Let’s face it, most career and side hustle lists repeat the same ideas over and over. Or, the list might present some really odd ideas that leave you questioning whether they actually work. While there’s nothing wrong with money-making ideas like driving for a rideshare company, walking dogs, or even selling items on Etsy or eBay, these options are also pretty competitive, which means you may need to think even further outside of the box.
If you’re looking for unique jobs to make money, these ideas are realistic, doable, and actually work. Whether you only have a few hours per week or minutes to spare on random days, this list of money-making ideas is a great place to start when you need to earn extra money fast.
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing isn’t something that’s reserved for huge bloggers or influencers. Sure, it does help to have a platform and an audience, but you don’t have to be a social media influencer or content creator to make money with affiliate marketing. You can start by sharing links and making recommendations through social media posts to the followers you currently have.
If you already do gig work selling a product or service, you can start an email newsletter and share affiliate links that way as well. Affiliate marketing is not a way to make money quickly, though. It takes time to build up an audience and implement a strategy.
Even then, you may find yourself testing things and making small changes, so there is an initial investment of time. But it could also lead to some passive income and more time freedom in the long run.
2. Art Therapist
An art therapist is a trained mental health professional who uses art and creative expression to help people reduce stress, explore their emotions, process trauma, and more. Art therapists can work in a variety of places, including schools, hospitals, rehab centers, community centers, or within their own private practice.
If you prefer to work from home, you could launch your own private practice and meet with clients virtually. This career path is pretty flexible, but you will need a good amount of education and clinical training, such as a master’s degree in art therapy or counseling and human behavior.
While this can be a rewarding, interesting, and fun career, you’ll need to consider the pros and cons, including pay, growth rate, and job availability. If you want to explore this career, conducting informational interviews can be an excellent way to get the inside scoop.
3. Donate Plasma
Donating plasma is neither a secret nor a groundbreaking way to make extra money. But it’s unconventional, and it works. Generally, you just need to be 18 years old, weigh more than 110 pounds, and be in decent health. There are several plasma donation centers all over the country, and you typically get paid that same day.
CSL Plasma is one popular option with several locations across the country. You should eat a healthy meal and hydrate before donating plasma. The process can take around one hour to 90 minutes, and you can earn anywhere from $40 to $70+ per session. Some places will offer bonuses periodically, so this can be an easy way to make extra cash when you need it.
4. Farmstand Owner
Farmstands are all the craze right now. If you have a passion for baking, gardening, and making food from scratch, you could always try your hand at starting a local farmstand business. From the outside looking in, this job idea looks pretty low-stress, but I know it requires a lot of planning and preparation.
You’ll need to come up with a list of items you want to sell, test out different recipes, and order proper packaging and even marketing materials. You’ll also need to either buy a farmstand or customize one. All in all, there are tons of stories on YouTube and social media about people finding success with their farmstands and offering advice for those looking to get started.
The best part is that you can promote your farmstand online and have people come right to you. A lot of people set up shop in their driveways or backyards, so you don’t even have to leave home if you don’t want to. If you’re interested in going this route, check out this book from Lisa Kivirist and John D. Ivanko:
- Homemade for Sale: How to Set Up and Market a Food Business from Your Home Kitchen
5. Flip Concert Tickets
Flipping things, such as buying and reselling concert tickets, is another easy way to make some extra money if you have some cash on hand to spend upfront. Some concert and event tickets for popular attractions tend to sell out fast, so if you’re able to purchase a few tickets early on at an affordable rate, you can always resell them for a profit.
You don’t have to hike the price of the tickets up to an insane amount or buy dozens of tickets to make decent money with this idea. In fact, you probably don’t want to be that kind of reseller. Instead, you can purchase tickets early for concerts or events that you wouldn’t mind going to if you couldn’t sell the tickets. But just do your research and make sure the event is in high demand and likely to sell out, so you’ll have a good chance of turning a profit.
6. Flip Domains
I’m sure you’ve heard of people who flip homes to make extra money, but if you don’t have a lot of cash to get into real estate, you can always flip digital property. Flipping domain names can be an unconventional but profitable way to make extra money. Each website or domain name has to be purchased in order for the owner to use it.
