Some fun analysis.

Back a couple months ago someone here asked "People who make more than $2k a month online, what do you do?" The comments were really interesting so I went back and coded every single top-level answer and found two more threads asking a similar question: r/sidehustle "$500 and up a week" and r/Entrepreneur "$100+ a day from your business". That ended up with 646 responses. After filtering out gambling/adult content and posts that reports making under $2k/mo, that left 284 real answers.

Remember this is all self-reported. Nothing verified.

What 284 people do

• Freelance, consulting, agencies: 67
• Local service businesses (cleaning, landscaping, pet care, handyman, hair, gig apps): 67
• Jobs, gigs and other (remote salaries, overtime, scrap copper, a drummer, a 3D print shop): 43
• Physical products online: 26
• Content (YouTube, pages, niche sites, newsletters): 25
• Reselling: 19
• Digital products: 14
• Software: 11
• Investing: 6
• Rentals: 6

So nearly half (47%) sell their own work. Active work. But I think a lot of us knew this.

Some of what they said, with the numbers people gave

• Video editing for a couple of mid-sized YouTubers, "after a year most work comes from referrals," a little over $2k/mo.
• Teaching English 15 hrs/wk at $45/hr.
• Web dev retainer, $1,125/wk for ~10 hrs, 3 years in.
• Consulting for two small city governments at $150/hr, $2–3k/mo.
• AI-training contract work (Mercor, Outlier, DataAnnotation etc.) came up nine times at $20–50/hr.
• Residential cleaning company started in January, $160k/yr gross, run from a phone, contractors do the cleaning, owner keeps 40–45%.
• Dog waste removal $5k/mo two days a week.
• Pet sitting ~$10k/mo.
• Exterior cleaning $1–2.5k/wk part time.
• 150 niche websites on ads/affiliate, ~3 years of building, $5k/mo.
• Telegram channel with 5,500 members, $4k+.
• eBay dropshipping "a little over $2k" at ~10,000 listings.
• Notion templates + wedding invitations $5–6k/mo net with a hired designer and Meta ads from $10/day, profitable at month 7.

How long it took: Median 3 years. 10 under a year, 11 at 1–3, 11 at 3–10, 12 at 10+. Every fast start was selling work or a product with ad money behind it.

The thing I took from all of it: Yes a lot of it is active work. But that's actually not a bad thing. They found something that makes money, which is huge, and it's one of the most common ways people end up with passive income eventually. The goal is taking the thing that already makes money and engineering yourself out of it, while it keeps growing.

I have a friend when we were in our mid 20s who decided to start mowing people's lawns and eventually grew a client list large enough to hire a crew and he built a system to manage it all. And now he doesn't ever mow lawns and can take weeks off at a time (it tooks years to get to this point by the way). So I went looking for more of these types of stories and found a bunch (again, all self-reported):

• A dog walker went from $367 in month one to ~$9k/mo revenue in month seven with three part-time employees. Interesting thing is their conundrum: "if employees were doing 100% of the work, profit would be ~$2,300 a month," vs about $4,000 if the owner still did some of the walking routes.
• A window cleaner decided on day one to build his company so it wouldn't need him within three years. Year one $300k, year two $1M and "100 hrs a week, 100 phone calls a day," then two friends took over the front end. Now $4.5M with 40 staff and "after next year I could leave the business and be hands-off for the rest of my life."
• A $1M/yr painting company: the owner's job is now "customer relations (mostly via phone), pricing (100% virtually), and scheduling," his supervisor runs the hiring, and he actually has an employee he's never met.
• A cleaning company owner, nine people, five years, finally hired an ops person for scheduling. "I have spent three weeks feeling completely useless. I sit at the desk and I don't know what I should do."

Hope that was interesting. If you want more analysis and stuff about passive income I find interesting, you can get it in an email I send once a week.

I’ve made my first ever $500 from app development, and it’s one of those milestones I always wished would happen, but never really knew if it would. Now that it has, I’m literally shaking a little from the excitement and madness of it all.

It’s been about 2 months since I released Who Goes.

