Are you looking for a side hustle to make extra money?

Today I'm going to share with you 10 side hustles that I've personally tried.

Some of which have quite literally made me millions of dollars, and some of which probably aren't worth your time.

1. Selling on Etsy

Okay, so the very first side hustle we're going to be talking about is—selling on Etsy.

So one of the things I did in college as a side hustle, really just trying to make enough money to buy groceries was I created resin jewelry and sold it on Etsy.

I ended up only doing it for a couple of months because it was so much work making all of these different earrings that I wasn't even sure people were going to buy.

In fact, I didn't even make that many sales.

There was so much competition on Etsy.

I couldn't charge enough even if I was to charge $50 for a pair of earrings, which is a lot, but you have to keep in mind:

-the cost to make the earrings
-your time to make the earrings, which is a lot, by the way
-plus they charge you a little bit per every single listing

And from what I understand, the listings expire after a while, and then you have to redo the listing, also to play the Etsy game in today's world, you're going to have to probably run Etsy ads, which is going to cost money as well.

So for me, the profit margin and then also the amount of money you can make versus the time on Etsy just isn't worth it for me.

So that's why I'm going to rate this about a 2 out of 10.

2. Reselling things on Facebook Marketplace or eBay

The second side hustle we're going to talk about is reselling things on Facebook Marketplace or maybe even eBay.

So in high school and college, my friends and I would go thrifting a lot and I would find a lot of cool items and I would try to resell them on eBay.

Now, of course, I think Facebook Marketplace is really good. It just didn't exist back then.

The cool thing about Facebook Marketplace is people can actually drive to your house and pick up the item.

So you're not having to pay for like the packaging and the shipping and the time and the driving to the shipping store and all that stuff.

Now the upside of this is I feel like literally, anyone could do this.

You don't really have to have a lot of skills to do this.

You know, if you really like shopping, going to thrift stores, you could easily just spend your time going and finding cool items and reselling them.

Now of course the downside is that first of all, you have to know what are the cool items, what items are going to sell.

Probably do some research.

Also going to the stores, doing a lot of shopping because it's not like you just show up to Goodwill and there's all these cool items that you know you're going to be able to resell for more of a value.

So again, I would give this a 6 out of 10, and although personally, I never made thousands of dollars a month with this.

I do know people on TikTok that are making a couple of thousand dollars a month or more doing this and the cool thing is that it's really high profit margins as well.

3. Blogging

Okay, so the third side hustle is blogging!

This is absolutely one of my favorites.

Blogging is how I started my very first real following online.

I started blogging about one to two times per week very consistently to build that following and then eventually move them to email subscribers to build my email list.

Once I had my following in place, I was able to easily sell them digital products and courses, which we'll talk about in a little bit here.

Then ended up making $254,000, my very first year doing this.

Yeah, seriously, I started this as a side hustle when I had my photography studio because I was pretty burnt out trading my time for money.

I wanted a way to have more leverage.

I wanted a way to scale my business without only directly trading my time for money and I had a lot of photographers coming up to me wanting help.

So I thought, well, I'll just create a blog and share my free tips.

And then once I had a following, I was able to sell digital products and courses and make $254,000 in my very first year doing this.

I would give this 5 out of 10 stars because although I love blogging and it's how I got started.

I feel like in today's world, there are better and faster ways to grow a following online.

4. Digital Products

The fourth side hustle is—you guessed!

Digital products!

As I shared with you from the last side hustle idea, digital products are quite literally what made me $254,000 my first year and one on to make me over $8 million in revenue today.

Turns out that people are happy to buy things from you when you actually have a good product and solve a problem for them.

Now I would give this side hustle an 8 out of 10 because it is a work upfront to build a following to actually sell to but the upside of this side hustle is huge.

5. Pet Sitting

Okay, so the fifth side hustle idea is—pet sitting.

Now this is something that I did in high school.

There were different friends of my mom, especially from her work that had pets and they would go on vacation and they would pay me to actually live at their house for the weekend and just watch their dogs and their cat or whatever.

Now the cool thing is in today's world they have an app called Rover.

So instead of going to someone's house or having to spend the time at this person's house, they can actually book you via Rover and they can actually drop their pets off at your house.

So I think this is a really cool side hustle especially if you're working from home.

My husband and I are actually pretty big users of the Rover app.

We've used it about three or four different times when we've gone on vacation to watch our dog.

We've had some pretty good experiences. We've had one pretty not good experience but the cool thing is once you do find a good Rover sitter then you can keep using them which is great.

Or if you are a Rover sitter then you can keep getting repeat clients and it's not as much work as getting those initial clients.

But I would give it a 6 out of 10 because it's definitely not as lucrative as other side hustle ideas that I've shared but I will say I have found people online making one to two thousand dollars extra every single month just watching animals on Rover which I think is pretty cool.

