24 Creative Ways To Make Money In 2025

The average salary in the United States is just over $66,000 in 2025. But with the cost of living creeping upward, you might wonder how you can earn extra money—and you’re not alone. 

If you’d like to join the more than 1.1 million Americans who already have a side hustle, you’re in the right place.

Here are 24 creative ways to make money in 2025, from providing pet care, home catering, and tour guide services to flipping furniture, selling vintage clothes, and more. 

Want to make extra cash but unsure where to begin? Dive into dropshipping or explore the latest trending products in ecommerce. Then let Shopify take care of the rest.

24 creative ways to make money

1. Sell your photos
2. Print on demand
3. Teach online classes
4. Recommend your favorite products
5. Rent your unused space
6. Sell your services
7. Create niche products
8. Host tours in your city
9. Test websites and apps
10. Sell your art
11. Provide house-sitting and pet-sitting services
12. Work as a mover, handyperson, or errand-runner
13. Sell secondhand clothes
14. Become an online juror
15. Answer questions
16. Become a home chef
17. Tune pianos
18. Babysit
19. Join clinical trials
20. Flip furniture
21. Become a fitness instructor
22. Organize other people’s things
23. Become a translator
24. Become a mystery shopper

You’ll find each creative way to make money broken down by:

• Effort: How much time, skill, or experience you’ll need.
• Leverage: How easy it is to earn. A low-leverage idea is a one-to-one trade of time for money. A high-leverage idea generates a higher return for effort and can lead to passive income.
• Startup costs: The upfront budget needed to launch the idea.
• Potential earnings: How much profit you could make from your side hustle.

Sell your photos

Effort: Medium

Leverage: Low

Startup costs (out of 5 💸): 💸

Potential earnings: On average, 35¢ per image; typically, 10¢ to $99.50 per (royalty-free) sale, or up to $500 for a photo sold under an extended license. Exact payouts depend on the platform—for instance, Shutterstock pays 15% to 40% of image revenue to photographers.

To successfully sell your photography, you need to target an audience of potential customers who want or need it. Start by considering your photography style and try to identify a niche, whether it’s landscapes, portraits, pet pics, or something else.

Once you’ve identified a niche, build a following on visual-heavy platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. Snap niche-specific photos, use a free photo editor to polish them, and then sell them on sites like Burst by Shopify, Adobe Stock, and Shutterstock. Monitor which style works best through the platform’s analytics.

Use your social media accounts to tease your paid content, targeting bloggers and business owners who always need stock photos. You can also pitch businesses directly. 

Bear in mind that you’ll price your stock photos based on three factors: industry demand, competitor pricing, and your business costs. 

If you’re shooting people, you need to pay them, and if you’re shooting locations, you may need to apply for permission or pay a fee. Consider equipment and software costs, too. Build it all into your pricing to ensure you earn more than you invest.

Print on demand

Effort: Low

Leverage: High

Startup costs: 💸💸

Potential earnings: Print-on-demand entrepreneurs can earn anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars a month to $118,000 a year. 

It’s estimated that the global print-on-demand market will be worth $59.4 billion by 2033, with apparel currently representing the largest market segment.

Print on demand is a low-risk way to make money while leveraging more creativity than traditional dropshipping models. 

Here’s how it works: You partner with a supplier to customize (or white label) products such as books, t-shirts, phone cases, or other merchandise. You add your designs to plain items, and the supplier prints and delivers them on a per-order basis. You don’t hold inventory, and you only pay for products after they’ve sold.

Shopify apps like Printful, Lulu Direct, and Printify take the lion’s share of logistics and operations off your plate so you can focus on designing, branding, and marketing your products. 

Print on demand is an accessible business model, achievable alongside a full-time job. Get creative, or commission a freelance designer to help with patterns or full-blown product designs.

Print on demand is a superb model for creatives who want involvement with their products but don’t have time to commit to manufacturing. It lets you be expressive and build a distinct brand with fewer logistical considerations than other ecommerce models, making it a nice sandbox for earning extra cash.

