If passive income is our ultimate goal, we’ve got to understand that to get there, we will have to work and work hard first. Side hustles are small jobs we can do on the side to supplement our income in pursuit of this goal. They’re not really jobs but they’re not passive either. It’s best if these side hustles are things we enjoy (whereas our full time jobs might not be). Really what we want are side hustle ideas to make money that don’t feel like work in the first place!
If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die. — Warren Buffet
With these side hustle ideas to make money, we would ideally like to create the illusion that we aren’t actually working. The same can be said about our full time jobs. If we love what we do, we’ll never feel like we’re at work. This creates the illusion of passive income, even though it’s anything but.
6 Side Hustle Ideas to Make Money (but don’t feel like work)
1.) Driving for Uber or Lyft
Uber and Lyft are my favorite side hustle ideas to make money, because they have survived the test of time and show no sign of stopping. Although each company has faced its share of hurdles and controversies, the fact remains that people truly do make good money on each platform.
I drove for Uber for about 1 year before I called it quits. I decided to stop driving because I wanted to find side hustle ideas to make money that allowed me to be closer to my family. Even though I was only driving on the weekends, when I moved jobs, the weekends were the only time I had to spend with my wife and kid; that is precious time and I wanted to make the most of it.
While driving for Uber, I was making about $26/hour after fees were paid. And this was driving in a small town in rural eastern North Carolina! I could only imagine what driving in a larger city center like Raleigh would yield.
How does it work?
To be a driver for Uber or Lyft, you need a serviceable vehicle, a valid driver’s license and a clean background check. That’s about it! You’ll go to the Uber driver web site, sign up for a count, submit required documents for your vehicle and background check, and then… when you’re ready… go online and make yourself available for rides.
While you’re online, you and your vehicle will show up on client apps when they search for an Uber. If you are the closest available vehicle, you will automatically be paired with them, and you will get a notification of where you need to go to pick them up.
Most of the time, your fares will enter their destination in the app, and it will automatically create GPS guided directions for you to get there. It really takes a lot of the guess work out of it. The driver interface is very intuitive: push a button to begin your ride, push a button to end it, and then rate your passenger.
How do you get paid?
With Uber, payment is handled entirely in the app. Other than confirming that the person you are picking up is the right person, you really don’t have to interact with your fares at all. They get in and get out, and the payment is transacted automatically. Depending on time of day and the volume of riders/drivers in the area, there may also be “surge pricing” in effect, which can double, triple (or more!) your rate.
For every trip you make you will receive a commission based on travel time, miles driven, and surge pricing. With Lyft, tips are built into the app, so there is no awkward moment at the end of your drive. It’s not customary for passengers to tip, but often times they do anyway.
I made a $40 tip one time for a 25 minute trip!
Are there any other skills needed?
- Be a people person.
- You aren’t expected to make conversation, and some people would actually prefer you don’t, but it’s best that you can interact and be personable when needed. Be polite when picking people up, and understand that many times you might be dealing with… well… drunk people. Expect changes in destinations, and don’t get frustrated by them.
- Accept cancelations as a part of life.
- You might get trips canceled on you. That sucks. One time I had to drive over 20 minutes to pick up a fare since I was the only vehicle nearby. When I got there, I waited almost 10 minutes for them to “get ready,” and then they canceled on me. In those cases, Uber will often compensate you, but it’s not really commensurate with the amount of time you invested.Luckily those incidents are pretty rare.
- Be a safe driver.
- Taxi cab companies are well-known for being aggressive drivers. While you will be insured through Uber’s insurance provider, you are still liable for following all traffic laws. It’s beneficial to know the quickest routes to most local places, but other than that, you won’t ever get penalized for being a defensive driver and playing it safe. If your passengers are dead, they can’t tip you!
- Offer value.
