643: 10 Creative Side Hustles That Make Real Money

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1:14Oh, what's up? What's up? Nick Oloper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show because your nine to five may make you a living, but your five to nine makes you alive. It's that time of year again. It's time for our Thanksgiving tradition of showcasing some of the most interesting and creative side hustles that have come across my desk this year, starting with number one, mobile gift wrapping. Is this something you could do in your area? Michelle Hensley is a longtime side hustle show listener, and she's grown her business niftypackage.co to a$300 ,000 a year business. I truly started Nifty Package out of a necessity.

1:47I was a pastor's wife, homeschooling children and running a nonprofit. I was in a position to give things away, not to have to make an income. What do you do with a pastor's wife after her husband passes away when she's 50 years old? Now I was on a journey to create an income for myself at age 51. After I got home from an interview, one of my sons said, Mom, you had a gift basket business. Why don't you start that again? So ultimately I made an art out of gift giving in order to bring joy to both the recipient and the giver. My gift basket and mobile gift wrapping services is niftypackage.co. In 2018, while praying, I was looking out my window and I noticed and realized my van was sitting there empty.

2:27I thought, gosh, I already make gifts. I wonder if anybody wraps gifts. And does anyone go around and even do that? Is there such a thing as a mobile wrapping? Can I put all my gift wrapping paper in my van and drive around and serve people? I put up a webpage that day and I got a call from a current client within a week asking if I'd come and wrap all those gifts. I was so excited. I piled everything into the van to take care of that job, brushing my hands when I was done. And then I realized I forgot to label every gift. So I had to go back and rewrap every gift. I learned a huge lesson, which blossomed into a business.

2:59In March of 2019, I got a call from Too Faced Cosmetics asking if I could do a large scale gift design and gift wrap. I was so excited. This was right up my alley. Their brand is very similar to mine, which is a little edgy, but still very beautiful. We got a million hits on that Instagram feed on their site. And then in August of 2019, I got a call from the Kardashian estate manager asking if I'd consider creating a design for Kim and Kanye. I was not sure who they were because I didn't watch TV at all. This is where I transitioned from pastor's wife, grandmother, mom to business owner. I piled all my paper in the van and headed out to their home.

3:34My own team was there with me and everyone was watching me from her team. She didn't like any of the five or six ideas I presented to her. I walked outside. I'm like, Lord, you brought me here and I'm not going home without a sale. So I walked in and I suggested a Fierce Shoki gift wrap and created that out of fabric and she loved it. And that's what started the celebrity gift wrapping. We continued to get referrals and the brand continued to expand across the nation. I started training on how to gift wrap many women and teams all over. So we have several nifty corporate gift wrap teams everywhere, eventually becoming the number one mobile gift wrapping business in the nation.

4:08So although we do luxury gift baskets, the mobile gift wrapping is 70 % of our business. I've had many reach out to me and ask me how I ran my program. So now currently I'm starting to franchise and license across the nation because this is absolutely a new opportunity. It's a perfect hustle, especially for the holidays. You can do it with one person. You can do it with a team. So typical sales could be well over$200 ,000 for the season. In reality, for one person, it could be 30 to 50 ,000. So what's next for Nifty and myself? Well, I wrote a book so you can go to my personal brand website, which is michellemhensley.com and you can read it, put your information in there and all that it would be is the cost for shipping or you can buy it on Amazon.

4:49I'm working to raise funds to start the franchise, which is already in place, but it just costs a lot of money in the state of California to do this. Also, I license and I teach others how to run their own profitable mobile gift wrapping business. You can join my Unwrapping Your Mobile Gift Wrapping Business Masterclass and I teach my gift framework there. Thank you again, Nick, for this opportunity. I look forward to talking to anybody who has an interest. They can totally email me, michelle at niftypackage.co or call 714-863-6058. Happy wrapping. Happy wrapping indeed. Now we'll link up all of Michelle's resources, including her book, Master the Business of Mobile Gift Wrapping, where creativity meets convenience.

5:27She sent me a copy, which of course was very nicely wrapped in it. She says the average price for a nicely wrapped gift is$25. So you can start to see how the revenue in this business can start to add up, especially if you land a few corporate customers who are sending gifts out to their clients or partners, employees, and you may not need even a celebrity client like Michelle did to start to get some pretty serious business there. Next up on this list of creative side hustles is print on demand candles. Now, sure, we've covered print on demand on the show before. We've even made some money doing it ourselves, my wife and I, but it's always been t-shirts, stickers, mugs.

