One of my favourite ideas from the book The Millionaire Fastlane is that there is a common misconception that it’s impossible to get rich quick.
The author says that it’s quite the contrary. It’s more than possible to get rich quick – but not easy. He later expands on this thought and says that “quick” is 5-10 years.
Always remember that creating a solid business online and making money takes time and effort.
Following this philosophy, over the past 3 years, I was a broke student trying out dozens of different ways to make some beer money on the side online.
So in this guide, I want to share which websites worked, and which didn’t.
What are the best side hustle websites?
Choosing the right one isn’t easy.
Because there are hundreds, probably thousands of sites out there waiting to be your next side hustle.
But choose the wrong one and you end up filling out surveys for $0.05 per hour.
Yikes.
Also, there’s the spotlight effect. Once you pick an online side hustle there are 10 more waiting for you because “grass is greener on the other side”.
The thing is, you can succeed in any one of them. But not all of them.
The thing I realised after trying out a bunch of things is that switching your focus and jumping from one thing to another just restarts your progress and you’re back to square one.
So I highly recommend choosing a side hustle and sticking with it for at least 3-6 months. At least.
You will immediately beat 98% of people that quit after the first two weeks of seeing no results.
Here are my picks for the best side hustle websites:
1. Payhip.com
Payhup is a platform where you can sell digital products.
You can choose what you want to sell, upload your digital product (like an e-book, template, preset, app, course or anything else), set the price and you’ll be given a custom link for that product.
You can then embed that product page on your website, put it in a YouTube video description or just send it to someone.
Payhip is free but it has a 5% fee on every sale that you make.
You can use an alternative website called Gumroad but it has an even higher fee of 10%.
Here are some things that I sell on Payhip:
The downside of Payhip is that it doesn’t have a large built-in audience looking to buy your products (like Facebook’s Marketplace, Esty or eBay). So you have to market them yourself.
That’s the hardest part.
Making and listing a product can take a while but getting someone to buy is a beast of a task if you don’t have an audience.
And building an audience is probably one of the best things you can do for your side hustle.
It isn’t a short-term thing but it’s well worth it in the end. Having an audience can supercharge and 10x any side hustle that you have.
That’s why the next side hustle website will have to do with building an audience.
2. WordPress.com
WordPress is a place where you can start a blog.
Just like the one you’re reading right now.
I’m not talking about the type of 2016 blog where you talk about what you did on your last trip to Bali. It’s a website that has a bunch of useful resources about a specific topic.
Now that’s a blog.
So why would you want to start a blog?
It’s probably the most passive side hustle there is. The only downside is that it can take a while for it to get going (usually around 2 years). And by get going I mean replace your day job.
This blog is not at a level where it can replace a full-time job but I’ve only been writing on it for 1.5 years. And during that time I published more than 120 articles (one every 4 days or so).
How does it work?
To make money with a blog you write the best possible articles (that are as useful to the reader as possible), then those articles (blog posts) rank on Google’s search results and people visit it and read them.
So?
Well, several things can make you money from that point. The most popular ones are (a) affiliate links (that’s how I mostly monetize this blog), (b) ads or (c) your digital products.
The best part is that all of them are passive. Once you write around 100 articles for your blog, add affiliate links, and create a few digital products that solve a painful problem for your readers, it can be as hands-off as you want.
I wrote a massive guide about how to start a WordPress blog so I won’t go into a lot of detail here.
For example, this blog was created in 2019 and in May 2022 it makes $400000 per month (mostly through affiliate links), which is absolutely crazy.
The first step to creating a successful blog is obviously having a website where to blog.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to know how to code to make your website. It’s just drag and drop (you can use a no-code website builder like Elementor).
But the first thing you’ll need is a domain name and hosting.
I use Hostinger to host this website (because it’s cheap) so that’s what I’m going to recommend to you as well.
3. UserTesting.com
Of course, maybe you don’t have an idea for product to sell or don’t want to spend a year writing articles. Then another amazing website that can make you at least $10 in as little as 10 minutes is called UserTesting.
It’s a great side hustle website for some beer money.
You sign up, complete a practice test and they’ll let you test out websites, or complete surveys for other companies.
Every test that you compete will pay $10 to your PayPal account.
There are also 30 or 60 minute interviews (where someone will ask you questions about what you think of how a website looks or interacts) and those pay $30 and $60 respectively.
