Best side hustles 2023 - What is feasible?

Introduction

Did you ever come across one of those videos like “How to make an extra $3000 on the side with 1-2h per day”? I mean the concept seems to good to be true but is it even feasible?

This year I am planning to test some of those side hustles and see, if they are really possible.

This post starts by researching ideas and selecting one idea to test out for the next few months.

Criteria

In order to compare our side hustles, lets define some criteria to compare them.

• Start capital:
  • Some side hustles will require some capital to start. The higher this number, the harder it will be to get into this side hustle. Hence we are looking for a side hustle without required start capital. Tools which I need to buy to start this hustle will count into this start capital as well!
• Time to setup:
  • Before you can execute your side hustle, you’ll probably have to invest some time to set it up. Obviously, the smaller this number, the earlier you should get your first results and hence the better.
• Time per week:
  • There are two types of hustles: Upfront work vs. continous work. Either you develop something and automate the hustle or you have to invest time continously to see progress. My personal favorite would be to spend time upfront but then forget about the hustle instead of investing time every week. This way I could try other side hustles as well.
• Localization:
  • Even though this blog is written in english, I am living in Germany. Hence I am looking to work from here (or anywhere else) and don’t want to be bound by the side hustle to any particular place.
• Skillset:
  • I am a software engineer. I know how to code. Along with some other skills I am not looking for side hustles which require me to take month-long courses or enroll in some program. I want to be able to use my current skillset as much as possible.
• Time for money:
  • Either you develop a product that markets itself or you “trade” your time versus money. I would like to develop a product so I can try out different hustles as well, but it is always possible to find some task you can do on a side which earns you some side income.

Side Hustle ideas

Selling books on Amazon

One possible side hustle is to write a book and publish it on amazon. There are different variants for this side hustle:

• Instead of writing a full blown book, we could start writing a childs book, finding an AI for generating art (or buying it off of Etsy or Fiverr)
• Instead of finding a publisher for our book we use Amazon KDP

For the comparison of all side hustles on the end of this page we assume the following:

• Start Capital: $0
  • Assuming we can find an AI to generate our images!
• Time to setup: 24h
  • Lets assume we need three full workdays to write the story, generate our images, register us on Amazon and publish our book there.
• Time per Week: 1h
  • We might want to optimize our product page on Amazon but after a few weeks this number should approach 0h!
• Localization: Anywhere
  • We should be able to publish our book from anywhere in the world, as it is a purely digital product.
• Skillset: Anyone
  • This side hustle idea should not require you to have any particular set of skills. However: You would benefit from having the ability to draw, as the image generation step is the step with the most risk! That said, telling a story is the most important part of this idea. You should be in a creative mindset when starting with drafting you book.
• Time for money: No
  • As the book is a finished product, we could potentially have a small income stream without putting more work in.

Writing a mobile app

As a developer I know how to code. Writing an app is one of the most generic ideas you can throw to a developer (similar to saying someone “write a book”). To reduce the complexity of this side hustle lets say you want to develope an idle game for iOS (Apple).

For mobile games there is espacially one big question: Where do you get your art and music from? Buying art and music might cost money, free resources might be sparse and hard to get. However, lets say you know a friend of a friend that can draw and you found some royalty free music. Than this side hustle idea could rank as follows:

• Start Capital: $100
  • You have to pay Apple $100 to publish your app to the appstore. (As a side note: Google has their own fees you have to pay to publish you app their.)
• Time to setup: 80h
  • Writing an app could take weeks. The 80h assume developing the app idea, writing the software, acquiring the music and the art, testing the app with some beta testers and publishing the app to the appstore. Note that depending on the app this number could increase fast!
• Time per Week: 3h
  • We might want to optimize our app, our app page in the Appstore and might want to fix some bugs which get reported by our users.
• Localization: Anywhere
  • We should be able to publish our app from anywhere in the world, as it is a purely digital product.
• Skillset: Developer
  • You have to know how to code. There are a few no-code options out there but I am not familiar with those and therefore cannot recommend any.
• Time for money: No
  • As the app is a finished product, we could potentially have a small income stream without putting more work in.

YouTube automation

YouTube is the biggest platform when it comes to videos on the internet. Even though it is nowadays hard, to monetize a new channel on YouTube, it doesn’t mean you can’t. I am not a person who likes to speak in videos. Hence, I am not looking in creating a new channel with original content written by me. Looking into YouTube channels and side hustles, I stumbled over “YouTube automation”. Basically: Download royalty free music, find some free background images, combine them into a video and post that video on YouTube. Most people are looking for background music. There are channels that get millions of views just with the described content.