6. Affiliate Marketing

Okay, now the sixth side hustle that I will recommend is—affiliate marketing.

But before you run, I'm not talking about scammy affiliate marketing where you just get a bunch of affiliate links and spam them everywhere.

That is not at all what I'm talking about. I'm also not talking about Amazon associate's affiliate marketing because let's be real they pay out basically nothing.

However, the affiliate marketing I am talking about is when you already grow your own following then you can hand select a few different products to promote to your audience. And this way they typically pay 30, 40, or even 50% of the sale.

I'm not simply promoting willy-nilly random things to my audience. I'm only promoting the things that I actually use which is key.

Now I would give this side hustle 7 out of 10 because the upside can be big and you're not having to do the delivery or the customer service or anything like that.

But of course, you do need to build a following upfront.

7. YouTube

Okay, the seventh side hustle that I want to share with you is—YouTube.

Now I started my channel in 2021 but I didn't really get serious about it until 2023.

The cool thing is that I am very very close to being monetized.

So although I'm not making an income from YouTube Ad Sense directly yet, I do have friends that are making money directly from Ad Sense.

They are making anywhere from 30 to 100 thousand dollars a year.

If you're not familiar with how YouTube Ad Sense works.

Basically, once you get 4,000 public watch hours you can become monetized with YouTube Ad Sense and that means that people are allowed to then run ads on your channel and you get paid a percentage of those ads.

So it's less about subscribers and more about public watch hours.

The cool thing about YouTube though is that even though I'm not monetized with YouTube Ad Sense yet I still made just under $400,000 last year from my YouTube and Instagram content.

Because I'm selling—digital products!

So you don't have to wait until you're monetized and it can be a really good side hustle so that's why I wanted to mention it.

So I would give YouTube as a side hustle 6 out of 10 because it is a lot of hard work.

Growing a YouTube channel for most people isn't easy however the upside is so massive.

8. Online Courses

Okay, so side hustle number eight is—online courses.

This one is just like digital products but instead of being able to sell a digital product for around $9 to $97, you can sell an online course for anywhere between $297 and $1,997 typically.

Again you do need a following to sell.

And you can price online courses so high and really get people such amazing results.

Plus, you can make so much money from online courses.

I remember when I built my blog following I would be able to do a push for my online course and make $50,000 in a week.

I know, crazy! Right?

And now I really prefer to sell passively but what's so cool is online courses still make up about 80% of my revenue.

Digital products are such a great way to get started but once you're ready to scale, an online course is such a great way to make even more money!

And help your followers even more on a deeper level.

So I would give online courses an 8 out of 10 for a side hustle.

9. Podcasting

Okay, my ninth side hustle idea is—podcasting.

In this side hustle, you're only needing to share your voice and it's a bit easier to get a following than blogging.

Whereas on YouTube, you have to be good at scriptwriting, speaking, and being on camera.

In podcasting, once you grow your podcast following you can have sponsorships.

Now I know people making anywhere from $2000 to $50,000 or more per month from sponsorships on their podcast episodes.

Now of course this is going to depend on how big your podcast following is and how many downloads you get.

What your niche is, and what kind of sponsors you can land but it is a really cool side hustle.

Now I would give this a 6.5 out of 10 because again…..

It's work up front to build a following but the upside is you can still make a good amount of money with it and you don't have to be on video.

10. Freelancing

Alright! Last but not least the tenth side hustle idea is—freelancing.

This is how I got started with my very first business and made my very first dollar as I was freelancing as a photographer.

I started out not really making a lot of money but I was able to eventually grow a multiple six-figure per year photography studio.

Now you don't have to do photography of course you could do copywriting, funnel building, and organizing a house.

There are so many different things that you could do when it comes to freelancing.

Now the upside of freelancing is that it is a lot easier to get clients.

In freelancing, you’re not going to teach people about something, but you will literally do the thing for them for an X amount of dollars.

However, the downsides are:

-You are quite literally trading your time for money so it's not that far away from a job. You're basically clocking in with a client.

-You have to keep getting clients whereas you don't have to do that with a job. With freelancing, you have to find your own clients.

However, I do think this is a really good one to get started with especially if you have a skill in mind because again this is one of the easiest things to sell because again you are just doing the thing for them.

I would give this a 7 out of 10 especially if you've never had a business before or you've never made a dollar before, or you don't have a following at all.

If you have a skill that you want to use to trade your time for money, I think this could be a good side hustle for you.

Final Thoughts

That concludes the list of “10 Easy Side Hustle Ideas I Tried & How Much Money you can Make From Them”.

So as you can see out of all 10 side hustles, the ones that are going to make you the most money, are the ones that require so much work upfront to build a following.

Let me know which of these side hustles you think sounds the most interesting and which of these side hustles are you going to try!