Teach online classes

Effort: High

Leverage: Medium

Startup costs: 💸💸💸

Potential earnings: Variable. English as a second language teachers can expect to earn between $10 and $40 per hour, while niche class teachers charge upward of $3,000 per course.

Turning industry knowledge into an online course—as the creators behind Sugarlash PRO Academy did—is a smart way to earn extra money. 

Start with a subject you know well. What can you talk about for hours on end? What do your family and friends ask for your advice on? The answer might be a great class idea. But remember, a huge part of any online course’s success is understanding your audience.

Some niches are less profitable than others, so check whether there’s high demand for your course topic before creating it. Generally speaking, seek audiences who are willing to pay. Passionate hobbyists or professionals who will invest in their craft are prime examples.

Next, plan the flow of your course. Consider the topics you want to cover and create content for each section to sell as one-off lessons or combine into a course curriculum. 

You’ll need to promote your course as long as it’s running, but once you’ve invested time creating the content, your biggest investment is basically done. To put it another way, upfront costs occupy most of the time and money—you’ll only fork out marginal costs on marketing and content updates.

You can host and distribute your content on platforms like Shopify, Udemy, Teachable, Skillshare, or LinkedIn Learning, all of which allow creators to monetize their courses.

Recommend your favorite products

Effort: Low

Leverage: Medium

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: Successful affiliate marketers can earn between $71,000 and $130,000 per year, with the average affiliate marketer making $8,038 a month. 

The affiliate marketing model works by recommending products to your network and receiving a bonus—usually a percentage of the sale price in commission or gift cards—as a reward. Most companies, including Amazon and eBay, offer refer-a-friend incentives.

You could take things further by recommending your favorite products to a bigger audience through blogging or posting on social media. Ecocult regularly promotes sustainable products via affiliate links in its editorial content. 

Reviews on sites like Wirecutter aren’t spammy—there’s no pushy feeling that forces you into making a purchase just because the writers will receive a commission. Their reviews are in-depth, unbiased, and genuinely make it easier for you to find the right product. That’s the basic idea of great affiliate marketing: providing education and context that can be challenging for the official company to present in a genuine way.

It’s relatively easy to get started with affiliate marketing, but to see significant income, you need to have a large online following. To take your first steps toward affiliate marketing, search your favorite brands’ websites to see if they offer a refer-a-friend program. (If they don’t, you can always email to enquire.) Ask friends to use your link or code when they purchase from that brand, and you’ll typically both be rewarded.

Rent your unused space

Effort: Low

Leverage: Medium

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: Up to $450 per month for a parking space and $14,000 on average per year for renting on Airbnb. 

If you have extra space in your home, office, garage, or parking lot, you might be able to make money renting it out.

One example is your backyard. You can treat it as a side-hustle opportunity by listing it on sites like Hipcamp and charging people to pitch their tent there. Create boundaries with the people you open your camping space to, like whether they’re allowed to use your indoor toilet, access your home, or light barbecues on your grass.

Similarly, for a small monthly fee, you could rent the parking space that comes with your home or apartment to family, friends, or one of the many drivers looking for a parking spot—a huge source of frustration for commuters. This is one of the most creative ways to make money if you use the car space at night but aren’t at home during the day.

Use sites like Parkopedia or Craigslist to check out your competition. Find what people in your location charge for their parking spaces, then price your spot competitively. Pop into local offices and ask if staff are interested in renting your spot.

Sell your services

Effort: High

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: Variable depending on service and experience.

The gig economy is here to stay, with more than 75 million freelancers in the US. 

To get involved, think about your skills and interests. There’s probably a company looking to employ someone like you on a project basis, as opposed to a full-time contract.

You might need to spend a while creating your portfolio—a collection of work that proves you’re good at the service you’re selling—before you can demand higher rates. Gain experience through gigs on sites like Upwork, TaskRabbit, and Fiverr. 

