A little bit of creativity can put a lot of extra money in your pocket.
Business Insider has spoken to individuals who found ways to earn income outside their 9-to-5s. In some cases, they even turned their side hustles into full-time gigs.
To get the gears turning, here are income-earning ideas from seven individuals. Business Insider verified each individual’s revenue claims.
Austin Ziegler built a shop on Etsy and listed 3D printed products
While Austin Ziegler is at his day job managing an engineering team, he has a dozen 3D printers at home printing various products, from soap boxes to coat hooks to keychains, that he sells on Etsy.
One of his most popular items is a gas can ornament with a hole in the middle designed to hold cash so you can gift money.
In August 2023, he brought in $10,000 in a single week, mostly from the gas can ornament.
He invests most of his profit back into the business, which he hopes to scale to the point where it’s bringing in enough passive income that he can live off of.
“The whole goal of the 3D printing was to make some side cash so I could woodwork,” said Ziegler, who specifically wants to do epoxy projects. “The goal is to woodwork in the future and have a company that can generate enough money where I can spend minimal time on it and maximum time on woodworking.”
Jacob Shaidle started deep-cleaning his neighbors’ barbecues
In the summer of 2021, Jacob Shaidle knocked on his neighbor’s door, explained that he was starting a business to pay for university, and asked if he could clean his barbecue. His neighbor agreed, and the next day he spent three hours deep-cleaning his first client’s barbecue.
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The idea of cleaning grills came after doing the job for his mom. She encouraged him to reach out to their neighbors in Hamilton, a Canadian port city in southern Ontario, where owning a home is practically synonymous with owning a barbecue, noted Shaidle: “There’s a pretty good market for it.”
He spent nearly all of his savings, about $400, on wire brushes, scrapers, a degreaser, and other cleaning equipment at Home Depot, and landed his first five clients by door-knocking.
In 2023, with help from one of his classmates, he took the business online and started expanding. As of 2024, Shaidle Cleaning operates in multiple Canadian cities, employs 20 students, and does six figures in annual revenue. The Canadian teen profits enough to cover his university expenses.
Nischa Shah created a YouTube channel and posted videos about her expertise: finance
While watching YouTube videos one day, investment banker Nischa Shah thought, “Why don’t I just do this myself? I have nine years of experience in banking, I’ve got the qualifications, everyone is always asking me about money tips.”
She filmed, edited, and uploaded her first video to YouTube in December 2021 and continued intermittently posting personal finance-related videos to YouTube.
For a year, her side project didn’t drive any revenue. Then in late 2022, one of her videos on what it’s like to be an investment banker went viral, and her subscribers snowballed: “It took me 11 months to get to 1,000, and then one month to get from 1,000 to 100,000.”
Shortly after, she monetized her channel, started earning enough to cover her fixed costs, and quit her corporate job.
It’s been over a year since Shah turned her side project into a full-time gig. She believes in maintaining your day job for as long as possible while simultaneously building your side hustle or business, as it removes pressure; you can work on your side hustle because you want to, not because you have to.
Sahaj Dhingra resold Costco products on Amazon for profit
Sahaj Dhingra learned about the vast business of e-commerce and its various strategies by watching YouTube videos. He decided to try out Amazon retail arbitrage — buying products from retailers like Costco and Walmart, thrift stores, or dollar stores, and reselling them on Amazon for a profit — because it’s low-cost and low-risk.
When he launched in May 2023, he was 19 years old and had a few summer vacation months ahead. It was the perfect opportunity to scale a retail arbitrage operation.
He mainly sold products in the grocery category. The very first product he bought and resold was a Fairlife protein shake.
It’s important to consider demand when selecting products, said Dhingra, who scaled to six figures in sales in less than four months: “Just profit doesn’t mean anything if you can’t sell it. If there’s no demand on a listing — if the sales rank is really low — then there’s no point because you could list it at whatever you want, but if no one else is willing to pay for it, then you don’t have a market.”
Richard S. resold electronics and clothing on eBay
Richard S., who prefers not to share his last name for privacy reasons, plans to retire at 40, thanks to the reselling business he’s built over the last 15 years. The first item he resold on eBay was a T-Mobile Sidekick. He eventually pivoted from reselling electronics to clothing.
“Anybody can do it,” said the financially independent eBay veteran. “It took a minute or two to make the profile and list the items the best that I could at the time. I was not an expert. I didn’t know everything.”
In the reselling business, “it doesn’t matter what I think is cool,” he added. “It matters what the customer thinks is cool.”
Rather than guessing what might sell, use the tools available to you to understand what people are buying. He recommends browsing the “sold items” section of your category on eBay to figure out what is selling well and what isn’t. When it comes time to actually source an item, look it up on eBay before you buy it.
“You can go right on the eBay app and you can look at the comp,” he said. “In 2024, there is no excuse to speculate on an item, and there is no excuse to lose money on an item because we have this luxury.”
Erika and Kareem Hall earn passive income from two soccer franchises
In 2017, Erika and Kareem Hall started looking into ways to earn passive income.
“We were both really happy in our careers, but, at the same time, we wanted another stream of income that could help with other things like investments or just adding to the satisfaction of our life,” said Erika, who is an associate professor at Emory University’s business school. Kareem runs his own consulting firm.
What the Halls liked about the idea of investing in a franchise was that there was a pre-existing model for how the business should be run.
“We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel,” said Erika. “And franchising offered us the opportunity where we wouldn’t have to start from scratch.”
The Halls, who own two Soccer Shots franchises in Georgia, have done more than $1 million in revenue since launching in 2019.
They both plan to continue working full-time. Their salaries cover their household expenses, while their franchise profit is extra money they can use to invest for their futures or in experiences they might not have been able to enjoy otherwise.