This article will be a deep dive into what I think are the top 10 side hustles for 2022. 

In my article about the 2nd pillar of FIRE: make more money, one option I recommended for boosting your income was to start a side hustle. I listed some other ideas to make some quick cash as well. If you haven’t checked that out, you definitely should.  

Table Of Contents (Jump Links…)

• Qualifying Criteria

• Types of Side Hustles/ Businesses

• Top 10 Side Hustles

• Conclusion

Not all side hustles are the same, some are hard to scale, others don’t pay well, and some are frankly just not worth your time. When making this list of the very best types of side hustles I had to come up with some guiding criteria.

The criteria are as follows.

1. Low startup costs

2. Flexible schedule (can be done around your full-time job)

3. Can be scaled into a full-time job or business in the future if you wanted

I like to say gig workers are paid for their time, freelancers are paid for their service, and consultants are paid for their expertise.  

Gig/Hourly Work

I am excluding gig work from my list because trading your time for money isn’t usually a good deal. If you need a quick buck, sure go do Uber or Door Dash, just keep in mind these gigs are hard to scale because you are trading time for money. At the end of the day you only have so many hours in a day. Plus, someone is always willing to do the same job for a little bit less if they need the money. 

Provide a Service/ Freelance

You’re much better off sharpening your skills and providing a service for a set fee. This approach scales better. As you become quicker and more skilled, you’ll find your hourly rate improving. Soon, you will be able to take on better-paying opportunities, hire team members to do the busy work while you focus on what you do best.  this is how you maximize your returns on effort!

Consulting

People don’t typically start out consulting. You need a proven track record that typically takes years to establish. But if you’re a leading expert in your field, you can charge whatever you want. I’m not going to cover how to start a consulting business in this article. However, having done some consulting in the past, I will touch on this in a future post.  

Now that you understand the selection criteria, lets dive in!

1 - Freelance Writer/Editor

As the world becomes more and more online, good editors and writers are in high demand! Bloggers need editors, companies need press releases, and well-written articles about current events are always in high demand.  

Pros

• Flexible schedule:  Typically, people need an article written or edited by a deadline. It doesn’t matter if you work evenings, during lunch, or in the mornings. As long as you deliver quality work on time, the customer is usually happy.

• Can be done anywhere: This is one of the best side hustles if you want to work from home or a beach in Hawaii. Again, it’s all about getting the job done.  

• Low startup costs: This is probably the lowest cost side hustle to get off the ground. If you have a laptop, you can probably get started using gig sites such as Fiverr.com.

Cons

• You need to be a good writer. If you are not already a skilled writer, you’ll need to sharpen your skills before attempting this side hustle. A poorly written article or errors that get missed during editing isn’t going to earn you much repeat business.  

• Sometimes the work is boring.  If you’re writing a press release for company X about the four new colors of fidget spinners they have, you may find the work to be a bit of a grind. It still pays, but it’s not always going to be exciting content.  

• New technology Risks. With new technologies such as ChatGPT, and other chatbots coming out it’s easier than ever to generate content at the click of a button. even so I still think writers are a needed skill, but you’re going to need to differentiate yourself from the noise.

Scalability

Once you’ve established a strong reputation, you could hire an editor to edit your creative work and improve turnaround times. Conversely, you could hire a team of writers while you assign topics, manage customers, and edit their work similar to how a news room works.  

2 - Video or Photo Editing

YouTube. TikTok. Instagram. Everyone wants to be an influencer, has an exciting story to tell, or a brand to get in front of eyeballs. Video content is one of the fastest-growing categories online. Yet, many people don’t have the skill or time to edit video content.

Pros

• Location independent: This side hustle can be done from home as long as you have a good internet connection and set up a cloud location for files to be exchanged.

• Flexible schedule: Like writing, you’ll have a deadline, but it doesn’t matter if you work evenings, mornings, etc.

• Lots of opportunities: To get a quick start, you can get set up on sites such as Fiver.com

Cons

• Flair: A lot of personal taste goes into video editing. Not everyone is going to be a fit for your style.

• Startup costs: The software and computer equipment to edit efficiently could run a couple thousand dollars. If you already have a top-notch computer, this cost may not be an issue. 

• Time: This gig can be very time-consuming. If you get a pile of random unlabeled video clips, it can take a significant amount of time to make sense of it all and put together a compelling video. Be clear in what you need from your clients, and price accordingly.  

