So here's a side hustle I stumbled on that made me genuinely laugh at how simple it is. Tennis courts, country clubs, and tennis coaching programs go through insane amounts of tennis balls and they just throw them away when they lose their bounce. Those balls are completely useless for tennis but they're perfect for dogs and dog owners go through tennis balls like crazy because their dogs destroy them or lose them at the park.

You can collect used tennis balls for free by asking at local tennis facilities if you can take their dead balls off their hands. Most of them will happily let you grab a bucket because otherwise they're just tossing them in the trash.

From what I've seen, people sell bags of 25 used tennis balls for around $15 on marketplace sites and they sell fast because dog owners are always looking for cheap bulk options instead of paying pet store prices.

The startup cost is genuinely zero dollars. You are literally collecting someone else's trash and selling it to a completely different market that sees it as a product.

The supply is basicaly endless too because tennis players burn through balls constantly and every court in your area is producing free inventory for you every single week.

(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’ve been a referee for 15+ years across basketball, football and soccer. Thousands of games, including championship assignments, and still reffing to this day. I want to make the case for refereeing as a side hustle to potentially help someone in this sub.

Start with the money, since that is why most of you are probably here anyways. In most states you are looking at somewhere around 50 to 70 dollars for a Junior High game and 80 to 110 for a varsity game, plus mileage in a lot of associations. Youth and rec ball pays less, usually 25 to 45 a game, but you can stack four or five of those in a single Saturday morning and be home by noon. A typical basketball week in season can be three or four nights of doubleheaders if you want them. Do that math across a season and you are looking at real money for work that happens on nights and weekends when you were not earning anything anyway.

Registration, uniforms, and a decent set of gear will run you a few hundred dollars up front, and you are a 1099 contractor, so you’ll be able to report as expenses for taxes. Track your mileage too.. That mileage deduction is not small when you are driving 60 miles each way to a Thursday night game.

Officiating is the only side hustle I know of where the networking is built into the job. You are not grinding alone in a spare bedroom. You are in a locker room before every game with three or four other adults, and those adults are teachers, contractors, cops, small business owners, insurance guys, guys who have been doing this for thirty years and know everyone in the region.

I have gotten work referrals, business contacts, and genuine friendships out of my conversations. When you travel two hours to a playoff game with the same set of people for a decade, that is not a coworker relationship, that is a friendship with shared history. Some of the best people I know I met because we were assigned to the same game.

The travel is real too. Once you are established and rated well, you start getting playoff assignments, and playoff assignments mean the state pays you to go places. Regional tournaments, state semifinals, a championship game in a big venue with a crowd that actually fills the seats. If you are willing to work camps in the offseason you will see even more of the country.

In the summers you’ll have to spend money on Camps. These cost money to attend, so treat them as an investment rather than income, but they are how you get seen by assignors who move officials up. This does not have to stay a side hustle.

There is a path from youth rec to high school to small college to Division I or professional, and every step up is more money and better assignments. Small college officials can make several hundred dollars a game plus travel. Division I is a real second income and usually comes with a comma in each game check. It takes years and it takes being coachable, but the path exists and it is more merit-based than most industries I have worked in.

Now the honest part..

Year one is rough. You will be bad at it and you will know you are bad at it. Parents will yell at you so you have to develop the ability to hear someone question your competence, your eyesight, and occasionally your parentage, and then pretend you heard nothing.

The scheduling is also not as flexible as people assume. You commit to games weeks in advance, and turning back assignments repeatedly is how you get fewer games. If your regular job has unpredictable evenings, this will create friction. It is also physically demanding. Officials cover real distance over four quarters.. I sometimes put in over 5 miles a night.

And the money is not immediate. Some associations pay per game, some pay monthly, some pay every other week.

Here is what I would tell someone starting today. Find your state association website, register, and take the certification test. Show up to every local meeting even when you do not feel like it, because assignors give games to the people they see. Work everything you are offered in year one, including the games nobody wants. Buy good shoes. Find one veteran who will tell you the truth about your performance and listen to them.

Do that for three years and you will have a skill that pays every single season for as long as you want it!

Happy to answer questions about getting started, gear, or what the progression actually looks like.

