option for you. Here are some reasons why:

• You can pursue something that excites you, instead of the same-old you see day in, day out.
  Things can get boring, or even overwhelming, pretty quick – especially a ten hour shift 5 days a week on a chronically understaffed ward. When you start an online side hustle, you’re giving yourself a new project to be excited about, something new to focus on – something that isn’t the exact same thing you see on a daily basis. The side hustle ideas I’m about to share are worlds away from the mundane routine you may be finding yourself dreading lately.
  
• It’s a chance to reignite the passion that brought you into medicine.
  Many of us got into our specialist area because we loved it and had a genuine passion for it. We wanted to make our passion our career and help people as we do so. But over time and as you progress in your career, you may find you’re not be able to spend as much time doing those things that drew you in in the first place. I recently spoke to a dentist who got into dentistry because she was passionate bout oral health, but was now becoming bogged down by patients who only wanted to see her for aesthetic purposes. She doesn’t have anything against veneers or teeth whitening – it just wasn’t what she got into dentistry for. When you start your own side hustle, you have power over what you choose to focus on – and I know we’d all prefer to focus on the things we’re passionate about!
  
• With business, there’s no glass ceiling of income.
  Locum is great, but you’re always going to be paid £X per hour, give or take. But when you start an online hustle, you’ll quickly realise your income isn’t determined by how many hours you put in. One of the most powerful things about business is this very thing – you aren’t limited by a glass ceiling, your potential is unlimited!
  
• A side hustle that blossoms into a full-time business may just be the way out of a stressful day job.
  I have spoken to SO many tired, burnt out doctors who just cannot balance work and life the way they wanted to. It’s no secret that doctors in the UK are overstretched and overworked. Being a doctor is a rewarding, but demanding career. And if you are a mother or plan on becoming one, a stressful job may not be the work-life balance you wanted. A side hustle that capitalises on your knowledge and passion as a medical health profession might just be the key to escaping the doctor burn-out without ‘wasting’ your medical qualifications!

Sounds appealing? I think so, too. If you’d like to learn more about some amazing side hustles for doctors, keep reading. And if these ideas hit a note with you and you feel like you’d like them to become a reality for you, I have something just for you. Keep reading for more!

Side Hustle #1: Provie online tutoring

As long as there are parents and students in the world who value academic achievement, there will always be a demand for tutoring. This is particularly so for students who want to get into medicine – competition is through the roof, the pressure is high, and very often these students (or their parents!) are willing to invest in tuition, to ensure they attain their goals. Your position as a doctor will make you very desirable as a tutor for aspiring med school students.

Starting an online tutoring side hustle is simple. In principle, all you need is a Zoom or Google Meets account and a method to handle payments through (Stripe and/or PayPal are great). To find students, you may find it useful to advertise your services on platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn, or on social media. Word of mouth is also pretty powerful too!

Side Hustle #2: Sell revision guides and educational material for students

As a student, we’ve ALL been there. Trying to find a revision guide, some notes, some kind of resource to help you with a very specific topic and being disappointed to find nothing. Trying to make sense of a boring, difficult to understand topic and being met with… boring, difficult to understand revision resources. *Yawns*

Where you are now in your career, those old topics that you couldn’t figure out for the life of you are now likely leisurely walks in the park. And this is a prime opportunity for an amazing side hustle – creating and selling online revision material.

The best route for a busy individual who doesn’t want the hassle of printing and posting is digital products. Selling digital educational resources can be incredibly profitable – lucrative, even. There are so many online platforms to choose from to sell on, which will automatically deliver the files to your buyers, take payments from them and deposit them into your account, such as Etsy. A quick search on Etsy for ‘doctors revision’ returns almost 1,000 results!

You may choose to write up revision guides in plain text on Google Docs or Microsoft Word. If you’d like to create graphics, visuals or illustrations like the ones shown in the image above, Canva will be your best bet. You don’t have to be design-savvy to use Canva, so please don’t feel like this is off-limits for you! With the Canva Pro membership, you’ll have access to thousands of graphics and images to help you create engaging, beautiful graphics!

Pssst… this side hustle goes super well with #4 and #5!

[Also Read: The 9 Best Canva Side Hustles in 2024]

Side Hustle #3: Medical writing

Have you ever wondered who writes all those Mayo Clinic articles online about what a rash on your left nostril at 2am after eating a doner kebab means? Or where all those educational textbooks that get updated yearly come from? Well, they’re all written by SOMEONE… and that someone can be you!

There’s a vast field of medical writing as a profession, and it’s not very well known! It can be done on a freelance basis, meaning you’d be self employed, for the public health sector as well as for private companies. Types of projects you could write for as a medical writer include:

• Articles for newspapers, journals, magazines or websites
• Instruction booklets
• Guidelines for usage of medical equipment
• Research proposals
• Promotional material/copywriting
• Health-education material
• Package inserts for medication
• Regulatory submission documents

If you love to write, this is a great side hustle for doctors that isn’t as well-known as it should be!