Scalability

You can hire additional editors or an assistant to help sort through media files, do rough edits, add music and effects, etc.  Once you have a portfolio of creat content you can expand your services to higher paying clients

3 - Real Estate Photography

This is a great side hustle! I know several people who started in wedding photography and ended up in real estate photography full time instead. (Bridezilla is real, and there are a bunch of them!) It’s normal to make a couple hundred dollars per shoot or more if you have a proven track record. There are always properties up for sale that need quality photos. 

Pros

• Opportunity: Real estate photography has lots of weekend and evening opportunities.

• Flexibility: Agents normally want pictures quickly, but if you can do the work sometime in the next day, that’ll usually work. As long as it gets done, they don’t care when you do it. Head to a shoot during lunch, edit everything in the evening, and have it to them in the morning!

• The customer isn’t very picky: You need to take good photos, but you’re not documenting a wedding or an emotional once-in-a-lifetime event. Make sure the lighting is good, use the right lens for the room size, and you’re in good shape! If a shot is missed, you can always go back and try again.

Cons

• Drive time: You have to drive to the location.

• Startup Phase: It can take some time to break into the industry. Established real estate agents tend to use the same couple of people they’ve used before. You might have to sell yourself a little. Stop by offices and open houses, or offer to take pictures of rental homes that friends and family own to get started. Once you’re in, the money is good!

• Expenses: The camera gear can be expensive. You don’t need the highest-end equipment when you’re starting out. Still, you could easily build a collection of cameras, lenses, and lights exceeding $5,000. Of course, if your hobby is photography, this might not be all bad. Camera gear tends to resell well on the used market as well.  

Scalability

You can hire a photo editor to speed up processing, or an assistant to help carry gear and lights through the house. Also, you could offer to train aspiring photographers once you have enough work on your plate. 

4 - Graphic Design

Gone are the tacky websites of the 1990s where goofy fonts were considered a normal branding technique! Competition is fierce, and everybody from gamers, influencers, bloggers, and small to large businesses are investing in quality logos and branding art to give their company a polished look.  

Pros

• Demand: Graphic design is a highly demanded skill.

• Turnover: If you’re fast, you can make cool logos pretty quickly.

• Pay range: There is a wide range of pay from a few hundred per logo to thousands if you are working with brands

Cons

• Specialization: Graphic design is a somewhat specialized skill. (I paid someone for the Blind Luck Project logo.)

• Picky customers: When dealing with someone’s personal brand or company, there is a lot of vested interest in getting just the right look. You may find some customers are difficult and request many revisions before they are 100% satisfied.  

Scalability

There are not a ton of scalability opportunities with this side hustle. You could potentially work with other people, but a lot of this comes down to your style and needs the personal touch your customer paid you to deliver.  

5 - Handyman / Contractor

I don't see this side hustle on many people's lists. Maybe it’s because you have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Being a handyman or small project contractor can be a great way to make some money on the side. Many jobs, such as installing new sinks, building bookcases, or replacing broken doors or windows, only take a few hours to do and are outside of most people's comfort zone or ability.

Pros

• Versatile opportunities: You can do anything: painting rooms, building sheds, installing blinds and ceiling fans, etc.

• Added profit: You can charge a markup on building supplies to add to your earnings.

• Flexible schedule: Many projects can be done over a weekend or in the evenings around your day job. Plus, you can take on as many or few jobs as you’d like. I personally know a school teacher who hires some high school kids every summer to build wood fences with him. He makes an additional $30K+ every summer when he’s not teaching. Not bad! 

Cons

• Labor: The work can be physically demanding.

Scalability

As your business grows, you can take on larger projects and hire additional workers to help with large jobs or complete specialized aspects of specific projects. Some of the largest companies in the world started as small one-person construction firms.  

6 - Mowing Yards & Landscaping

My first job was mowing the neighbor’s yard! This quickly grew into a sizeable side hustle making me over $1,500 a month. That’s pretty good for a high school kid working part-time (much better than flipping burgers).

Pros

• Flexible schedule: As long as the grass gets cut every week, you won’t get many complaints.

• Repeat business: Since grass always grows, you get a lot of repeat work from the same people.

• Added opportunities: Mowing lawns can quickly turn into other landscaping opportunities such as pruning, building patios, and more.

Cons

• Startup costs: This side gig does require some equipment, but you could start with a push mower.

• Labor: The work can be physically demanding. (Getting paid to work out isn’t all bad!)

Scalability

One of the great things about mowing yards is that you can upgrade to larger mowers, hire additional help as needed, and find better opportunities such as businesses, rental properties, and community HOA’s that have larger properties to manage.  

