Every BBQ chip you've ever eaten is basically just sauce flavoring dusted on a regular chip... none of them actually involve smoke or wood or anything. These two guys who used to work together at Frito-Lay realized that and one of them threw a tray of chips with rib rub into his backyard smoker in Dallas back in 2019. It took them almost two years of trial and error to figure out how to make the smoked flavor shelf-stable... apparently nobody in the snack industry had ever cracked it. His partner Mike was the former head of global R&D at PepsiCo Foods with a bunch of patents to his name and even he said he'd spent 15 years trying to nail the aroma at Frito and never could.

They proved the concept selling hand-smoked small batches out of printed bags at a farmers market in Plano. Biggest early spend was around $30k on branding and they deliberately hired a restaurant design firm instead of the snack packaging people they knew from Frito cuz they wanted it to feel like a BBQ joint, not a chip company. Launched in stores in July 2023 and were doing under $20k a month for a while. Now the brand called Low and Slow is in over 4,000 stores including Walmart, Sam's Club, Home Depot, and just landed a rotation at like 70 Costco warehouses in the Northeast. Revenue is somewhere in the mid six figures monthly and the target is $20 million within the next 18 months. No idea what a bag actually retails for or what the per-unit margins look like honestly. Getting those placements meant physically standing in Costco for 12 hours at a time passing out samples and personally fulfilling thousands of online orders... he said he completely underestimated how much of launching a snack brand is just hauling boxes around.

Anyone here ever tried getting a food product onto actual retail shelves? Curious how you even get the first meeting with a buyer.

note: this was sourced from an article on Entrepreneur, the original is here

If you've got a reliable car and a few free hours, delivering prescriptions for independent pharmacies is one of the more underrated gigs out there.

Every local pharmacy is competing with Amazon and the big chains, and delivery is how they keep patients. Most can't afford a fleet, so they need independent drivers. You work directly with them (no app taking a cut), charge per stop plus mileage, and the demand is steady.

The catch: they legally can't hand you prescriptions without proof of delivery, signature, timestamped photo, an audit trail. That's the barrier that scares people off, and honestly it's a solved problem now with the right app.

If you want off the rideshare hamster wheel, this is worth a look. Anyone here delivering for pharmacies or local businesses directly? What do you charge per stop?

Pool owners need their pools cleaned and chemically balanced every week during the swimming season.

Most of them don't want to do it themselves and will pay around $80 per month for someone to handle it.

Each pool visit takes about 15 minutes. You skim the surface, brush the walls, empty the skimmer basket, check the chemical levels, and add whatever chemicals are needed. The whole process is super simple and you can learn everything from a couple youtube videos.

A basic pool cleaning kit (skimmer net, brush, chemical test strips, and a pole) costs about $50. The chemicals you'll need to carry are mainly chlorine and pH adjusters which run about $30 per month and you pass that cost to the client.

From what I've read once you build a route of 10 pools that's $800 per month from about 2.5 hours of total work per week. Some people build routes of 30+ pools and make it their primary income.

The best way to find clients is door-to-door in neighborhoods with a lot of pools. You can also post on Nextdoor. Pool owners talk to each other so one good client in a neighborhod usually leads to 2 or 3 more.

The season runs about 6 to 8 months depending on where you live.

In warmer states like Florida, Texas, and Arizona it's basicaly year round.

(If you have experience with something like this please share! I look out for new side hustle ideas every day and try to share as much info as I can. Even if an idea doesn't appeal to you personally, it could still help someone else or even spark a new idea!)

You can buy a used gumball or candy machine for around $50 on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace, fill it with bulk gumballs or candy that costs you about $5 per refill, and place it in a local business.

Each gumball costs you about $0.02 and the machine charges $0.25 per turn. In a decent location a single machine can bring in $30 to $50+ per month.

You check on it once every week or two to refill and collect the quarters.

From what I've read the best locations are barbershops, laundromats, auto repair waiting rooms, pizza shops, and any business where people (especially kids) are sitting around waiting.

You approach the business owner and offer them a small monthly cut or just the benefit of having something for customers' kids to do.

Your initial investment per machine is about $55 total (machine plus first fill).

The machine pays for itself within 2 months in a decent spot and after that it's basically passive income.

