The sole purpose of spending your time and completing a side hustle is to make decent money. Hence, if a remote job doesn’t pay well for your hard work then there’s no reason to spend time on it. Unfortunately, most teenagers and beginners don’t know which side hustles to avoid, and they end-up cursing the entire industry.
This list will help you get rid of the side hustles that are not worth the hard work, and even if it is, it’s too hard to make good money. In fact, you can make good money from these side hustles, but it would take too much effort and time. Something not everybody has.
Ready? Let’s dive innn….
(1) Blogging
I know you’re surprised that Blogging is included in this list. I’m not saying that Blogging is dead, but it’s way harder to make money as a blogger than it was 5 years ago. The competition is insane and the outcome is minuscule.
Yes, Bloggers can have multiple sources of income, but in recent times Google updates have killed most of them. Ad revenue is down, affiliate marketing is not as good as it was few years ago, companies are spending less on sponsored posts (thanks to recession), and the worse among all, domain prices are on rise every few months.
Of course, it’s impossible to kill a broad industry like Blogging, but getting visitors into website is harder than before. You’ll have to use every resource necessary to retain visitors. Staying dependent on Google search is a bad decision.
Read this: Start a Money-Making Blog to start a new website the right way, without making any mistakes. Choose the right domain, the right hosting service, and the best plugins to start a blog that makes money fast and avoids Google Search penalty.
(2) Completing Surveys
Trust me, I cannot say how many times I have tried to make money from completing surveys. No, it’s not like completing surveys won’t make you any money, but is it really worth your time? I doubt! The highest I have ever made from completing surveys is $750. Please don’t ask me the sheer number of hours I had to put in to make that much.
Considering how completing surveys practically require no experience $750 is good money. But, the work I had to do was insane which is absolutely not worth it for $750. I’m sure the company made $10,000 from my hard work.
So, it’s better to switch to other side hustles than to expect making money from completing surveys. Yes, you may be lucky to make $1,000 within a month, if that’s the case, then carry on and use the opportunity while you still have it.
Check out these 10 Passive Income Ideas that actually makes money with low investment.
(3) Dropshipping
Dropshipping has made many millionaires in the past decade, but those days are gone. Yeah, unfortunately those days are gone when you could just import ultra-cheap products from China and sell them at cut-throat prices. Though, unlike other side hustles Dropshipping still has some steam left, but the entry barrier is higher than before. That means, you’ll have to spend more to get a hold of it. Dropshipping is hyper-competitive, which means you have to act fast and follow trends before it even becomes a trend.
The sheer work you’ll have to put in to run a successful Dropshipping is not worth it for a side hustle. It’s more like a full-fledged business. Also, it’s all the “Ad game” nowadays. The more you have to shell out for advertisements the better are your chances to make a good profit.
You’ll also find countless YouTube videos where a Dropshipping seller reveal how much he/she made. What they hide most of the time is the profits. They only show the revenue, not the actual profit. Don’t fall for such scams. It’s even a bigger red flag when a “millionaire” Dropshipper sells a course on how to become a millionaire from Dropshipping. Nobody is saintly enough to share their trade secrets. NEVER buy courses such as on Dropshipping. You can find free contents on YouTube.
(4) Etsy Store
Etsy is, hands down, the best place to sell handcrafted and DIY products. It’s like that corner of the internet where art-loving people meet and exchange products with money. Unfortunately, this was only true a few years ago. Etsy store has gone to the ruin (at least compared to before) and the quality has degraded a lot. The worst thing, as you might have already expected, is fake sellers trying to sell AI generated artwork in the name of “hand-made” artwork.
I haven’t used Etsy in a long time, but sellers complain of not getting the same exposure they used to get few years ago. The only way to grow fast on Etsy is to spend money on ads. If you remember the Dropshipping part, Facebook destroyed itself after it introduced this option. If this keeps on happening, in few years, people would shift to other platforms like Amazon and eBay to sell their products.
So, if you’re thinking of entering Etsy, you sure can try, but don’t get too overdependent on it. While you list your products on Etsy, also use your time to setup email marketing and increase genuine social media follower base.
(5) Candle Making
There was a time when people earned millions selling candles. In fact, few even have achieved the billionaire status. Yeah, hard to believe that people can become billionaire by selling candles. Today, the candle making industry is too saturated. And the recent rise in wax prices in only adding insult to the injury.
While the prices of raw materials have gone up, people are reluctant to spend more on candles. You can say that the candle making industry is in correction mode now. It’s weeding out the companies that cannot evolve their products.
Etsy was once the best place to sell handcrafted candles and machine-made candles. Sadly, even Etsy is flooded with ultra-cheap and super-low quality candles. The demand is too low and the supply is off the roof. It’s better if you stay out of this industry. You wouldn’t like to take such uncertainty for a side hustle would you?
(6) Content Writing
Few years ago, when apps like Grammarly, ChatGPT weren’t present, content writers made hell lot of money because they had the edge. But today, everybody is somewhat capable of writing decent content with the help of ChatGPT and Grammarly.
And when you mix this with MarketMuse suggestions, any content not only has good English construction, but is also ready for good SEO ranking. I have experimented this and have seen great results in the past. But, after many updates from Google Search, this seem to have waned off.
