Looking for a new side hustle to earn a little extra money, and potentially transition into a full-time job?

Nowadays there are actually so many different ways to make money on the side that it’s hard to choose just one. And it’s also difficult to tell who is just giving out helpful advice, and who is looking to sell their own product or course.

In this article, I’m going to give my unbiased opinion of what I think are 20+ great side hustles that you might want to consider.

Why Have A Side Hustle?

You might be wondering, why would you want a side hustle at all?

Just having the extra money can definitely make things easier. Imagine having an extra couple hundred dollars that you can spend (or save) each month without having to worry about it.

Plus if you ever get laid off or fired, you can be confident that at least your income won’t drop to zero. Imagine having a side hustle that can totally cover your rent or mortgage. Then even if you lose your job, you won’t have to worry about making ends meet.

There’s a good chance that you have more spare time than you think. The average person spends several hours a day browsing social media or watching television, so why not use that time to make some extra money?

Plus if you find something you really love, you can even make it into your new full-time source of income.

Passive or Active Income?

Passive income is more of a “set it and forget it” approach. For example, if you publish a book or put up a bunch of songs for sale on iTunes. You’ll get royalty payments each month from copies that you sell. So you’re actually making money even while you’re sleeping or doing other things.

This kind of side gig requires more upfront work and might take longer to get a payback.

The alternative is active income. This is what most of our jobs are. You put in the work, and you get paid accordingly. Lots of side hustles allow you to choose how much or little you want to work. The downside to this is that you’re still trading time for money, and there’s only 24 hours in the day.

Start A Youtube Channel

If you want to get your face out there and spread a message or skill with the world, Youtube is one of the best platforms available.

You’ll need to post new video content fairly regularly, and it may take up a while to build an audience.

But once you’re up and running, you can earn a good side income from Youtube. Aside from ad revenue, you can also promote affiliate products and find other ways to profit from the platform.

Podcasting

If you’re self-conscious about appearing on video, maybe you’d feel more comfortable starting a podcast.

Podcasts require that you commit 1 to 3 hours per week to record each episode usually. And they’re less discoverable of a format than Youtube.

There also isn’t any ad revenue potential built right into them, so you’ll need to find sponsors to promote on your show.

Uber / Skip The Dishes / Instacart

There’s a handful or more of these apps that you could consider using. Basically you run errands for people and get paid for that. Whether that’s acting as a taxi, delivering groceries, or picking up food from restaurants for people.

Each platform has its own pros and cons, so I would check out some reviews on Youtube and places like Reddit from people who have worked with these platforms before you choose one to work for.

Read my article Tax Deductions For Freelance Writers if you’re looking for some examples of expenses that you can write off.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is basically promoting a product or service that someone else is selling. Then you get paid a percentage commission or flat fee for directing customers to them.

Usually you’ll have to combine affiliate marketing with some other item on this list. That way you’ll have a pre-existing audience that you can drive to buy products.

Before you go all-in with Amazon, be sure to read my article Amazon DESTROYS Affiliate Commissions: Alternatives To Consider

Blogging

Some people say that blogging is dead, but I disagree! You just have to go about it the right way.

If you pick a profitable niche that people are actively searching for, you can still make a living from a blog.

The downside is that blogging takes a long time to get going. You likely won’t see any money for the first six months of your blog or more. It’s not even worth putting advertisements on your blog until you’ve got a steady flow of visitors coming to your page each day.

Babysitting / Petsitting / Housesitting

Most of the items I’ve included on this list are things that you can do online from home. But if you want something more hands-on in the real world, you might consider babysitting, petsitting, or homesitting.

People are willing to pay trusted sitters to watch over things that are valuable to them that they want kept safe. Whether that’s their kids, their pets, or their home.

If you love working with kids or pets, it can be an awesome choice.

Even if you don’t like pets or kids, you can just housesit empty houses or check on them once a day for people.

There are websites where you can find people looking for housesitters or babysitters. Or you might just check with your network of family and friends to see if they know anybody looking for one of these services.

Tutoring

If you did particularly good in a subject in school, why not make some money by helping kids out with those topics?

