8 Side Hustles I've Used This Year

During my years of exploration into the world of savings, I found out about side hustles. Through these many trial and errors, I've developed a pretty solid list of ones that I use to get some extra cash. In 2021 I focused on streamlining the list down to ones that I felt were mostly worth the effort.

Today, I'm going to share with you a comprehensive list of how much each side hustle has made me (or put me in the negative), the estimated time I put in per week, and how long I've been doing each. I'll also share on a scale of 1-10 of how much I enjoy each, and a bit about them. Links that are available will be listed. I'll share with you my experiences and reveal the real numbers of what I've made with each- down to the cent!

Depop

Rating: 8

This is by far my most successful source of extra income, and honestly one of the more consistent streams of income on this list. I will say the initial set up for the app is fairly simple, maybe 10 minutes. It's available in the UK and the USA, and uses paypal only in the USA.

I will say that on Depop it's kind of expected that your shop either be organized or be a specialty shop. Clothes don't sell very well unless it's vintage or band merch. My most popular items are unofficial BTS photocards and official merch I no longer want.

I also spend time looking though who liked certain items I'm willing to lower price on. I'll message them with an offer. A lot of times it's ignored but it's lead to at least 20 sales in the past few years. I'm more willing to lower my prices on larger items because I really just want a lot of it gone, which sometimes helps with sales.

I think free shipping is a good thing to offer, if you're able to. But I think a lot more people on Depop are willing to pay shipping, because they're more focused on the total cost rather than looking at it as an additional cost (Mercari, listed below, is a site that strongly encourages free shipping, and you don't get many sales unless you choose that option).

Money Invested: $15 (packaging supplies)

Items Sold: about 200 (they only keep track of how many reviews you have. If I wanted an exact number, I'd have to scroll and count every single transaction manually. And I'm sorry I'm just not up to that. I have about 15 sales that weren't given a review, and 186 reviews. So I just rounded it out to 200)

Money Earned: $300

Time Invested: anywhere from 1 hour to 6. Depends on if it's a holiday season (more sales= more packaging) and what Items are bought (photocards can be sent stamp mail, while larger things require me to mess around with shipping labels). I spend at least a half hour every week updating listings so they're constantly showing up in people's news feed.

Total Time: 3 1/2 Years

above is the android version of the app. Below is the website.

Vocal

Rating: 8

This is my newest means of income and let me tell you, it's paying off! Of course It's mostly due to my weekly posting. I also had my post "Things I Learned in my 20's" shared on Vocal's Facebook and Twitter, and even though it was my latest post, it outperformed my oldest post within a day! This lead to me making $11 off of that single post. I've had a lot of luck as a beginner, and I just want to continue to do what I love- write and make money!

I won't spend too long on this one since a lot of you reading this are already members of Vocal.

Money Invested: $10 Vocal+ Membership (Only been a + member for a month, so this investment will keep growing)

Money Earned: $35.94

Time Invested: 5-10 hours a week

Time Total: Vocal Member since August. Vocal+ member since late September. 50+ hours spent writing in those 2 months (avg 25 hours a month)

Solitaire Cash

Rating: 5

Okay, so maybe I just love solitaire... But this is a great app for those who have at least 5 minutes of down time and an internet/Wi-Fi connection. You can play using diamonds, and then use that diamond currency to play for real money! It is a FTP/ FTW game, but I decided to throw in $5 to see how far I could get with it. The answer was not very far. I've won more money using gems than actual money to play.

What exactly do I mean by that? Solitaire Cash has many options on how to pay. The ones they highlight are like "Rookie" with a $1 entry fee but a prize pool of $5 made up of the top 3 players. But there are options like "Gems Factory" where the entry fee is 2 diamonds, and you could win up to 7 diamonds. Once you've accumulated 120 diamonds, you're able to play "Freeroll" which has a first place prize of $4. Additionally, if you were to either win in Freeroll or transfer some money into the game, you could play "Diamonds Dash" which has an entry fee of 60 diamonds and $1, with a first prize payout of $5.80.

How you win is by being the fastest to complete a solitaire game in your pool. You also can win even if you don't complete the puzzle, as long as you had the highest score out of every one else.

Money Invested: $5

Money Earned: $32 (minus the $5 investment I've made$27)

Time Invested: half hour a week

Time Total: owned for 4 months

Mercari

Rating: 3

This is a selling app. You can think of it like eBay or like an online garage sale. They have the option to sell locally with pickups or non-local with shipping.

I will say that Mercari and I have a large love hate relationship. I even boycotted them last October with thousands of other sellers and buyers (which is a completely different story I won't get into right now). Posting a listing for sale is free.

But there's several sellers fees once an item is sold through the app. They also will delete any conversations, listings, or even whole accounts who even suggest selling outside of Mercari. Part of this is to ensure the buyers aren't scammed, but a lot of it is just so they don't miss out on those seller fees.

