A side hustle is anything you perform in addition to your regular job. You perform it in addition to your main work, thus the name “side hustle.” However, it does not instantly become your primary source of revenue (nor does it ever have to).
These twenty side hustle ideas are all genuine and may be accomplished while working a standard job (or non-traditional hours). Whether you’re looking to earn a few extra dollars for Christmas gifts this year or want to start something that has the potential to grow into full-time employment in the future, these are the golden tickets. So, let’s delve into probing the highest paying side hustles in USA right now.
20 Highest Paying Side Hustles In USA You Can Start Now
If your objective is to earn additional money while developing your full-time profession, attending school, or pursuing a career in Hollywood, a typical side work is probably what you’re looking for. Ideal hustles are adaptable enough that you can perform them whenever you have time and availability.
However, not all side hustles are scalable. Some are merely designed to increase your earnings in return for a bit more of your time. The following eight side hustles are great if you’re looking for some additional cash but aren’t concerned with building an entrepreneurial empire.
- Deliver Food Or Groceries
First on the list of highest paying side hustles in USA is the groceries business. If you own a car and are searching for a job that is almost certain to be accessible during COVID (as long as you reside in a community large enough to support it), try becoming a food delivery driver.
While this is not the most glamorous side hustle option, you may earn money driving for Uber Eats or Instacart. Delivery convenience is a high-demand service, particularly in 2021 (who doesn’t want their groceries to magically appear?). In a major city, this is likely to be a reliable source of revenue.
The disadvantage of making deliveries is that you must have a vehicle ready (or a bike in some cases). However, unlike taxiing, you are not required to maintain the vehicle immaculate for passengers. Additionally, you’ll require exceptional time management abilities, since the faster you provide, the more money you may earn.
- Complete online questionnaires
It is exceedingly improbable that someone will earn a billionaire by doing internet surveys. However, you may surely earn some extra money in your spare time if you devote it to sharing your perspective with organizations seeking it.
Online surveys do not provide a significant amount of additional cash, and they are neither consistent nor scalable. However, they are a popular method to earn money online since they can be completed while standing in line, riding on a train, or watching the latest Netflix binge-worthy program.
The majority of polls take only a few minutes of your time, and those that do take longer typically pay somewhat more. This is a simple side hustle to get started with. You just visit a site like Swagbucks or Toluna, create an account, and wait for surveys that are seeking for people just like you to be sent to you.
- Earn money driving for Uber or Lyft
Uber or Lyft driving is not the ideal side business for everyone. However, if you love driving and have regular access to a vehicle for picking up and dropping off people, this might be a lucrative side hustle.
What makes rideshare driving so enticing is that you can work when and when you want. Drivers choose their own schedules and earn money when it is convenient for them. Certain individuals have chosen to make driving a rideshare vehicle their only source of income.
Regrettably, this option is not available unless you reside in a major city that permits for the operation of such services. While cities such as Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and Calgary permit rideshare drivers, not all cities with smaller populations permit more modern modes of transportation.
Additionally, you must have access to a car that complies with the standards of the ridesharing service for which you wish to drive. While this varies per firm and city, they frequently want a recent car with at least five damage-free seats. However, there are a variety of tax benefits available to you if you operate a sole proprietorship in this manner.
- Sell or resell secondhand goods
There’s a good chance that you have a slew of items in your home that you’re not utilizing right now. They’re hidden away in a box or on a shelf, collecting dust rather than generating revenue.
Savvy side hustlers sell old products for a profit on sites such as eBay, Craigslist, Kijiji, Facebook Marketplace, and even Amazon. This is not limited to stuff you currently own; you may also look for products that you can purchase cheaply and resell online for a profit. Alternatively, you can resale products through Amazon’s Fulfilled By Amazon service.
The beauty of selling pre-owned items is that you may specialize in whatever sector you like, from books and apparel to kitchenware and vintage furniture. While this is primarily a part-time, after-hours employment, there is opportunity for growth if you become proficient.
The disadvantage of a side hustle in secondhand sales is that it requires a great deal of hard lifting. Your items must be sourced, stored, and marketed. Additionally, you are constrained by the regulations of the platform you choose to utilize, which may include restrictions on the type or quality of the item.
- Online tutor
If you have expertise in a single subject (or numerous areas), tutoring might be an excellent way to earn money. Tutoring can be paid hourly or per session, and you can quickly earn a few hundred dollars each month.
Through an internet network such as Skype, you may accept private tuition customers on a local or worldwide level. Alternatively, you might partner with a firm such as VIPKID or Brainfuse that pays on an hourly or contract basis but assists you in obtaining clients.
