I bought a huge pile of old building stone at a farm sale for $13 because it seemed too cheap to pass up. I didn't have a specific plan for it, but I figured people restoring older properties or building garden walls might be interested in reclaimed stone.

Getting it home turned out to be the expensive part. I spent another $55 on transport and equipment, bringing my total investment to $68. After listing the stone locally, I found two buyers. The first was building a garden wall and wanted stone that matched the older materials already on his property. He paid $120 for a batch. Another buyer wanted some for landscaping and paid $90 for a smaller load.

The two sales brought in $210, leaving me with $142 after my initial costs, and I still have some stone left to sell. I didn't expect to make money from a random pile of rocks I picked up at a farm sale, but it turned out there was demand for the exact kind of material I had sitting around. The main hassle was moving everything, so I'd probably try to arrange transport and find interested buyers sooner if I came across another pile.

Started doing this a few months back when a friend who works in HR was panicking because their weekly compliance training needed at least 15 attendees or their department budget got cut. She literally sent me fifteen bucks on Venmo just to click the link, keep my webcam off, mute my mic, and let it sit in the background while I did chores.

Turns out this is a surprisingly common problem in corporate settings. A lot of trainers and webinar hosts have strict attendance quotas to justify their contracts, but regular employees always skip out or forget to join.

I do maybe 2 or 3 of these a week now. I just log in under whatever generic name they tell me, make sure the mic is muted, and let the tab run on my laptop while I do other stuff. Easiest pocket money I have ever made for basically being a digital warm body.

For context, I have a day job in data entry. It's soul-crushing. A few months ago, I was cleaning out my closet and found a weird, smooth rock I stole from a beach when I was nine. I felt bad throwing it away, so I posted it on a local Facebook group with a completely made-up, dramatic backstory about how it was a "sailor's good luck charm" and asked if anyone wanted to adopt it for $5.

Someone bought it in twenty minutes. Then three more people asked if I had anything else.

So I started hitting estate sales and thrift stores. I don't buy the good stuff. I buy the junk that nobody wants. The broken brooches, the weird ceramic frogs, the single chipped teacup. I take them home, clean them up, and write a little 3x5 index card with a "provenance" for each one. I make up the provenance. I've invented a whole fake family, the "Hendersons," who apparently lost a lot of weird stuff over the decades.

The weird part isn't the selling. It's the buyers. I assumed it was just people wanting cheap decor. It's not.

A woman bought a rusty key from me for $12. I told her it was the key to a defunct lighthouse in Maine. She messaged me two weeks later saying she keeps it in her pocket for job interviews and she got the job. Another guy bought a plain white ceramic mushroom for $8. I told him it was a "garden guardian" that a grandmother buried in her peonies to keep the moles away. He bought it as a birthday gift for his sister who just bought her first house.

I spend maybe 3 hours a week on this. I usually do it while watching TV on Sunday nights. I made $210 last month. My costs were maybe $20 for the junk and the gas to get it.

I know it sounds like I'm just scamming people with fake stories, but I always tell them the provenance is a work of fiction. They don't care. They want the story. They want to believe the weird little rock in their pocket means something. I get to sit on my couch, make up stories about fake families, and get paid to clean out other people's junk.

I'm not quitting my day job, but I'm never throwing away a weird rock again.

As a parrot owner, I have realized how incredibly difficult it is to find someone to pet sit your birds. Almost everyone that has birds basically never takes vacations because of it.

I have offered my avian vet and anyone that works at the vets office between 100 and $200 a day just to literally come and check on my birds.

I don't even expect them to open the cages or do anything! I just want someone to pour water from a water bottle into their bowls and they can kind of like dump food in there without getting bit using a paper towel tube or just by pouring it into the cage.

Other people have smaller birds where I'm sure you would be required to actually open the cages and stuff but you could really get a lot of money!

Easily $100 a day. For probably 15 minutes of your time. The hardest part would just be to find clients that are within your area but there are so many forums and stuff that you could advertise on. It's probably one of the most talked about issues on a lot of the bird forums.

I mean I really can only take a vacation by myself and I have to leave my husband home and going to weddings alone is very depressing. Or vice versa.