You can help teach kids math or other subjects and get paid for it.

Flip Items on eBay / Amazon

Flipping items basically involves buying items locally for low prices, and then selling them online for a profit.

You can source your items a bunch of different ways.

Traditionally, places like Goodwill, Value Village, and Salvation Army were great sources for used items that could be sold online for a profit. But nowadays they know what most of the stuff they sell is worth, and mark up prices accordingly. You may still want to check them out to see what they’re like in your area though.

Garage sales are another place to pick up valuable items for cheap. People might be clearing out their kids old comic books, baseball cards, or other items without realizing how much they’re actually worth.

Even shopping at stores like Walmart or Target, you can find items in clearance bins that have been drastically marked down. Amazon has an app you can use where you just scan a product barcode and you can see what it’s selling for online.

I have limited experience with this, but I’ve come across a few deals in my time that were too good to pass up. For example, one time I saw Walmart selling boxes of crayons for 10 cents a piece during “Back To School” season that were worth $3 each online! So I picked up a hundred boxes for $10 and made a couple hundred dollars in profit by flipping them.

The downside is that if you aren’t careful, you could end up with a whole room full of products that you aren’t able to sell right away. Most professional flippers I know have whole warehouses full of items meticulously categorized, and it might be months after they pick up an item until they sell it.

Music Lessons

If you know how to play guitar or piano at any decent level, people will pay you to learn that skill. If you have any other talents that you can teach people, there are other things you can make money by coaching people on too.

You can offer music lessons in person as it’s traditionally done. But some people are now even offering music lessons online, which really increases your number of potential customers.

Don’t feel like you have time for a side hustle? Read my article How To Start Writing With A Busy Schedule or Full-time Job for some motivation!

Data Entry or Transcriptionist

If you’re looking for a more entry-level side hustle to just earn some extra money, data entry is a good place to look.

Basically some data just can’t be manipulated by computers alone, and companies need to pay humans to manually enter it into their system.

Transcription is similar, but it involves listening to audio or video and then writing down what is being said.

Freelance Writer

This is the one that I make most of my income from!

Freelance writing actually involves a lot of different types of writing.

You can create blogs or articles for people. You can do social media posts or emails. You can be a copywriter and create landing pages and sales pages. Or any number of other things.

You don’t need to be an expert at grammar and spelling to get started. But when you’re starting off, you likely will work for 1 or 2 cents per word until you have some experience or specialization.

Read my article 20 Ways Writers Can Earn Money (Writing Job Opportunities) for another 20 gigs just for writers!

Editor

If you’d rather do more reading than writing, maybe being an editor is better suited for you.

Most places that hire freelance writers also make use of freelance editors.

To get hired as an editor, you’ll have to know your grammar and spelling a lot better than just being a writer. If you’ve got a degree in literature or something similar, you could be in a great position for an editor role though.

Teaching ESL

Teaching ESL has always been a popular option in Korea and other Asian countries. But normally it requires uprooting and actually physically moving there to teach in a school.

Nowadays, many parents are looking for native English speakers to help tutor their children over Skype or Zoom. You could do it for just a couple of hours per week, or scale it up.

Programming

There are tons of ways to make some extra money with a programming side hustle.

You can do web design, develop apps and software, or any number of other things.

Nowdays there are tons of resources online to teach yourself programming from scratch. It will probably take a year or more to get to a point that you have sellable skills, but then you’ll always have that knowledge going forward.

Even in other jobs, knowledge of programming can be useful for automating tasks and other purposes to make things easier on yourself.

Photography

Photography is a great hobby that can be further developed into a side hustle, or even a full-time career eventually.

You can make passive income by putting your images up for sale on stock photo websites.

Or you can make a killing doing photography for weddings just on weekends.

Photography is one field that’s easy to get into. All you need is a good DSLR camera and to watch a few hours of Youtube tutorials to get started. But it’s also difficult to master, and there’s a huge skill ceiling between a beginner and expert photographer.

Graphic Design

Companies hire freelancers to create logos and all kinds of other graphics for them.

It’s easy enough that even high school or college kids that are talented when it comes to art can start doing some graphic design work in their spare time.

