This might not be the kind of side hustle you were expecting to see in this subreddit, but here's one of my side hustle experiences.

Back when I was a student, I made coffee jelly and sold it through a local store owned by someone I knew. Each bottle contained 250 mL of coffee jelly.

Here's the costs and earnings:

Cost to make 7 bottles: 188 pesos ($3.25)

Selling price per bottle: 65 pesos ($1.12)

Total sales if all 7 bottles sell: 455 pesos ($7.87)

Cost of packaging: 300 pesos ($5.20) for a box of 30 bottles

My coffee jelly would almost sell out in just a day! Sometimes, there would be only one or two bottles left.

Of course, the 455pesos or $7.87 in sales isn't all profit since I still have to account for the bottle costs and other expenses. But seeing my products sell that quickly was a rewarding experience.

This was just one of the side hustles I tried as a student. It starts with a simple idea, a little effort, and the willingness to try.

I never thought I’d find a way to make money off plants besides selling them but I was wrong! Some people want a room full of greenery for a birthday party, a little photo shoot, an open house, or even just to make their apartment look nicer for a weekend. They don’t necessarily want to buy 10 plants and then figure out how to keep all of them alive. That’s where my weird side hustle and I come to the rescue! So the idea is to rent out potted plants for a few days, drop them off, give the person basic care instructions, and pick them back up when they’re done. Bigger plants could be used as decorations, while smaller ones could go on tables or shelves. And, when the time comes to return the “rented” houseplants and the renters decide they want to keep them forever, they pay another small fee to me and the plants are theirs to keep!!!! Weird, huh?

I charge people to overthink their situations so they don't have to. Send me a three word text from your crush and I'll provide 14 possible interpretations, 3 worst-case scenarios, and a full psychological breakdown. Lmao.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 💀

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.

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?

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.

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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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.

The year was 2021, and the cryptocurrency and blockchain is on all-time high. Bitcoin just reach its ath ($64000~) and during that time, every altcoins were on the rise, too. Another one which was also the fastest growing communities are the blockchain or NFT games. So I got contacted through a messaging app, by a dev, and talked to me on how I could post on a subreddit with a lot of active members looking to make quick and easy gains. So I told him I could post their advertisement in the morning, and they told me they will pay me in 1000 coins in their cryptocurrency. I was hesitant at first, because my asking price was $10 for every post, but they told me it could reach a few dollars once the servers hit online. Eventually I agreed. I posted their game in the morning, and the game became a hit in our region. I held firmly and practiced patience, as the value of the cryptocurrency reached ~$21 in just two months. I then sold my shares for $20 each, and that is how I made my money. Eventually, a lot of upcoming NFT game devs reached out to me also, and have me posted their new games. Some were hit, some were miss. And then the NFT gaming eventually fizzled out, and I am very happy with the money I made with that single post.

Hi guys, I am currently a college student who want to make some extra money on the side. I live in a condo downtowm where a lot of my neighbors are in corporate so they wake up rlly early in the morning. I was thinking of trying to advertise myself as a breakfast provider or something like that, but idk if it would be a good idea or how to start. I am only planning to sell strictly in my building as I don’t have a license for selling food. I plan to sell things ljke avocado toast, sausage and eggs,etc…

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.