6:01Never knew there was such a thing as print-on-demand candles. Francisco Rivera started his candle-focused Etsy shop in early 2023 and, according to CNBC, sold over$450 ,000 worth of product last year at an estimated 30 % to 50 % profit margin, which is actually a really strong margin for a physical product business where he doesn't have any inventory risk. That was enough for him to leave his tutoring job and pursue the business full-time, full-time in air quotes because the CNBC article also has him saying he only spends around 20 minutes a day on his shop. And that's one of the advantages of a model like this in that you can make sales even when you're not working, but there obviously is work involved in product research and creating and uploading new designs.

6:42Francisco uses Printify as his fulfillment partner and mentioned that neutral colored organic candles perform well with his witty and eye-catching labels and that he uses Canva to create those. Now this made me super curious. What other random products could you do print on demand with. In Printify's catalog, I found some interesting options, including pickleball sets that can make a good gift, right? Baby onesies, kids shoes that look like Crocs, but aren't officially Crocs, of course, and some Christmas ornaments. Then you figure out what niche you want to play in and what kind of clever design that might make a good gift.

7:16And it's a pretty low risk business. All it costs is 20 cents to create an Etsy listing. And you can see if anybody wants to buy your thing. The Etsy sales system integrates directly with Printify, which handles the production and the shipping to the end customer. Now, one downside to this and to other print on demand businesses is the issue of copycats. Pretty much as soon as you find something that sells, other sellers and research tools can see that and are often going to blatantly rip off or copy your work, which can dilute the listings and push your products down in the search results. And still, Francisco says it's best to focus on creating new candle ideas rather than spending too much time trying to fight with copycats.

7:56Now, what's the next big thing for print on demand? If t-shirts are too saturated, maybe there's an up and coming product category that could be a blue ocean for you. Creative side hustle number three is pay what you want poetry. Hi, my name is John McCollum. I'm 22 years old. I live in Nashville, Tennessee, where I am currently a full-time poet. My business is JM Street Poetry and my website is jmstreetpoetry.com. My business basically consists of me sitting at a table with a vintage typewriter. Strangers come up to me, tell me what they want a poem about. I write it. They pay however much they want for it.

8:29And that's it. I first was inspired to do this when I was an English teacher. And I was talking to one of my friends and they saw a guy doing something similar in New York. And I had an old typewriter that someone had given me when they moved away. And I was so inspired by the story of a man sitting outside writing poems for strangers all day. I thought it was beautiful and creative and sounded like a great way to spend a Saturday. So I bought a folding table, went to a busy street in Nashville where there's a lot of shopping, and I wrote a sign on the back of a manila envelope that said, Poems for sale, your topic, your price.

9:04I was expecting to maybe write a handful, but the entire day I had a line. People were paying anywhere from$1 to$100 for a poem. I was writing about everything and just having these wonderful interactions with strangers. It was the most creative day that I had had thus far, and it was incredible. So I started going out every weekend I could, and if school ever wrapped up early, I would be out there writing poems for people. I bought a nicer chair and a tablecloth, and it was incredible. Saturdays, I'd make anywhere from$400 to$800. Weekdays were quite a bit slower, but still fun. And so when my school year ended and I had a summer to figure out what I was going to do next.

9:44I decided to try and take it full time. So I'd go out during all of the busy hours and figure out the scheduling, figure out when people were out, when they weren't out. And all of a sudden, people started trying to book me for events. So we made business cards, designed a website, made an Instagram, and started trying to book more corporate events and weddings where I would just sit there with the typewriter and people could come up to me. It's been an incredible journey of now being a full-time poet. I just can't explain the joy of working for myself and doing this thing that I care about so much.

10:17My average week, I make anywhere from$9 to$1 ,200 working 15 to 18 hours a week, which is incredible because it gives me time to work on my personal writing and my personal poetry. As far as next steps go for the business, I really want to build more of an online presence, and I hope to be able to publish a poetry collection eventually. You can And follow along, find out more on Instagram at JM Street Poetry or by checking out my website. Thank you so much for having me on. Huge fan. Love what you do here. JM Street Poetry. Give John a follow over there. How cool is that? What a fun and random business.

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13:06Look at them getting that three letter domain. Quo.com slash side hustle. And if you've got existing numbers with another service, Quo will port them over at no extra charge. Quo, no missed calls, no missed customers. All right, three down, seven creative side hustles to go, including a couple honorable mentions we'll sneak in. Number four on this list is virtual mechanic. In fact, the six-figure virtual mechanic. And when I think about jobs that can be done remotely versus jobs that really need to be done in person. Car mechanic is one that fits pretty squarely in the, you know, gotta be there hands-on category, right?