7 - Resell on eBay

This is a side hustle I personally enjoy. I look for going out of business sales, yard sales, or items in need of repair. Then I clean them up, send them in for warranty replacement, or fix them myself. Finally, I resell them on eBay. Typically, value-dense items that are cheap to ship, such as pocket knives, multitools, collectables, and computer hardware, do well.  

Pros

• Ease: It’s pretty easy to find items, clean them up, take pictures, and sell them.

• Flexibility: There are no deadlines or schedules to work with. Just ship when something sells.

Cons

• Potential waste: Not everything will sell well. I recommend becoming an expert in a category, such as high-end knives or computer hardware, so you know what you are buying and the demand and potential resale of an item.

• Scammers: There are scammers to deal with. I’ve seen every trick in the book. My best advice is to follow eBay’s guidelines and say no to shipping out of the country or accepting offers outside the eBay system.  

Scalability

You can scale this one, but you’d need to find some good people. I’ve heard of people buying stuff in bulk off of TSA. (Now you know where the pocket knife security took last time you flew went.) Then have employees clean up and take pictures of items to sell.  

Another opertunity would be to sell for friends and family so they they don’t have to deal with the hassle in exchange for a cut of the profits.

8 - Start a Blog or Website

With more and more people getting online, the niche website and blogging world is still a growing market worth looking into.  

Pros

• Creative ownership: You get to take ownership of the creative process and build something you are passionate about.

• Flexible schedule: You can write whenever you want.

• Potential passive income: It can turn into a good source of passive income over time.

Cons

• Time investment: It can take a long time to get established with steady traffic.

• Steady input: This stream of income will require you to be somewhat regular in producing content. (1-2 articles a week is typical.)

• Marketing: Your blog won’t get found unless you are. You’ll probably have to promote your content through various marketing strategies.  

Scalability

A website is possibly the ultimate scalable business.  One well-written article could be seen by millions of people. You can hire ghostwriters and editors to write on topics based on your content calendar. There are also many different ways to monetize a website: banner ads, affiliate marketing, promoted content, merch, and more.  

9 - Sell on Etsy

Are you the crafty type? Then Etsy might be for you! You can make and sell just about anything you can imagine on Etsy. I’ve seen everything from diaper cakes to custom signs and movie props.  

Pros

• Satisfaction: You get to make whatever you enjoy!

• Flexibility: You can make things whenever you have some extra time, and let the storefront display your products and make sales while you’re busy doing other things.

• Built-in clientele: You have instant access to a large marketplace for selling anything.

Cons

• Time-consumption: Making things by hand can be time-consuming.

• Space: You’ll likely need some space to store materials, completed items, and shipping supplies.

Scalability

Etsy is specifically for crafted items, which means they are mostly handmade. This limits how much you can scale up, but there are still opportunities to automate some steps and have extra hands help out.   

10 - Make Video Product Reviews

There is a whole industry of people doing video product reviews. You can make some videos about products you already use and enjoy. Then post them to YouTube, Instagram, Amazon Influencer Program, etc. Once you have a bit of a following, companies will offer to send you products for free to do honest reviews and help get their brand in front of more people. You can either keep the products or sell them on eBay for some additional cash flow.  

Pros

• Flexible schedule: You can make content whenever you feel like once it’s uploaded you start collection commissions.

• Commissions: Videos can be a strong source of passive revenue for years to come.

• Free stuff: Get free stuff! Who doesn’t like that?

• Creative outlet: Get to be creative with how you showcase a product.

Cons

• Time: Producing videos can be time-consuming.

• Demands: Companies can be demanding with tight deadlines (holiday season etc.).

• Consistency: You will need to produce content consistently to be successful.

 Scalability

This side hustle can be a little hard to scale, which is why it’s last on this list. However, there are still ways you can streamline your workflow. For example, you could work with a video editor to free up your time for filming. You could also hire a virtual assistant to manage some aspects of your social media presence. This strategy can help push your video reviews to a larger audience, giving your brand more authority and reach.

There you have it! Ten quality ideas that have low startup costs, can be done in your spare time, and can be scaled up if/when you feel like quitting your full-time job!

You might notice a few common “side hustles” that people like to talk about didn’t make this list. It’s likely because they didn’t meet one of my three criteria above. There are many other ways to make money. However, many of them have high startup costs, require you to be on someone else’s schedule, or have poor future scalability, meaning they are dead-end gigs (such as driving for Uber). They might be fine for making a quick buck, but they aren’t going to be good long-term opportunities to free yourself of the demands of others and retire early on your terms.

 Now get out there and make yourself some MONEY!! 

Already got a side hustle? Let us know how you are raking in the dough in the comments below!  

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