If you have a good eye for specific domain names or want to target a particular industry, you can buy a few quality domain names for cheap with the hope of reselling them at higher prices for a profit. GoDaddy is a great place to buy domains and scout for opportunities as you do your research.
7. Graphic Designer
Graphic designers use original ideas and creative concepts to make stunning graphics, logos, website designs, brochures, and more for different clients. You don’t need a formal education to get into this career, and the range is wide depending on what type of projects you want to take on. There are some online courses on sites like Coursera that can help you get started. Or you can even consider enrolling in classes at your local community college to gain more skills in this field.
Having graphic design skills can lead to high-paying jobs, such as graphic artist roles, which pay anywhere from $127,000 to $152,000. Related fields, like marketing design, pay up to $90,000 and involve blending marketing expertise with artistic skills to create unique campaigns that clients can use to advertise and build brand awareness.
Since you’re doing the bulk of your work from a computer, it’s easy to work remotely as a graphic designer if you have the right technical skills. There are tons of work from home job ideas in this post.
8. Mystery Shopping
With the cost of goods rising, many families are feeling the squeeze at the grocery store and with other household purchases. A few years ago, I started mystery shopping again (something I tried in college), and it’s been a great way for me to earn extra money and get free meals and products.
Mystery shopping provides various ways to make extra money. I’ve done several mystery shops at restaurants, retail stores, and even services for my car, like getting gas and oil changes. There are so many paid mystery shopping opportunities out there, and you just need to sign up and look.
Here’s a list of a few popular mystery shopping websites to try out. Just remember that if your assignment requires a purchase, you often need to pay upfront, and the company will reimburse you once you complete the shopping assignment and successfully turn in your report. But most mystery shopping companies will reimburse you and pay you a separate fee, so you will still earn money from the job.
9. Online Survey Sites
Yes, online survey sites have been around for a long time, and many people swear by doing surveys to earn extra cash. But have you ever signed up for multiple online platforms at once and checked them regularly? Most of us check our phones for social media several times per day. So you could replace that time by checking out a few survey sites instead.
The key to making money with online surveys is consistency and timeliness. Consider checking out sites like Swagbucks, InboxDollars, Survey Junkie, and even focus group sites like Respondent and User Interviews, rotating your time and attention among a few options.
10. Pinterest Manager
Love Pinterest? Many businesses and entrepreneurs use Pinterest to market their products and services and drive traffic to their websites. If you can learn how Pinterest works as a search engine, along with how to create stunning, eye-catching pins, you can work as a Pinterest manager and make money from home. This would be a great fit for stay-at-home parents, side hustlers, or even those looking to become more of a digital nomad.
To get started, you can create pins from scratch or even just customize templates on Canva. You can offer your services to bloggers and business owners with an online store, for example. There are websites and tools you can use to schedule pins, like Tailwind, and Pinterest managers can easily batch their work so they can schedule content once a week or once a month. From there, you’ll just need to work on reviewing your client’s account analytics and implementing different strategies.
11. Registered Dietitian
With so many people looking to eat healthy and balanced diets, becoming a registered dietician (RD) can be a fun and profitable job you can do remotely. The path to becoming an RD includes earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree in nutrition or dietetics, completing 1,000 hours of supervised clinical practice, and passing an RD licensing exam.
As a dietitian, you help people achieve optimal health outcomes, whether they have diabetes, an eating disorder, food allergies, kidney or heart disease, or are managing weight or intense sports training.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, RDs earn an average of $73,850 annually, with an annual growth rate of 3% (which is faster than average). Dietitians can work remotely for hospitals, clinics, insurance companies, and specialized practices like Cecelia Health, Nourish, and Health Loft.
12. Resume and LinkedIn Profile Writer
Resume writing is an excellent way to use your writing skills to make money from home. People are always looking for jobs, and a fresh, professional resume remains one of the most important tools. You can also take it a step further and use your creative writing skills to become a LinkedIn profile writer, too.