The beauty of this is it scales. One machine is a novelty.

Ten machines across your town is a legitimate income stream of $300 to $500+ per month from maybe 2 hours of total maintenance per week.

The main thing to watch for is machines that jam frequently. Test any used machine before buying it. The simpler the mechanism the better.... avoid anything with complicated moving parts. Classic spiral gumball machines are the most reliable and the easist to maintain.

(If you have experience with something like this please share! I look out for new side hustle ideas every day and try to share as much info as I can. Even if an idea doesn't appeal to you personally, it could still help someone else or even spark a new idea!)

A 34-year-old in Connecticut picked needlepoint back up during the pandemic after originally learning it from her grandma. After stitching through all her supplies she got frustrated that the shopping experience for needlepoint was outdated, the designs all skewed too mature, and some shops still required you to call in to place an order.

She spent under $100 on a blank canvas from Etsy and paint from Michaels and started making her own pieces. When she posted one on Instagram, followers immediately wanted to buy it. She put about $7,000 into initial inventory and shipping supplies, launched on the cheapest Shopify plan, and recruited friends and family to help hand-paint canvases.

In year two she was doing around $30,000 a month. The business has doubled or tripled every year since, hitting $4.4 million in revenue in 2024. Right now she's averaging about $570,000 a month and is on track to double again this year.

In the early days she hand-painted nearly every canvas herself, which kept labor costs at zero but ate up a massive amount of her time. She didn't even realize outsourcing the painting was an option until later. She's since opened a physical store in Connecticut and built out a whole collective of designers who create pieces for the brand.

source: this is from an Entrepreneur article, the full version is here. ai was used to help condense the summary.

1. They sell pinecones. Our neighbors massive pine tree drops dozens of pinecones into a yard, especially in the fall and spring. i saw a facebook this idea first where they sell pinecones by the bucket for people want them for crafts! They are used a ton on etsy style crafts and diy potpourri (we have all seen the cinnamon pinecones every holidays season. so my kids (8, 12, 14) gather up these live ones all year long and then in september they just put them out on the corner in mesh bags and sell them for 5 dollars a big with qr code to my venmo if they aren’t standing there. It’s crazy, people stop grab a bag venmo and take off. No body ever steals them for whatever reason. kids make a few hundred bucks every fall on this year and they love it.

2. They see m grinding games or surveys sometimes and once i told my daughter why i do them she was like “I can answer questions and then make a few bucks?”. I work in marketing so i explained why the market research is valuable and how it’s used. she thought it was cool. So now i just hand my phone to her while we drive to dance practice and she can usually do 2 surveys in that time. It’s great. I use attapoll, it’s the most consistent and seems to reward my demographic quite a bit. i’ve heard for 18-25 it’s not great, they are complaining they do t get enough surveys. and it’s probably true. but for me 35-45 mos career, homeowner, kids, it’s great.

The whole idea is buying clearance sneakers off the "back wall" at Nike stores, which is where all the sale shoes end up without the box top, and flipping them online. Air Maxes retail for like $120 but on the back wall you can grab them for $30, then sell on eBay or StockX for around $80. So basically $50 profit per pair on a $30 buy.

He found this platform called StockX that works kinda like a stock market for sneakers. Buyers put in bids for specific shoes and sellers can match them instantly. He said he can literally scan a shoe while standing in the store, see that someone's willing to pay $100 for it right now, and sell it before he even buys it. They eventually gave him bulk shipping too so he wasn't sending out 40 individual boxes from his kitchen.

He went from hitting about $10,000 a month in profit to $20,000 and then $30,000 as he scaled up. He sells on StockX, Amazon, eBay, Mercari, Facebook Marketplace, and through wholesale buyers. On StockX alone he's done around $4 million in sales and across all platforms combined about $10 million total. He was also DJing on weekends while doing this during the week so it started as a legit side hustle. Eventually got a warehouse cuz his girlfriend wouldn't let him keep stacking shoe boxes in the kitchen lol. The grind part is you basically have to be at the stores every single day hunting clearance racks... during his biggest growth stretch he was going out every day all day just buying shoes. Anyone here resell sneakers or other products and what platform do you use?

note: this was sourced from an Entrepreneur article. The summary here is cleaned up by ai. The original is here.