13:39Well, Chris Pyle is proving me wrong, earning an average of$14 ,000 a month as a virtual mechanic through the Q &A site, justanswer.com. Now, the site's been around for a long time, and Chris has been on it for a long time too, since 2006. It is a place where you can connect with experts, and those experts get paid for their advice. On the customer side, Just Answer charges a monthly membership fee ranging from around$30 to$125 per month, depending on what kind of experts you'd like help from. It's interesting to me that it's packaged as a membership when I imagine most people coming to the site for the first time just have one specific problem that they want solved.

14:19And the complaints about Just Answer online seem to mirror that apparent disconnect with customers saying, hey, I didn't expect to get charged for the next month. But on the expert side, you can earn 20 to 50 % of what the customer paid to answer their question. And there are over 100 different categories in which you can join as an expert compared to other marketplaces. That fee is actually really steep. Normally you would see the platform taking 20 to 30 % as a fulfillment or matchmaking fee for new members, not 80%, but each question, each question individually might only be worth two to$20 depending on the category and complexity.

14:52But still, if you enjoy answering questions, you can knock them out quickly you can make good money, as Chris's virtual mechanic example proves. Chris originally trained as a transmission tech with Ford and stumbled upon this online side hustle turned full-time income while he was researching how to fix a transmission he was working on. It didn't take long before he signed himself up as an expert on Just Answer and started answering questions after work. He told CNBC that he liked the challenge of diagnosing a motor that he couldn't see, touch, or smell and realized he had a knack for virtually helping people solve their mechanical problems.

15:26Chris made$500 in his first month and$1 ,000 in his second and eventually eclipsed his day job salary and now far exceeding what he used to make at that old day job. And one drawback here is that Chris is really putting in the hours. In this CNBC article, he says he managed to take this side hustle full-time in 2012 and that it fits really well with his lifestyle and pays better than his old job, but that he still works every single day at an average of 40 to 60 hours a week. It looks like there's a pretty extensive vetting process to get accepted as a just answer expert. And there are all the career categories that you might expect, like law and medicine and finance and technology and home repair.

16:08But there are also some expert slots in academic tutoring and homework help, in veterinary care, in antiques, in dream interpretation, and even in etiquette. So maybe there's some less competitive categories on there too. So that's Just Answer, a wide-ranging pay-for-advice site that might make sense to test out as a potential new source of side hustle income, even in industries that are traditionally pretty hands-on, like car repair. I was surprised when I saw that headline about the six-figure virtual mechanic. Creative side hustle number five is the high-end dorm room designer. This year, I came across Shelley Gates, a fourth-grade teacher in Mississippi, who turned her eye for design into a really lucrative side hustle, designing college dorm rooms.

16:54Constraint breeds creativity, right? Here, you got a small space to work with and kind of a tight window in which to do the work. Now, Shelly's rates vary based on a number of different factors, but can go as high as$20 ,000 to$30 ,000. How crazy is that? And you'll hear her explain in the upcoming clip, she's got a wait list of clients and has already surpassed her teaching salary. Here's Shelly explaining how the business got its super fast start. Hey guys, my name is Shelly Gates and I own a company called Mary Margaret Designs where I focus on custom dorm room design. My website is marymargaretdesigns.com.

17:28However, TikTok has become quite the platform for seeing my rooms and getting updated on dorm trends for 2025. My TikTok is also marymargaretdesigns. The idea for my dorm design business really started by accident. I've always loved design and beautiful surroundings and of course shopping. So when my daughter was a freshman at Mississippi State University, I had the most fun creating her room. I put the pictures of her room on social media for friends and family to see and it gained a ton of attention. The following year, her sophomore dorm was featured on TikTok by an influencer and it really took off.

18:07Here in the South, especially SEC schools, beautiful dorms are the norm and people love to see all the rooms. So this gave me the idea for my business. Also, since I'm a fourth grade teacher with my summers free, I thought this was perfect for a little summer side hustle. Little did I know that this side hustle would turn into 12 to 18 hour days in the summer to get everything done. The TikTok exposure was really great because it helped me book clients for my first year. And because I was advertising exclusively on social media, that free advertisement made my startup costs non-existent. But that first year was rough and I learned a lot.

18:49I took on far too many clients and I realized that I was stretched a mile wide and an inch deep. So I realized I had to limit my clients for the following year. I'm so proud to say that my business has become quite lucrative and I've already exceeded my current salary. Even though I love my fourth graders, I eventually plan to stop teaching and focus on this full-time. I have such exciting plans for 2025. I'm hiring additional designers to expand the business, especially since I have such a long wait list. I really want each room to be unique. So I spend months interpreting the girl's vision into the perfect dorm room.

