Corporations taking over side hustles seems to be screwing over people, since they take such a large cut and flood the market for that hustle.
But the ones I’ve personally seen people do that work pretty well (in USA) are:
Stay at home mom watching another kid (legally dubious depending on state/situation. But I ain’t no narc.)
A neighbor of my mom’s sends out a menu saying what she plans on cooking each night for that week, and for $X will deliver you some as well (Legal in Utah due to special laws, other states could be dubious. )
People who go pick up free furniture that is pretty trashed, and then refurbishes it and sells it. Or people with trucks who are like “Will deliver furniture for $30 in X area” is also pretty life saver for people without cars/trucks. Was able to get a super cheap/nice coach because of this.
People who just flip free stuff or stuff from thrift stores without doing any improvements annoy me greatly though. We broke and you’re just driving up the price!
None of these generate a ton of cash, but I like that they take very little up front cost, aren’t disruptive, and mostly take labor.
So what side hustles have you seen work out?
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Buddy of mine picked up old washers and dryers for free or close enough. Fixed and flipped 'em on eBay marketplace. Made several hundred a week.
The genius is that those appliances are easy to work on and usually have compatible parts. I went over to get a part from him and there were only 2 that fit all American washers.
I used to pick up vacuum cleaners on my paper route. Got stoned at night and cleaned them, maybe added a new belt and bag, perfect. Sold for $20 a pop. (This was in the 90s).
Another friend used to go out with her husband early on trash days and pick up free stuff by the road. Had a garage sale every Saturday, 6-7 hours tops, made $300-$400. “We take our neighbor’s trash and sell it back to them!”
Scalpers = bad
Fixing expensive things and selling them cheaper than new = based
They get money, buyer gets a cheaper appliance, OG person got what they thought was junk hauled away. 10/10 business.
Saving perfectly good things from the dump = based
Seriously, just post on marketplace “Free thing sitting out on corner of XYZ, no holds, I’ll let you know if it’s there or not” So much really good stuff ends up at the dump out of laziness.
I just do love side hustles that actually make a positive impact on their community, and I think all those do for sure do.
The only one I’ve heard of working really well was 3D printing copyrighted material that is usually way overpriced. Board game pieces, figurines, etc.
A little bit of legally dubious action to pay the bills and siphon money from billion dollar companies never hurt nobody!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FW99X9Z?psc=1
$50 dollars for THREE, UNASSEMBLED, and UNPAINTED minis? Yeah man, I ain’t gonna question why the texture of your warhammer minis are different. Game on.
Furnace/water heater replacement.
Can low water pressure in the whole house be attributed to a bad water heater?
No.
Ours was exactly that, the oulet and inlet pipes in the tank corroded badly. Cold pressure fine, hot pressure was flow restricted
Only if you have good pressure on cold water but weak pressure on hot.
Whole house suggests an issue with the supply line, for example an old galvanized pipe which is filling with rust deposits.
European here without education for a plumber, just barely scratched the profession for a few years.
Low water pressure occurs in bigger complexes with a pipe to small for the consumers. The water pressure in suburbans and cities comes directly from the local water station.
If you have issues with this, there are special armatures for low water pressure.
The cheapest improvement is replacing the water disperser with a current one.
Other then that, one could install a pump to improve the water pressure, but these things are expensive and have high maintainability costs due to pumping drinking water, not water in a heater pipe.
Perhaps your pipes are too wide.
Low water pressure is usually a sign of low water pressure.
Churning. The art of spending money in a circle using accounts that offer rewards.
I knew a guy who had like 50 credit cards and 25 bank accounts. He could move money in circles all month, and get like $100k/year in cash back rewards on top of his $100k/year job. His credit report said he spent $8M a year on credit cards. His credit score was 845.
He also pretty much flew for free, and he flew all the time. There were a few mileage programs in his little scheme.
As far as I can tell, 100% legal. The banks just make frequent changes to their offerings to make it hard to do.
Bahaha that is pretty awesome.
I’ve “debated” doing that, since I’m debt free aside from mortgage and have a good credit score, so I could probably open enough cards to get the cycle moving. But the research to find the best hidden gems of reward programs is probably hard.
Other thing I’ve seen people with great credit scores do is basically put EVERYTHING on 0% intro credit cards, pay minimums, save all the money in a HYSA or a mutual fund, then pay off the balance right before the 0% ends, and then open a new 0% card and repeat. Which seems finicky, but basically gives yourself a 4-8% raise if you set it up to just take care of itself automatically.
Tech support for elderly.
I don’t want to start it yet because of the obligation and enjoyment of free time. Once it starts reputation is everything, especially with the demographic.