Now let’s take a look at our classification:

• Start Capital: $0
  • It is free to start a channel on YouTube and there are plenty of resources to find royalty free assets (images and music). Sounds great!
• Time to setup: 8h
  • It should not take much time to setup a new channel, download some music and images, combine them and upload them. 8h should be enough to start!
• Time per Week: 8h
  • As we need to provide enough content so that the “famous” YouTube algorithm picks us up, we should upload at least one to two videos a week. This should take about 8h per week.
• Localization: Anywhere
  • We should be able to publish our videos from anywhere in the world (we only require internet access).
• Skillset: Anyone
  • There are plenty of resources that show how to combine images and music. Anyone can do it!
• Time for money: Maybe
  • This is kind of difficult. The YouTube algorithm benefits those, who put out more and more videos. Hence, it is good if we produce a continious number of videos. However, at some point our videos might produce money without that we have to put more work into them.

Tutorials and educational content

Sites like Udemy or Skillshare gained a lot of popularity in the past couple of years. Many companies and people are looking to teach them a new topic or enhance specializations. A possible side hustle could be to teach people a specific skill. Please note that the quality of your course might be the success determining factor, that said, a course on a long living topic might generate revenue even in a few years of time.

Let’s assume, that the reader (and myself) have some skill that might have a chance as a educational course. Than we can do the following classification:

• Start Capital: $0
  • Some slides in PowerPoint or Google docs, a microfon and a Laptop should be enough to make such a course. No investment required.
• Time to setup: 80h
  • Since the quality of the course is so important we want to make sure, we spend a lot of time researching and creating our course. 80h should be sufficient though.
• Time per Week: 2h
  • We want to optimize our course page and answer to possible questions related to the course.
• Localization: Anywhere
  • We should be able to publish our course from anywhere in the world (we only require internet access).
• Skillset: Some special skill
  • Our course must be meaningful. We do not have the time to build a new skillset. Hence we want to monitize an existing one.
• Time for money: No
  • The courses are our product which could produce income without us having to interact with them.

Print on Demand

Print on Demand is a very popular side hustle. Whether you create art to go on t-shirts, mugs or stickers, the idea is simple: You create the design, find or make a digital store/website for it and sell it to the customer. If someone buys from you, you send a print on demand service the request and they fulfill it. No dealing with inventory. You are “simply” the person in the middle.

The main challenge is to drive customers to your website. Hence many print on demand stores are really active with social media or Google ads.

Let’s classify it using the measure from above:

• Start Capital: $250
  • You need to host your store, which costs about $50. There are cheaper options out there but this $50 should ballpark it pretty well. (Shopify starts at $1 per month). A free alternative would be to use Etsy or something similar. However, a shop with dedicated domain seems to work better in advertisments.
  • You’ll need to promote your designs and products. Hence, let’s assume the initial setup cost for ads are about $200. You’ll need to try different strategies to find one that matches you needs. The $200 should get you started and hopefully your sales will cover the rest of what you need to spend.
• Time to setup: 40h
  • There are plenty step-by-step tutorials out there which demonstrate, how to setup the store with a few designs. Challenging is the advertisment you need to do.
• Time per Week: 10h
  • We want to optimize our store and product pages, create new designs and most importantly improve the advertisment strategy.
• Localization: Anywhere
  • We should be able to publish our designs and store from anywhere in the world (we only require internet access).
• Skillset: No special skill required.
  • Obviously we have to create the design. However, there are AI powered tools that could help here. Otherwise, we could try some royalty free art assets.
• Time for money: No
  • The designs are our product which could produce income without us having to interact with them.

Advertisments for your local businesses

Stores around you are slacking when it comes to web presence and advertisements. This might be a great opportunity for a side hustle! The idea is simple: create ads for your local businesses and get paid to do so. It might be hard to get started since I don’t have any references to go off of, but once someone has given you a chance, it might be easier to get new customers.

Let’s see, how we could classify this hustle:

• Start Capital: $0
  • If you can find a business that trusts you, they are paying the ads you host. Hence, the cost of running this business are your hours to find your first customer.
• Time to setup: 60h
  • The hardest part is finding you customers. If you don’t have any sales expertise like me, this could take even longer.
• Time per Week: 10h
  • We want to optimize the ads we sold our customers and invest time to find new customers. So this really is up to you. You can invest as much time as you’d like.
• Localization: Anywhere (but near you)
  • You cannot travel with this side hustle, as your customers likely want to interact with you in person. However, you should be able to start this hustle wherever you are in the world.
• Skillset: Advertisment skills
  • Obviously you have to manage the ads for your customers. You need to know, how to do so.
• Time for money: Maybe
  • You might be able to setup those ads in such a way, you don’t have to interact with them anymore. If not, you are basically trading time for money.