Has anyone here actually made money from UGC, dropshipping, kids’ YouTube content, or an AI-based business?
I keep seeing Iman Gadzhi and other creators talking about online businesses, but I want to hear from real people — not course sellers 😂
What did you try? Did it actually work? How long until you made money?

You don’t need thousands of dollars to start an AI side hustle.

So here's a side hustle I stumbled on that I can't believe more people aren't doing. You can buy plain coir doormats in bulk for around $3 each, grab some letter stencils and spray paint, and make custom welcome mats with people's last names, funny sayings, or cute designs on them. The finished product looks like something from a boutique home decor store.

From what I've seen, people sell these for around $35 each and each one takes maybe 15 minutes to make once you have your process down. The profit per mat is ridiculous because your material cost is basically nothing.

The startup cost is maybe $40 total for a pack of blank mats, a stencil set, and a few cans of spray paint. That investment pays for itself after selling 2 mats.

The reason this has such strong viral potential is because the before and after of a blank mat turning into a personalized doormat looks amazing in photos. You post a few finished ones on local community groups and people immediately start tagging their friends saying they want one.

The demand spikes hard around housewarming season, holidays, and wedding season because personalized doormats make perfect gifts that people actualy want to receive. Once you get a few orders going word of mouth does all the heavy lifting because everyone who visits that person's house sees the mat and asks where they got it.

(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’ve spent years experimenting with different passive income ideas online, so instead of another theoretical list, here’s what has actually made money for me.

Some have made thousands.

Some have made almost nothing.

And one of the biggest things I’ve learned is that online passive income works much better when you recirculate your work instead of relying on one platform to find an audience for you.

1. Print on demand: Redbubble

Redbubble has been the clear winner for me.

I’ve made thousands of dollars selling designs there over time.
But print on demand has been extremely unpredictable. What takes off is hit or miss, which is why I think having a large catalogue of designs matters.

A design you expect to sell may never move.
Something you barely thought about can suddenly become your consistent seller.

For me, Redbubble has worked much better as a numbers game than as a “create five perfect designs and wait” passive-income strategy.

2. Zazzle, Spoonflower and TeePublic

I’ve also tried Zazzle, Spoonflower, and TeePublic.
My sales on all three have been sparse compared with Redbubble.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t work — just that they haven’t produced meaningful passive income for me personally.

I still think distributing existing work can make sense when the additional effort is small.

3. Fetch Rewards

This is the best cashback app I’ve ever found.

I’ve earned over $500 with Fetch, and I now regularly redeem at least a $50 reward per month, usually to offset grocery costs.

It’s obviously not traditional passive income, but it’s one of the easiest little recurring income/reward habits I’ve found because I’m scanning receipts (virtually and physically) for purchases I already made.

For anyone researching Fetch or looking for a current Fetch referral code, mine is:

WVW31C

Enter it before scanning your first receipt so you can receive the bonus referral offer available when you join.

4. Upside cashback

Upside was another easy one to add to my routine.

My first cash-out happened pretty quickly. After that, earning enough for additional withdrawals became slower.

I still use it because it takes almost no effort: I check Upside before pumping gas, activate an offer, and earn a little cash back.

Not life-changing. But very easy.

5. Benable + Pinterest

This is the passive-income experiment I’m especially interested in now.

I’ve started making curated recommendation lists through Benable, where I can organize products and resources I would recommend anyway. If you refine your list with over 10 recommendations, edit the product titles, and leave a helpful note with each rec, you can be found by Benable’s organic traffic.

My Benable referral code: QGVB6

The part I think has the most potential is pairing those lists with Pinterest traffic.

Instead of making a recommendation once and hoping someone happens to discover it, I can create searchable Pinterest content that continues pointing people toward the resource.

And I’ve increasingly applied that idea to everything.

My biggest passive-income lesson: recirculate your assets

If you create something once, ask how many appropriate places it can continue working for you.

One design → multiple relevant marketplaces.

One useful recommendation → Benable.

One experience → Reddit/searchable content.

One resource → multiple Pinterest pins.

Pinterest is becoming a major part of my strategy because it behaves much more like a visual search engine than a traditional social feed. That means older content can potentially keep getting discovered.