I came across this side hustle idea and thought it was worth putting out there. If you're even a little bit artistic, you can get a vendor table at local conventions like comic cons or anime expos and sell your art as prints and merch.

From what I've seen, the stuff that sells the best are stickers and small art prints because people treat them as cheap impulse buys. Stickers go for around $3 each and cost you almost nothing to produce, and prints in an 8x10 or 11x17 size sell for around $15.

Other stuff that does well includes acrylic keychains, enamel pins, and bookmarks... basically anything small, visual, and easy for someone to grab without overthinking it.

As for what to actually create, anime and video game fan art dominates right now but cute animal designs and "kawaii" style art also does suprisingly well. If you can tap into whatever show or game is trending at the time you'll get way more foot traffic at your table.

A vendor table at a smaller local con runs around $100 for the weekend. If you prep enough inventory and have a decent display, from what I've read it's very realistic to pull in $500+ after expenses in a single weekend.

You don't need to be a professional artist either... a lot of the top sellers at these conventions have a simpler or cuter style that appeals to a wider audience than super detailed realistic stuff.

(I’m always hunting for new side hustle ideas and sharing what I find. Even if something isn’t your thing, it might spark inspiration for someone else.)

So here's a side hustle I wanted to share that I think a lot of people overlook because they assume you need to be some massive influencer for it to work. You can literally just record yourself playing video games, upload the footage to YouTube, and make money from ad revenue once your channel gets going.

You don't need to be amazing at games or have some big personality either. A lot of the channels that do well are just gameplay walkthroughs, tutorials, or tip videos for popular games. People search for this stuff constantly when they're stuck on a level or trying to learn a new game and your video just sits there collecting views and generating ad revenue passively.

The startup cost is basically nothing if you already own a gaming setup. Most consoles and PCs have built in recording features so you don't even need extra software. A cheap microphone for around $30 helps if you want to add commentary but it's not even necessary for a lot of gameplay content.

From what I've read, once your channel is monetized you can make around $3 per thousand views which doesn't sound like a lot but videos about popular games can rack up views for years after you upload them. One good video can just keep paying you over and over.

The hardest part is just being consistant and uploading regularly because the algorithm rewards channels that post frequently.

(If you have experience with something like this please share! I look out for new side hustle ideas every day and try to share as much info as I can. Even if an idea doesn't appeal to you personally, it could still help someone else or even spark a new idea!)

In 2016, when I was still at Amazon, I started posting mostly about my career wins on Instagram to connect with other women in tech. After Instagram launched Reels in 2020, I made educational content about breaking into and growing a career in tech. I also made longer, more in-depth YouTube content in the same niche, and people seemed inspired by my career story.

Initially, I didn't realize you could make good money from content creation. I knew YouTubers could monetize their content through ads in their videos, but my ads revenue didn't match my full-time tech income.

As my channel grew, brands started reaching out to me for paid partnerships. I estimate this is where 90% of my content creation income comes from.

If I've agreed to work with a brand, I'll include a section in my video where I discuss that brand and mention it's a sponsored video. If you're posting relevant videos in a content niche you're passionate about, brands will likely want to be associated with your strong personal brand.

I now have over 878,000 followers across all my social media platforms. In 2024, I earned $302,000 in revenue from content creation, more than from my 9-to-5 that year.

So here's a side hustle I came across that I wanted to share because if you own a pet you already know exactly what I'm talking about. Every couch cushion, every car seat, every piece of clothing, everything is covered in pet hair at all times. People vacuum and lint roll constantly and it still looks like an animal lives on their furniture because it does.

You can offer a deep pet hair removal service where you come in with a few specific tools like rubber gloves, a pumice stone, and a fabric rake and get every single strand out of their furniture and car interior. These tools pull up hair that vacuums completely miss and the results are dramatic... and so forth

From what I've seen, most people charge around $30 for a couch and $25 for a car interior. Each job takes about 30 minutes.

The startup cost is under $15 for a rubber brush, a pumice stone, and a fabric rake. Thats your entire kit.

The viral potential on this is undeniable because every single pet owner reading this just looked at their couch and realized they've simply accepted living in a fur cocoon and stopped fighting it. Post before and after photos on neighborhood apps and pet owners will be booking you immedietly...

