We Obsessively Researched Side Hustles—Here Are 29 That Actually Work

For me, it’s not only a great way to earn some extra cash (whether to pay down debt or just for fun money), it’s also a way to shake things up by using different parts of my brain.

One thing freelancing advice articles don't address enough, though, is that there are distinct side hustler personality types, and that changes the work you're after. There are probably times in your life when you weren’t sure if you would make rent and you needed quick cash now. But then there were the times that you had a stable income and just wanted to make a little extra to pay for that trip to Vietnam. 

That’s why we set up a quiz to help you determine which side hustle mindset you’re in so that you can find the ideal gig to help you earn the extra money you’re after. Take it to determine which area you should explore below:

But even when you know what sort of work you’re after, it can be surprisingly hard to find a viable option. Trust me, I just spent an hour going down a Google rabbit hole after searching “creative side gigs.”

And so, without further ado, here’s an explanation of the five different types of side hustlers, plus some gigs that would work best for each of them.

The Emergency Hustler

Your boss tells you they won't need you come Monday or your car comes to a sputtering halt in the middle of the freeway before spitting up a cloud of black smoke. Regardless of what sort of bad luck you’re up against, rent is due in a week and you are brookkeeeeeeeeee. So you need money ASAP, as in now, and you’ll do whatever it takes to get it.

Sell Your Clothes

For immediate cash, take the bags straight to a consignment store like Buffalo Exchange or Crossroads. 

Pro tip: Having had a friend who worked at Crossroads, here’s an insider's trick: buyer frenzy is real. Don’t just throw your stuff into a garbage bag—make sure everything’s clean, ironed, and folded, then pack it all in a nice tote or at least a bag from a higher end retail store (I always fold my items and place them into a prominently labeled Clare Vivier tote bag). Put two of your nicest, high ticket items on the top of the pile, then mix in a couple of mid-levels with another high-ticket item, then mix from there. If the buyer gets excited about the first few items, she’s more likely to buy, buy, buy. 

Sell at Used Bookstores, Throw a Yard Sale, and Post on Craigslist

Yes, you should unload any furniture or books you’re not using.

Sign Up for a Fiverr Account

You can make money (not much, but it adds up!) doing almost everything on Fiverr from copywriting to proofreading to logo design. If you have a great voice, you can even try voiceover work. The payout's not as immediate as selling all your stuff, but the cash starts to come quickly.

Stalk NextDoor for Odd Jobs

NextDoor is technically meant to serve as a digital neighborhood watch, but people often post wanted ads as well for various things. I've asked for a dog walker on there before. It’s super easy to reply, and it’s much less formal than the other helper apps. You can also post a listing saying you’re available as a house sitter, to mow lawns, etc.

Houseclean, Organize, or Run Errands

Not the most glamorous side hustles, but great if you’ve got free hours. You can sign up to work on sites like Handy and Postmates obviously, but another great option: if you have friends or neighbors who Airbnb, offer to help clean up after each new tenant in exchange for the cleaning fees they receive anyway. It's one less step they have to do, and it's regular work. Embarrassing maybe, but it depends on how desperate—or unflappable—you are. I had a friend who cleaned house for several of her boyfriend's disorganized male friends when we were in college.  

Financially Responsible Hustler

You’re making enough money to pay the bills, but you’ve got a couple big debts looming over your head. Those student loan payments are no joke, and your credit card interest is atrocious. You've already considered Uber or Lyft, but what else? You’re willing to put in some serious work after your day job to get rid of that debt (or just build an emergency savings account) sooner rather than later. 

Work as Weekend Shopgirl

Yes, in an ideal universe, work would end at 5pm on Friday and you’d go to the beach on Saturday and eat brunch on Sunday, then come back revitalized on Monday morning. But if you’re trying to earn some extra cash temporarily, asking around your neighborhood bookstores and clothing boutiques to see if anyone is hiring weekend or evening shifts is a great option. 

Take on Copywriting and Ghostwriting Gigs

If you’re a great writer, using a service like Upwork is an excellent choice for ongoing, albeit sporadic work. For a few months, I ghostwrote articles for a tech site. I only got a few assignments monthly, but each one made me $125 a pop and only took me about an hour and a half to write.