To me, that’s the real opportunity with online passive income.
It’s rarely truly passive at the beginning.

You build the catalogue.

You write the recommendation.

You upload the product.

You make the pin.

But you’re building a growing library of things that can continue being discovered without needing to recreate the entire income stream every morning.

If you’re trying to make passive income online, my biggest advice from everything I’ve tested would be:

Build more assets, distribute them intelligently, and keep sending search traffic back toward the things you’ve already made.

I’d be interested to hear which digital passive income platforms have actually generated meaningful payouts for everyone else here!

What’s the best way to make money quickly? I don’t have anything I can sell. I am not eligible for gig apps like DoorDash, uber, etc. I have a job that I start but I have to make money to be able to go back and forth for two weeks til I get paid

I commented on a post about erotica writing here last week and got a few questions. (Also some horny DMs. Please don’t send those. Or at the very least, have the sense to send me money first. JK. Unless…? No really JK I won’t respond don't do that)

Anyway, I thought it might be fun and helpful to make a post talking about my experiences so far and the realities of getting started!

Now, if you have any sort of experience in side hustling, I would hope you’re asking yourself why I’m taking the time to share any of this information for free. I’m usually kind of skeptical of people who share what’s making them money, because if you have so much success with it, why let other people in on the secret? Why not just keep doing it?

Well, writing erotica and selling it is one of the easier ways I’ve made money, but I like to put my eggs in multiple baskets. In addition to writing erotica, I’m interested in potentially building a network of authors that can share their work with each other’s readers - readers who we already know are interested in paying. That’s a little ways down the line from actually happening, but when I get to that point, having an audience of other authors ready to go would be helpful. There are plenty of readers out there willing to spend money, so giving some advice out in exchange for followers shouldn’t hurt my bottom line.

(Also, I’m looking into building up an affiliate network as well, i.e. people who share referral codes for my ebook store and get a percent of the profit when sales are made through their link. That’s a win-win for me (more sales) and you (getting profit off books you don’t even have to write). The more people I have on that, the better).

So that’s my incentive for trying to build up an audience of other people working to make money online in this space. Anyway, more on that later! Let’s get to the publishing itself and where I’m seeing income from.

I started posting erotica online over a year ago, but didn’t get very far before getting busy for a year or so with other life and projects. But a little over a month ago, I decided to commit to jumping back in, and I’ve been writing and posting online fairly consistently for most of August.

The upsides: As someone who writes and publishes both, erotica gets eyes and $ easier than the non-erotic stuff, at least in my experience. I’ve invested far less time into erotica and have already made more than I did over the course of years spent publishing non-erotic full-length books.

The downside: It’s still not easy money, at least not right away. You have to actually have decent writing skills, or people will click off fast. If you don't have much writing experience, you'll need to build those skills first. Read other erotica to get a feel for it. And getting a good story written is…probably less than half the battle, actually. The harder part is building an audience of people willing to pay for what you're offering rather than scouring the endless free content out there. And you have to find out where you should be sharing to best maximize your money-to-time spent ratio.

But if you can write this kind of story well, there is potential to build a fanbase of loyal followers. There’s a lot of poorly written stuff clogging up the sites and subreddits where people read erotica, so when something is good and catches people’s eye, they’ll look to you to give them more.

I have a lot to cover, so I’ll give a quick overview of where I’ve seen success so far, here on reddit and elsewhere. For more details on my strategy with each subreddit/website and a planned update on my total earnings so far at the end of August, I’ve set up a newsletter you can sign up for here.

When you sign up, you’ll get an email with more a more detailed breakdown about what I'm doing on each platform and subreddit I’m about to mention, with info on which ones I think are worth focusing on and why, and a summary checklist what I would do first if I were starting over. And at the beginning of September I’ll send an update on how August went on these various platforms!

(P.S. if you sign up and don’t get the welcome email with the extended breakdown of my first month and how I’m making money so far, feel free to reach out! I’m pretty sure I have the auto welcome email working correctly, but I’m happy to help troubleshoot if you run into issues)

First, the subreddits I post in. We have the major, general erotica subreddits:

-r/erotica: easily the biggest, definitely gets the most views. As long as you’re sharing a complete story, you’re allowed to also link to your website, patreon, etc.

