13 Excel Side Hustles (That You Didn’t Know Can Make You Money)
For anyone with a computer, having skills in Excel and spreadsheets is useful for many things, from work to calculating personal finances.
If you really know your way around Excel, you may be surprised just how many different ways there are to make money with this skill.
While Excel has around 1.2 billion users (and Google Sheets 2 billion), very few people are experts.
This is where you come in.
Crafted after analyzing various job boards and freelance platforms such as Upwork, this list contains some of the best Excel side hustles such as templates, blogs, or corporate consulting, all based on their demand and pay.
The 13 best Excel side hustle ideas
1. Sell Excel templates
Selling Excel templates is perfect for passive income and quick scaling. It allows you to swiftly sell your skills without taking on a new full-time job.
Because users can easily find templates for their specific needs and then customize them, these are extremely popular for saving time and ensuring a professional-looking spreadsheet.
Due to their usefulness, some of the best-selling templates include:
- Budgeting
- Project management
- Workflow templates
This side hustle not only has relatively low costs but also offers the potential to build a steady stream of passive income.
The most effective way to sell your spreadsheet templates is by creating your online store on an eCommerce platform like Sellfy. This way you get to enjoy the benefits of 0% transaction fees, full control over the selling process, and the ability to easily share your products on social media, helping you reach a wider audience.
2. Create eBooks and guides on Excel
People are always looking to learn more about how to use Excel, especially as the software evolves with new features.
If you’re an Excel expert, you can take advantage of this opportunity by creating eBooks and online guides, allowing you to provide valuable content while gaining passive income and incurring relatively little cost.
Consider developing educational content on topics such as:
- Advanced Excel functions and formulas
- Excel shortcuts
- Productivity tips
- Data analysis techniques
- Industry-specific guides, e.g., Excel for finance, marketing, or healthcare
You can also combine this educational content with templates to provide a full Excel package to customers, either selling them separately as individual digital products, or as a combined deal with templates.
3. Offer custom Excel spreadsheets
Sometimes a template isn’t enough. Many businesses and individuals need tailored Excel solutions, and you could be the one to provide this.
If you do a good job, the chance of well-paying repeat clients is high due to the great demand for custom Excel spreadsheets. These projects could include:
- Financial models for startups
- Custom dashboards for data visualization
- Employee scheduling tools
- Inventory management systems
This side hustle is a little more time-intensive than some of the others, but it can also pay a lot more. If you want to succeed, make sure to build an attractive portfolio to show off your work, offer excellent and responsive customer service, and always hone your skills.
Some clients may wish to learn more about how to create their own custom spreadsheets, making this side hustle a perfect combination for providing educational content.
4. Teach Excel skills through online courses
For the same reason educational content is popular, online courses teaching Excel are the next step to sharing your skills with customers.
Online learning platforms are extremely popular worldwide, making the potential for earnings high — if done right.
Some popular course topics include the absolute basics for beginners, teaching advanced data analysis and visualization, Excel for business analytics, alongside many others.
To create and run a successful online Excel course, you need to:
- Select your course topic
- Create engaging content via video tutorials, documents, and other materials
- Find the right hosting platform
An eCommerce platform such as Sellfy can help you easily sell and promote your course, facilitating additional features such as certificates of completion to add value.
5. YouTube channel for Excel tips
YouTube is an excellent site for growing an audience and sharing your Excel knowledge.
Providing useful content on YouTube can be used in multiple ways. You can promote other paid content and courses, use it as a platform to sell your services, or even get an income stream through YouTube itself via advertisements on your videos.
Some topics you could cover include:
- Excel tips and tricks
- Reviews of Excel plugins and tools
- Step-by-step Excel tutorials
- Q&A sessions drawing questions from previous video comments
Look around at other popular creators such as ExcelDictionary to get an idea of what kind of channel you want to create.
6. Share Excel advice on social media
Just like YouTube, other social media platforms can be excellent ways of reaching large audiences and building a personal following.
Simply by creating useful content such as Excel tips and tricks, exploring case studies, and step-by-step guides, you can build an audience and make money through sponsored posts or affiliate marketing. This is not to mention the benefits of promoting your own products.