I actually don’t know what is Google trying to do. Because it has become too hard to rank blog posts. Unless your content is topnotch, it’s almost impossible to get good Google ranking. And, ChatGPT is making situation worse.
But, if you still want to make money as a content writer, then spread your wings a little. Deviate into copywriting, ghostwriting, and everything related to content writing. The more expertise you have, the better your chances of getting good side hustle opportunities.
(7) Fiverr Gigs
I don’t know whether I’m right, but Fiverr was named because the available gigs were as low as $5? Anyways, Fiverr rose to popularity quicker than any other freelancing platform because how easy it was to hire a professional at insanely low cost.
People who completed gigs on Fiverr in the early days are the real OGs. They took the best opportunity and make $10,000 per month easily. Unfortunately, situation has changed a lot after that. Fiverr is plagued with extremely low-value gig workers who don’t deliver good quality work and charge unsustainable rates.
On top of that, the entire platform is too competitive to survive now. I have seen people agreeing to complete gigs for as low as $0.99. That’s actually unsustainable in the long run. The only way to grow on Fiverr is to overdeliver at a very low price. You can watch YouTube videos on “how to grow on Fiverr fast.” You’ll find some good videos on growing fast on Fiverr.
And, remember one thing: Never take a course on “how to grow on Fiverr.” You’ll only be wasting your money and getting almost nothing in return.
(8) YouTube Channel
I remember back in 2020 when random videos of BeamNG.drive popped into my feed. I found out that those videos got 350+ million views within a month, which was insane. But, it’s been many years since and YouTube has taken action against such low-value videos. Today, it’s harder to rank such videos and even if it does, the earning for such videos is abysmal.
So, if you’re thinking of starting a YouTube channel, either treat it just as a hobby, or if your only goal is to make money as fast as possible, then have patience, and work incredibly hard. Because it’s not that easy anymore to rank a new video as it was few years ago. And, since YouTube has no option to promote videos, the only way to shine on YouTube is to create unique contents.
Yeah, you can try creating a “Cash Cow“ YouTube channel, but that too requires some investment initially. I’m sure YouTube will take action Cash Cow YouTube channels too when the niche becomes too saturated. The option you can explore is Lofi YouTube channel. Profits of a lofi channel is good and the work is very little compared to other niches.
(9) Facebook Pages
Facebook always had an option to create pages and groups. Back in 2009 when I created my Facebook account, those “funny pages” used to share memes, etc. I don’t exactly remember when did Facebook add an option to link an URL to websites. It’s the same as what Pinterest does today.
The people who had Facebook pages back then and used the platform to divert traffic to their websites made A LOT of money. Unfortunately, Facebook got greedy and suppressed this option. If any of your post contained a link to outbound website Facebook’s algorithm would automatically suppress its visibility. Today, it’s nearly impossible to get outbound traffic from Facebook.
Today, you can make money from Facebook pages (from ads), but there’s very less chance that you can get outbound clicks to your website without spending money on Facebook Ads. It’s quite a hard work to make money from Facebook today unless it’s in the entertainment niche.
So, if you are targeting the entertainment niche, then you might make money from Facebook’s embedded ads, but I doubt you’ll get any traffic to your website, of course unless you spend money.
(10) SEO Consulting
SEO Consulting is probably the hardest in this list. It’s almost impossible to know what Google is thinking and what they will do in their next Search Engine Update. By the time you fix one SEO issue, the next one drops, and you’re again in the dark, not knowing what exactly went wrong. Google uses hundreds of factors to rank a page on the top, and as an SEO consultant, your job is to find loopholes in your client’s website and fix them before Google penalizes them.
SEO in itself is not hard, but the competition in this niche has made it nearly impossible to thrive. And, it’s absolute hell if you’re a beginner. I mean why would someone believe you over a SEO experts like Brian Dean and Rand Fishkin? Yeah, I might sound rude, but think logically a bit. Would you trust a new “SEO guru” over a legendary SEO expert like Brian and Rand? Well, I won’t!
Trust me, if you’re looking at SEO consulting as option, I’ll ask you to consider it trice. You can try, but how soon you’ll get success is not guaranteed at all!
(11) Affiliate Marketing
Ask any blogger about their primary source of income, and they will either say it’s from Ads or from Affiliates. Most content creators prefer affiliate marketing as their primary way of making money because it’s completely passive, and you’ll only have to put in the hard work once. Once you have a sizable fanbase/visitors on your YouTube channel or Blog making money from affiliate is a child’s play. The biggest content creators make six figures per month just from affiliate sales.
But if making money from affiliate is so rosy then why am I asking you not to consider it? Because everything was good until 2021. As you might have already guessed, Google is a serious buzzkill! They released the so-called “Helpful Content Update” and pretty much killed affiliate marketing. Their motive was to remove thin content from Google search, but they ended up removing even the best websites. Heck, the release was no bad that even the best websites with “authority” faced more than 50% drop in website traffic within 24 hours.
Things haven’t gone up since then though. So, if you’re thinking of starting a blog/YouTube channel solely for the affiliate income, then please be aware. You might have to abandon it before you even make $1. I register a new domain to see how bad was the Google update. And, let me tell you… IT’S WAY BAD!
The better option would be to take the long route. Focus more on Email marketing and use your email subscribers for affiliate sales. Google search cannot affect your email subscribers, so it’s ways safer and future-proof.