- The quality of your ride may have some impact on your ratings. Uber enforces a strict rating policy which penalizes drivers who don’t keep a high star rating. To keep your ratings high, there are simple tricks like providing your passengers with mints, phone charging cables, or bottles of water. Being on time, opening the doors for them, and so on are also perks.
Why doesn’t it feel like work?
I spend a lot of time driving to and from work as it is. Often times driving is somewhat meditative. It’s not labor intensive and it’s something that pretty much all of us know how to do well already. It encourages proper care and upkeep of your vehicle too!
The only downside is that you must devote 100% of your attention and time to the task at hand any time you are working for Uber or Lyft. In this respect, it’s definitely not a side hustle idea to make money that is passive. In fact, it’s the opposite. But it fits my criteria because in all reality it does not feel like work at all.
Go here to sign up for drive for Uber. If you want to see what it’s like to be a passenger first, just go here to sign up to be an Uber rider. To sign up to drive for Lyft, go here. The truth is, both companies are excellent, and there’s nothing stopping you from signing up for both.
2.) Shopping for Instacart
Because of the success of Uber and Lyft, a whole market of services has risen, catering to people’s most common needs. For nearly every service, there is an “Uber of ______” it. Instacart is the Uber of grocery shopping. It’s the second favorite, of my top 6 side hustle ideas to make money, because, like Uber, it takes advantage of a skill that most of us already possess: buying groceries.
How does it work?
The premise is similar to Uber. You sign up as an Instacart shopper (or Instashopper), receive a background check, upload a few documents, and then sign up for specific hours of availability. During those hours, you may receive orders for pickup and delivery.
With Instacart you will receive a shopping list for each order, with specific instructions. As the shopper, it will be your job to efficiently pick up all of the items for the assigned job(s) and then deliver them in a timely manner.
There are a few nuances involved, such as making sure you’ve got the right products, and batching your purchases for peak efficiency. Because of these issues, it’s not my preferred side hustle idea to make money because it is a little more brain and labor intensive than just getting behind the wheel and driving.
How do you get paid?
You get paid the same way you do for Uber. You are even able to get tips, depending on the quality of service you provide. The commission rates are reasonable, but I have not been able to match my Uber earnings with Instacart. The beauty of Instacart is that your shopping hours are predetermined by you. While you may or may not get orders, there is less surprise and less thought going into acquiring work.
With Uber, you have to drive around, position yourself strategically, and compete with other drivers for fares. With Instacart, you just choose your hours and wait for orders. No muss, no fuss.
Instacart pays out weekly, and it’s all automated. They even send you a specialized Instacart credit card to use for all of the purchases, so you are never financially obligated for anything.
Why doesn’t it feel like work?
This is a tough one, and I was actually on the fence with including Instacart in this list. I left it in the top 6 because the amount of money you can make is pretty substantial given the amount of work required. But there’s that word again: work.
Instacart often times can feel like a job, until you have perfected your flow. Once you get a feel for how quickly you can shop for specific items, or how to plan out a shopping trip, it becomes much more automatic.
I’ve never considered shopping for groceries as labor intensive or “work,” although I don’t particularly enjoy doing it — even for myself. No matter what purpose I am shopping for, be it my own food or someone else’s, there is always some mental work going on. If I’m shopping for myself, I’m usually trying to find discounts and coupons. If I’m shopping for Instacart, I’m usually trying to find the most efficient way to make my purchases.
So as far as side hustle ideas to make money, Instacart doesn’t feel like another job, because it just replicates something I do anyway. It’s not passive, and it’s not as big of an earner as Uber or Lyft, but it still deserves a spot on the top 6.
To sign up as an Instashopper go here.
3.) Retail Arbitrage
Like Instacart, I was tempted to specifically exclude retail arbitrage from this list. If pursuing retail arbitrage as a full time side hustle, there is a ton of work involved. From pricing out products, obtaining items in bulk, doing profit analyses, and listing, packaging and shipping items, it takes a lot of work to make this into a full time profitable enterprise.