Side Hustle #4: Start a YouTube channel

If you’re more of a visual person, a YouTube channel may be a great move for you! You can use YouTube to create an educational channel aimed at medical students, junior doctors or even specialised medical health professionals to share career advice. You could potential start a doctor vlog, where you share the realities of life as a doctor in your field. In fact, you could even start a channel educating people about your area of expertise and sharing your knowledge and recommendations.

Not only can you make money from people simply watching your videos, there’s more options too! Successful, engaging YouTube channels can funnel viewers to purchase products, such as revision material, tuition or coaching services or even private consultations (if you provide those). This idea has potential to be a very lucrative side hustle, and can be used in conjunction with the next side hustle for doctors on the list…

Side Hustle #5: Start a doctors’ blog

If you enjoy writing and sharing your knowledge, starting a doctors’ blog is a fantastic side hustle for you! A blog is THE platform to position yourself as an authority figure. You could start a blog on a variety of topics, including:

• Tips, advice and help for medical students and/or junior doctors
• Educational resources for medical students
• Careers advice
• Your specialist area. Some great examples of this include Sport Doctor London and The Paediatrician Mom.
• A general doctors’ lifestyle blog, such as The Motivated M.D.

When it comes to monetising your blog, the sky is the limit! Options include running ads, promoting products for affiliate sales, selling products or courses or using it as a platform for brand sponsorships.

To start a blogging side hustle, you’ll need to purchase and set up a blog, and then learn about search engine optimisation (SEO). It’s a learning curve, but the good news is once you’ve gotten the hang of things, it gets much more streamlined!

Side Hustle #6: Provide career consultation services

Sometimes we forget how far we’ve come in our careers – that is, until we look back to see what we’ve gone through to get here today.

As a doctor, your advice is incredibly impactful and valuable for aspiring doctors, doctors wishing to progress their careers, or those interested in your specialist area. Again, you might not realise this, but there is a demand for medical career consultation services.

At its core, all that is needed to set up a career consultation service is a Zoom or Google Meets account, and a payment gateway to handle payments (PayPal or Stripe are great options). It’s truly an incredibly simple business model!

This can be done in conjunction with a blog or YouTube channel, or as a stand-alone service you advertise on social media or other platforms. If you’re open to not being exclusively online, you could even look into speaking at events, schools or Universities about this!

Side Hustle #7: Start your own private online practice

Starting a private practice is a multi-component, time taking process and ultimately, is a long-term game. Starting a private practice will involve looking into and taking out medical indemnity (i.e., insurance), finding a reliable accountant and a marketing plan to build a customer base. And that’s just the start of it!

It’s a long journey. But once you’ve gotten through all those hoops, it’s an extremely profitable and incredibly rewarding venture. There are hundreds of online private practices now, such as ADHD360, Psychiatry UK and Push Doctor which serve patients almost completely online.

And to look reality in the eye, with the wait times on the NHS we are seeing today, the demand for private practices is only set to rise. There’s no doubt that there will be a demand for your private online practice if you execute it in the right way!

(A fantastic practical resource for doctors looking into starting their own private practice can be found here.)

Skills you’ll need to start a successful online doctors’ side hustle

Now that you’ve read these amazing side hustle opportunities to cash in on your expertise as a doctor and your mind may be buzzing with ideas. But hey, these ideas are just the beginning. ANYONE can think up a fantastic business idea. But executing a fantastic business is a whole ‘nother playing field and requires a certain skillset. Some of the most important skills needs to start an online side hustle include:

• Marketing
  It’s 2024, girl. It’s noisy out here, there’s SO many people selling something and asking you to click on their links and everyone is a bit overwhelmed. So how do you stand out from the crowd? How do you get your business noticed? It’s through the magic of marketing ✨. Any new business that wants to thrive in this day and age needs a solid marketing strategy – whether that’s through social media, SEO, email – or all of the above.
  
• Business mindset
  You can have a million dollar business plan. But if you don’t have the right mindset, you will not be able to maximise your income. There’s no two ways about it – mindset can make or break your business. Cultivating an abundance mindset, affirming your success and surrounding yourself with a network of likeminded, ambitious women is one of the biggest secrets to succeeding in business.
  
• Confidence with tech
  If you’re going to start a successful online business, you’re going to need to be comfortable with tech. The good thing is, as a doctor, you may already be comfortable with a lot of tech-related systems! But there’s a difference between comfort and confidence; and that difference can give you the edge you need in your online business.

If you want to start a side hustle but need a boost in confidence, skills and know-how, I’d love to help you along your journey. My utmost passion is to help women, especially women of colour like myself, to achieve financial independence by building smart, strategic businesses. This passion has led me to creating a whole community of like-minded, ambitious, hardworking women who share this same goal.

You can join this community by signing up to the Brown Girl Money email newsletter here (as well as getting my FREE Money Mastery Toolkit!) and by following me on Instagram here. I’d love to see you there!

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Doctors of the BGM blog, did this post open your eyes up to new possibilities? Have you ever considered any of these options for yourself before this post? What kind of support do you need to get started with your dream side hustle? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you!

Aaminah x

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