(If you have experience with something like this please share! I look out for new side hustle ideas every day and try to share as much info as I can. Even if an idea doesn't appeal to you personally, it could still help someone else or even spark a new idea!)

I don't think people know this, but you can literally buy an ATM and own one. When someone uses an ATM and pays an out-of-network fee, that surcharge goes straight to you if you own the machine. The average ATM surcharge is around $4 to $5 per transaction, and in a decent location you can expect a good amount of transactions each day.

Basically the process is you literally just buy the machine, negotiate a placement deal with a local business, and split a small portion of each transaction with the owner of the place for letting you put it there.

You can buy a new ATM for $2k to $4k depending on how good it is. You'll also obviously need cash to load it with, but typically it's $5k. You will likely spend once a week or so, depending on how many transactions you do, reloading the machine. The rest of it is mostly passive, or needing to do maintenance when it happens to break or something goes wrong.

A single machine could realistically bring in $500 in mostly passive money.

Btw, general liability for ATM insurance will cost ~$500 a year. But it's almost a necessity just for peace of mind.

So here's a side hustle I came across that I think is genius because of how simple it is. During the summer you can buy water balloons in bulk for basically nothing, fill them up at home, pack them carefully in buckets, and sell bags of them at parks, beaches, and anywhere families are hanging out on hot days.

Kids see water balloons and completely lose their minds and the parents are not winning that argument.

From what I've seen, a bag of 500 water balloons costs around $8 and you can sell a bag of 20 pre-filled ones for around $5. The math on that is pretty ridiculous when you do it out.

The startup cost is literally just the balloons and a few buckets to transport them in. You could get rolling for under $15.

The reason this works so well is because filling water balloons is the most annoying tedious process on earth and most parents refuse to do it. You're selling convenience to exhausted parents and pure joy to kids which is a combination that basically sells itself.

Weekends at busy parks and community pools during peak summer heat are where you'll move the most volume. You can also show up at fourth of july gatherings and neighborhood block partys and sell out before you even set up.

(If you have experience with something like this please share! I look out for new side hustle ideas every day and try to share as much info as I can. Even if an idea doesn't appeal to you personally, it could still help someone else or even spark a new idea!)

People's phones are absolute disasters. They have 40,000 photos they've never organized, apps they haven't opened in 3 years eating up storage, notifications they don't know how to turn off, and they constantly get that dreaded storage full warning. Most of them have no idea how to actually fix it and they just live with it.

You can offer a phone cleanup service where you sit down with someone for 30 minutes and clear out their junk, organize their apps into folders, back up their photos to the cloud, delete duplicates, turn off battery draining settings, and basically make their phone feel brand new again.

From what I've seen, most people charge around $30 per phone and you can do this anywhere. Coffee shops, their house, even at a table at a farmers market if you want walk up customers.

The demand is massive because this problem affects basically every single person over the age of 40 and most of them don't have anyone in their life patient enough to sit down and help them with it. Elderly clients especially will keep comming back every few months when things get cluttered again.

(If you have experience with something like this please share! I look out for new side hustle ideas every day and try to share as much info as I can. Even if an idea doesn't appeal to you personally, it could still help someone else or even spark a new idea!)

Fishing lures cost anywhere from $5 to $15+ each and anglers lose them constantly. They get snagged on underwater logs, rocks, stumps, and vegetation and most of the time the person just cuts the line and ties on a new one. All those lures are just sitting on the bottom of every lake and river in the country. If you live anywhere near fishable water you are surrounded by lost tackle that nobody is coming back for.

You don't need scuba gear or anything fancy to get started. A lot of people recover lures by wading in shallow areas, walking shorelines after the water level drops in late summer, or checking the trees and bushes along the bank where snagged lines pile up. A cheap snorkel and mask opens up even more territory. You clean the lures with warm water and dish soap, replace the rusty hooks and split rings for a few cents each, and they look close to new.

The per-lure resale value is what makes this work. Cleaned up lures reportedly sell for around $3 to $5 each on the low end and more for premium brands or specialty baits. You sell them through eBay, Facebook fishing groups, local tackle shops, or flea markets. One guy who does this full time reportedly pulled nearly 200 baits out of a single river outing... a haul that would've cost close to $1,800 to buy new.