If you have any artistic inclinations, you can pick up graphic design even if you don’t have any art degree or experience. You’ll just need to take some time to teach yourself a program like Photoshop or GIMP from scratch. Luckily like most things, there is a ton of free video tutorials and information available online.

SEO

Companies will pay you handsomely if you can drive new traffic to their business.

If you’re taking on SEO as a side hustle, I would personally start by focusing locally. Pick an industry that you’d like to work with, like local restaurants or dentists. Then reach out to a bunch of businesses in that industry.

Most small businesses have minimal online presence. If they do have a website, it’s usually very low on content and difficult for people to find.

If you can help put a local business on the front page of Google search results when people search for “(Your city) dentist” or “(Your city) pizza,” that’s a service that’s worth thousands of dollars.

Social Media Manager

If you always find yourself scrolling through Facebook and Instagram, why not make that into a career?

Companies are looking for people to manage their various social media platforms for them. Sometimes this is done in house. But more often than not, it’s handled by freelancers.

Reach out to your favorite brands and offer to handle their social media for them. Especially if they currently aren’t doing much on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Like SEO, it’s fairly easy to start getting them a ton of followers when they’re starting from nothing.

Animator or Comic Artist

Maybe you’re artistic, but graphic design feels too corporate or stifling of your creative freedom. Then maybe you want to create your own animations or comics!

Like blogging, starting up your own webcomic will take a lot of time before you start getting results. You might have to create hundreds of comics before you start to really build up a following.

But if you find yourself always doodling and coming up with jokes anyway, why not put it online for everyone to see?

Voice Actor

Are you a big fan of cartoons and anime? Maybe you have a really unique voice or accent?

How cool would it be to star in one of your favorite shows?

Voice acting is something you might want to consider if that sounds appealing to you!

You might have to start off small, doing work on Fiverr or reading audiobooks. But once you make a name for yourself, who knows what kind of big break you could get?

Translator

If you were lucky enough to grow up with a second language being spoken in your house, why not put those skills to the test as a translator?

It doesn’t matter if you speak French or Mandarin. Translators are in high demand. Especially if you can do it for cheaper than what other professionals charge!

I wouldn’t recommend this if you don’t already speak another language, since you’ll need to invest a lot of time becoming fluent. But if it’s a skill you already have, then why not monetize it?

Virtual Assistant

Virtual assistant is a pretty broad term that can include a lot of different tasks. Basically it’s like being a secretary or assistant to an online business. It tends to involve more menial tasks that entrepreneurs are tired of doing themselves. It might be something like resizing images, summarizing information from spreadsheets, uploading ebooks, or all kinds of other things.

If you don’t have any particular skills and want a place to start, being a virtual assistant is one way to get your foot in the door.

Designing Products

There are lots of online platforms that will let you upload and start selling your own products without charging you anything.

Merch By Amazon, Teespring, and RedBubble are some of the biggest names when it comes to selling stuff like tshirts, mug, and other products.

These platforms use a print on demand model. So your product only gets printed when someone orders it. That means you don’t have to print a whole bunch of shirts in advance and take the risk that nobody will buy them.

If It Seems Too Good To Be True…

While there are tons of legitimate opportunities to start a new side hustle in 2020, there are unfortunately still a lot of scams that go around.

Like the old saying goes… if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Keep that saying in mind whenever you’re evaluating a cool new business opportunity that you’ve heard about. Anything that promises you the ability to get rich quick with minimal work probably isn’t giving you the full story.

In particular, I’d be hesitant of MLMs (multi-level marketing) and any number of scams that are online. Any company that is asking you to pay them to get started probably isn’t legitimate.

Conclusion

There has never been a better time to get started with a new side hustle. You can make a few extra hundred dollars per week, or even create a new career for yourself.

With various options involving art, language, writing, teaching, and other jobs, there’s something out there for nearly everybody.

Take some time to really explore the different side hustle options that are available for you. But once you pick one that seems to really appeal to you, I recommend going all in on it.

Try not to dabble between several different side hustles, or you’re unlikely to see much results from any of them. Instead pick what you’re strongest at and give that your full effort for at least six months.