Be wary that other freelancers, especially those who don’t know how to position their services, might charge pennies for similar work and that there’s a risk of pricing yourself too low to beat them. Understanding average hourly rates for specific professions in your country can help you set reasonable fees. The average hourly rate for a marketer in the US, for example, is $37.

Service-based businesses are high margin and can be profitable. But the downside is they’re usually harder to scale. Since you are your business, you need to be on hand to do the work—or at least to oversee it.

Create niche products

Effort: High

Leverage: High

Startup costs: 💸💸💸

Potential earnings: Variable, depending on product type, target customers, and market conditions.

What’s missing in your current work life? Is there a product that could fix a common daily problem that you constantly find yourself wishing for? Market gaps like this are opportunities waiting to happen! 

Take the example of Dustin Lee. He noticed that graphic designers were always looking for add-ons to their standard tools, such as paintbrushes, design elements, Photoshop templates, and clip art. So, he created RetroSupply to sell those products directly to other designers.

Cassidy Caulk did something similar. The Kindred Label founder identified a gap in the market for high-quality, foldable footwear that didn’t sacrifice style or durability. She embarked on a four-year journey to develop the Catherine Slide, a luxury shoe combining the elegance of traditional footwear with the convenience of foldable designs. 

To succeed in your niche product venture, you must understand your clients and peers. You might need to land a few freelance gigs first before spotting a gap in the market, but that’s a silver lining. Business ideas are easier to spot when you’re in the weeds and living with the problems yourself.

Host tours in your city

Effort: High

Leverage: Medium

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: Tour guides earn about $22 per hour—plus tips—in the US. Independent operators can set their own rates, potentially earning more per tour. 

If you live in a tourist city, there’s an opportunity to host tours for visitors.

Niche tours, like exploring little-known historical sites, or activity-specific ones, like bicycle, food, or alcohol tours, are opportunities to apply your knowledge and interests. 

Once you’ve identified a niche, consider how people will find you. Keyword research can help you create a website based on words tourists search, such as:

• “Walking tours in [your city]” 
• “Bike tours in [your city]” 
• “Cheap [your city] tours” 

You may also need to create a script or fact sheet to explain areas of your city to your attendees. 

To start immediately, join a tour hosting platform like Showaround, Get Your Guide, and The Tourpreneur. These platforms let you host tours in your city to make money—and friends—by entertaining tourists passing through.

Test websites and apps

Effort: Low

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: $10 or more per test.

Companies need feedback on their websites, and you could get paid for sharing your thoughts on web design, content, and usability.

Testing is an easy, creative way to make money in your spare time. Sites like UserTesting pay $10 per 20-minute test; do one every lunch break and you’ll find it soon adds up.

Since so much online life happens on mobile devices, you’ll need a working phone or tablet. Software Testing Help offers tips for getting mobile testing jobs, plus links to mobile testing job portals.

Similarly, you can volunteer to take part in focus groups. Designers, copywriters, product teams, and marketers are always looking for fresh feedback on their ideas, campaigns, or user experiences. Your input helps them shape better products and messaging, and in return, you might get a small incentive like a gift card, cash reward, or early access to something cool.

There are plenty of websites that connect everyday people with companies running focus groups. Sites like User Interviews, Respondent, and TestingTime regularly post paid opportunities for participants from all walks of life. You’ll typically answer a few screening questions to see if you’re a good fit, then hop on a call or Zoom session to share your thoughts.

To identify companies that might need feedback, look for early stage startups, agencies testing new creative, or businesses launching new products. Keep an eye on startup directories like Product Hunt, or sign up for newsletters like BetaList or Startup Digest, which spotlight companies in launch mode. 

Sell your art

Effort: High

Leverage: High

Startup costs: 💸💸💸

Potential earnings: From $0 to $20,000 per month. This artist makes $22,000 a month selling her art online, while this one earns $2,300 to $66,000. 

If you’re artistic, selling your creations is a simple way to make money from your hobby—especially when you combine it with the print-on-demand model. Use software to model your illustrations on products such as t-shirts and mugs, then create an online store for your items. You’ll need to put time in, but you won’t have to pay for items until you sell them.