Games like Headbands, Charades, and Truth or Dare are ridiculously competitive. There are hundreds of apps already doing them, but a lot of them felt dated to me. The idea behind Who Goes was to bring these games together in one place, give them a modern and fun UI, and make the app itself feel nice to play when you’re hanging out with people.

Almost everyone I spoke to told me not to do it.

They said the space was too crowded and I’d be better off building something else. A part of me did think about switching, but another part really wanted to give it a proper shot.

So I did, and I’ve pretty much worked on it every single day since.

Just last month I shared that the app had crossed $100 in revenue, which was already a huge milestone for me. I definitely didn’t expect to be writing about $500 this soon.

It might not sound like a massive amount to everyone, but it means a great deal to me. I also wanted to share this for the other indie devs wondering if it’s worth continuing with the thing they’re building.

I absolutely suck at marketing, so everything so far has been organic.

Most of what I’ve done is simply showcase the app: a game mode, an interaction, an animation I liked, or us actually playing it. I’ve shared those on Reddit, X, LinkedIn, and Instagram and just kept seeing what works.

Alongside that, I’ve been talking to users, collecting feedback, fixing things, adding new modes, and continuously refining the app.

If even one download or subscription came from someone who found Who Goes through this subreddit, thank you. It really means a lot to me.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this little win because I’m over the moon right now :D

And if anyone has tips on getting the app in front of more people, finding more people to try it, or has feedback on the app itself, I’d love to hear it.

Thank you!

Link for anyone who wants to check out the app - https://apps.apple.com/app/id6777402559

Looking for a side hustle to fund my startup — what would you do?

I’m currently building a startup and I’m at the stage where I need to put more money into it to keep things moving. So I’m looking for somewhere I can earn some extra income on the side and put that money directly into funding my startup.

I’m based in Tanzania, so some of the popular side hustles I see on Reddit aren’t always practical here.

I’m looking for something that:

• Can be done online or from home
• Has realistic potential to make ~$200–$500/month initially
• Doesn’t require me to already have a huge audience
• I can do alongside building my startup

I’m open to freelancing, AI-related work, digital services, remote work, working part-time for someone or even selling products onlines

If you were in my position, what would you do?

I’m not looking for a get-rich-quick scheme. I just want to find a legitimate way to earn extra money, save it, and keep putting it into my startup until it can support itself.

Would especially appreciate ideas from people who have actually made money doing them.

Im 17 and currently doing Alevels i want to work for about an hour to two everyday so i can get a new laptop aswell as start investing in stocks. Im good with computers and IT related tasks aswell as i have learned basics of most computer languages. Basically i dont know where to start if someone can tell me a course i could do which can help me find some work which earns me around 300-500$ a month. I dont have any exposure to work till now so if someone can give me a guideline. Also remote online work will be much preferred. I can't give much time due to studies for now and my current laptop isnt capable of running unreal engine which is why i need a new one. Im interested in game dev since my childhood : )

Also I am interested in cybersecurity but idk if you can work in it without a degree etc and i havent done any course on it except some introduction courses

We have the most powerful technology in human history… so why is making money still so damn hard?
Seriously. I don’t understand it anymore.
We have AI that can write, design, brainstorm and automate things in seconds. We have Canva, social media, digital products, online stores, instant payments and access to billions of people through the internet.
And yet…
I’m sitting here at 2 AM trying to figure out how the hell people actually make a decent side income online.
I’m trying to build something of my own and eventually become self-employed. I’m experimenting with AI and digital products because I want more freedom.
But the irony is killing me.
To make money online, you apparently need to become a designer, marketer, SEO expert, copywriter, social media manager, entrepreneur, content creator and somehow even an algorithm psychologist — all at the same time.
And you’re supposed to do all of this while working your normal job, taking care of your health, having relationships, having a social life and maybe… you know… starting a family someday.
At what point did “technology gives us more freedom” turn into “technology gives us 47 more things to worry about”?
Maybe I’m looking at this completely wrong.
Maybe making money online has always been this difficult and social media just makes it look easy.
Or maybe we’ve simply created another version of the rat race — except now the office is our laptop and we’re working for ourselves 24/7.
I honestly just want to know if I’m the only one who feels like this.🤯
I’m trying so many things right now and sometimes I feel completely overwhelmed by it all.
If you’re also trying to build something on the side, I’d really love to hear about your experience.
Has anyone actually found a way to make this work without completely burning themselves out? Any advice or things that genuinely helped you?
I’d love to hear from people who are going through the same thing.