But if you’re looking specifically for smaller side hustle ideas to make money without really putting a ton of effort into it, then retail arbitrage may still work.
Retail arbitrage involves buying products at a discount and then selling them for a higher price. I do this in a very passive manner, and I never actively look for opportunities, because it is too labor intensive.
How does it work?
If I’m out shopping, I’ll always keep my eyes out for clearance items. These items must specifically be marked down, rather than parts of sales or promotions, because usually those sales or promotions are used to compete with other retailers’ lower prices.
If, however, I happen upon a clearance rack with specific items marked down not in bulk, and it’s something that I find value in, I will usually purchase the item on the spot and then assess its feasibility for resale once I get home. The idea here is to not spend too much time overthinking it.
This side hustle can have a steep learning curve because most of the time the items you find on clearance simply will not be profitable. The time taken to research pricing, take pictures, list the item, package and ship, all eat into your bottom line. And unless that item is offered for a steep discount, you are unlikely to make much return on investment.
On the other hand, with minimal research, once you get a feel for the value of certain items, it can be very passive and not require much work at all. What little work there is, is easy, and is something you can do from the comfort of your home, or even make a family activity out of.
How do you make money?
If you buy something for 20% off, odds are you will not make a profit. Competition on sites like eBay, Craigslist or Amazon can be fierce. And often times you are not going to be the only one trying to sell that item at a discount.
As a side hustle, the money to be made will be on items you find for 70%+ discounts. Just keep in mind that just because an item is discounted 70% doesn’t mean it has any value. For example, I bought a set of Christmas ornaments for 70% off, off of a shelf with several dozen others.
I didn’t stop to think that maybe they were marked 70% off because they weren’t good sellers. Lo and behold, I listed them for their original retail price with free shipping, and was unable to sell them for months until I substantially cut the price. I was finally able to break even on the purchase, but after considering the time spent on listing/re-listing them, I would say I bought these for a loss.
Why doesn’t it feel like work?
The purchasing process is something you can do intuitively on the spot. Once you get home, you can research the profitability of the product better, and if it’s not what you’d like it to be, you can usually return it unopened to most vendors within 30 days. You can do this research while relaxing watching a movie with your family. Not work.
Listing the items can be time intensive, unless you develop a methodology and stick to it. There are many free templates you can use for eBay, or, for some minimal investment, you can have custom ones designed or make your own. This is a one time expense, and once you find something that works for you, it typically doesn’t require a lot of maintenance.
The listing process should only take a couple of minutes per item once you get the hang of things.
In most cases, items sit unsold for some time before they attract any attention. While it’s not generating you any profits while it sits unsold, it still has the potential for return on minimal investment. If you can front the small up-front investment to purchase products at a steep discount, then the low maintenance aspect of this side hustle idea is worthwhile.
4.) Amazon Mechanical Turk
For a long time, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk was my favorite side hustle. And in many respects, it still is. The reason it’s number 4 on my list of side hustle ideas to make money is because the returns aren’t as substantial.
But where it falls short on returns, it makes up for it in ease of work and portability. MTurk is something you can do while watching a movie, doing laundry, or even just with a free minute here or there.
How does it work?
MTurk is a system designed to help people, businesses, universities, etc. collect data or complete tasks that can’t otherwise be completed by computers. These tasks are called “Human Intelligence Tasks” or HITs. Sometimes these tasks are surveys; other times they require you to transcribe audio, or visit web sites, or create data entry for scanned receipts.
The HITs allow companies or organizations to compensate workers for completing each HIT. Sometimes this compensation is a couple of cents. Other times it can be a couple of dollars. Typically they take no more than a few minutes. If you get a good system for signing up for, and completing these HITs, it’s not unusual to make a couple extra bucks per hour.
If all you’re doing is sitting around at home anyway, this is a particularly useful way to monetize your free time, and not feel like work.