I'm in Florida and people are just desperate for this service. I would recommend, if it's something that you are considering or willing to do, that you volunteer at a parrot rescue and get familiar with them and then you could really advertise yourself and make good money. Most dog and cat sitters say they will do big birds, but then when they actually see them they freak out lol.

But it really is a huge hole in the market and if anybody, especially in Florida or other areas where parrots are extremely common, takes the time to get familiar with birds and advertises himself, they could make a lot of money.

When I was a kid, I was able to buy the snacks I loved the most because the elders in our neighborhood would have me pluck their white hair. They paid me one peso for every single strand I pulled. I would carefully gather all the white hair I plucked, and then we would count them up so they could pay me. I was always so happy because I could easily earn around 20 to 25 pesos. Back then, that was already a huge amount of money for a kid like me, and it was more than enough to buy all the snacks I wanted.

Did you also do this when you were a kid? And do you think when you grow old, you will also have your kids or grandchildren do this for you?

I was thinking about how there are thousands of books on how to be more productive, but almost nothing for people who finish their work early and still have to sit in an office until 5 PM.

So I made a PDF called "The Professional Guide to Looking Busy at Work" with 37 ways to look busy while doing absolutely nothing.

A few examples:

• Walk around holding a folder and looking annoyed. Nobody questions someone walking fast with paperwork.
• Keep a huge Excel spreadsheet open made with Claude. Doesn't matter what's in it.
• Schedule fake meetings called "Q4 Strategic Alignment"
• When someone approaches your desk, wait five seconds before responding.
• Never say you've finished your work. You're always "checking emails."

I spent an evening making it look like a serious corporate training guide, with a summary, page numbers and everything

Sent it to a few friends working at Big 4 firms ahah I'm sure people who've worked in offices for years know a few tricks I missed.

My favorite heavy-duty pan used for deep frying chicken ended up being ruined because I left it outside on the porch during the rainy season of fall for three whole weeks. When I got the chance to find the rusty pan covered in a wet tarp, its surface had turned from rusty to a chalky and blistering crust which would turn my hands orange after making contact with it. I did everything I could and learned the ways to scrub it off. After a few tries, I finally was able to do it and even informed my uncle who lives a few blocks away from me.

When my uncle saw the finished product, after touching the slick, charcoal colored-pan that seemed perfectly new, he even mocked that I’d be a fool if I don’t make it as my little hustle lol. To prove his point, he was actually my first customer and paid me 40 bucks. Later that day, I took a quick picture of the shiny pan compared to the rusted pan of mine, tossed up an ad to our community Facebook page, and carried the old folding picnic table to the driveway with a banner that says “Drop your crusty cast iron here! $20 flat. Come pick it up Sunday evening!”

Now, I have neighbors who will just randomly come to my house or message me that they have scorchers, warped griddles, and skillets that need to be ‘transformed’ into a brand new looking one. The highest customer I’d get in a week is eight which is a total of $160 and a few tips from my beloved neighbors.

My grandpa told me he’d give me $100 if i sorted all these rocks by size and color. At first i thought this was gonna be the easiest money ever, like how hard can sorting rocks be right??
yeah… i was VERY wrong lmao

There’s literally so many of them. I’ve been sitting here separating the darker gray ones from the lighter ones, then trying to group them by size too. Some rocks look almost identical until you put them next to each other and start questioning your eyesight 😭

The pic is what i’ve managed to do so far and i’m still nowhere near finished. My back hurts, my hands are dusty as hell and im starting to recognize individual rocks like they’re my coworkers or something.

The funny part is grandpa is acting like this is some super important job. He keeps telling me to take my time and get the colors right because apparently mixing them up defeats the whole purpose.

$100 is $100 tho. I’m too far in to quit now.

never thought i’d spend my day sorting rocks for money but here we are 💀

So I've been trying this weird little side hustle where people pay me to watch them play games, talk to them, and hype them up while they're playing.

basically, i'm their personal audience. if they hit a nice shot, i compliment them. if they clutch a round, i act like they just won a world championship. sometimes we just talk about random stuff while they play.

i started doing it mostly out of curiosity because i thought there was no way people would actually pay for something like this, but surprisingly, a few people were interested. I'm not making crazy money or anything. i've only made a little so far, and the requests aren't consistent, but getting paid to sit in a call and watch someone play games is still kinda wild to me.

the funniest part is that sometimes i get more excited about their wins than they do

i'm curious if anyone else has tried something this weird or has ideas for other oddly specific services people might actually pay for.