Still developing your craft? Sites like Buy Me a Coffee let people donate the cost of a coffee in return for your custom work, so you can earn while you’re still building a following.

Talented artists can also offer made-to-order illustrations for businesses or consumers through sites like Etsy or Fiverr.

Amber Fossey sells her charming illustrations on Instagram under the brand name Zeppelinmoon. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Amber Fossey (@zeppelinmoon)

Alternatively, you can use Shopify to sell your art directly to customers, giving you control over your pricing, inventory management, and creative output.

Provide house-sitting and pet-sitting services

Effort: Medium

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: Roughly $16 per hour for house sitting. Pet sitters make a similar rate.

House sitting and pet sitting are flexible gigs you can tailor to your schedule. To find opportunities, explore online platforms like TrustedHousesitters, HouseCarers, MindMyHouse, and Rover.

As a house sitter, you’ll care for clients’ homes while they’re away. Tasks could include collecting mail, watering plants, maintaining the pool or lawn, and ensuring the overall security of the property. You may also be tasked with basic maintenance such as vacuuming or taking out the trash.

Pet sitters, on the other hand, focus on homeowners’ furry, feathered, or scaled companions. Requirements may involve feeding, walking, washing, and playing with pets. You might also administer medications or provide companionship. 

Work as a mover, handyperson, or errand-runner

Effort: Low

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: From $45 to $120 per hour, depending on task complexity and experience.

There are plenty of apps for offering simple services like moving furniture, mounting televisions, and running errands. If you’re experienced with practical household tasks, this could be an opportunity to market your skills. Use the work as a side hustle or turn it into a full-blown online business.

Here’s a list of apps that connect handypersons and task contractors with clients:

• TaskRabbit: A general app for finding and offering handy services such as home delivery, shelf mounting, gardening, and more.
• Handy: Another general app for handyperson services, Handy also includes listings for plumbing and electrical tasks.
• Fancy Hands: For assistant gigs of all types, including picking up dry cleaning and walking dogs.
• Thumbtack: This platform rewards specialization, connecting customers with local pros from handypersons to wedding DJs to photographers.

Sell secondhand clothes

Effort: Medium

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸💸

Potential earnings: Variable.

Look in your closet and dresser. How much clothing is just sitting there, unworn? If your items are in good condition, you may be able to get money for them. Selling your clothes is an easy part-time side hustle you can pair with annual spring cleaning or turn into a small business. 

Once you’ve tried selling your own used clothes, consider buying, curating, and reselling thrifted collections.

There are a number of websites and apps you can use to sell your clothes.

• ThredUp: For selling everyday clothes that are still in good condition in a relatively hands-off way.
• Poshmark: For selling trendy, mid-range, and everyday fashion.
• Depop: Popular with Gen Z and best for vintage, streetwear, and quirky fashion pieces.
• Vinted: Known for being easy to use with no seller fees. Great for selling high-street and casual fashion.
• Rebag: Specializes in buying and selling genuine luxury handbags and accessories.
• LePrix: A marketplace that partners with professional luxury consignment boutiques to resell authenticated high-end designer items.
• The Real Real: For designer and high-end fashion items.
• Facebook Marketplace: For selling clothes to your local community.

Remember that these apps will take a percentage of your sales. They can also charge listing and shipping fees. If you can manage your own logistics, consider starting an ecommerce store instead. Stores like Fashionably Yours, an online consignment shop that buys and sells pre-owned designer clothing, operate both online and in-store.

Become an online juror

Effort: Medium

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: Usually $5 to $10 per case.

Lawsuits are popular in America, with more than 60 million cases each year. Often, the more than one million lawyers working in the US need practice presenting their cases to real people. That’s where you come in.

