With current economic woes many are looking to side hustles to earn extra income – but many are afraid it will take money to make money. We’ve done the work for you and found the top side hustles to start with no money.
Side hustles promise the lure of extra cash, and with luck, the start of a new full-time career. But, of course, some side hustles have more promise than others.
9 Side Hustles to Start with No Money
Here are the top side hustles you can start today with little to no money:
- Rideshare Driving
- Food Delivery
- Tutoring
- Take Paid Surveys
- Get Paid to Shop
- Pet Sitting
- Freelance Work
- Complete Odd Jobs
- Sell Used Items Online
1. Rideshare Driving
Rideshare apps aren’t grabbing as many headlines as they used to these days, but rideshare services are thriving. And driving for Uber or Lyft still remains a reliable way to earn money. Drivers can earn—and cash out—$100 or more daily.
The minimum driving age can vary by locale, but generally, you must be age 21 or older.
While there are a lot of stories of high car mileage and higher gas prices, don’t let that scare you off. Both Lyft and Uber offer generous sign-up bonuses and regular promotions for completing trips during peak periods.
You can pick the routes and hours you want, and be strategic to minimize the wear and tear to your car. For example, if you’re headed for the shopping mall, airport, or another busy hub, pick up a nearby passenger who’s headed in the same direction. You don’t have to drive miles and miles aimlessly around town to give rides; you can pair up rideshare trips with errands you are already running.
In terms of earning potential, the figures are all over the place driven by myriad variables like city, driving time, gas prices, and tips. But according to The Ride Share Guy, most full-time Uber drivers can earn $600 to $800 a week with many topping the $1,000 figure.
2. Deliver Food
If carting around an extra passenger or two doesn’t strike your fancy (not to mention the stress of always having to keep your car looking spotless), dropping off dinner may be more up your alley.
As a part-time side hustle, you could earn some great extra cash each month delivering food.
Another benefit: no car is needed. When delivering meals, you can make drop-offs by bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, or even by foot with these popular delivery services:
- Uber Eats
- DoorDash
- Postmates
- Grubhub (non-car deliveries supported in limited geographic areas for now)
Many Dashers (DoorDash workers) prefer making deliveries by bike: they can easily weave their way through congested streets, enjoy the sunshine, and essentially get paid to exercise. As with rideshare services, you can pick the routes you want so if you’re on a bike you would avoid ones with highways and impassable roads.
3. Tutor or Make Tutorial Videos
Making tutorials, how-to videos, or online tutoring is a great way to earn $100 or more each month. You create the video once and then get paid every time your video is downloaded or watched. Top creators can earn $10K+ every single month.
Share your video as a paid e-learning course on Coursera or Udemy, or you can post it to your YouTube channel and monetize it with in-video ads and sponsors.
You don’t need to be an expert pastry chef or roofer to have video-worthy skills. People love learning about new products and acquiring new skills through videos.
Someone who’s searching for “how to ride a bike” probably already knows how to do it. But they could be looking for content to share with a parent teaching their kids how to ride a bike. Or maybe they want some good ideas for how to teach their own child to ride.
There’s a how-to video for everything, no matter seemingly easy or ridiculous. You just have the patience to explain it to viewers in a way that’s easy to understand.
This is a beginner-friendly hustle as anyone with a smartphone or video recording device can do it. If you don’t have a phone tripod, you may want to buy one to keep the phone steady while you’re recording. But you can buy one for a super low cost on Amazon (around $6 or less).
4. Take Paid Surveys
Paid online surveys are one of my favorite ways to earn extra cash. You can make $50 to $200 a month, reliably, for fairly minimal effort. But you do not need to chip away at it each day.
Market research companies partner with survey sites to gather consumer feedback. When you qualify for and complete a survey, the survey company will get paid and they share a portion of those earnings with you: your payout.
Survey payouts can range from $0.25 to $5, or even more. It depends on the length, topic, and complexity of the survey. (i.e., Is it multiple choice, or are you asked to give qualitative feedback?)
You won’t qualify for every survey that you attempt, but you will be able to qualify for and complete some of them. And if you complete 3-4 surveys a day—while watching TV or just scrolling through your phone—that’s an extra $100 to $200 a month for fairly minimal effort.
Here are some of the best survey programs (with a website and app) for you to check out:
- Freecash: FreeCash is an excellent option if you want to diversify your side hustle incomes. It’s also just a fun way to spend some free time while making extra cash.
- Survey Junkie: Earn points for taking surveys that you can redeem for free Amazon gift cards or PayPal cash.
- Branded Surveys: Formerly known as MintVine, Branded Surveys will pay you points for completing surveys on a variety of consumer issues. Cash out your points via Dwolla or PayPal.
- Kashkick: In addition to taking surveys, get paid for discovering new offers, trying freebies, and playing games. Redeem earnings for gift cards or PayPal cash.
5. Get Paid to Shop
If Target is your happy place, this may be the gig for you. Sign up for Instacart and you can get paid to shop! You don’t get to keep the goods, but you do get to stroll the aisles sipping Starbucks as you fill orders. Shopping just 10 hours this month could bring in an extra $300.
Similar to delivering meals, you’re getting paid to drop off a customer’s order. You pick the hours you want to work and accept only the deliveries you want to make.
Instead of delivering someone’s lunch, you’re dropping off their Target fix in the form of groceries, clothes, toys, and home goods.
Instacart shoppers can earn upwards of $20 an hour, plus any customer tip.