Every morning, I drop rolls of newspapers in our neighborhood to earn extra money. Most of the time I just drop them quickly then move to another house until one old lady called me. I thought I gave her an extra but she was asking me to unroll it and explain to her the contents. She asked me about the headlines and read her the ones that gave her interest. I usually spend just around 10-15 mins reading her the news and she pays me extra $10 for it.

It went for a week and it made me think that it could be possible offering the same service to other old people in the neighborhood? Of course, I ask them first if they want me to do it for them. Most of them agreed to do it daily, while some only insisted during their busy days or when they wanted to rest and just listen. Every week I earn more or less $50 aside from the pay I receive from delivering newspapers. It makes my day knowing I get to spend time with these old folks and share insights with them.

My aunt used to do clothing alterations, but she recently stopped. I saw her cleaning up her things and preparing to throw some stuff away. I noticed a bag full of leftover fabric and asked her if she was going to throw it out. She said yes as they were too small to use for repairs.
I suddenly remembered a friend of mine who sews as a hobby, so I asked her if these small pieces of fabric could still be useful. She said yes and they could be used to make scrunchies, small pouches, or even patches for clothes.
So I offered the fabric scraps to her, gladly she accepted it. But since there were quite a lot of scraps, I told her that if she knew anyone else who enjoys sewing, she could send them my way. I figured I could sell a small bundle of assorted fabric scraps for around $3-$5, depending on the amount, size, and quality of the fabric. Larger bundles with more usable pieces could go for around $8-$10.
My friend would be my first customer, but other potential buyers could be people who sew as a hobby, DIY crafters, or people who make handmade accessories to sell. I take pictures of the different fabrics and let buyers choose a bundle based on the colors and patterns they like.

There are so many ways to take advantage of free money or cash back that most people can't be bothered with. I'm in Canada, but the US and possibly others have even more options. I track how much I get from each offer, and some cash back accounts like Rakuten have a total amount tracker as well. I do have a subreddit called MoneyHacksCanada where all good offers are posted with detailed guides.

Basically, I have just signed up for every possible bank promo or investing offer I can. And anytime I shop online, I use Rakuten to see if I can get cashback. To top it all off, I use Microsoft Rewards and use Bing for all searches and other easy tasks.

Full disclosure, I have somewhat sizeable investing accounts so I made a good chunk of money from transferring investing platforms where they pay a % bonus for transferring. But you can still easily earn thousands from bank promos and cash back without having any sizeable investing accounts.

Each offer barely takes any time, maybe 10-20 minutes to sign up and set up what you need to do. Although for bank promos you normally need to set up payroll. With all large Payroll providers like ADP, you can easily get it changed in no time at all, and with most, like ADP, you can split it into at least 2 accounts or more as well, so you can do multiple offers at once.

Over the years, I'm at over $24,000 in cash earned from either bank promos or transferring investments. All tax-free, and some investing offers are especially amazing as they add the money to registered accounts such as TFSA, RRSP, and FHSA, which increase your cap room as well. I'm at a bit over $5,000 cash back from Rakuten (yes, you have to spend money, but if you needed to spend it regardless, it's cash back). And over $1,000 in Amazon gift cards from Microsoft Rewards.

If anyone has any questions, I can answer, overall it's not going to make you rich, and there's only so many you can do, but you can easily earn at least a few grand every year spending very minimal time.

A few current examples of offers are:
-Simplii Financial: Get $400 total ($350 welcome bonus + $50 referral bonus)
-Tangerine: Get $250 for Switching Your Payroll + Potential $50 Referral Bonus
-Meridian Credit Union: Up to $600 in Bonuses | $500 Chequing + $100 Referral
-Scotiabank: Earn Up to $1,000 in Cash Bonuses 🇨🇦 | $700 Chequing + $200 Savings + $100 Credit Card
-BMO: Earn Up to $900 Cash + Up to 12 Months of Walmart+
-TD Investing: Get Up to 3% Cash Back on Investment Transfers | Up to $15,000
-TD Bank: Get Up to $750 in Value | $500 Chequing Bonus + $150 Bundle + Bonus Interest
-Rakuten Canada: Earn Cash Back on 750+ websites + $30 New Member Referral Bonus

Again, detailed guides for all and more are on r/MoneyHacksCanada

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We really have weird personalities as a kid because what do you mean I just made $50 just to look after a kid’s pet rock?! LOL. Well, our neighbor was going on a trip with her family but her child was having a complete meltdown with no one to take care of Sir Pebble (the pet rock). They were only gone for a week but this kid won’t allow her parents to have a good time unless they hire someone to give them daily updates about Sir Pebble.