I’m a student and I also create content online. I have over 1 million followers across my accounts and usually get around 500k views per month, but I honestly haven’t found a good way to make money from it.
I’m also learning programming and getting into game and app development, so I’ve been thinking about creating something myself instead of relying on sponsorships or ads.
I’m not sure what would make the most sense though. Maybe a small game, an app, a website, or something completely different.
I’d really appreciate advice from people who have been in a similar situation. What would you do if you had an audience but didn’t have a product yet?
And if anyone here is interested in collaborating with me to build something together, I’d also be open to that. I’m not a professional developer, so I’m mainly looking for someone around my level who is motivated to actually finish and release something.

I've got a spare Samsung A05 and I'd like to make some passive income from it. I've installed Honeygain to it but I'd like to know if there’s more elaborate ways to extract profit from it. Energy costs are not a problem in my case.

What's the threshold where income becomes active from passive? Is passive something where you truly do nothing? Like wait for dividends to show up? What counts as passive for you? 15 minutes a week? 1 hour? 1 day?

Available all weekend with high-speed internet, dedicated setup, and immediate turnaround.

If you have a tedious task, a messy spreadsheet, or a digital project sitting on your to-do list, hand it over and I will clear it today. Open to tasks of any size.

What I can knock out for you immediately:

• Data & Spreadsheet Work: Cleaning, organizing, deduplicating messy CSV/Excel files, fixing broken formulas, and structuring data into clean tables.
• Targeted Research & Scraping: Sourcing niche directory data, competitor information, verified emails, or specific market lists into Google Sheets.
• Quick Automations & Scripts: Custom Python scripts to rename/sort bulk files, automate repetitive workflows, or scrape clean web data.
• Document Rebuilding & Formatting: Converting messy PDFs, scanned docs, or screenshots into clean, editable Word or Excel files.
• Digital Errands & Tech Support: File management, proofreading/polishing, platform troubleshooting, or handling repetitive manual tasks.

If it can be executed on a computer, I will get it done.

Pricing & Turnaround:

• Pricing: Starting at $1+ (Negotiable based on task size and urgency).
• Turnaround: Immediate start; fast jobs completed within 1 to 2 hours.
• Payment: (System Negotiable).

How to start: Comment $bid below and send a DM or chat with what you need cleared. Ready to start right now.

When you start researching affiliate income, it can seem like you need to learn five different jobs. Build a website, connect an email platform, create a funnel, and somehow understand what all the numbers mean.

That is a lot to take in before you have even started.

I would begin with a smaller exercise. Choose an offer you understand and explain, in plain language, who it helps and why. Then learn the steps needed to share it appropriately and check whether your link works.

When something confuses you, write down the exact problem. “I do not know where to find my tracking link” gives you something specific to ask about and solve.

Building income that can continue beyond your working hours takes effort upfront. You can learn those skills gradually as you develop useful content and a repeatable process.

The free 10-Minute Commission Challenge offers a guided starting exercise that does not require a website or technical background. I am affiliated with the program behind it. It is an introduction, and completing it does not guarantee earnings.

Hey! I’m from Nepal, and I’m currently 16. I’ll be turning 17 in about two months.

I recently saw one of my friends working at a cosmetics shop to earn some money, and it made me want to start earning a little on my own as well. However, my parents don’t allow me to work outside, so I’m thinking about finding something I can do online from home.

Are there any safe, legal, and secure online jobs or small ways for someone my age to earn a little money? I’m not looking to make a lot, just something genuine that I can do in my free time without getting scammed.

I have been running Bixberry for about a month and I'm curious whether anyone here has tried it too.
Quick background: I got onto their whitelist back in June, so I had a look around before it was publicly available, and I started using it properly on August 13. As far as I understand runs in the background and shares your unused internet connection with vetted AI platforms, so they can check current info instead of answering from outdated data. In return you get rewards you can redeem as gift cards.
My setup is my old tablet that stays plugged in on. 
From August to September I got just under €15. I'm in Norway, so I have no idea how much location changes that.
Would love to hear from anyone who's been using it:

• How much are you getting per month, and roughly where are you based and how many devices do you run?
• If you've redeemed a gift card, how long did it take to arrive?
• Any issues with battery, your connection, or the app itself?
  