For individuals looking to work and travel, teaching English is a popular tutoring career. The online experience may pave the way for in-person opportunities in other places, if that appeals to you. However, particular criteria for teaching English are frequently in place.
Tutoring is not an excellent alternative if you’re seeking for future scalability, simply because tutoring is often conducted one-on-one or in small groups. Unfortunately, we only have a fixed amount of time, and we simply cannot manufacture extra time to accommodate additional people.
- Offer pet-related services
If you like animals, offering pet services is an excellent side income. The potential is undeniable, from operating a small pet daycare to providing overnight stays, grooming, and walking services.
Walking and overnight stays are likely to be less accommodating of your schedule, since most owners will specify a certain time (or range of time) for the activity to be completed. However, certain services, like as grooming, may be scheduled around your schedule.
This is obviously a side job, and you’ll want to research the insurance requirements for watching and grooming dogs. However, it may be a wonderful part-time job for individuals who could use some extra cuddling time with pets.
- Host an Airbnb listing
Utilizing Airbnb to rent a place for a little more cash might be a wonderful source of passive income for people want to keep their time free yet earn some additional cash. Naturally, you’ll need a venue to host—a room, home, or apartment where guests may stay. However, if you have one, you are set.
You could certainly opt out of Airbnb and offer your place privately, but there are some significant benefits to joining a reputable platform. For one thing, marketing is a wee bit easier. Guests looking for a place to stay are considerably more likely to come across your platform.
Additionally, the firm provides damage insurance, the ease of using their platform to collect deposits and payments, and customer assistance.
- Consider Upwork jobs.
Upwork is a well-known site for anyone wishing to earn some additional cash online. Whether you have experience writing blog entries, entering data, editing audio, creating social media postings, or proofreading, there is a good possibility that someone is seeking for you on the platform.
What makes Upwork an excellent side hustle opportunity for those with full-time jobs is the abundance of employment available for practically any talent or expertise. You bid on projects that interest you and skip over others that do not. And, maybe most importantly, you can complete jobs according to your own timetable.
The primary disadvantage of Upwork is that they take a sizable part of your money. While the actual proportion they take is dependent on the amount of work you receive from a customer (the more work you perform, the less they take), Upwork freelancers who are just getting started may anticipate seeing 20% go to the site. Additionally, they charge a fee for transferring the funds collected on your behalf to you.
Additionally, you’ll need “credits” to bid on tasks on Upwork. While you receive credits on a monthly basis, you may purchase more credits. Additionally, freelancers earn additional credits for obtaining “interviews” or responses to proposals they submit.
Freelancer, SolidGigs, and Toptal are all similar to Upwork. You may create an account (you may need to be accepted in certain situations) and begin looking for contract work that you can complete on your own terms.
- Side hustles that are scalable
If you want to start a side hustle today with the prospect of expanding it later, you’re searching for something scalable. Scalability refers to a business’s ability to expand. That might simply entail establishing a reliable source of part-time income. Alternatively, it might be a full-fledged business.
There are several aspects that affect scalability, but one of the most critical is the amount of direct engagement required vs the amount that can be delegated or packaged. For instance, if you instruct one-on-one individuals, you must be present during the session. However, if you create an online course and package it properly, you may sell it to several individuals without redoing any work.
Scalable side hustles are ideal for those with an entrepreneurial passion but are not ready or certain about making it a full-time endeavor. All of the ones we’ve picked can be started part-time.
- Create a blog
If you’re looking for a long-term internet side business, blogging may be a suitable option. While profiting from a blog on the first day is exceedingly improbable unless you already have a following, beginning a blog has a high probability of generating a constant stream of revenue if done strategically.
Profitable bloggers earn money in a number of ways. There are several opportunities to make this a viable side hustle, ranging from affiliate marketing and advertising to sponsored partnerships and goods. The trick is to establish a strong brand with which your audience can identify and trust.
Because you can generate material in advance and schedule it to be online at a certain time, blogging is easier to manage with a full-time job. It has the potential to make you several hundred to several thousand dollars every month, depending on the amount of effort you put into it.
The best part is that blogging is really simple to begin started with. The internet is replete with easily accessible resources that may assist you in setting up your first blog. Additionally, it is quite affordable to begin started. Regrettably, the major disadvantage is that you’ll need to put in some effort before you see a benefit.
- Marketing via affiliates
While affiliate marketing may be used to supplement an income stream from a blog, you do not need one to earn money. When it comes to affiliate marketing, all you truly need is an engaged audience that respects your judgment.
Affiliate marketing is a concept in which you partner with businesses you like and share trackable affiliate links to their items given directly by them (or via an affiliate network) with your audience. You earn a modest commission when someone makes a purchase through your affiliate link.