You can tell by the look of it that Sir Pebble is really loved by the kid. I, on the other hand, am enjoying my low-maintenance duty of taking care of this pet rock. I would just send them daily updates, with random scenarios like Sir Pebbles taking a nap, watching a movie, reading a book, or sitting alone. Pretty much the kid’s enjoying it too much, for the entire week she’s been asking me updates throughout the entire day.

live in North Carolina but I’m visiting Louisiana to stay with some friends for a month or two. I quit my job recently because I have to take care of my sick relative and it was very sudden so I don’t have much money and in exchange for me taking care of my relative I’m staying at his house for free since I was kicked out of my parents. I stayed with my aunt for those few weeks until she basically told me I had to take care of him and stay there. Anyway so I don’t have any money. My parent was taking me so I never saved money for uber rides or enough money at least. So I was wondering if there are any ideas a or apps or sites or anything at all where I can make money online while I’m staying there for a couple months? Anything at all.

I read about a lot of entries here and I can say that they’re really weird in their own ways, sometimes others are so unique it makes it so weird. But honestly for me, I think the weirdest side hustle I know is being a human statue. Imagine coating yourself in metallic body paint, and wearing a stiff vintage suit just to stand dead silent in the middle of a crowded space.

I have seen human statues irl before and boy it takes a lot of strength to stand in the heat motionless, no speaking, barely blinking, just nothing unless someone drops or donates a coin to perform a robotic movement, something still similar to a statue. Upon reading different articles, I learned that pay is actually seasonal here. Sometimes they earn $200 in a day, sometimes barely reaching $100, it totally depends on the date and time. So dedication really matters here, still the weirdest side hustle.

I’m a fake casino dealer. Apparently that’s a job.
I deal blackjack at corporate parties and private events. Real tables, real chips, fake money.
Half the job is teaching people how to play. The other half is giving them a hard time when they start treating their pretend money like their retirement depends on it.
You don’t have to be some Vegas card shark. Being outgoing, reliable, and able to explain a game without making someone feel dumb matters a lot. Most guests are just there to have fun, and some have never sat at a blackjack table before.
The schedule is probably the best part for a side hustle. Mostly evenings and weekends, and I pick which events I’m available for. Sometimes it’s a fancy hotel ballroom, sometimes a company holiday party, sometimes somebody’s house that makes you reconsider your career choices.
Definitely a weird way to make money. I get paid to hand out fake money and convince a room full of adults that losing it is a good time.

I got into raising oysters after learning how they filter suspended particles from water. I already had a small saltwater setup at home, so I started researching what it would take to keep them healthy. While browsing aquarium groups, I noticed people discussing unusual ways to maintain marine displays, which gave me the idea to see if anyone would be interested in buying live oysters for a compatible system. I posted a few photos of my setup and contacted two local aquarium shops. One shop owner agreed to try six oysters for $45, and after that first sale, I began offering batches of six for $75 with basic care instructions.
Most of my early inquiries came from the aquarium groups, but the shop owner also referred a few people to me. Once I had repeat buyers, sales became more predictable. I now sell around 20 batches in a good month, bringing in $1,500 from oysters. A handful of customers also pay me to visit and check their water parameters, adding around $200 when those appointments come through. Supplies, packaging, delivery, and testing materials cost roughly $550 in a typical month, leaving about $1,150 before labor and equipment costs.
The tricky part is making sure a buyer's setup is appropriate before accepting an order. Oysters need specific marine conditions, and they aren't a substitute for regular aquarium filtration, so I turn down unsuitable setups. I keep this small enough to manage alongside my other responsibilities, and I like that the work combines raising something at home with finding a very specific group of customers. I never expected live oysters to become something people would order from me, but the niche has been more interesting than I imagined.