To get started just visit Mechanical Turk and sign up for a worker account. It’s all done through Amazon, so you know it’s a trustworthy company. After you have signed up and entered some basic information, you can view their listings of HITs and start completing them.
Some HITs have prerequisites, so you might need to complete a certain amount of HITs before the majority become available to you. This is because organizations only want to receive data from reliable workers. Also keep in mind that in most cases you can’t just click your way through these HITs; if a requester receives bad data from you, they may reject your HIT, which puts a ding on your record, and will make you ineligible to complete certain other HITs.
Many HITs require a certain percentage of non-rejected HITs as a prerequisite.
How do you get paid?
Payments are processed automatically through Amazon payments. You can cash out any time and Amazon Payments will send the money to a specified bank account. The amount of compensation for each HIT is listed next to it, and you can clearly see how much you will get paid before you accept it.
You can use web sites like Reddit’s HITs Worth Turking For in order to complete HITs that have particularly good rates of return. This is a community of people who post links to HITs that are known to pay well, pay promptly, and not reject a lot (provided they are completed honestly). With an hour of free time and this web site, you can expect probably $3-$4.
Your mileage may vary on rate of return though, because it is all dependent on which types of HITs are available at any given time.
Why doesn’t it feel like work?
Anything that I can do while sitting on my couch and having a beer doesn’t qualify as work. Period.
If you’re looking to make minimum wage with this system, you will need to invest a lot of time. Many of the HITs just aren’t worth doing. Some may pay $0.10 and require more than 30 minutes of work. That just won’t do.
Creating a good, efficient Turk workflow can be time consuming and labor intensive and it’s not my preferred way of doing it. I simply use MTurk to add a couple bucks here and there on the side, without any additionally invested time or labor. Heck, some of them are even fun to do.
5.) Swagbucks
Like Mechanical Turk, Swagbucks is something you can do with time that you’d already be spending sitting around. You might argue that instead of sitting around, you could be actively pursuing other professions. While that’s true, at some point (unless you truly are a workaholic) you’re going to want to rest and reset.
For those moments, mTurk and Swagbucks are great. Swagbucks is an online portal that pays out to complete surveys, view videos, purchase products, and even search the web. The payout is in the form of their currency (Swagbucks), which can ultimately be redeemed for Paypal or Amazon gift cards, among many other things.
How does it work?
Swagbucks makes all of its money through advertising. Users sign up for it and do any number of things which exposes them to these advertisements; for this they are compensated.
At my peak, I was making $60 extra per month doing Swagbucks. This isn’t walking around money, but it’s not chump change either. It was enough to pay for our internet bill, even.
You can earn Swagbucks by answering surveys (similar to mTurk). These surveys have a lot of prerequisites, and many you won’t qualify for. I made most of my money completing surveys, but tapered down my involvement after I realized how much time I spent just qualifying for the surveys in the first place.
Nonetheless, if you complete a survey correctly, you will be compensated the advertised amount of Swagbucks. As of this writing, 1 Swagbuck is equivalent to $0.01. So 100 SB is $1.00, and so on. Some surveys pay 300 SB or more!
Other ways to earn include signing up for promotional offers. For this, I usually used a spam e-mail account, and just went at it. I signed up for all kinds of offers. Some of these offers even send you free stuff in the mail. Other offers may actually be of use to you, like Gamefly memberships, and so on.
What also might be useful is their shopping portal. For many online vendors, if you shop through their respective Swagbucks link, you can earn cash back, similar to EBates.
How do you get paid?
Swagbucks pays out in their proprietary currency that goes by the same name. Once you’ve amassed enough Swagbucks (SB), you can redeem them for Paypal credit or a variety of gift cards. Personally we used our Swagbucks for Amazon gift cards most of the time. The amount of income received was not substantial enough for us to include in our monthly expenses very often, but for those times when we needed something on Amazon, it was nice to log in and remember we had $50, $60, or $100 in redeemed Swagbucks to take the sting off of the purchase price.