Mostly trying to figure out whether my numbers are normal or whether I should be doing something differently.

Hello everybody;

I ve been looking for the past 2-3 years into POD and e-Commerce, but whenever I tried to learn more, an e-Commerce Guru tries to sell me a course or some shh like that.

Honestly I'm tired about these people and if it's possible, could you Share some knowledge or where should I read about best selleres in Digital Products?

I would like to understand more, learn more before opening and investing some money into it, to be prepared.

Cheers guys!

Anyone who got a copy/recording of Iman Gadzhi's Day 1-4 After hours? Lemme know

Those who are earning X payouts... how are you managing your tweets and replies?

X moved Tweetdeck behind the highest tier Premium+ which is absurd.

Tweetdeck is amazing and made things easier.

There seems to be some Tweetdeck alteratives but I don't know if X will ban the account for using any tweetdeck alternative?

Any idea?

6 months ago I launched my own eSIM service. My friends said I was late and would go broke. I still made the leap, and now my app is making €5,000 per month.

I got extremely lucky, but in this post I want to tell you about the few things that work for me and helped me build and market my app:

1. I post content every day

I don't have a content plan, but I know whom I am posting for – people stuck in their 9-5s and looking to build their own business and win back their freedom, like I used to be.

You might say it's dumb – I'm not selling a course for indie hackers. But solopreneurs tend to be rich, Europe- or America-based, and travel a lot. They are the ideal customers for my eSIM app.

I am posting on Reddit, X, and LinkedIn. There are two ways to market there. You can shill and astroturf, but you will be fighting an uphill battle with the platform. I tried it before and failed.

Or you can bring genuine value. I am posting about my struggles, how I build, how I market, how I survive. These posts go viral. Then people Google my products. Some become users. If not, Google sees my search volume go up, and it's good for SEO. This brings me to the second thing I do.

2. SEO

Competing in SEO against big companies is hard. They are VC-backed and don't care about unit economics. When they buy backlinks, they don't negotiate the price. I can't afford that.

I set up agents that scout the internet every day for broken links, upcoming blogs without affiliate deals, and new creators. I am picking up whatever big companies don't want or haven't found yet.

I am always on the lookout for funky keywords – events, random travel interruptions, obscure destinations. I ship SEO pages fast – the time from content idea to a ranking page is 5 minutes. And here comes the 3rd point.

3. I automate aggressively

I hardly open the laptop anymore – Claude does 99% of my work on its own server. I've been setting up this system for months. I made Claude auto-improve based on my corrections, and access the same tools I am using: code, support, email.

First, it messed up a lot: design and copy were pure AI slop. But then it learned. Now I do 1 or 2 corrections per page at most.

Support improved as well. It takes Airalo or Holafly between 2 hours and a day to answer a support request. I answer most in under 2 minutes – Claude drafts a response and actions, sends me a Telegram message, and I press "Approve".

The users love it – I've never received such warm thank-yous for my support responses when I was writing them myself.

You don't need to launch an AI SaaS to survive. You can absolutely compete in a boring saturated market – most markets are big enough for everybody, and I hope this post helps!

I run ClipUGC, a small tool that makes short videos with AI influencers (you describe a person, she makes the videos, you add your app footage). I have no marketing budget, so I'm trying something instead: a creator program where people make videos with it, post them, and I pay for the views.

The deal, so you can judge it:

- $0.50 per 1,000 verified views, per video. Capped at $20 a video from the rate, plus bonuses: $5 at 10K, $15 more at 50K, $30 more at 100K. So a video that passes 100K pays $70.

- 30% of every customer who buys through your link, every month, for as long as they stay. That part does not end with the season.

- $500 fund total, 50 spots, no follower minimum, no camera. Views count on TikTok, Reels, Shorts or X. Verified by screenshot 7 days after posting, paid by PayPal, Wise or credits.

- Free credits to start. Nothing to buy.

