Side Hustle Ideas: 15 Side Hustles to Start in 2024

Last updated: December 10, 2023

With high inflation, rising mortgage rates, and tons of bills piling up, you have no choice but to find a way to earn money outside your nine-to-five job. While having a full-time job helps keep things afloat, having a side hustle can help you build savings, invest your income, and help you make your way out of the rat race. Since you’re hustling on the side, you can find something that complements your skill set, allows you to learn new skills, or is a passion project for you. With a side hustle, it can take months for things to pay off, so sticking to something you’re genuinely excited about is crucial to your long-term financial success.

In this article, we’ll share 15 side hustle ideas to start in 2024 for you to use as a starting point.

1. Digital product website
2. Dropshipping businesses
3. Online course for students
4. Editing services as a side hustle
5. Start a graphic design business
6. Offer coaching services
7. Create a blog on the side
8. Investing side hustles
9. Virtual assistant side hustle
10. Make money with self-publishing
11. Create a YouTube channel
12. Create a podcast
13. Become an influencer
14. Become an online personal trainer
15. Play video games

Side Hustle Ideas to Make Money Online From Graphic Design to Editing Services

1. Digital product website

You can earn money online by selling digital products on your own website using a free website builder like Payhip. Digital products come in all forms, like digital downloads such as spreadsheets, labels, music, cards, templates, ebooks, photos, and more. This side hustle is great for people who want to create and design their products without having to package or ship anything. By selling digital products, you’ll only need to spend time creating the product, but once it’s made, you can make recurring money for years to come without any added work. If creating your own products seems like too much work, you can hire freelancers to create products that you can sell on your website as long as you retain the rights to those works. Selling products people want that are niche-specific will help ensure that you grow your business and make some money as well.

2. Dropshipping businesses

Dropshipping is a business model where you sell goods made by a manufacturer to a customer. For most physical product businesses, the holiday season is the best time to sell online, but you need to start preparing around August or earlier. This business can be risky when buying from third parties, as credit cards can sometimes get flagged when placing too many orders from one site. If dropshipping isn’t your cup of tea, you could always buy inventory upfront. The great thing about starting a commerce business is that you don’t need to work by the hour. You could automate so much of the business processes so it could run without you having to do work manually and minimizing how hard you hustle.

3. Online course for students

Online courses are popular side hustles for those in the information space. If you’re an expert in insurance, you could create courses about choosing the right policy, protecting your assets, and things to look out for before committing. You could upsell your course by making extra content such as gated spreadsheets, private tutoring, or coaching sessions. Students will consume content best when videos are short, so they can consume content at their own pace and keep focused. By offering numerous hours of video content, students will be more inclined to believe they are receiving good value for their money. You could sell courses using Payhip, which has a beautiful course player and many features that make running an online course on your own website easy.

4. Editing services as a side hustle

With so much written and video content out there, you could provide editing services to bloggers, authors, content creators, and writers. You could be the editor of a popular blog, book editor, or social media video editor. You could offer related services in your editing business, too. For example, a resume editor could also offer interview prep or services where they’ll apply to jobs for you. As an entrepreneur specializing in editing services, you can easily find clients on social media. You might search LinkedIn for people with author, content writer, or blogger as their job title. You could also direct message content creators on social media for video editing services. You don’t need a budget to advertise. You just need to devote time each week to finding new clients online. It can be a challenge to get people to say yes, but with a portfolio, a reasonable cost, and giving people the right offer at the right time, you could build this side hustle into a full-blown business.

5. Start a graphic design business

A business you can easily start on the side is a graphic design one. You can offer these services on your website or through third-party sites like Fiverr. Your graphic design business can be as simple as creating handwritten logos or as complicated as designing graphics for a game. A business like this is easy to start if you’re willing to put your designs on social media to help you attract new clients. You can run ads to find new clients, pitch businesses that have custom graphics, promote services to online retailers that sell products with graphics on them, and more. Alternatively, you could run a print-on-demand business where you add your designs to products and sell them to an end-user.

6. Offer coaching services

You could sell coaching as a service when it comes to side hustles. Coaching can involve everything from business coaching, life coaching, or something else entirely. Running your coaching website with a blog, email list, and calendar for booking meetings is possible using a platform like Payhip. Building businesses like this can be hard in the beginning, especially when you’re first trying to build up your client base. However, you can attract clients through word-of-mouth referrals, building a blog, and promoting your services on social media.

7. Create a blog on the side

If you need side hustle ideas that are tried and true, you could always start a blog. This popular hustle idea is a lot of work but allows you to build your website as an asset. Blogs that bring in millions of views could be sold to brands looking to acquire audiences. Building an audience online is a great way to make money online. With your blog, you should create an email list so you can have other assets that are just as important. Writing SEO-optimized blog posts will allow you to rank organically in search. Building a blog on the side could be done for years and eventually become your main income stream. You could monetize by selling it one day, earning via affiliate links, adding products to your website, or simply having ads. Your blog could be about anything you’re interested in, from making money online to reviewing guides about the latest products.