You do not need any prior expertise to become an affiliate marketer; for instance, the Amazon Associates program is available to anybody interested in giving it a try. You only need a location to post links to Amazon products you adore.
Affiliate marketing is a part-time career that may be done while working a full-time job. Alternatively, it may be integrated into your full-time job, depending on the amount of time and effort invested. However, in the majority of situations, substantial outcomes take time to manifest.
- Begin a freelance writing career
Freelance writers work on a contract basis for a range of platforms, ranging from businesses and blogs to news organizations, depending on the specialty field in which they specialize.
While many freelance writers work full-time, there are just as many who work part-time to augment their income. Some authors even opt to compose pieces that are directly related to their full-time profession in order to supplement their résumé (and pad their wallet).
Freelance writing is an excellent chance for individuals who like writing, are proficient at it, and are organized. The initial fees are fairly inexpensive, and you have the option of setting your own hours and working whenever you choose. Typically, you’ll be given a deadline to submit material and then free to work whenever you like.
- On Fiverr, you may sell services.
Fiverr is another popular network for freelancers with a variety of skill sets to earn some extra money online. It operates in a similar fashion to Upwork, except that it is more of a marketplace than a job board.
Rather of bidding on tasks, Fiverr freelancers sell their services. You have the autonomy to pursue initiatives that interest you and to reject those that do not. Additionally, you may establish the rates of your services at your discretion.
Some freelancers and gig workers wind up utilizing the site as their primary source of income due to the platform’s unlimited capacity for work and earnings. While there is no monthly subscription, the site does take a 20% share of any earnings.
- Develop your skills as an editor or proofreader.
If you possess an innate ability for spelling and punctuation, proofreading may be the ideal side hustle for you. Proofreaders, depending on their skill, give the ultimate check on a variety of tasks, from manuscripts to blog postings.
As with proofreaders, editors must have an eye for the finer points of writing, although the field of editing tends to include more facets and expertise. You can work as a development editor, looking for story gaps and unanswered questions. Alternatively, you may modify all of the above for a specific component of a website.
Whether you’re seeking for extra income for the holidays or to pay off student loan debt, there is plenty of work available for editors and proofreaders. Certain tasks are available via sites such as Upwork and Freelancer, or you may look for a part-time side hustle on your own.
- Begin dropshipping
Dropshipping is the ideal solution for side hustlers who want to run their own online retail business but only want to do it part-time. You manage an internet business, but you’re not required to maintain a physical inventory or deal with inconvenient activities like shipping.
With little to no expertise, you may launch a dropshipping shop. All you need is a platform like Shopify or WooCommerce (both of which are available at a reasonable price) and a niche in which you wish to sell.
Once you’ve established a platform on which to sell, you’ll want to locate suppliers of the things you wish to offer. This is possible with Shopify using their platform’s plugins, or you may source your own items if you choose. After you’ve set up your business, it’s time to promote and wait for the sales to flow in!
While dropshipping has somewhat greater expenditures than side hustles such as founding a blog or generating digital items, it remains quite inexpensive in comparison to the size of online enterprises. Your business’s success is entirely dependent on the amount of effort and planning you put into it, although it is completely possible to operate on a part-time basis.
- Conduct online classes
While tutoring was discussed previously in the essay, it is not a very scalable method of teaching because it often requires one-on-one or small group sessions. However, producing your own online courses might be an excellent side job.
The benefit of teaching your own online courses is that you may specialize in subjects that interest you and in which you are an expert. You’d be amazed at the kind of online courses that are successful—they aren’t usually the “how to develop your business” courses you may assume.
Knitting, yoga, travel, and other lifestyle subjects are all acceptable topics. The true gold in establishing an online course company is in your love for and expertise of the subject, as well as your promotion approach.
Because it is a one-and-done approach, this is the ideal side hustle for people wanting to work when they can and want to. You can create a course once and advertise it to potential clients indefinitely if you’re ready to put in the work.
- Produce digital goods
Similar to online courses, digital items follow the same one-and-done paradigm. Goods can be thought of as a stripped-down form of a digital course, such as an e-book or worksheet, however courses are also considered “digital products.”
The advantage of developing smaller digital goods is that they can frequently be created more quickly than a whole course (depending on the size). However, you will most likely want to market and sell them through your own platform, such as a website.
E-books are an excellent example of a digital product, and a wide variety of subjects perform well on platforms such as Amazon. Additionally, you may utilize Kindle to construct the finished book, which takes a fraction of the time it would take to do it manually.
