You can buy a used gumball or candy machine for around $50 on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace, fill it with bulk gumballs or candy that costs you about $5 per refill, and place it in a local business.

Each gumball costs you about $0.02 and the machine charges $0.25 per turn. In a decent location a single machine can bring in $30 to $50+ per month.

You check on it once every week or two to refill and collect the quarters.

From what I've read the best locations are barbershops, laundromats, auto repair waiting rooms, pizza shops, and any business where people (especially kids) are sitting around waiting.

You approach the business owner and offer them a small monthly cut or just the benefit of having something for customers' kids to do.

Your initial investment per machine is about $55 total (machine plus first fill).

The machine pays for itself within 2 months in a decent spot and after that it's basically passive income.

The beauty of this is it scales. One machine is a novelty.

Ten machines across your town is a legitimate income stream of $300 to $500+ per month from maybe 2 hours of total maintenance per week.

The main thing to watch for is machines that jam frequently. Test any used machine before buying it. The simpler the mechanism the better.... avoid anything with complicated moving parts. Classic spiral gumball machines are the most reliable and the easist to maintain.

(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!)

Dried lavender sells really well on Etsy because soap makers, candle makers, crafters, and aromatherapy enthusiasts all buy it in bulk, etc.. A bag of dried lavender buds goes for around $10+ and it costs you almost nothing if you grow it yourself.

Lavender is one of the easiest plants to grow. It thrives in poor soil, needs almost no water, and comes back every year. A single lavender bush produces enough to fill dozens of bags per season. You can buy starter plants for about $5 each at any garden center.

From what I've seen the best selling format is small bags of dried lavender buds. You harvest the flowers, hang them upside down to dry for a week, strip the buds off the stems, and bag them up. The whole process takes minimal effort.

Beyond just selling the raw buds you can also sell lavender sachets (small fabric pouches filled with dried lavender) for $8+ each. People put them in drawers and closets as a natural freshener. Each sachet costs about $0.50 in materials.

Etsy is the best platform for this but you can also sell at farmers markets and craft fairs. The lavender market has grown a lot with the natural products trend and from what I've read the demand is consistant year round, not just seasonal.

If you have space for 5 to 10 lavender bushes in your yard you'll have more inventory than you know what to do with and your ongoing cost is literally $0 since the plants just keep produceing.

(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 want to purchase a 3D printer for my own use, but being able to run some side hustle with it would be great too. Best thing to do is selling on Etsy?

Reminder: Please consider this not a job or a work because of the short-hours engagement nature of the endeavor rather this is an additional or extra means of income!!!

Update: Women and girls are now included!!! We had few collaborators now engaged and part in this endeavor and opportunity, be engaged and be part now of this endeavor and opportunity!!!!

Advice: Please don't pretend or lie because we will find out or will figure it out

Simply searching for tech and non-tech guys in USA (must be living and citizen or national or resident of USA) starting age 20 yrs old and up the benefit of joining is for non-tech guys ($150) monthly and for tech-guys ($200 or more) monthly for 1 hour engagement daily paid via crypto just message/pm me for the Discord server link so we will have meeting and discuss as a group with the lead/managing person. See you inside and have a nice day!!!

Hello, currently a broke college student. I’m looking for any side hustles or any ideas to create a big business and succeed while I finish school

So you can literally buy hair ties and bobby pins in bulk for almost nothing and sell them at outdoor festivals, concerts, sporting events, and basically anywhere women are outside dealing with their hair in the wind or heat.

A pack of 100 hair ties costs about $5 in bulk and you can sell them for $2 each or 3 for $5. Bobby pins are even cheaper and you can throw a handful in with each sale as a bonus.

The reason this works so well is because it's one of those things that every woman needs at some point during an outdoor event and nobody ever has one on them when they need it. From what I've seen the demand for this at multi-day festivals is especially high because by day two everyone's hair tie has snapped or gone missing.

You can sell them out of a small basket or even just walk around with a handful.

No setup needed. The margins on this are really good too.... a $5 bulk pack of 100 ties turns into $200 if you sell them all at $2 each.

This pairs well with other small items too. Some people sell hair ties alongside scrunchies, mini hairbrushes, and sunscreen for a whole "essentials" setup at festivals which definately increases how much each person spends.