19:26I really want to provide a turnkey room. So I order absolutely everything from the custom pieces to the practical items like organization, even down to the light bulbs and cleaning supplies. But surprisingly, a big part of my service is coordinating move-in day. People always find it funny because I hire movers for the room. But once you've carried heavy furniture up 15 flights of stairs in the 100 degree heat, you quickly realize that is money well spent. I also do a lot of consulting for rooms across the country. So I'm planning to expand that part of my business as well. After three years in business though, I can really just tell everybody that my favorite part is the relationship that I form, especially with the moms.

20:12Sending your child off to college is so hard. Think how hard it is to send your child to kindergarten. Now multiply that times a million. I can really empathize with the moms too, because I've sent two girls off to college and my son will be starting college next fall. It's a huge life change letting your little baby bird leave the nest. So with that in mind, I really limit my clients because I want to invest in my families and encourage, love, and offer support during this time. I am so proud of what Mary Margaret Designs has become and all the exciting opportunities that await in the future.

20:49And of course, when I look at some of Shelley's designs, you can check them out at MaryMargaretDesigns underscore on Instagram, MaryMargaretDesigns on TikTok. I can't help but think back to my own dorm room experience where, you know, we just thought we were geniuses when we figured out how to loft my bed and stack up some cinder blocks at old newspapers to support a couch underneath it. What a wild business. And just a fun example of doing something she was going to do anyway, sharing about it and getting such a positive reaction. Do you ever have those moments when you do something that is second nature to you, but other people are like, wait, wait, how did you do that?

21:25Or they ask, can I hire you to do that for me? That's a good sign. Pay attention to that. Pay attention to what wants to happen. That's creative side hustle number five, the dorm room design side hustle. Number six is somewhat similar. This is the virtual home studio design service. I want to introduce you to Kevin Shen, who has found a unique niche side hustle helping people's, I assume full-time business at this time, helping people set up professional home studios. And unlike Shelly, his work is done 100 % virtual, 100 % online. So this is one that taps into the rise of remote work and virtual content creation.

22:00Kevin recognized this. There's this growing need for people to have high quality home offices, podcast studios, video setups. I mean, if you want to impress people on Zoom calls or step up your YouTube game, his is the service you need. And he now charges$8 ,000 per client to do this studio design consulting. And if you go through his testimonials, it's like a who's who of online business. He's got Sam and Sean from My First Million. He's got Steph Smith, Jay Klaus, Ryan Dice, Justin Jackson, Neville Medora, lots more. And looking at all their setups, they all look kind of similar, like there's a consistent vibe going on, but you can't argue they look good.

22:36And it kind of makes me want to step up my own studio game. So how it works, Kevin offers these consultations over Zoom where he walks clients through everything they're going to need to create this polished professional look that they're going for. And then he provides this detailed list of the recommended gear and equipment and supplies based on the client's goals and budget, obviously paying attention to lighting, decor, sound quality, and even, you know, will help you troubleshoot any issues as you go along. And since it's all remote, he can serve clients all over the world. Now, Kevin's customer base includes YouTubers and podcasters and course creators like you might expect, but also remote employees and even executives who need or want more polished setups for virtual meetings.

23:18Now, he also sells his design expertise as an online course. There's like the high-end consulting price, right? The$8 ,000 done with you type of service. But there's also the more DIY version at dreamstudiocourse.com where for$500, you can get the self-serve on demand version will teach you how to do this. And it looks like YouTube and Twitter are his primary traffic drivers, and they appear to be working quite well. Now, Kevin's business is an example of a niche business that taps into a few common themes on the show. First, it piggybacks on the broader trend of remote work and video creation and even video podcasting now.

23:56And it's got some level of built in virality because when other creators see you've upgraded your space, they're naturally going to ask how you did it. And I think it illustrates the power of niching down. It's not a virtual interior design service. That would be too broad. It's specific for video studio spaces. And that apparently was a wide open blue ocean to stake a claim to. It's kind of like Shelley. It's tough to compete as a generic interior designer. But when you niche down to interior design for dorm rooms, all of a sudden you're the only game in town. So the question is, is there a similar niche within a niche where you could become the undisputed market leader in?

24:34Remember, if you can't be first, be different. Where can you play where you can be a market of one? You can check out Kevin on all the socials at the Kevin Shen, S-H-E-N. And one honorable mention to throw in here on the list is a listener sent me the story of basically being a professional tattletale, which maybe makes it sound a little bit negative. I guess there's a law in New York against idling vehicles. Hey, this burns unnecessary gas. It creates unnecessary pollution. So the city says, we're going to fine you if we catch you idling for too long. And where the side hustle comes in is you as the do-good citizen catch the idling vehicle in the act and you record the video evidence, New York will pay you 25 % of the fine that they eventually collect, which could end up being several hundred dollars or even more if it's a repeat offender.