How much you earn depends entirely upon how much time you invest. I typically would make more on Swagbucks than I would on Mechanical Turk, but I usually invested more time in Swagbucks.
You can also earn by watching movie trailers (how awesome is that?). Granted, it’s not going to make you rich, but if you just start them playing while you do other work in the background, it’s a super easy way to earn a couple cents here or there.
Swagbucks is one of many online portals of its kind, but I think it is the most established and easiest to use. Go here to check them out and sign up.
Why doesn’t it feel like work?
For all the reasons above, Swagbucks is something that, just like mTurk, can be done while you’re on your couch. Of the 3 or 4 computer-based side hustle ideas to make money that I’m listing here, it’s probably the one that I’ve had the most success with. The reason it’s lower on the rankings is because with that success came a little more focused work.
With mTurk, you know what to expect with most of the surveys. With Swagbucks, you really have to seek out surveys that you qualify for. Sometimes the site can be laggy, and not all of the offers are straightforward either. So even though you’re sitting around and “not working,” it still requires some focused attention.
Nevertheless, I recommend it from a personal perspective as one of my most lucrative side hustle ideas to make money.
6.) EBates and iBotta
To round out my top 6 side hustle ideas to make money, I’m listing two programs that aren’t really side hustles. Why include them, then? Because they’re definitely not work! And because they really can make money over the long term.
EBates is probably the most popular online discount shopping app/site available. They’ve been around for quite some time and have partnerships with the most retailers out of all the other sites. I’ve used EBates for 4 years and have saved well over $600 through them on purchases I’d be making anyway.
So if EBates is the front-end of my online shopping experiences, iBotta is the back-end.
How does it work?
Any time I need to buy something, I consider if I should buy it online. If I think I can find it cheaper in store, I will always buy in brick-and-mortar. But first i check on EBates. By shopping at my favorite stores through EBates’ portal, I earn cash back on my purchases. Sometimes this can be quite substantial. But over time, especially, the returns are amazing.
EBates (and us, subsequently) makes money by partnering with retailers and directing traffic to their online portals. Every time you make a purchase through EBates, they pocket a little change… and so do you… everyone wins!
iBotta works in a similar fashion, but it works on the tail end of your purchase. Rather than funnel you directly to retailers, it provides you with discounts on individual items from those retailers. When you buy one of these discounted items, you scan your receipt into iBotta and receive cash back directly!
Combined, the savings you can get through these two apps are really substantial.
The down side is that many of the things you might buy in store won’t have available rebates on iBotta. In that case you’re not losing any money… you’re just not saving any either. Similarly, you have to actually need something from one of EBates’ affiliated retailers to make it worth your while. One thing you don’t want to do is buy products that you don’t need, just because they’re discounted.
How do you get paid?
With both platforms, cash back is automatically credited to your accounts after purchase, or after scanning a receipt. IBotta has a $10 minimum, and EBates will credit you twice a month with a “Big Fat Check.”
Why doesn’t it feel like work?
I think this should be obvious. Neither of these platforms require any added time or work investment on your part. If used for things you were going to buy anyway, there really is no down side.
The reason they appear at the bottom of my top 6 side hustle ideas to make money is because they’re not really about “income.” Instead, they create income indirectly by saving you money up front. A penny saved is a penny earned, after all. Also, they typically will not return the same amount in the short term as the first 5 items I listed.
Over the long term, and for the amount of work required, Ebates and iBotta are my go-to shopping apps for saving money.
Conclusion
So there you have it. My top 6 side hustle ideas to make money without actually feeling like you’re working. Remember, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. For side hustles, the best we can hope for is to disguise them as things we’d likely do anyway.
Our ultimate goal is to use this supplemental income to pay off debt, cover bills, and reach financial independence. It’s critical that the money you make be used to help you reach your ultimate goal of passive income.
What do you think about this list? Are there any other side hustle ideas to make money that you use which you think are better?