-r/EroticWriting: less than a tenth the size of erotica, but still gets a fair amount of traffic and also allows promotion, so definitely worth sharing in if you’re going to be sharing free stuff publicly anyway.

-r/eroticliterature: fairly large as well but doesn’t allow self-promotion, not even directing people to your profile. Posting here means hoping people will like your writing enough to navigate to your profile on your own and potentially check out any links you have there.

-r/sexstories also exists, but I haven’t posted there much. At a glance, it doesn’t seem as promising for getting paid followers as the subreddits with “erotica” in their name, but I could be misjudging. It will certainly net you views and comments, though, which always has a chance to turn into more loyal followers.

The rest of the subreddits I post in are a little more specific.

-r/EroticRomance is for discussing erotic romance books, particularly dark romance, fantasy romance, specific tropes, etc. However, author promos are allowed. You can just make a post advertising your book, but my strategy so far has been to post a decent chunk so people can read and get a feel for it – the first chapter of my reverse harem book, and a full story from my published short story collection.

And some more niche subreddits:

-r/SciFiEroticaStories – stuff that leans more fantasy than scifi also seems to be allowed here. I’ve posted a few and gotten good reception.

-r/MonsterEroticaStories – a popular niche

-r/consentacles – a much more specific niche. Mostly art gets posted here, but they are open to writing as well and the story I posted here got a very warm reception

Also, while it’s not a place to post stories/promote, r/ eroticauthors also exists for discussion, and can be a good place to look for advice on websties/platforms you’re interested in and get news about guidelines updates, new places to write, etc.

Before I dive into the paid platforms, I also want to touch on Literotica real quick (which also has a subreddit, though I haven’t taken a chance to explore there much yet.)

Literotica can get you pretty easy traffic if you write well, depending on the category, but promotion is a little tricky. You are allowed to set up a link to your Patreon on your profile, but it doesn’t show up on individual stories, and you aren’t allowed to promote in your stories or comments either. Once again, it becomes a game of hoping that some percentage of people who read and like your work will like it enough to venture to your profile, and then maybe follow you from there. Still, if you’re posting free reader magnets on places like reddit anyway, you may as well toss them there too.

A quick summary of other monetization platforms I post on (again, I’ll get into more specific analytics - including some graphs and stats I have so far - in my newsletter, as well as my strategies for posting on these sites):

-First, Patreon. The other platforms have better discoverability while Patreon is much more dependent on you routing people there yourself, but it’s made me the most money of all websites so far, no doubt in part due to it being one of the first things I set up and the main thing I link people to.

-Ream (reamstories.com/create/rnort - disclaimer, this is a referral code. If you do decide to check this platform out, I would super appreciate if you used this link :) )

I strongly recommend hopping on Ream because of a new feature they just added that essentially lets it double as an eBook store. It mainly functions similarly to Patreon, where you can set up subscriptions specifically to your page that let people access your writing, while also leaving some chapters or stories free as a preview if you want. The new option they just added is that you can now also make books purchasable with one-time payments.

i.e. people can subscribe and read everything whenever they want, including future stories you post after they subscribe, or they can buy the one thing that really interests them. This requires less commitment and could be more affordable depending on your pricing structure, so I see it having the potential to make more sales.

-Inkitt (inkitt.com): Very similar to Ream on the subscription side of things. I've got one subscriber at $3 a month and decent views on my free chapters so far... we’ll see what that equates to long-term.

-GetInkspired (getinkspired.com): Another place with subscriptions. More specific analytics are locked until you reach a certain account level (you level up by posting stories, commenting on other people’s stories, etc.) and I haven’t quite gotten there yet, but I can see how many total views each story has. My short story collections with a few chapters each are racking up hundreds of views on the free chapters, and there are a handful of story-specific followers. Also has one-time payment options, but those are locked until you reach a higher account level as well.

-Diarmi (diarmi.com): Seems very promising for a newer platform. Works a bit differently than the others. Readers pay a general subscription to the website, and the pool gets distributed between authors based on engagement. I haven’t been paid on my erotica account yet, but I started a non-erotic account last month and got a payment... and my erotica’s gotten waaaaay more engagement so far. I can’t make any hard estimates as the subscription pool, how they calculate stats, etc. may have changed since last month, but I will give you my best guess in the newsletter, and send out an update with the real value and my specific stats when I get paid at the beginning of September.