8. Investing side hustles

If you’re looking for side hustle ideas that allow you to make passive income, investing could be a great option for you. This side hustle will enable you to scale your income drastically. You might invest your money into a retirement plan, pick stocks, or invest in something tangible like a business like an SEO blog, SaaS company, or real estate. To make money, you’ll need to have some money ready to invest. You might set aside 10% of your paycheck to spend on investments. Reading reports about companies and doing your due diligence about what’s worth investing in will require time and dedication to ensure your money is well spent.

9. Virtual assistant side hustle

As a virtual assistant, you could help entrepreneurs, marketers, and people who need help with projects with various administrative tasks. You can make more space in their calendar, help them choose the perfect platform for their marketing campaign, send emails, build up more demand for their business, schedule interviews, or do data entry. The money you earn as a virtual assistant can vary based on your tasks. The more specialized or high value your skill set is, the more you can earn to support and help entrepreneurs with their businesses.

10. Make money with self-publishing

Creating ebooks is a popular way to earn money online. If you’ve always wanted to become an author, you can use your books as the product you sell online. As a self-published author, you’ll need to write your own books, do your own marketing and editing, ask for reviews for social proof, and read reviews to improve your books. You can read guides on how to write your first book. You’ll need to be good at finding the right word to say at the right time to create content that resonates with people. The more books you write, the likelier people will discover you and read your books. There’s a pretty good income potential, but that comes with creating and publishing multiple books online. So, create a list of book ideas you’d like to create and start writing on a regular and steady basis. Learn how to build your author website today.

11. Create a YouTube channel

Creating a YouTube channel can be a fun way to spend your time while building your own audience. Your YouTube channel can involve you creating educational content, television shows, vlogs, music, or a whole range of other things. You don’t necessarily need to be the personality or face of your own YouTube channel, especially if the idea of putting yourself out there makes you feel intimidated. If you choose to get started, you can find ways to monetize your channel by making Shorts and earning a part of the ad revenue, adding memberships, and charging a monthly subscription for gated content, such as high-production videos or courses that take extra time or effort.

12. Create a podcast

Podcasts have grown in popularity in recent years. You can get started without needing too much equipment. You can choose to have calls with people and record audio-only podcasts. You can also record video chats with people using your webcam. You need to have a sales mindset when running a podcast, as you’ll be pitching people to get good guests on your show. You’ll also want to pitch businesses to get sponsorships or advertisers on your podcast to earn some extra income. So, if you get started as a podcaster, you’ll need to know how to sell to get regular paychecks from your show. If you’re extroverted, it’s a great side hustle that allows you to form new connections with like-minded people.

13. Become an influencer

One of the side hustle ideas you can start is delving into the world of being an influencer. Building your own audience is an asset you can monetize in many ways. You can do brand sponsorships, sell products, monetize videos with ads, resell photos and videos, or promote your services to others. With so many ways to make money as an influencer, it’s a lucrative way to make money online. Once your audience is built up, you can create a business or get started creating products.

14. Become an online personal trainer

If you want a side hustle idea that doesn’t require a big budget, you can become an online personal trainer. Using platforms like Instagram or TikTok to promote your services, you can easily learn how to become an online personal trainer. Building out social proof from friends and family who use your services, you can use their photos to showcase results from your impact, training programs, and motivation to help people achieve their fitness or weight loss/gain goals. You can address topics such as nutrition, calorie intake, and building healthy habits on your website or social media platform. As the training takes place online, your costs will be minimal, so it’s a good earning potential for you.

15. Play video games

Finding the right side hustle ideas doesn’t always have to mean work. You can also use your downtime and do things you enjoy to earn money online. Your business doesn’t have to burn you out and can be the thing you do that relaxes you. If you love hanging out with your friends and playing video games, you can create social media content by streaming your video gameplay and talking or telling stories to people who follow you. If you’re planning on playing video games after work anyway, you could make money from it. Plus, you can earn money in so many ways from streaming. You might get free video games, earn donations, sell merchandise, charge subscriptions, earn a commission of ad revenue, or earn a commission from game sales. With so many ways to make money from a single side hustle, this can be a lucrative model for people. Show off your quirky personality or teach people cool things, and you’ll go places.

Conclusion

The good news is that these 15 side hustles are just some ideas to help you think about the possibilities of building a business or asset on your own, but trust us, there are so many other fantastic side hustle ideas out there. Furthermore, your side hustle doesn’t have to focus on online only. You can also do pet sitting businesses, real estate investing, become a window washer, or many other lucrative ideas. However, if an online side hustle is what you prefer, the easiest way to make money is to have your own website where you sell your products and services by signing up for Payhip for free.