Narrator for audiobooks

If you find yourself having a great voice and you want to try voice overs, you might want to checkout being a narrator for audiobooks. There is a company called ACX where you can sign up to become a narrator for audiobooks. You have to record some voice samples and you can get drafted for certain audiobooks that might get published to Amazon Audible. Let’s rank this side hustle using our criteria:

• Start Capital: $0
  • If you own a good microphone, it is free to register and promote yourself as narrator on ACX.
• Time to setup: 6h
  • You have to spend some time recording some voice samples and create a profile. That said, the setup time is marginal.
• Time per Week: 8h
  • This one is a hard one. You only get some revenue when you get chosen as a narrator for a book. When you do, there is a burst of work you need to fulfill, but you’ll get paid for that work.
• Localization: Anywhere
  • As long you have access to a good microphone and internet, you can do this work from anywhere in the world.
• Skillset: Speaker skills
  • As you do work with your voice, it is benefitial to have a speaker background or have a naturally good voice.
• Time for money: Yes
  • You get paid per recorded audiobook and hence trade your time for money.

Transcription Work

When you are looking into options where you can “trade” time vs. money or oder and want to be flexible in how much time you spend, then maybe it is worth checking out Rev. They ask you to do transcribing, captioning, or subtitling and you get paid per minute of footage/audio.

You can even try to accelerate your work by using a tool like Dictation, to pregenerate the text and just fix it manually.

Lets rank it for our comparison:

• Start Capital: $0
  • You only need your computer and internet access!
• Time to setup: 3h
  • You have to spend some time setting up your account.
• Time per Week: as much as you’d like
• Localization: Anywhere
  • As long you have access to internet, you can do this work from anywhere in the world.
• Skillset: No special skill required
  • Anyone can do this.
• Time for money: Yes
  • You get paid per minute of audio and hence trade your time for money.

Comparison

Now, lets see how the listed side hustles compare:

I am not interested in starting a second job! I like my job, and hence I am not looking for a hustle that trades time vs. money.

This leaves me with four options:

1. Childsbook on Amazon
2. Mobile Game for iOS
3. Educational course
4. Print on demand

I first want to try a hustle which does not require me to pay something initially. This drops “Print on demand” from my list. (Mobile Apps are still in, since I already have paid the Developer fee.)

Ranking those three hustles by “Time to Setup” we find, that my best options for my criteria is to try creating a Childsbook and selling it as a digital product!

What is next?

I want to try this “selling a childbook as digital product” hustle over the course of the next few months. This means, research the best ways to create a childsbook, where to sell and how to setup. I want to share my process in the following weeks on this blog and hope to make some side income without too much hassle.

Join me on my journey!

Appendix 1: Other options (more speciallized)

Beneath I have listed some other side hustle ideas that did not fit the list above but still were worth mentioning on a post about side hustles.

Affiliate marketing

If you have a following (i.e. a blog, social media followers, a website or an app) it might be feasible to look into affiliate marketing. Basically, recommending products to your followers and getting a cut for your advertisments. This would take not that much extra time of you but you have to be carefull not to loose your following. But since I don’t have a following, I didn’t look into this any further.

One additional side note: You could always try to grow a follow for affiliate marketing. You could for example create a YouTube channel for product reviews and link an affiliate link there. This might be an option I’ll explore later.

Ads on your website

Similar to affiliate marketing you could use your following and expose them to different kinds of ads. For example, if you own a website, you can monetize it using Google Adsense. However, this might be more and more difficult as the revenue produced went down the past couple of years and you must have a really popular site to generate a meaningfull amount of revenue.

Ghost selling

Ghost selling is a method where you sell a physical product for a higher price than you can buy it for. Often, you use sites like Etsy where you find some product, go to a different place (like Facebook Marketplace) and sell the product for a higher price. Depending on the shipping situation on for the original deal you might be able to sell this product without having to deal with inventory.

As I am not interested in physical products and want to avoid copyright issues with digital products, this is not the method I want to try (but still wanted to mention it for completeness sake).

Renting out a spare room

If you have a garage that you don’t really need or have a room to spare, you might be able to rent them out. I am not a fan of this hustle as it is unlikely you would have such a space. But who knows, maybe you know someone who has! If you do have something, you might want to take a look at Airbnb.

Mentoring

There are a lot of people out there looking for some guidance in learning a new skill. If you have a skillset (like developer or being an entrepreneur), you might be able to offer a mentoring service to them. Finding your mentees might be difficult. It might be wise to attend some conferences for your skillset to find like minded and interested people.

Writing Book-Reviews

Do you read a lot of books? You might be able to write reviews for books you read and earn a little bit of money for that. There is a service out there called Online Book Club which promises to pay you for reviewing their books. I am not sure, whether this side holds what it promises but if so, this might be a good alternative for anyone reading books.