Online juror website eJury pays people to sit on virtual juries. Once you’ve met the site’s conditions (you must be a US citizen who is not employed in a legal profession, among other requirements), you simply log in, review the facts of the case, and submit your verdict. Verdicts aren’t legally binding, but they can help lawyers identify strengths and weaknesses in their arguments and decide how to present their case in court.

Do as many or as few cases as you want—each will earn you $5 to $10. You won’t get rich being an online juror, but you can certainly earn some extra spending money.

Answer questions

Effort: Low

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: Surveys typically pay anywhere from 50¢ to $50 each. 

If you’re a professional or an expert in a particular field, you can get paid to answer questions in your area of expertise. Simply apply, and once your credentials are verified, you can start making money right away on sites like JustAnswer.com. 

If you’re a health care professional, you can use platforms like Sermo and InCrowd, which connect healthcare professionals with short, quick “micro-surveys” that typically pay $25 to $100 depending on the topic. 

If you’re in a field like marketing, software, or finance, you can try Respondent.io, which pays professionals to do one-on-one interviews for $100 to $500 per session, or AlphaSights, which connects high-level professionals with companies doing market research. 

Everyday consumers can check out Survey Junkie and Pinecone Research for quick surveys in exchange for cash or points. 

Become a home chef

Effort: Medium

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸💸

Potential earnings: $20 to $50 per meal, or an average of $34 an hour.

Turn your culinary skills into cash by working as a home chef. 

If you’re a casual cook, online platforms like Mealawe, Shef, and Eatwith connect you with individuals seeking home-cooked meals for delivery or communal enjoyment. You’ll typically set your prices per serving, with earnings ranging from $20 to $50 per meal. In most cases, you’ll cook in your own kitchen, but some platforms allow cooking in clients’ kitchens.

For experienced chefs, catering small events or offering private services can be lucrative. Set personalized menus, cook on- or off-site, and command premium rates, depending on the occasion and number of guests. 

Private chef services can range from $550 a week to $425 for a meal for four people depending on the calibre of chef and service. Local regulations and licensing may apply, so be sure to research the requirements in your area.

Overall, being a home chef offers the flexibility to work on your own terms and share your passion for food. However, it requires planning, marketing, and ensuring compliance with local regulations.

Tune pianos

Effort: Medium

Leverage: Medium

Startup costs: 💸💸💸

Potential earnings: Roughly $18 to $50 per hour; average is $39,000 per year.

Pianos are one of the few instruments most players cannot tune themselves. Becoming a piano tuner requires training and equipment. Getting certified with the Piano Technicians Guild may increase your earning potential and help you attract clientele.

There are a few routes for getting started as a piano tuner. One option is to build a client base through word-of-mouth recommendations and by partnering with piano stores, music schools, and concert venues. Websites like Thumbtack can also connect you with clients in your area who need piano-tuning services.

Babysit

Effort: Medium

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: Average is $15.48 per hour.

America has fewer babysitters than it needs. For generations, parents entrusted teenagers (often neighbors) to look after their kids, but attitudes have changed, and contemporary parents are less comfortable letting other children mind theirs.

As a result, today’s average babysitter is 37 years old.

So, depending on your location and experience, it’s not uncommon to charge $10 to $25 per hour, per child. Getting Red Cross certifications in First Aid, CPR, and advanced child-care training, will make you even more attractive to parents.

Word-of-mouth referrals are helpful, but you can also use f apps and websites to manage babysitting gigs. Here are five that can get you started:

• Care.com
• UrbanSitter
• Bambino
• Sitter Pro
• Sittercity

Join clinical trials

Effort: Low to high

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: $150 to $13,000 per trial, according to one study of Phase 1 clinical trial participants.

Clinical trials need volunteers who fit specific parameters to test drugs or hypotheses. 

Clinical trials can involve participating in new treatments, drugs, or screening techniques, answering health and lifestyle questionnaires, giving blood or other samples, and more. Sometimes they can even be fun, like this trial from 2019 that compared the effectiveness of video game fitness programs versus standard exercise. 