You need patience, kindness, and a general enjoyment in helping others.
Have seen the need. And will increase as time goes on.
Support extending to personal traxjing sessions as well as just fixing basic shit.
One day.
The thing about IT for older folks is you have to be up for conversation too. Most of the customers I have only get out for church, so if I come out to see them it might be the first conversation they’ve had in days.
Honestly just convincing old folks that “Hey whenever something stressful happens on your computer, please for the love of god just call me.”
Is worth its weight in gold to prevent scams. A big thing scammer prey on is shame, blaming the individual. If there is someone they have paid to help them and trust to help them with any issue without judgement, I would hope they would lean on that person when scared by a scammer. So as long as it’s for the right reasons I can see how cool that could be!
I do like the computer literacy classes that get ran for older folks, and the ones about avoiding scams. So I can see how this can be good!
Very good point. Eliminating shame gets them to be interested and ask good questions.
I have been side by side when someone got scammed. They’re fucking scum.
She had the windows support scare ware. Called the number. They walked her through putting the remote desktop software. 10 downloads on the queue so they were patient.
Called while i was looking to see damage. Blocked number. They called again from a private line still in character as Microsoft support.
She had 2 factor because her daughter got her to do that so she was safe.
Shit is scary.
Knife sharpening. Not hard to learn how to do it decently, and hard to find someone who can do it decently. The equipment is not too expensive either. 40$ for a good coarse stone (you will need one!!!) And 40$ for a decent combo stone of medium and fine. You probably want a good flattening stone too.
DONT use amazon, all of the stones there are scams. A good coarse stone is a Naniwa lobster 220. A good combo stone is the KING KDS 1000/6000.
Huh, I never considered that one. But I guess if a neighbor advertised “10$ to bring over your knives and I’ll make them like new” I probably would at least try it since I have some pretty nice knives that I’ve been struggling with that are really old.
I am sad to report I have tried to sharpen my own knives… using a thing I bought off amazon. It dud not work out.
I use stones now, but when I was learning to sharpen my knives, I used a Lansky Sharpening Kit. I learned the angles and what the stones do from the kit, and bought some good stones from Japan.
For my American friends, don’t bother with the stones at Harbor Freight. That’s the one tool that I have found that is just going to cause more frustration trying to use it, rather than just buying a good one.
Photographer seems like a good one. I’ve a friend who works four days a week, and occasionally fills in the extra day or weekend with a quick professional photo shoot.
Edits in the evenings while rewatching movies.
It’s pretty chill. That one day off actually earned them more than if they worked five days a week, even if they only work it once in a while.
Oh yeah if you like photography as a hobby and already have decent gear, I remember my mom would occasionally do that from time to time! A couple weddings, engagement photos, senior pictures, stuff like that. Someone who understands the basic of how cameras react lighting and is willing to put thought into composition of the photo makes a world of difference compared to folks who don’t.
My Etsy shop hit a very niche market and was pulling around $3k a year. I didn’t put any effort into advertising, it kinda did that on its own
I’m also a performer which is a great side hustle for my creative fulfillment, but pays nearly nothing
You don’t have to confirm/deny - but I’m going to pretend this niche is selling tiefling horns/ears.
Flaming nipple tassels
You read that right 😂
Curious! Is your main market other fire dancers, joke gifts, or weird sex thing?
Or do you just not ask questions and happily take your little bit of cash?
Cause 3k a year ain’t nothing to sneeze at. $200ish a month if you are only clearing your bills by $50 can make a WORLD of difference.
Other fire performers. They’re not exactly cheap
By “performer” do you mean musician? Playing bars or coffee shops here and there? I’ve done that for a free drink or two here and there. I think that would be one of my retirement activities if I had loads of free time, but it takes a lot of energy to set it all up and be “on” regularly while also working full time.
I’m a fire and sideshow performer weirdly enough, we’re a dying breed. I mostly do shows at bars and host my own, but every now and then I get a nicer gig that pays a bit more, like at a faire.
I wish I had some good ones but I’ll be watching this thread.
What I can say is that anyone on youtube that’s got a channel dedicated to a particular hustle is no longer making their money doing that hustle. They are an influencer now.
Oh yeah all the influencer side hustles are straight trash.
My friend if you actually made $1000 a day working 2 hour, you wouldn’t be uploading here my dude!
A close friend sells a product on eBay. A product most households have & my friend collects when it’s no longer wanted which is cleaned, sorted & resold. Has now left 9-5 job to run it as a business.
This friend is exceptional at exploiting niches & will likely become amongst leading sellers of this type (is well on the way already having done it before with a particular collectible). Interestingly, reading through the suggestions here, previously collected & sold scrap before pivoting.