6. Petsitting
If you love oohing and aahing at people out dog walking—or cuddling with your friends’ pets—then pet-sitting may be your dream job. You could make an average of $16 per hour to amble through the park with a coffee and a cute dog in tow — thanks to the burgeoning number of gig apps connecting pet lovers to doting-yet-busy pet owners.
You can get paid to walk and play with dogs, clean out kitty litter, feed pets, administer meds, and other related tasks.
Earnings can vary based on the work: babysitting a dog overnight in your home, for example, will pay more than a mid-morning walk. But it’s possible to make a full-time go at it.
According to community forums on Rover, a popular dog-walking app, full-time dog walkers can earn $3,200 a month and part-time walkers can reasonably see $1,000.
In addition to Rover, here are some other popular pet apps to consider:
- Wag
- GoodPup
- Wooftrax
- PetBacker
- Pawshake
- Fetch! Petcare
There aren’t any special certifications required (i.e., you don’t need to be a licensed pet behaviorist).
But generally, will need to pass some sort of a background check, be age 18 or older, and show (reels or photo footage) that you know how to safely walk a dog on a leash and put on different styles of harnesses like a Gentle Leader or back-clip styles.
7. Freelance Work
Fiverr is a great marketplace for bloggers, writers, designers, and other online side hustlers. Make extra money for completing gigs big and small for businesses of all sizes, with top Fiverr earners making $100K+ a year.
I’ve used Fiverr to hire blog writers, graphic designers, online researchers and data entryists, voice actors, and film animators. Talent I’ve worked with says they do projects for small businesses, regional brands, and Fortune 500 companies; the depth and range of clientele are extraordinary.
The most commonly needed, and marketed, skills on Fiverr include:
- SEO marketing (guest post exchanges, backlink building, sharing posts on social and across online forums)
- Writing (blog articles, e-commerce web content, infographics, case studies, white papers, one-sheeters)
- Videos (talking heads, animated, illustrated)
- Graphic design (infographics, logos, one-sheeters, presentations, web design, UX design)
- Virtual assistant work (email research, email communications, proofreading presentations, calendar management, travel arrangements, administrative tasks). Jobs may have typical 9-5 day job
- SEO audits (reports outlining recommended technical changes, meta description updates, sitemap updates, intersite linking, etc.)
- Voice talent (voice-over actors for video scripts, reels, and TV commercials).
- Digital marketing (display affiliate, social, influencer, community management).
- Programming and technology (front-end development, WordPress, landing pages, data analysis, and data visualization).
- Photography (portrait, real estate, food, product, image editing).
You can charge anywhere from $5 to $500, or more, on Fiverr for your skills. When you’re just starting out, you’ll need to set your rates low until you have completed projects and review scores on your seller profile.
In addition to Fiverr, you can find similar types of projects on:
- Upwork
- Freelancer
- Toptal
- Truelancer
- OutSourcely
- 99Designs
- Panda Copy
8. Complete Odd Jobs
There are two kinds of people: people who are good at assembling IKEA furniture and people who are hopelessly bad at it. And people in the latter group are willing to pay big bucks to get someone to come install their Swedish particle board goods.
If you were interested in joining their ranks, you could earn anywhere from $5K to $52K a year. Part-time or full-time, there’s plenty of work waiting for you.
Sites like Thumbtack, TaskRabbit, or Jobble are great marketplaces to connect local doers like you with other locals who need things done. It’s not just IKEA. Other gigs include:
- Non-IKEA furniture assembly
- Yardwork
- Snow removal
- Garage clean-out
- Home organization
- Painting
- Wallpaper removal
- Home cleaning/housekeeping
- Banquet set-ups/tear-downs
IKEA assembly furniture is one of the most-needed gigs. According to TaskRabbit’s website, furniture assemblers can make $18 to $28 an hour.
But as someone who has booked furniture assembly through TaskRabbit recently (post-inflation), that figure seems low. The tasker I booked charged closer to $35 an hour and was booked nearly 2 weeks out.
And right now, it’s a tasker’s market. There are more people paying to get tasks done than taskers offering up services. At a rate of $25 per hour, you could earn $52,000 a year doing this great side hustle full-time.
9. Online Selling
Cleaning out your closet is good for your sanity and your bottom line. You’ll be able to see the back of your closet and clear out goods you’re no longer using.
And those old goods could be worth $200 to $300, or more, on online resale sites like eBay, Facebook Marketplace, or Poshmark. In fact, one Minnesota mom sold her two kids’ outgrown clothes and made over $2,300 on Facebook.
That mom’s discovered what savvy parents know: there’s big money to be saved, and made, in the secondhand clothing market. Millennials and Generation Z (Zoomers) are embracing vintage and used apparel.
It’s easy to snap a pic and create an online listing (it takes less than a minute), and you’ll get a text or email when your item sells. If you don’t know how to price your item, the app will offer a suggested price based on how similar items are selling.
Clothing brands that sell especially well include name-brand athletic labels, top-end designers, couture, or vintage brands (Y2K vibes or earlier).
Side Hustles To Start With No Money: Which Is Best for You?
It truly is a gig worker’s economy. With the explosion of apps, gig work sites, and nontraditional job boards, everyone’s got a hustle or is talking about getting one.
With hustles, like with regular 9-5 jobs, there is no one perfect side hustle. The best side hustle to start with no money for you, is going to be one that aligns with your likes, your interests, and your skill set.
Among the dozens of options we’ve covered—from social media manager to full-time Target Store shopper—there’s bound to be one that intrigues your interest.
And if you’re truly looking for a more casual way to earn a little mad money, check out these fun games you can earn cash for playing.
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