LinkedIn is still a must-have tool for most people who are in the job market or those who just want to keep up with their professional connections. You’ll want to stay on top of all the latest career trends, resume-writing techniques, and what recruiters are actually looking for to help others improve their resumes. You can market your services to professionals at all career stages and even host workshops to educate job seekers and help them land their dream roles.
Becoming a resume and LinkedIn profile writer doesn’t require a special degree; however, you should have excellent writing skills, in-depth knowledge of resumes, LinkedIn, SEO, and personal branding. Some resume writers enter the field by obtaining a career coach certification, others take an online course, and others have worked in HR, recruiting, or a writing field.
How much can you earn writing resumes and LinkedIn profiles? According to Glassdoor, resume writers earn an average of $85,000 annually. One woman who was interviewed here on The Work at Home Woman, Day Merrill, started her career as an English teacher and eventually launched her own resume business, earning six figures annually.
13. Sell Airbnb Experiences
You might have heard of Airbnb as a way to rent out your spare room or home for travelers for extra money. But Airbnb also has a service called Experiences, where people can sign up to host fun and creative experiences for visitors. With this option, you don’t have to open up your home if you don’t want to. You can earn money by teaching a class, offering tours, or coming up with another fun experience that you can list on Airbnb.
This is a great way to monetize your passion and use your resourcefulness to make an exciting experience for guests and tourists. It’s also a business opportunity that can work flexibly around your day job whenever you have free time.
14. Sell Digital Templates
Another unconventional way to make money on the side is to create digital templates to sell based on your expertise and what has worked well for you. Maybe you created a practical but super helpful chore chart for your kids to help the family stay on track each week. Or, perhaps you have a super thorough house-cleaning checklist and schedule that you swear by. What’s stopping you from selling it as a digital template?
Your creativity and knack for certain routines and resources can help someone else and put some cash in your pocket. Tools like Canva make it easy to create digital templates and tools that people can print out and use on their own. You can use this tool to redesign and elevate your original creation or even to create more templates. Consider setting up an online store with Shopify or ThriveCart once you start marketing and making sales. This can really become a thriving business idea with creativity, determination, and a clear and consistent plan.
15. Sell Your Hair
If your hair tends to grow pretty fast during the year and you don’t mind getting it cut, you can sell your hair to make wigs, extensions, and other products. Natural, human hair is always in demand, and if your hair hasn’t been dyed or processed a lot, you can usually charge more. expect to make anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on length and other factors.
Sites like Buy and Sell Hair and Hairsellon are great places to check out, as well as local salons in your area that may buy hair.
16. Video Game Designer
Playing video games can be more than just a hobby. If you’d like to get behind the scenes and work on how the game is created, the characters’ development, the rules, and the storyline, then becoming a video game designer can be rewarding for you. Video game designers do all of this and more, and their job usually involves creating the design, story, and layout of a video game.
You’ll need tech skills in programming, UX (user experience), and UI (user interface design), and many Video Game Designers have bachelor’s degrees in fields like Web Development, Computer Programming, and Video Game Production to get started. But you can earn six figures or more if you’re able to break into this unique, remote-friendly career.
17. Voiceover Artist
Voiceover artists often record their voices for entertainment projects, narration, character acting, or dubbing animated characters. Also known as voiceover acting, this could involve speaking in commercials, video games, animated films, and more. According to Indeed, average salaries for this role range from $46,685 to $159,745, depending on the types of projects you take on and how often you work.
Voice acting requires a lot of training and practice, but you can look for online courses. And if you want to work from home, you can even create a small home studio to work from.
Summary: Unconventional Ways to Make Money
Earning money doesn’t always have to be straightforward. Whether you’re looking for something flexible, daring, or just outside of the box with a little less competition, there are still several good options to consider. This list just scratches the surface of creative ways to make money.
Whether you want to play video games, participate in clinical trials, or sell stuff online, there is an unconventional way for you to make money that suits your personality.
Take the first step by beginning with one or two of these ideas and see how much you can earn over time.
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