This is an excellent choice for hustlers who lack time but possess information to offer. Creating a single product does not have to be time-consuming, but if well marketed, it has the potential to be quite successful.
- Develop your skills as a virtual assistant
Establishing a side business as a virtual assistant allows you to use existing muscles, focus on topics you’re enthusiastic about, and work the hours you desire. It’s an excellent choice for folks with a variety of talents who wish to expand their résumé.
This hustle may take many forms—it might be as simple as filling in for an executive assistant on the side, or it can mean specializing in a particular area, such as email marketing, and assisting businesses in connecting with their audience. Which services you provide is entirely up to you.
While some virtual assistants work full-time, there are several options to engage with clients on flexible, limited-hours contracts. The advantage of this sort of work is that you can either discover clients on your own or through a site like Upwork. You determine your own working hours and charges.
- Create content for social media
Social media is a multibillion-dollar industry. However, curating a well-curated social media feed takes time, and there are lots of businesses, large and small, that could use some assistance in this area.
Whether you’re enthusiastic about Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Tik Tok, or Facebook, or something altogether else, someone is seeking for content creators. Why not pursue content creation as a side hustle?
The nicest aspect of developing social media content is that it can be developed and arranged in advance in the majority of circumstances. That implies that if you find yourself with three hours on Sunday and a customer that need Facebook material throughout the week, you can create and plan it ahead of time.
It’s an excellent side business for individuals who are capable of creating appealing visual and written microcontent and are familiar with their preferred social platform. This industry offers several opportunities, both via sites like Upwork and through private contracts.
- Consult on marketing
If you have a certain set of marketing talents, selling your services as a consultant may be a viable side hustle alternative. This is not a job for everyone—you must possess expertise and experience in order to effectively market to your clientele. However, if one is truly interested, one may learn.
Marketing consultants come from a variety of different backgrounds and specialize in a variety of different areas. Some act as generalists, assisting customers in developing strategies and plans for business growth. Others specialize in certain areas such as email marketing, social media, or content development and provide exclusively those services.
Clients for these services can be obtained through your own contacts lists, on marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr, or by approaching individuals with whom you wish to collaborate.
- Create websites for your clients
While website designers may be considered a subset of marketing consultants, many of individuals who undertake these services have a higher level of technical understanding. This is advantageous if you possess an eye for design and proficiency with website builders such as WordPress or Squarespace.
If your hours are restricted, you can deal with clients one at a time or take on many tasks. It’s an excellent employment if you want to work on your own schedule—just sign a customer, assign them a deadline, and work when you’re available. As long as you provide high-quality work on schedule, there is frequently the possibility for more employment.
How To Pick The Optimal Side Hustle For You
Determine how much time you can devote to it.
If you work a 40-hour workday and wish to devote 20 hours to your side business, you’ll suddenly find yourself working 60 hours every week.
There are 168 hours in a week, including weekends, assuming you sleep eight hours every night, leaving 112 hours for leisure. After deducting your 60 hours of work, you’re left with 52 hours to travel, eat, do errands, and binge-watch your current Netflix program. That is a short period of time.
Some people thrive on workweeks of 60+ hours, while others require more break to simply recuperate. When it comes to determining how much time you want to spend on a side hustle, there is no right or wrong answer, but time management is critical.
Determine the amount of money you wish to earn.
While you may be an entrepreneur at heart, the majority of individuals start a side hustle to earn a little more money. Before you begin, you must determine how valuable a bit extra is to you.
Setting objectives is a critical component of company management. While you may not reach your income goal in month one, it will give you an idea of the price structure you should establish and the number of clients you need to acquire.
Choose an area of interest in which you are zealous.
With a realistic understanding of the amount of time you can devote to your side hustle and an idea of the amount of money you want to earn, you can limit down your options.
In a perfect world, you’d choose something you’re enthusiastic about, are competent at, can do within the time period you’ve set for yourself, and will earn you the money you desire.
If you just have six hours per week and your schedule is unpredictable, but you can write quickly and are open to picking up tasks on the go, bidding for assignments on Upwork may be a viable option. Similarly, if you’re looking for a job where you’re virtually certain to have employment and have access to a vehicle, delivering meals may be a suitable alternative.
While you may not be able to cross everything off the list immediately, it is critical to have a sense of direction. Simply because you’re adding a side hustle to whatever you’re already doing does not mean it should be a hardship.
Begin hustling!
With the critical decisions determined, it’s time to go to work.
One thing that sometimes gets forgotten in the discourse about side hustles is the fact that even something done part-time is still a business. That implies you must decide whether to become a sole proprietorship or a corporation. So, there you have it, the highest paying side hustles in USA.