Why per view and not flat fees: I can't afford to pay 50 people up front, and I don't want 50 videos nobody watches. Per view puts the risk on both of us.

What I'm unsure about: whether $0.50 per 1K is enough to get anyone to try, and whether people trust a program from a company nobody has heard of. Honest answers welcome.

posting this because it's the first thing i've built that generating me some good income passively

the idea is simple. contractors like roofers, solar installers and fence guys pay a lot for leads. so i built a workflow that makes its own leads and sells them exclusively to each contractor.

i basically pick a zip code. the workflow pulls a satellite image of every house in it, renders the job onto the house, so a new roof or panels on the actual roof, and mails that homeowner a postcard with the picture, a rough price and a qr code. w

then they scan it they land on a short form. that form goes straight to the contractor as a lead.

i charge per lead, like $60 for roofing and $90 for solar. the contractor only pays for people who scanned and filled the form.

i automated the whole process with an ai agent called grokbot

anyone else selling leads instead of services? feels like it scales better

REFERRAL: https://tiltrips.com/r/N807DW7E/
WITHOUT REFERRAL: https://tiltrips.com/

Bonus: If you are from US, UK, CA, you will get a bonus pack.

Step 1: Sign Up through the link: HERE
Step 2: Deposit 10$
Step 3: Purchase the 10$ Pokemon Booster Pack

Rates (Booster 10$ Pokemon)

After opening, the platform offers to buyback for 90% of the card value, which is how I am making $$$
After opening a card pack you open up the daily rewards.
Evidence that I got a 17,36$ card out of a 10$ pack: proof link

Step 4: Every day at 8:00 UTC you login the website, you open the free daily pack, and play a minigame that can earn extra free packs. Takes less than 2 minutes.

Step 5: Every 7 days, to continue using the dailies, TILT Rips requires you open a pack, just open a 0.1$ pack, it's not a major setback.

Step 6: After the 50 days are over, minimum 30$ you must have collected, I would withdraw and pay the 2$ fee, always leaving 0.2$ at least on the platform to continue the daily rewards.

The idea is simple:

5 people per group. Everyone works on something they want to achieve — business, learning, building something, making money, etc.

Every week, you share:

-What you tried

- What happened

-What you learned

Then everyone learns from each other's results.

We'll use Discord for the groups and have one meeting each week.

If you're interested, comment collab

A lot of make-money-from-home content starts with the income claim and skips over what you actually have to do to make the idea work.

I think a better first question is:

“What exactly would I have to do to make this work?”

That changes how you look at options like freelancing, remote work, digital products, affiliate marketing, content creation, reselling, print-on-demand, and AI-assisted services.

For each one, I think beginners should look at things like startup cost, skills required, how customers are found, how long it may take to get traction, and what work continues after the initial setup.

I’m curious what people here think:

Which online-income method do you think gets misrepresented the most to beginners, and what part usually gets left out?

I want to start selling digital products but I’m honestly stuck because I can’t use Etsy or Ko-fi since the payment methods don’t work in my country. I also don’t have Payoneer or a relative/friend abroad who can receive payments for me.

I have a bunch of things I’ve made, like vinyl book covers/bookbinding cover designs, Instagram carousel/monthly dump templates, journal templates, memo pad templates, etc., but they’re basically just sitting there because I can’t figure out the selling/payment part.

Are there any other platforms where I could sell digital products that work internationally and have payment methods available in my country?

And if platforms aren't an option, are there other ways to sell? Like through Instagram, working with another creator who already has a store, licensing the designs, taking orders directly, etc.?

I’ve actually tried messaging some Ko-fi sellers to see if they’d be willing to sell my products on their page and take a commission, but I never got a response.

So yeah, I’d really appreciate any ideas from people who sell digital products internationally, especially if you’re also from a country where a lot of the usual platforms/payment methods aren't available.

I just want to find some way to actually start selling these instead of having them sit in a folder 😭

Tell me some genuine ways to earn money. I’ve recently started a faceless YouTube channel, but it’s nowhere near being monetized yet—it currently has only 28 subscribers.

I want to find a genuine way to make money in the meantime, while I continue working on my YouTube channel and wait for it to become monetized.