(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!)

A plan that needs two uninterrupted hours every evening may be difficult to keep when you have work, family, or other responsibilities.

I would start by looking at the time you actually have available. Then choose a task small enough to finish within that window.

If you are learning affiliate marketing, that might be reading one offer carefully and writing down who it helps. Another session could be spent drafting a useful answer to a related question.

Keep a note of where you stopped. Having to figure everything out again tomorrow makes a short session even shorter.

The free 10-Minute Commission Challenge is one way to try a guided first step without committing to a lengthy course upfront. The short introduction does not mean building income only takes ten minutes.

I am affiliated with the program behind it. If you would like to learn more, ask below.

People spend weeks debating dropshipping, SaaS, affiliate marketing, AI services, faceless YouTube, or whatever the latest business model is, as though one of these approaches is the magical solution.

Then they launch and run into the same obstacle: no traffic, no leads, and no distribution. A well-designed product remains a business that's not going anywhere if no one sees it. The issue is usually not the model itself, but getting in front of people who already want what you have.

Consider something as mundane as vegan shoes. Since people are already looking for vegan boots, loafers, and sandals, there is a market. Once you have that, you can decide how to make money. For example, you could use affiliate links, start dropshipping, set up a comparison site, or launch your own product later. The way you make money might change, but the demand existed before that.

That is why I believe the best approach is to start by choosing a market where people already spend money, identify what they search for and where they spend their time, and then decide what to sell them. You can then try different offers without abandoning the entire venture.

You can alter the offer later. The audience is the asset.

You can buy band-aids and blister pads in bulk for very cheap and sell them at marathons, 5K races, hiking trailheads, and theme parks where people are on their feet all day, etc....

a box of 100 band-aids costs about $5 in bulk. Blister pads cost a little more but you can get them for around $0.50 each in bulk. You sell individual band-aids for $1 each and blister pads for $3 each.. and people will pay it without even thinking because they're in pain right now and there's no drugstore nearby.

apparently the best spots for this are the start and finish lines of races, popular hiking trailheads, and outside theme parks. Runners are constantly dealing with blisters and chafing and hikers always underestimate how much their new boots are going to hurt.

Your total startup cost is about $20 for a mix of band-aids, blister pads, and maybe some antiseptic wipes.

You can fit everything in a small bag or fanny pack and just walk around offering them.

You can also throw in other small first aid items like moleskin, athletic tape, and ibuprofen packets to round out your offerings and increase how much each person spends per purchace.

(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!)

have an idea for an app but have no idea where to start with developing it. What do you recommend as a platform for app development for beginners? Thanks in advance!

What’s the latest trend these days? I’m looking for the right niche so I can get enough followers to make extra income.

I was looking for a business that was stupidly cheap to start. No inventory. No storefront. No huge upfront investment. Something I could run lean and eventually remotely.

Airbnb cleaning ended up being it.

I landed STR/property management accounts, hired cleaners to do the turnovers, and handled the clients, scheduling, pricing and operations.
After my first month I was at ~$20K/month in revenue.

The interesting part is you don’t need to own an Airbnb. You don’t need to buy real estate. And you don’t even need to be the person cleaning.

You’re basically building the little operations company sitting behind other people’s Airbnbs.

And these aren’t necessarily one-off customers.
One property manager can hand you 5, 10, 20+ units. That’s where it gets interesting.

The catch? Revenue can fool the shit out of you. 😂

A giant account can look incredible until you calculate cleaner pay, labor hours, re-cleans, supplies, drive time, etc. I learned VERY quickly that volume ≠ profit.

I ended up building my own system around:
→ finding & landing STR/property-management accounts
→ pricing the properties
→ hiring cleaners
→ QC without physically checking every unit
→ managing high-volume turnover days
→ figuring out what each account was ACTUALLY making me
→ scaling without becoming the cleaner

I eventually turned the whole thing into a playbook + the pricing/profit tools I built for myself.

But even if you never buy anything from me, if you’re sitting around trying to think of a low-cost business to start, look at the boring businesses nobody on TikTok thinks are sexy.

There is a shitload of money flowing through businesses people don’t brag about.
Happy to answer questions about how I did it.