You cannot ship stamped mail with Mercari. Okay so I might actually hate Mercari with all of my heart but I can't deny that lots of people use their app to purchase items. Sadly that traffic is what I need to make sales. So yeah, that's why we're still frenemies.

Money Invested: 0

Items Sold: 104

Money Earned: $213 (according to my dashboard but I know I've made over $600.. I just never kept track properly)

Time Invested: I currently give Mercari 10 minutes of my time every week. When I used to sell about $60 in profit per week I was spending 2-3 hours (this includes product pictures, writing listings, creating prices, shipping, and updating listings).

Total Time: 4 years using the app

Robinhood

Rating: 2 (risky)

I highly do NOT suggest this strategy if you're new to investing. I myself jumped into the deep end a bit too soon and well.. you'll see here shortly where that got me.

Basically, I invested a ton of money into DOGE COIN and then forgot about it until it was too late. So now I'm just holding onto it until there's an upturn for me to sell with at the bare minimum, no loss (pssssh good luck on that one). My other stock is in RWEOY- a natural energy company. I honestly don't know a whole lot about it but it's been in a downturn for about 3 months, but I've been invested in it since 2019 and at one point was sitting at +100... Oh if only I didn't hold onto them...

Money Invested: $178.70

Money Earned: $1.82 (Dividend)+ (-$14.74) +(-32.44)= a loss of $45.36, leaving my investment at $133.34

Time Invested: mere minutes throughout the year (probably one of the problems with me having losses)

Total Time: 2 years for RWEOY and about 8 months for DOGE COIN

Betterment

Rating: 9!

So, if you read my article about things I've learned in my 20's, you'll know how much Betterment has helped me start planning for my future financially. Since I started my journey I've added a few additional accounts- which won't be in the calculations because they've been around for less than a year. So we're going to focus on my 4 'goals' ; my Roth IRA, car fund, emergency fund, and my nest egg.

Money Invested: $7,496.20

Money Earned: $386.97 ($82.39 in Dividends)

Time Invested: Half hour for account set up, 5 minutes per month (I have my deposits automated, so I'm only accounting for the time I log in to check on my account)

Total Time: Joined Dec 7th, 2020 (Almost 1 year!)

Trad. Bank

I thought I'd throw this in just to kind of show that just letting your money sit in a traditional bank account isn't always the best idea. I'll make the timeline the same 1 year as Betterment just to compare. The $3K under Money Invested is not money I put in in one year, but what Interest on $3K in one year will earn you with a traditional interest rate. Just to reiterate, this isn't how I actually try to make money, but rather a look at how I put my money to greater use through Betterment than it would be with a Trad. Bank.

Money Invested: $3K

Money Earned: $0.30

Time Invested: 0

Total Time: 1 year

Red Bubble

Just a note: no earnings from 2021 were added to this total. RedBubble changed the way they payout artists so I only get paid once I reach $20 profit and with me being back in school I really haven't uploaded that many designs this year.

Money Invested: $0

Products Sold: 182

Money Earned: $160.95

Earnings By Year: 2016 $12.86, 2017 $55.78, 2018 $39.39, 2019 $33.59, 2020 $19.33

Time Invested: First few years I invested about 10 hours a week, back when I was still part time at my job. As I started school and went full time, I spend about 1 hour per week (which reflects in my sales but I also just have moved my priorities).

Total Time: Joined in August 2016 (5 years)

Garage Sale

I took Mother's Day weekend this year to host a garage sale. I took some pretty lowball offers, but honestly most of the stuff i just wanted gone. I wanted to add this in here, even though it wasn't a consistent around the year money maker because it's still a part of my side hustle earnings no matter how you look at it.

This was a two day sale, Friday and Saturday (Sunday was mothers day so obviously I didnt continue the sale then). It seemed pretty slow to me, and I actually got a lot of homework done while waiting for customers. But I surprisingly made quite a bit since it was a last minute decision to host a garage sale.

Some quick tips about having a garage sale: if you're doing a multi family garage sale, make sure you assign a colored tag per person or family. Get your change from the bank a few days prior. Don't list anything for less than a quarter, and if anything looks like it would be less than that, you're better chucking it into a free box (which sometimes can attract more customers). Last, bring something to work on. Weather it's homework, crochet, or downloaded episodes on your phone/laptop. You're more than likely going to have a few hours of downtime while waiting- even if you have a busy day.

Money Invested: $80 in misc. change

Products Sold: around 50

Money Earned: $80

Time Invested: 2 days for set up and pricing, and 2 days for the sale. 1/2 day for cleanup

Total Time: 4 1/2 days

CONCLUSION

So yeah, I'm not making hundreds of thousands of extra dollars... heck I might not even be making more than $200 (I'm too lazy to go back and do MORE math). But it's enough to give me some extra security. I obviously don't have all the answers and probably don't have a very good grasp on most of these markets, but I've managed to make some extra cash and for now that's enough for me. If you find one of these to be your jam, maybe hyper focus on it and you could make much more than I have. I'd love to hear anyone else's side hustles, and I'm always up for trying a new one!