I’m very proud of them!
Dog hotel. I’ve a dog. I take in other dogs when their owners are on holiday. Walking 2 dogs isn’t much more work than walking 1.
Taking on one extra dog for a few days seems like the easiest, most chill way to make a little money on the side if you are careful about which dogs you take. Those people who sit 4+ dogs at a time are insane but must pull in a good bit of money.
That makes sense! If they are similar to my dog, I probably wouldn’t notice that much, and if they provided the food and stuff, I honestly wouldn’t notice much.
Only fans. /s
Why /s? I feel like this is the perfect example if you can get away with only doing it part time. I have an aunt who does foot stuff on there and seems to do pretty well
For ugly people like me.
Fair. I mean same, it’s not for everyone.
What kind of shape are your feet in tho?
Found the wikifeet mod
If I ever picked up a side hustle, it’d be basic editing. ChatGPT has displaced the ghost writer but it can’t polish its own turd.
Editing ChatGPT generated content sounds soul crushing tbh.
I think the thing that would keep me sane is that I’m fascinated in trying to figure out how a single AI-generated paragraph can be accurately detected.
But yeah, the common permutation of multiple pargraphs, the first starting with reaffirm/validate/reiterate is downright obnoxious.
‘I’m sorry to hear you’re having such difficulties with editing ChatGPT-generated content. It can be challenging and even frustrating at times, but with’ lol
I’m doing online college atm, and there is a forum post assignment each week.
I dread having to respond to my other “class mates” because half of them are clearly using AI. Like having to read a single sentence of AI slop makes me lose the will to live. Spending my mental energy to read something no one was willing to put in the energy to write is not what I wanna spend my days doing.
The school, like all universities, are working on new policies. But it’s just so painful to prove someone is using AI beyond a reasonable doubt. Sometimes folks accidentally include something where the answer basically includes something like “as an AI” , and those generally get removed quickly and I don’t see that student post ever again. Or someone posted code where in it there was a comment that said “Then you can repeat this process to write the rest of the program”
So yeah, if you made a game out of catching AI slop, more power to you. You are a stronger, or more deranged, internet user than me.
My side hustle is real estate photography. Very flexible timing and I already had all the equipment. If I didn’t already own the equipment I wouldn’t have done it.
Good excuse to buy a drone.
You have to have a license to do that in the US. It’s not super hard to get but not as easy as just buying a drone.
I know here in Canada if a drone is 250g or under, you don’t need a license. I’m pretty sure that maby of the camera-drone manufactuers make variants that are just under 250g to make them more accessible.
The license is for commercial purposes:
What you can do with your pictures and video is limited without it. You can’t even donate such pictures to a school or non-profit or something. Basically if someone could make money doing it, you can’t without a license.
The weight of the drone has nothing to do with selling the media.
My wife does the furniture flipping thing. I don’t think we make any money on it — but we have much nicer furniture than we could afford otherwise and between reselling the items we get rid of the low prices we pay for the incoming, we’re certainly not spending money on it, either, and that’s counting the cost of renting trucks to move it around.
how is nobody afraid of bedbugs?
With any upholstered furniture we’ve bought (Since we’ve bought some for personal use), we keep it in the garage and treat it for like a week before it comes inside. We don’t do it often and have yet to have a problem, but anytime we buy something soft we are very concerned we are inviting demons into the house.
Maybe if you live in an area with mostly SFHs so bugs can’t spread as aggressively? I’d never take furniture off the street. I’d rather sleep on bare floor than deal with bed bugs.
Not that long ago I thought that “don’t let the bedbugs bite” was just a weird thing to say to your kid instead of “good night”. Turns out they’re a legit thing in some parts of the world!
speaking of the world…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triatominae “kissing bugs”paris,france has seemed to have been affected by bedbugs recently: BBC: Bedbug panic sweeps Paris as infestations soar before 2024 Olympics
We don’t fick with upholstered furniture for exactly that reason. Tables, dressers, cabinets.
I’m not saying all stories about inviting demons/vampires into your house are inspired by bed bugs. I have 0 evidence to support that.
BUT, if tomorrow it is said that evidence that supports that theory is found, I’ll just nod and be like “Yeah that tracks”
Once you’ve invited bed bugs in, they own that house now. You don’t wanna live with them anymore? Don’t like them sucking your blood? You move.
Also all your stuff belongs to them now. You invited them in, it’s your fault.
Well getting nice furniture from a hobby sounds pretty chill regardless!
Every now and then my eyes pop at the cost of new furniture.