Take Surveys

Yes, these really do pay money (as long as you're using the reliable, big survey sites). If you find you’re sitting at home after work staring at Netflix, this wouldn’t be a bad thing to do while watching whatever episode of Master of None you're on. Here’s a roundup of the best survey sites.

Sign Up for Amazon Mechanical Turk

Mechanical Turk kept coming up during my research, and I was like: Huh? So...I actually signed up to see if it works. Basically, you get paid a few cents to do a menial task, which sounds like nothing, but since the tasks literally take seconds (the one I tried asked me to draw boxes around trees in a photo), you can actually rack up some bills if you have time to kill. Boring, but some people have made it work for them.

Participate in User Testing

Yep, I did this for a period (as I write this, I'm realizing how many side hustles I've actually done) and made a few hundred dollars off of it. Basically, you get an assignment where you fiddle around on a new website and record yourself doing it, describing out loud what’s happening and any points where you have a difficult time. Web developers use your recordings to determine edits they should make to ensure their sites are user-friendly. I had luck using UserTesting, but there are other sites as well including Userlytics and
Userfeel.

Pro tip: You'll have the best luck with these sites if you're readily available to take on tests as they come in. Typically, they need X number of participants, so if you don't say yes ASAP, you miss out. 

Bookkeeping/Tax Prep Assistance

This is not the one for me, but if you’re using these skills at your day job, now might be a good time to offer your services after hours. It’s almost tax season after all. Small businesses are a great target (I have a friend who's now doing this for some independent record labels because—shocker—most music world people do not love finance stuff), but so are any of your friends who hate dealing with their taxes. Just give them a “friends discount” instead of offering to do it for free.

Give Local Tours

No telling how often this will flow in, but there are several sites that let you design and plan tours for visitors to your area. Especially if you live in a big city, this is a great way to get creative and get out of the house for a bit. Win-win. A couple of options include Tours by Locals and Vayable. 

The Make It Rain Hustler

You’re making all your ends meet, and you’re not in debt. Honestly, you could skip the side hustle thing entirely. But you wouldn’t mind a little side cash, especially since you’re going to be taking a few vacations this year. So you figure, why not? No rush exactly, but you’d love to make some extra money.

Airbnb Experience Host

We’re sure you’re familiar with Airbnb, and if you’ve got an extra room in your apartment, by all means consider becoming a host for extra dough. But the latest cool thing about the company is its Experiences section, where you can offer to host any number of activity-based opportunities—things like shared meals, yoga sessions in the park, or even city tours. If you like meeting people and event planning, this could be the option for you.

Rent Out Your Car

Evidently, the average car sits for 22 hours a day (mine sits for more like 23). Apps like Turo are aiming to change that by letting you rent out your car when you’re not using it. Not a bad deal if you’re comfortable with that kind of arrangement.

Plan Budget-Friendly Flights for Non-Savvy Travelers

Are you a total wiz at finding the cheapest flights possible? Flight Fox wants you to help them. If you can complete the test on this page, you could be the perfect fit.

Try Affiliate Marketing

If you have a big following on social media, this is a great option. Our social media coordinator is an affiliate for Glossier, so she has a special referral code she shares now and again on her Instagram. Anytime they make a sale from that, she gets a kickback. Other sites/apps offer affiliate bonuses as well (including some of our favorites like Digit and Qapital). $5 a sign-up may not sound like a lot, but if that happens 10 times, you’ve got $50 in your pocket, you know? And don't forget that Amazon has an affiliate network, too—if you're blogging about your favorite books or products, make sure to use your code for a little spare change. 

Make Your Own Online Courses

Passive income is the best. If you are an expert on something and are willing to put a little time in before getting paid, consider setting up a few courses on Skillshare or Udemy. With a little luck, you’ll earn a constant flow of money without putting much thought in at all.

Work as an Online Language Tutor

Bilingual? Fantastic. You can make money just by having conversations in Spanish, French, or even Russian online. Not bilingual? Apparently, you can also tutor non-English speakers abroad via Skype. Try Wyzant.

