When I was growing up, I saw that in my parent’s work ethic with both of them having more than one job until they got older. This wasn’t because they wanted more money. They needed it. They were raising a child, trying to buy a house, and my mom was finishing nursing school. My dad was getting started in his career in IT while trying to send money home to our family in Venezuela. Screams in millennial: With the rising cost of, well, everything and stagnant wages, of course, this culture is prevalent in America and much of the world. It’s pretty hard to escape. As a kid, I never grasped the impact of what the American work culture would have on my own adult life. Then, I dove into it headfirst in my teens. MLM stands for multi-level marketing companies. According to the FTC, 99% of people lose money in MLMs. They are far from worth it. Before you ask that question in the comments, just say no. Hard stop. No one has ever made thousands of dollars a month taking online surveys unless they’re a bot. If you’re someone who likes to build bots, build yourself some survey bots and go ham. See how much you make. Still, I don’t think you can make thousands of extra dollars a month with your army of bots taking online surveys. I do know people who love to make extra cash when they are stuck waiting in lines. They use that time to knock out a couple of surveys in the meantime. If they work for you, that’s great. They didn’t work for me. For those of you who had a Plato’s Closet nearby in the early 2000s, remember when they sold everything from clothes to shoes to accessories and even DVDs? Yeah, I quickly resorted to selling other items, and the payout kept getting smaller and smaller each time. I needed another side hustle idea to move on to. This side hustle idea wasn’t sustainable either. I have yet to find anyone who was able to make $1,000 in one month like some blood plasma centers advertise. This was such a fun side hustle, and I averaged about $20 an hour when I would take gigs. The only downside was the payout wasn’t worth it after things like commute time, wear and tear on my car, and dealing with cellphone dead zones in stores. There also weren’t plenty of gigs where I could find several gigs to do a day — it was more like one to two gigs a day, if that. I bought items from thrift stores, dollar stores, clearance aisles at Kohl’s, eBay, garage sales, flea markets, and even Craigslist. Then, I would resell them for a profit on eBay, Poshmark, Mercari, and Facebook Marketplace. I even got into the niche of fixing and reselling PlayStation game consoles from Craigslist. I did this side hustle on and off for years, including helping my wife with her own reselling business of buying and reselling guitars on eBay. This was a side hustle I loved doing until I realized I’d rather do a side hustle where I don’t have to constantly go to the UPS store to ship things. I first found paid research studies when I was in college when I came across some studies happening at my campus. Later on, I found paid research studies through sites like Respondent. Respondent pays for a variety of things like testing websites and virtual interviews. This was a fun side hustle, and I could get paid $100 for one 45-minute virtual interview session. It’s great for extra cash but also wasn’t sustainable as I wouldn’t always match the studies available. It was fun but pretty exhausting. My cousin and I would get out with our shovels while my uncle used the plow on his truck while we hit different houses. Still, this was too much physical labor for my liking when it was freezing outside. The work consisted of going to various bars, restaurants, and festivals during nights and weekends to hand out free coupons and drinks. We never had to sell anything but had to make sure people tried the product we were trying to promote. It was so fun, but the commutes were brutal. I stopped this side gig when I ended up finding out that one of the brands I worked for was a complete scam. The brand was called Boobie’s Rock! and was actually just some guy pocketing all the cash. They told us the profits we raised, in addition to our pay, were going directly to breast cancer survivors. Instead, those profits went to him. Hourly pay for servers sucks and is pretty messed up when you think about it. I got paid $3.25 an hour as a server, but some nights, I would take home over $300 in tips. Serving is one of the quickest ways I could come up with a ton of cash in one night at that age. I’d work my butt off for that money, though, and it’s one of the most physically and mentally challenging jobs out there. But holy crud, was it fun. I thought to ask the admissions area of these local venues to see if I could also come and set up and live paint during some of these shows. Some of them accepted but for no pay. They said I could bring past paintings with me and sell them while I got free admission. That’s what I did for a couple of months, which was great because my friends came with, and we always made a night out of it. I averaged about $200-$300 a show from the paintings I was able to sell while live painting. This was so fun, and if I were more focused at the time, I would still be doing this now. But, I’d rather keep my painting as a hobby only. Printify has a way to auto-link to Etsy, so when someone purchases something, that is immediately sent to Printify. Then, the warehouse you preselect when you set up your store prints those items “on demand” for you. Then, the warehouse ships the product to the customer without you having to do anything. Keep in mind that you still have to do customer service and any business admin tasks for this side hustle. My store was in the gothic bachelorette niche, and I got quite a few large group orders. Then, the pandemic hit, and weddings quickly died down. Shortly after that, I closed the store to focus on other side hustles. I do currently still have a store