Payment depends on factors like how invasive the study is, how much time it takes, and whether it presents any health risks. It’s worth noting that compensation generally is intended to make participating easier, but not to incentivize it.

Flip furniture

Effort: High

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸💸💸

Potential earnings: Earnings vary. This furniture flipper makes more than $3,000 a month. 

Over 12 million tons of furniture are thrown out every year. Not only does that hurt our environment, but it’s also a wasted opportunity. If you’ve got time, can transport furniture, and don’t mind a little elbow grease, flipping furniture is a great way to make money from home.

There are several ways to do it. One is to find high-end pieces online or at flea markets, then upsell them in your own store, as Flippers does. You can also buy worn-out furniture and spruce it up for resale.

You’ll need to invest money upfront for buying and storing furniture, and for tools, supplies, and a workspace to fix up the pieces that need it. The upside is, in most areas, you can find cheap furniture. And if you’re willing to give it a clean and a paint job, you can sell those pieces for hundreds of dollars.

Become a fitness instructor

Effort: Medium to high

Leverage: Medium

Startup costs: 💸💸💸

Potential earnings: On average, $26 an hour. 

The American fitness, health, and gym industry is projected to be worth nearly $42 billion in 2025. While most of that revenue goes to nationwide health club chains, plenty also goes to individual trainers offering fitness classes.

These days, you can teach in person, online, or both. 

First, you’ll need certifications. Check with your local gym or fitness center and see what certifications they require. Exams can cost anywhere from a couple of hundred to thousands of dollars. Some gyms pay by the hour, others by the head (i.e., the number of students in your class). Developing a unique teaching style can help you create a following of loyal students, which can lead to more classes.

Taking your workouts to the web like @MrandMrsMuscle can also help you build a following. They put their videos on Instagram and YouTube, and have even developed a fitness app.

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A post shared by MrandMrsMuscle (@mrandmrsmuscle)

All of this has earned them more than 1.5 million followers and a steady stream of passive income. 

Organize other people’s things

Effort: Medium

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: Professional organizers make an average of $55,000 per year.

If Marie Kondo taught us anything, it’s that sometimes all we need is a little help organizing the things in our lives. If you have a knack for organizing and like helping others, becoming a professional organizer could be the side gig of your dreams.

Clients hire organizers to create systems for streamlining their home and work lives, managing their digital information and time, applying feng shui principles to their living spaces, and more. Success means understanding your clients and creating organizational systems that work for them.

Become a translator

Effort: Low

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: On average, $26.19 an hour. 

In an increasingly connected world, fluency in other languages is an opportunity to make extra money.

You can find translation gigs on sites like Translate.com, Unbabel, and even Fiverr, although some require proving fluency with a test that will also determine your rate.

Combining your translation skills with other specialized knowledge—from web development to editing to health care and research—can be even more lucrative. Try Tethras for translation jobs for mobile app developers and American High-Tech Transcription and Reporting to work on government and law enforcement projects.

Become a mystery shopper

Effort: Low

Leverage: Low

Startup costs: 💸

Potential earnings: Average pay is $24.21 per hour, with significant regional variability. 

If you like shopping, why not get paid to do it? Mystery shoppers report their experiences in specific stores; they’re usually called in response to complaints or concerns about said stores.

Duties can include photographing the storefront, buying products, and recording the shopping experience from start to finish. Compensation depends on the tasks at hand. 

Before getting started, beware of mystery shopper scams—legitimate sites will never ask you to pay to become a mystery shopper. Also, check the fine print before accepting gigs since travel and other expenses may not be reimbursed. 

While this gig won’t replace your day job, it can earn you extra cash while you’re already out and about. Sites like Bestmark and IntelliShop make it easy to find suitable mystery shopper gigs.

How to make money in real life and online

Whether you’re selling your art, offering niche expertise, or simply renting out something you own, remember that building momentum for new income streams takes time.

These creative ways to make money are different from your typical money-making tasks, but they all need a creative person to do one thing: understand your clients’ needs and desires and develop outside-the-box solutions to fulfilling them.