The Freelance Side Hustle

You have a part-time gig—or enough clients—to make working for yourself full-time almost viable. You just need one more steady source of income to take the plunge. The key here is to find something that will bring in a regular paycheck without being too mundane or miserable.

Work as a Fitness Instructor/Personal Trainer or Coach

This is so...not me, but if you’re a gym rat who's using your ClassPass membership to its full potential, you might want to consider becoming an instructor. Requirements vary from studio to studio, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Even if you have to invest in a certification, it might be worth it if it's a gig you can fall back on anytime a freelance client falls through. Another option from a commenter on a side hustle Reddit: "I referee lacrosse and ice hockey as my side gigs. I can work as much or as little as I want. The real nice is thing is that I enjoy doing both. So it's not like work to me. Getting $35-$65 a game is easy money."

Become a Front Desk Assistant

Hair studios, large office buildings, gyms. Most of these places hire part-time people to cover the front desks. It’s a great, low-effort side job, plus you can usually be on your computer doing other work as long as you perk up when people arrive. I have a full-time freelancing friend who just worked at the front desk of her yoga studio a couple of days a week in exchange for free membership (so she essentially earned $100 a month for not spending $100 on the gym, and it got her out of the house.)

Dog Sit/Dog Walk

If you’re working from home and love pets, signing up on Rover is a genius idea. You can spend your lunch hour on dog walks or offer up your house as a mellow dog daycare. And it works—my own Rover dog walker recently told me she’s paying her rent off her services. Plus, this was Emily Henderson's side gig when she was first starting out...

Become a Virtual Assistant or Online Customer Service Rep

Outsourcing to the internet is real, so why not get in on it? Try services like Belay Solutions, Fancy Hands, and Live Ops.

Build Squarespace Sites

Chances are you’re fairly web savvy, but there are a ton of people who aren’t. Offer your services to people or businesses you know to get them set up on Squarespace. Especially if you’re a writer, you can help them set up their About pages and other content as well. 

Sell Books

I have a cousin who does this as her full-time gig. Basically, you download apps that let you scan codes to determine how much a book is worth online. Then you head to thrift stores or yard sales and start scanning. If you find a book priced at $2, but you can sell it online for $5, you’re turning a profit (theoretically—if someone’s interested in buying). You do that by setting up accounts on Thriftbooks, Amazon, etc.

Pro tip: The same technique can be applied to records if you’re a music junkie or to clothes. As a die-hard thrifter, I often find a bunch of designer stuff at Goodwill that I could turn a profit on by selling to consignment stores (Madewell stuff, designer shoes and bags, etc.).

The Exploratory hustler or Career-Shifting Hustler

These personalities are two sides of the same coin in a way, so I'm consolidating the side hustle options below. Maybe you’re not sure what you want to do next, so you want to use a side hustle to test some things out. Or maybe you know that you want to start a career as a writer or marketer but don’t have the experience, so you want to use as a side hustle to get there. Regardless, this is about learning and growing. 

Work in Customer Service at Companies That Interest You 

It’s the easiest way to get your foot in the door, and you’ll learn exactly how the company works plus improve your communication skills. Many companies let their customer service reps determine their own hours and/or work remotely, so it’s low commitment, too.

Offer Your Unique Skills to Small Businesses

If your goal is to get into marketing or social media specifically, approaching businesses that don’t have a social media presence to help them in exchange for a monthly stipend is a great way to start. In their side hustle roundup video, The Financial Diet recommends that you put together packages at different levels so they know exactly what they’re getting. Make sure to add them to your portfolio site when you’re through! The same applies to any other skills you might have—PR, finance, recruiting. Think of what skills you want to build up and offer them. 

Serve as a Wedding Officiant

Sounds nuts but think about it: you get paid to go to weddings, which are inevitably a great place to do a little mellow networking. Not a bad way to put yourself out there.

Search “Remote Work” or “Work from Home” on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Craigslist

This is a deep dive, but you never know what you’ll find! Searching for terms like "remote" make it more likely to be a part-time gig. 

Volunteer in a Field That Interests You

We prefer that every woman gets paid for her time, but if you want to get started in something, volunteering after your normal workday isn’t the worst thing for a few months.