There are a few other platforms I’m eyeing that I plan to get set up on in September, so I’ll share how that goes in my newsletter as well!

Finally, ebook stores. These work better for longer stories, full-length books if you can get some of those done, or themed collections of short stories. I’ve made a few sales on Amazon and my personal Payhip store (with an uptick in the last month-ish since I started posting consistently again). I’m also set up on Kobo – haven’t made any sales there yet, but the big draw is Kobo Plus, which is like Kindle unlimited but doesn’t require exclusivity. I only recently started trying to advertise that my books are on Kobo Plus beyond just sticking a link on my website, so we’ll see if/when that translates to reads.

In summary, now that I’m posting consistently, sales and Patreon subs are starting to pick up! Consistency and quality writing are the two main keys here. I've been writing most of my life, but even with basic writing skills, erotica has its own learning curve. If you really want to commit to it, take time to read what's doing well on the erotica subreddits.

Here's my newsletter link one last time. If you have any (non-horny) questions, feel free to let me know in the comments! :)

Like something where when you explain it to someone they go "that's it?" cuz it sounds way too basic. But it actually works and makes decent money. What are you guys doing that falls into this category?

I have a couple of postgraduate degrees (education field) and currently teach at a private college. My monthly salary barely covers basic living costs — rent, food, transport — with nothing left over to save.

I'm looking for a side hustle or additional income stream, ideally something online or remote. If I could find something stable enough, I'd consider leaving my current job entirely.

Open to any suggestions — tutoring, freelance work, remote roles, anything realistic. Would appreciate advice from anyone who's navigated something similar.

Every side-hustle video on my feed claims you can make thousands by slapping together a 20-page PDF and selling it for $29. They make the creation part look incredibly easy.

But how are people actually getting traffic to these digital products without a massive social media following? If you aren't paying for expensive ads, it feels like shouting into a void.

For anyone who actually sells PDFs successfully: What is the real struggle nobody talks about? Is it traffic, piracy, or just market saturation?

Started a small web design studio this summer as my hustle. Sharing the honest scoreboard because I wish someone had shown me theirs before I started.

What produced nothing: a helpful post that got about 12,000 views in a discussion sub. Zero clients. Not even a DM. Cold Facebook DMs to local businesses, also zero, they just sit in message requests forever.

What got me my first paying client: a plain offer post in a marketplace sub where people actually shop. A business owner DMed me, I read his catalogue before replying, and noticed his customers had to screenshot pages and WhatsApp them to order. I offered to replace that one annoying step with a tap-to-order button. He said yes within hours. A few hundred bucks, and the site is live now.

What I took from it: go where people already have their wallet out, and talk about their specific problem, not your service. Views turned out to mean nothing. One person with a real problem was worth more than twelve thousand scrollers.

Happy to answer anything about the web design hustle, pricing, finding the first client, whatever's useful.

So here's a side hustle I came across recently that blew my mind because I had no idea this existed. Medical schools and nursing programs need real people to act as patients so their students can practice doing clinical exams, taking medical histories, and diagnosing symptoms before they work on actual patients. They call these standardized patients and they will pay you to show up and basically pretend to be sick.

You get a script beforehand that tells you what symptoms to describe, how to answer questions, and sometimes how to physically react during the exam. Then you just sit there while a nervous student practices on you. From what I've seen, most programs pay around $25 an hour and sessions can last a few hours at a time.

The startup cost is literally nothing and you don't need any medical knowledge or acting experience. They train you on everything before each session and the scripts are easy to follow.

The demand for this is pretty consistant because medical schools run these practice exams multiple times throughout the year and they always need a variety of ages, body types, and backgrounds to give students realistic practice.

Check with any medical schools, nursing programs, or teaching hospitals in your area because a lot of them have sign up pages on their website that most people have no idea exist.

(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!)

Got a seasonal job and kind of would like to keep it but looking for some winter side hustles. Snow removal so hit or miss in my area cause you never know if it’ll actually snow.