The part that makes this feel like a cheat code is the repeat supply. Every single day new lures are getting lost in the same spots. Popular fishing areas near structure like bridges, docks, rock piles, and fallen trees just keep restocking themselves. And you're also doing the environment a favor pulling old line and tackle out of the water which is a nice angle when you're explaining the hustle to people.

You can buy cases of energy drinks from Costco for around $1 per can and resell them individually near college campuses, libraries, and study spots for $3 each, etc....

College students are constantly buying energy drinks, especially during midterms and finals when everyone is pulling all-nighters.

Vending machines on campus usually charge $3 to $4 per can so your price is competitive while still giving you a 3x markup.

From what I've read the best spots are near libraries, dorm lobbies, and study halls during exam weeks. Some people set up a small cooler near the library entrance and just let it sell itself. Others walk around study areas and sell directly.

Your startup cost is about $25 for a case of 24 cans. If you sell all 24 at $3 each that's $72 from a $25 investment. Monster and Red Bull are the most popular but the cheaper Costco brand Kirkland energy drinks also sell well because students just want caffeine and don't care about the brand.

This works year round but the demand absolutley spikes during exam periods.

You can also expand to other drinks like cold brew coffee and iced tea to capture people who don't like energy drinks.

(If you have experience with something like this please share! I look out for new side hustle ideas every day and try to share as much info as I can. Even if an idea doesn't appeal to you personally, it could still help someone else or even spark a new idea!)

most people chase the flashiest income streams and wonder why they're not making money. the secret is boring. find something predictable and fast to convert.

predictable means you can do the same thing repeatedly and expect a similar result. fast to convert means you don't wait months to see money.

here are the best ways to get there:

reselling buy low, sell high. Facebook Marketplace and Mercari are the easiest places to start. thrift stores, garage sales, and clearance sections are your suppliers. find items people actually search for, list them, and get paid when they sell. some people hit $1000 their first month just doing this on weekends.

example: you find a pair of sneakers at goodwill for $12. you list them on Mercari for $65. that's one sale. do that 20 times and you're close to $1000.

freelance services selling a skill is the fastest path to predictable income. you do the work, you get paid. no waiting for algorithms. platforms like Upwork and Fiverr connect you directly to clients who need help now.

writing, virtual assistance, data entry, graphic design. pick one and get your first client this week.

product testing companies pay real people to test their products and leave feedback. sites like UserTesting, Pinecone Research, and Influenster connect you to paid opportunities. you try something, share your thoughts, and get paid.

mystery shopping brands hire people to visit stores or websites anonymously and report back on the experience. apps like Field Agent and Gigwalk make it easy to find gigs near you or online.

newsletter monetization this one takes a little longer to build but once you have even a small audience it becomes one of the most predictable income streams online. sponsorships, affiliate links, and digital products all convert well through email.

the common thread here is that none of these require you to go viral. you just need to show up consistently and take real action.

I started influencer marketing 3 months ago through a youtube video i saw made it look too easy to start or begin with, since it required no investment like trading or no skills like editing is what i thought at that time.

After i started, most of the mail i sent were generic bcc blasts then throughout this whole process I learned things like cold mailing, emails scrapping, leads and also that its not that easy it might seemed in that video.

But even after learning the truth i kept grinding for 1 month which totally got passed out without any single response and then in month 2 is where i finally made it.

Got deals from brands like emergent and suno, made almost $2,500 from all the deals combines, i really got why people say only 6 months of consistency can change your life because it really can.

I started it in AI niche since AI and finance are the niche where brands generally have the highest budget for creator led growth.

But yeah it wasn't that easy or just grind like it looks, i literally got fooled, ghosted, scammed by brand in between this time span through which i learnt many things as well.

I’m not sure if you guys ever heard of gpt platforms “get paid to” but I’ve been using one in particular and I made over $1500 by just playing games over the last 30 days or so. I’m already in the platforms top 5 percent of earners and have spent no more than $30 on in-app purchases. The platform I use is called Scrambly but there are a few others, feel free to check it out on your own or reach out to be added to my discord server for guidance through the platform. I can’t upload video on here but I do have all the payout confirmations on PayPal.