that sells digital downloads like templates and workbooks. Then, I hit the jackpot on a few house-sitting gigs where you stay at the pet owner’s house while also watching one or more of their pets. One paid me $1,000 for one week of house sitting. The more pets that you sit while house sitting, the more you’re paid depending on how you set your rates in the app. It was surprisingly lucrative, and I still do this side hustle here and there to this day because I love doing it so much. The only downside for me was that Rover takes 20% of all your wages made through the app. I found a way around this fee by educating pet owners that work with me. I told them how much Rover takes, and they usually would make up for it with the tip after the completed sitting assignment. I found the majority of these gigs via a few Facebook groups I was a part of. It was fun until I realized it wasn’t something I wanted to do long-term. I found my first client on Craigslist, and they happened to be a client I had worked with at my previous employer, but I’d never signed a non-compete. I did work for them for 10 hours a month to sometimes 10 hours a week and would get paid $100 an hour. The type of work I did was supporting their existing WordPress websites while assisting with new websites. I kept this as a side hustle for a while, even after I finally got another job as a programmer analyst in retail tech. I eventually had to let it go because my day job required on-call duties, and I didn’t have the time to juggle the two anymore. I specialize in personal finance, content creation, and travel topics in my freelance writing projects. Most of my gigs are from Twitter, my own network of blogging friends, and pitching publications on my own. I make anywhere from $300-$1,000 an article depending on the scope of the project. I still do this side hustle to this day, and it is an important part of my business. This is a great, flexible way to make money online because it can be done virtually from wherever you are, as long as you have your laptop and Wi-Fi. I use Zoom and Calendly for the tools to execute this service. I got more clients once I started my blog because I had a larger network that included bloggers. Before that, I found clients through word of mouth and LinkedIn. The first course I ever created was a text-based course with some video interviews included. It was self-paced and is a course I still sell and teach today. Then, I started offering live workshops and webinars so I could get more live face time with several of my followers and students. This gave me more insight into their problems, learning styles, and what they need in real time to succeed. I teach courses on subjects like how to land a remote job, starting side hustles, social media management, digital marketing, creating websites, and more. I make anywhere from $2,000-$8,000 per course cohort. I have yet to ever speak in person, and I like it that way. I can speak virtually from wherever I am and make anywhere from $250 to $2,000 per virtual appearance. I usually speak at virtual conferences, other creators’ communities or events, or at internal events at companies. That blog later became a two-time award-winning side hustle, money, and career blog for neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ folks. It’s been featured in the New York Times, TIME, MSN, CNBC, Business Insider, and more, and helps thousands of people start and build side hustles every month — starting with my free side hustle quiz. I brought in $60k from my blog last year on the side of my full-time job. It’s also what introduced me to several other remote side hustles I still use today to bring in an income. Some of these are freelance writing, course creation, coaching, and more. The blog itself is not one income stream either. It earns money in a variety of ways including income from ads displayed on the blog, affiliate marketing, products I sell through the blog’s shop, social media, and brand partnerships. Starting and building this blog has given me an entirely new set of skills and outlook on how I work. So much so that I left my day job last month to run my blog full-time while also playing around with some of my favorite creative side hustles at the same time. It literally changed my whole life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Side hustles don’t mean you have to hustle until you die. They are here so you can create more options for yourself, more money, and more opportunities. They can help you save for goals, leave a toxic situation, work from wherever you want, save up money to invest, create passive income streams to help reach financial independence, and anything you want to use them to do. You don’t have to start a side hustle to leave your job. You don’t have to have a side hustle in addition to your day job. And you don’t have to try multiple side hustles if you don’t want to. I say this at the same time as acknowledging that there are folks who actually have to work two jobs or side hustle just to survive. Side hustles are not a solution to the broken capitalist system we’ve been dealt, but they can help us navigate it. Who knows, you might even realize a new way of running a business that no one has done yet. A way that could change the way we work forever. Your first side hustle will likely not be your last. If you’re anything like me, you’re going to have to try a few things out to see what you actually like doing. You’ll learn a lot along the way, get experience you wouldn’t have otherwise, and make money while you’re at it. You’ll also learn how to build a business, and who knows, maybe you’ll have your aha moment that just screams, “This is what I ACTUALLY want to do with my life!” and then you skip off into the sunset. Maybe not that elegantly, but you get it. It’s all about finding ways to design the life that was truly meant for you, outside of the daily corporate grind.
