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
- Publications
- 14 publications and shows
- Categories
- 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 data332 ideas, page 1 of 7
- Content and mediaA simple website that helps people learn Excel through exercises. The founder built it with very little effort and grew it as a dead-simple, boring niche site.Hands-offOnlineStarter Story, 2026
- Content and mediaFree chalkboards and whiteboards placed in restaurants and busy venues, which use them for daily specials. Income comes from selling small ad spots along the bottom to local businesses.Online and in personSide Hustle Nation, 2026
- Services and freelancingA large laundromat with a commercial laundry operation and remote management technology, now offered as a franchise.Over $10kIn personThe Koerner Office, 2026
- Software and appsThe operator runs a few near-identical sites that each sell access to a niche database, such as investors, angels or journalists. The revenue model is not stated in the source and is likely paid access.OnlineStarter Story, 2026
- Services and freelancingThe operator gathers one client's documents, structures them, and loads them into a custom GPT or Claude project so a specific audience can ask it questions instead of the owner. The example was a business broker whose buyers queried the assistant about a listing.Under $100Hands-offOnlineCorey Ganim (YouTube), 2026
- Services and freelancingThe operator replaces a repeated manual process with an automation built on off-the-shelf tools such as Zapier, Make or Asana, usually after a short diagnostic. It is charged as a one-off project, with a walkthrough video and a how-to-fix document handed over.OnlineCorey Ganim (YouTube), 2026
- Rentals and assetsBuying ATMs and placing them in local businesses, earning income from transaction fees with about an hour of work a week. The hardest step is finding and pitching good locations.Hands-offOnline and in personSide Hustle Nation, 2026
- Software and appsAfter leaving an agency, the operator built a directory-related software tool that earns recurring revenue and is adding a lead-gen angle.OnlineNiche Pursuits Podcast, 2026
- Software and appsA website for visualizing road trips, earning sales through organic traffic with peaks around holidays.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2024
- Software and appsBuilds browser extensions that fix common site annoyances. Revenue comes from them, helped by search-friendly names and store reviews.Under $100Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2024
- Digital productsCo-wrote a Spring Boot and AWS e-book with a companion online course, sharing the income among authors.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2024
- Services and freelancingTrains custom image generation models for customers on request using an automated pipeline, charging per commission.OnlineHacker News, 2024
- Digital productsMade a course on spreadsheet functions and formulas hosted on a small course platform, earning a commission share.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2024
- Software and appsA minimalist Android launcher distributed free, with a paid pro version.OnlineHacker News, 2024
- Digital productsA template for a note-taking app with a user guide and video course based on the owner's personal system, sold to customers.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2024
- Software and appsA free web tool for converting text case, built up over years.OnlineHacker News, 2024
- Software and appsA checklist app built for the owner's own routines that now earns recurring income.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2024
- Software and appsA browser extension that automatically claims daily login bonuses at online casinos for a monthly subscription.OnlineHacker News, 2024
- Software and appsA random number service sold through a website and a cloud marketplace listing, left running with little attention.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2024
- Digital productsCreated an online course teaching DevOps to small companies and self-hosters, which keeps selling even against bigger instructors.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2024
- Content and mediaA group of free sudoku websites that earn steady income from minimal ads.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2024
- Software and appsA GIF meme site that earns from one-off sales of watermark removal.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2024
- Physical productsWorked with a factory to make grounded power adapters that stop case buzzing, sold on Amazon.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2024
- Content and mediaPublishes personal notes from nonfiction books on a site and earns some money from it.OnlineHacker News, 2024
- Software and appsBuilt an algorithm using maritime trade data to trade options on shipping firms, also selling subscriptions to friends.OnlineHacker News, 2024
- 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 single-player chess variant app without ads or in-app purchases, supported mostly by donations.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsBegan hosting game servers for friends, grew into renting servers including scientific computing to universities.Over $10kHands-offOnlineHacker 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 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 appsWrote embedded software and earned a royalty on every device shipped for many years.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2022
- Digital productsWrote and sells a technical book on deployment that shows the steps without higher-level tools.Hands-offOnlineHacker 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
- Physical productsPut cartoon T-shirt designs about software error messages on craft sites.Under $100Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2022
- Software and appsSoftware that ties game stats to video footage for coaches, sold to schools in many states.Hands-offOnlineHacker 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 productsSells a curated list of places to promote side projects, for makers wanting traffic, directly through Gumroad.Under $100Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2021
- Content and mediaBuilt a site comparing glasses retailers that earns affiliate commissions.Under $100Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2021
- Services and freelancingSells commissioned art, licenses existing work from a large catalog, and puts designs on print-on-demand sites for low-effort extra income.OnlineHacker 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
- Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2021
- Physical productsStarted a niche menswear business alongside a full-time job. It now runs mostly on its own at small scale.Hands-offOnlineHacker 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 appsWrote a Mac app years ago that still makes steady daily sales through the app store without marketing.Hands-offOnlineHacker News, 2020
- 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