Take Emma, who started providing Excel tips and tricks on TikTok and quickly built a following of 2.5 million in just six months.
Now, she sells Excel templates via Sellfy, helping her turn a profit from her informational social media content.
7. Launch a blog on Excel
A quick and easy way of earning money through your Excel skills is through an Excel-focused blog.
Simply by posting useful content about Excel, you can generate income through various means such as affiliate marketing and ad revenue.
Here’s how:
- Choose your Excel niche such as Excel for small businesses
- Create a website via a platform like WordPress
- Regularly post valuable, SEO-optimized content
- Promote your blog on other channels to increase traffic
Even better, if you offer other Excel-related products, this is the perfect place to promote them.
You can write on whatever takes your fancy, from reviews of Excel-related tools to case studies, guides, and tutorials.
8. Develop Excel macros and automation
Businesses everywhere are constantly seeking to improve their efficiency, and automating their Excel sheets is an excellent way to do this.
This typically takes the form of:
- Generating reports from raw data
- Automating repetitive tasks across multiple worksheets
- Cleaning and formatting data
- Creating interactive dashboards
If you want to succeed, learn VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) and create demo videos to demonstrate your skills to clients.
If all goes well, this side hustle can be very lucrative.
9. Data entry services and other remote Excel work
Businesses are always looking for help with remote Excel work, often including:
- Creating and updating spreadsheets
- Data entry and cleaning
- Data analysis and reporting
To maximize your success, ensure that your work is consistent and flexible with demand, and put yourself out there on freelance platforms like Upwork to help clients find you easier.
You can also maximize your earnings by developing fast and accurate typing skills, managing your time effectively, and learning Excel shortcodes.
10. Freelance Excel troubleshooting and support
When things go wrong in Excel, it might be time to call an expert, i.e., you.
You can make a surprising amount of money as an Excel troubleshooter, fixing issues and repairing important business spreadsheets. To become the best, make sure to:
- Provide quick response times and reliable communication
- Fully understand all of Excel’s key features
- Offer ongoing support for regular clients
Make sure to join a range of freelance platforms such as Upwork and Fiverr to increase your visibility to potential customers.
11. Host online Excel webinars and live streams
Similar to online courses, paid webinars and live streams can be great ways to share your Excel knowledge and earn money.
This method also allows you to interact with your audience, helping you build a community.
To really succeed, you should choose a specific, relevant Excel topic for each webinar, and always provide valuable insights and resources such as sample files.
You can also provide interactive elements such as a Q&A for more value, or even record your live streams as extra content for other channels and Excel side hustles.
12. Excel corporate consulting and training
Companies are always looking to train their employees on relevant software such as Excel, and sometimes they outsource this task.
As an Excel expert, this gives you the opportunity to offer consulting and training services for businesses. Here’s how to get started:
- Create specific Excel training programs for different industries and skill levels
- Establish a professional website that showcases your skills
- Reach out to professionals and business owners in your target industries
- Promote yourself and start landing clients
To help you get ahead of the competition, consider offering both in-person and virtual training options. You can even offer very specific courses that target niche skills such as Excel for project management or Excel for financial reporting.
13. Enter the Excel World Championship
Originally named the Financial Modeling World Cup (FMWC), this yearly tournament was rebranded in 2022 to the Microsoft Excel World Championship, seeing Excel experts across the world compete to solve Excel puzzles.
The prize pool ranges from $25,000 to $50,000 depending on the specific year and events, meaning a win or even just doing well can net you some serious cash.
Not only that, just attending the event provides an excellent opportunity for both gaining recognition for your skills, as well as networking with other experts.
Be warned – the competition is fierce. If you are serious about winning the money, make sure to study past competitions, develop your Excel speed and accuracy, and practice all the advanced Excel techniques you know.
Conclusion
From winning prize money to selling templates, there are plenty of ways to make money out of your Excel skills.
Of course, many of these side-hustles require you to sell you customers, meaning you’ll need a platform to sell from.
Specifically designed to help creators sell spreadsheets and other digital products, Sellfy is the perfect online platform to help you get your side hustle started.
You can avoid the high fees of Shopify and other platforms, while gaining the benefits of a dedicated online platform with analytics, sales, and marketing tools to help you grow and reach customers.