But normal tests usually range between 5 and 15 minutes.
Before I started my YouTube channel and this blog, I used to do tests on UserTesting pretty much every day.
It was a great way to earn some extra cash.
The way it works is you get a test, accept it, and then It’ll record your audio as you answer questions about what you like or dislike on a certain website.
You can do them on your phone or laptop.
For example, you could be asked a question about what you like about the colors of a website or to navigate somewhere on it and comment about your experience.
Here’s an example of a typical test:
The downside of UserTesting is that sometimes there are no available tests for you to do and that it’s only available for people living in the UK or the US.
You used to be able to get around this by using a VPN but I’m not sure if it’s possible anymore.
4. Shopify.com
Shopify is the world’s most popular commerce platform millions of successful brands, like GymShark or RedBull trust to sell and ship things, and process payments.
One of the best ways to start a side hustle using this website is to do dropshipping.
How does it work?
- You find a cheap and good product, usually on a marketplace like AliExpress.com.
- Then you either order that product sample to test it yourself or take pictures straight from AliExpress and create an online store using Shopify to list that product for sale.
- You make your store look professional and import product reviews from AliExpress (it’s easy to do with Shopify).
- Then you market your product on TikTok or other social media platforms (by creating content of you using that product yourself or by paying influencers to create that content for you).
- Once someone buys that product from your store, a Shopify plugin like Oberlo will fulfil that order by shipping it out from AliExpress to the person who bought it from your store.
So how can you make money doing dropshipping?
Essentially, you act as a middleman who markets the product and then keeps the difference between the price that you sell it for and the actual price from the supplier. And if you do the marketing for free via organic TikTok traffic then you get to keep the whole difference.
Here’s an illustration of what it looks like:
Of course, Shopify isn’t only good for dropshipping. You can start your store, and sell products that you make, or sell online courses as well as other digital products.
YTjobs is a website where you can (a) work for other YouTubers or (b) hire talent if you are a YouTuber.
One of the best side hustles is starting your own YouTube channel. It’s usually slow and hard to learn but it’s well worth the payoff in the end. At least it was for me.
And since it takes a while to learn YouTube why not get paid to learn? A.k.a. work for someone who is already a YouTuber and who can teach you how to do it.
Of course, this is easier said than done if you currently have 0 skills to get hired by one.
So you can first learn a few skills on your own (video editing is a great place to start) by taking courses and trying to make a few videos or editing montages to act as your portfolio.
And then reach out to a bunch of YouTubers and offer to edit one of their videos free of charge to see if it’s the right fit.
It’s a no-brainer for them since it’s free and a great opportunity for you to either (a) get hired or (b) add more things to your portfolio to have a better chance of getting hired later.
Alternatively you can start taking on small projects and editing videos on websites like Fiverr.
This is not an “easy money” side hustle but it has a much larger upside. Even if it fails you’ll have learned a bunch of high-value skills that you can employ in another side hustle later down the line.
P.S. Since I have a YouTube channel I also have a course that’s all about how to edit videos specifically for YouTube. It goes over everything you need to know, (from mindset and strategies to editing tricks) to beat the great game of YouTube.
6. Facebook.com/marketplace
Moving over to the Facebook Marketplace, which is a free platform that already has a massive audience for you to utilize.
I use it to sell things that I don’t need or use anymore and you’d be surprised how much money you can make by just selling your old stuff on Facebook.
The hard part is forcing yourself to take pictures and list items on the marketplace but once that’s done you don’t have to do any maintenance apart from maybe bumping up your listings once a week.
If you don’t want your Facebook friends to see what you’re selling you can also hit this button to hide it from them.
Another cool tip is to add tags for items that you sell which will make it easier for people to find them.
When it comes to taking pictures, the quality of them matters quite a bit.
Try taking your pictures in a well-lit environment and on a flat surface where the thing you’re selling is clearly visible.
Was this list of the best side hustle websites useful?
It can be tough to find good side hustle websites.
But the general rule is that the harder it is to get started with a side hustle, and the more delayed the payoff, the more rewarding it usually is.
With that said, I’ll leave you with a few resources about starting and growing your own online business:
- Best Online Business Ideas To Start With AI
- 11 Best Books For Online Entrepreneurs (About Money)
- How To Grow A Faceless YouTube Channel – Notion Template
Thanks for reading 👋!