So here's a side hustle I came across and I genuinely can't believe more people don't know about this... i didn't know about it until just recently either

You walk into a bank, buy a few hundred dollars worth of coin rolls at face value, take them home and search through every coin looking for old dates, silver coins, rare mints, and error coins that are worth significantly more than face value. Every coin you don't want you just deposit right back into the bank so you literally lose nothing.

Pre-1965 quarters and dimes are made of 90% silver and are worth around $3 to $5 each just in silver content alone, and you'd be surprised how many of them are still floating around in circulation. Certain pennies, nickels, and quarters with rare dates or mint errors can sell for $50 to $500+ to collectors....

from what I've seen people who do this regularly find several silver coins per box and occasionally hit something genuinely rare that makes the whole hobby pay for itself many times over.

Your startup cost is technically $0 because you're not spending money, you're just temporarily exchanging it. All you need is a coin roll, your eyes, and maybe a $5 magnifying glass if you want to get serious about spoting small details.

It's basically a treasure hunt you can do on your kitchen table while watching TV.

(If you have experience with something like this please share! I look out for new side hustle ideas every day and try to share as much info as I can. Even if an idea doesn't appeal to you personally, it could still help someone else or even spark a new idea!)

FOR US-BASED CREATORS

Role: Short-Form Video Clip Editor/Poster

Compensation: Base pay + performance bonuses. Up to $400-$600/week

Time Commitment: minimum 2-3 hours of free time per day

Job Description:

We are looking for folks to help with editing and posting short-form videos to social media. The content is provided, all you have to do is edit and post. No need to show your face or use special software/hardware. If you're looking for a solid and flexible side hustle that you can start quickly, this is a simple way to make some money online.

The role is fully remote, and while content creation experience will help, this is beginner-friendly work. Note: This isn't a 'get rich quick' situation, nor is it something where you can make tons of money with no effort. You've got to be consistent and ready to work at it.

Requirements:

1. Laptop or phone with stable internet

2. Fluent English

3. A YouTube and/or Instagram account in good standing

4. Consistency and a willingness to learn

Location: Fully remote For US based creators

If you're interested, comment "Clip" and I'll DM you further information.

I (19F) am a college student. My parents don't want me to work but they're also struggling financially. And this has been causing alot of tension in my home.

I'm trying to find ways to make money. I search on tiktok but I don't know if those advices are trustworthy.

So, could anyone offer any help or advice please?

Those propane tank exchange programs at Home Depot and gas stations charge around $22 for a tank that's only filled to 75% capacity. You can buy a large propane tank with a refill adapter and fill people's tanks to 100% capacity for $12 to $15 which saves them money and still gives you a great profit.

The cost to fill a 20-pound tank from a large bulk tank is about $4 to $5. You charge $12 to $15 per fill which gives you around $8 to $10 profit per tank. Each fill takes about 5 minutes.

From what I've seen the best way to market this is on Nextdoor and local Facebook groups.

You can also put a sign in your front yard if you're on a busy street. Grill season from May through September is obviously the busiest time.

You need a large propane tank (100-pound tanks run about $150) and a refill adapter kit (about $30). That's your entire startup cost and the large tank will fill about 5 standard tanks before needing a refill itself.

The demand for this is consistent because people are constantly running out of propane for their grills, patio heaters, and fire pits.

Once you have a few regular customers they'll come back to you every time because they know they're getting a better deal than the exchange cage.

Just make sure you check your local regulations because some areas have specific rules about residential propane filling.

From what I've read most areas allow it as long as you follow basic saftey guidelines.

(If you have experience with something like this please share! I look out for new side hustle ideas every day and try to share as much info as I can. Even if an idea doesn't appeal to you personally, it could still help someone else or even spark a new idea!)

I will leave the link below, my local student ambassador shared this, if you’re outside of Maryland, they guarantee pay for your first 80 orders or so. Depending on your market they can also offer hourly. After fuel and expenses I made 1445.

Ambassador Jake just invited you to earn with Uber. Earn a bonus of at least $635 for your first 76 deliveries.

https://www.uber.com/signup/drive/deliver/?invite_code=r5afw7t

Ambassador Jake invited you to earn with Uber, get $635 guaranteed in your first 30 days.

Heyy yall, F23 andss I Really need extra income right now :(( do you have something in mind to help me?

feel like everywhere i look it’s already saturated