Side hustle ideas from people who actually run them
Real side businesses, described by their owners. Filter by cost, time and how they earn.
- Ideas
- 651 ideas
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- 14 publications and shows
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- 8 categories
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- Files sold online: templates, printables, ebooks, stock photos, fonts, presets, plugins, recorded courses
- A web app, SaaS, mobile app, browser extension, bot or API that people pay for or that earns from ads
- A blog, niche website, newsletter, YouTube channel, podcast or social account that earns from ads, affiliate links or sponsors
- Making, printing or reselling physical goods, online or in person
- Doing work for clients for a fee: freelance, consulting, done-for-you services, repairs, local services
- Earning from something you own: renting property, rooms, equipment, vehicles, parking, vending machines, domains
- A job board, listings site, directory or marketplace that connects buyers and sellers
- Live tutoring, lessons, workshops, coaching or cohort classes
Matching ideas
About the data300 ideas, page 2 of 7
- Software and appsBuilt an online multiplayer version of a domino-based game, funded by donations after ads did poorly.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsBuilt a Mac app for drawing and highlighting on screen during calls and presentations, after needing it personally.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsRuns a simulation service that lets traders backtest advanced options strategies, built from a background in processor simulation.Over $10kOnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsBuilt a single-player chess variant app without ads or in-app purchases, supported mostly by donations.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsGrew from blogging and a self-published book into building an email marketing tool for bloggers and creators.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsA newsletter platform built as a better alternative to a tool the owner used, with Markdown support and an API aimed at developers. Started as a side project.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsBegan hosting game servers for friends, grew into renting servers including scientific computing to universities.Over $10kHands-offOnlineHacker News, 2022
- Digital productsFound a popular product category on a code marketplace and built a better JavaScript image cropper and uploader to sell there.Under $100OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsBuilt a compression tool that was slow to compress but fast to decompress and licensed it to big software vendors who shipped floppy disks.Hands-offHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsCreated a web tool for making GIF memes with text that follows motion, after finding it hard to do elsewhere.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsStarted a niche credit card processor that has made money for many years.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsBegan by writing Windows apps for a hospital department and grew it into a SaaS tool for building calculator apps.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsA solitaire site that began as a Mac app, found by looking for popular apps with poor reviews, and now supports the owner.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsAn open source tool for detecting website changes, with a paid hosted subscription and custom work for companies.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsA web app that pulls transaction data out of PDF bank statements, built after the owner needed it for personal spending analysis.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsBuilt an embeddable analytics product that avoids cookies, sold as hosted subscriptions and to customers on invoice.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsWrote embedded software and earned a royalty on every device shipped for many years.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsCreated an open-source email verification tool, then built a paid hosted service on top of it.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsA Mac app that creates polished product demo videos from screen recordings using cursor movements and clicks.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsBuilds small apps and games for niche audiences and earns by adding paid features and selling ad space.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsBuilt a very basic tool for an industry the owner wanted to be part of, then found a larger opportunity there that now supports them full-time.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsSoftware that ties game stats to video footage for coaches, sold to schools in many states.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2022
- Content and mediaA blog that earns from ads and Patreon support, covering hosting costs and a bit more.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsBuilt a monitoring tool that began with GraphQL services and expanded to all APIs and web apps, running it with a couple of hours of work each workday.Part-timeOnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsStarted by scraping real estate listings for personal use, then built a scraping API that handles blocking and sold access to paying customers.OnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsBuilt a small tool that emails a weekly digest of newly saved Twitter bookmarks, with paid subscribers.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2022
- Directories and marketplacesBuilt job listing sites and blogs that run mostly automatically and cover expenses with ads and sponsorships.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2021
- Digital productsWrote helpful articles, collected them into a book sold on Gumroad, and also builds a monitoring SaaS on the side.OnlineHacker News, 2021
- Content and mediaBuilt a site comparing glasses retailers that earns affiliate commissions.Under $100Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2021
- Services and freelancingWrites custom automation runbooks for networks and provides a web platform where customers run them.Part-timeOnlineHacker News, 2021
- Software and appsA coupon site for developers plus a set of single-purpose web tools such as encoders and HTML cleaners.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2021
- Software and appsA service where users forward unwanted emails and it finds unsubscribe links and fills web forms for them.OnlineHacker News, 2021
- Software and appsA web app for sharing audio clips with timestamped comments, such as a music teacher giving feedback to a student.OnlineHacker News, 2021
- Software and appsA tool for recording video explanations on pull requests, to reduce misunderstandings during code review.OnlineHacker News, 2021
- Software and appsBuilt a document editor on a decentralized protocol alongside a day job. Revenue came from grant money from the protocol.OnlineHacker News, 2021
- Software and appsA paid Mac App Store app that grew out of a personal need for a Safari extension that refreshes tabs automatically.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2021
- Software and appsStarted a web hosting company on nights and weekends during grad school, which later became a full-time business.OnlineHacker News, 2021
- Physical productsLaunched hardware security keys with partners, working on it part time at first.Over $10kOnlineHacker News, 2021
- Software and appsWrote a Mac app years ago that still makes steady daily sales through the app store without marketing.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2020
- Services and freelancingDoes web work for clients and keeps income steady with annual payments for hosting, maintenance and small fixes.OnlineHacker News, 2020
- Software and appsRuns a web tool that migrates data from files like CSV, JSON and XML into MySQL databases, sold to users who need conversions.OnlineHacker News, 2019
- Software and appsBuilt a web tool for stock technical analysis and offered it white-labeled to companies with distribution, splitting profits with them.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2019
- Software and appsBuilt a platform for scavenger hunts played on phones. Sells it to team-building event companies and also to individuals for birthdays and parties.OnlineHacker News, 2019
- Software and appsA charting product for data maps, earning from subscriptions and from licensing its chart library.OnlineHacker News, 2019
- Software and appsTurned an internal debugging and remote logging tool for iOS and Android into a subscription product for customers of all sizes.OnlineHacker News, 2019
- Software and appsA browser extension that tests sites for SEO, speed and security best practices, with free and paid tiers.OnlineHacker News, 2019
- Software and appsBuilt a service with an API that lets businesses send cookies to customers and partners across Europe and the US.OnlineHacker News, 2019
- Services and freelancingBuilds and schedules automations for small businesses, using knowledge gained in a day job about common business pain points.OnlineHacker News, 2019