751: The Most Random Ways You’ve Made Extra Money

0:00The Side Hustle Show is designed to help you make more money, but do you have a firm grasp on your overall financial picture? I was stuck in spreadsheets and logging into a dozen different accounts for far too long, which is why I'm excited to partner with Monarch for this episode. Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything, your accounts, your investments, your saving goals, and your spending, and does it all in one place. Plus, you can get your first year of Monarch Core for half off. That's just$50 with promo code SIDEHUSTLE. Now, I probably check the Monarch app more often than I should, but it's helped my wife and I celebrate certain net worth milestones.

0:36It's helped us visualize our spending and get honest about where it all goes. It's helped us reallocate funds in an intentional way and just be less stressed about little expenses when they pop up. Use promo code SIDEHUSTLE at Monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core for half off at just$50. dollars that's 50 off your first year at monarch.com with code side hustle what's up what's up nick loper 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 last month i put the call out for listeners to share the most random ways they've made extra money and i think me getting paid to drink beer is probably at the top of my list.

1:24A woman approached me in the parking garage of my building in Atlanta, and that was her opening line. You want to get paid to drink beer? I'm like, well, mom, listen in. What's the catch here? So it turns out she worked for a market research company that was trying to recruit taste testers for this upcoming product launch. And she told me, hey, we need more people. So I invited a couple of friends to join as well. And we all got paid like 75 bucks to sample and give our feedback on what became Miller Chill before it came out. So that was pretty cool. And actually, later, we lived near a place called the National Food Lab in California.

2:00So went over there and did a few more paid taste testings over the years. Always like a good market research gig. They're a lot of fun. But our first caller sounds like they didn't do any research before signing up for his weird side hustle. Hey, Nick and Side Hustle Nation. It's Joe Salcihai from Stacking Benjamins, the greatest money show on earth where people like Nick tell some great stories about ways that they've not just made money, but the way they save money, the way they earn, invest, make more money work, all the above. My weird side hustle was actually when I was a teenager. I often had many, many jobs as a teenager.

2:36We didn't have any type of allowance. I think if you're not in the country, you couldn't do this one because here's what happened. I help load chicken trucks. This side hustle, I don't even remember how much I was getting paid, but I got hired to go to a farm and load a truck with chickens. And they were in these coops. And my job was to take the chicken out of its coop and shove it into the travel coop where it would go get loaded on the truck and be taken to slaughter. And I know this sounds horrible, but this is Midwest, right? Middle America. So I go out there, they give me these gloves. They show us how to do it.

3:18The guy makes it look real easy. You just reach in, you grab the chicken, you put it into the travel coop. How hard can that be? Well, here's what happens in real life. I opened up the chicken coop. I reach my hand in, the chicken freaks out. You can't hesitate because the chicken will freak out. the chicken freaks out. I go to grab it. I can't grab it. I finally grab it. I start to get out of the coop. It panics even more. I let it go. Chicken goes running away. The dude that owns the place is running after the chicken and I'm apologizing profusely. And then it happens again. And then it happens again.

3:51Finally, the guy goes, listen, here's how you do it. You reach in, you swipe, you grab both legs, you pull as hard as you can. My brother did this with me and we make it to the first break and my brother and I just look at each other and we're like, do you hate this? And he's like, yeah, I hate it. And we left. We didn't tell anybody. Probably should have told him. The guy later on, my dad made us call and apologize. But that is the weirdest and the worst side hustle I ever had. I would not recommend to anyone doing the side hustle where you load chicken trucks. That goes nowhere very fast. Nick, fantastic, hilarious episode idea.

4:26Thanks for including me. Joe from Stacking Benjamins, everybody. I don't know if anybody's going to top chicken grabbing for the randomness factor there. My one-day teenage side hustle was helping cut out dog biscuits. A friend of a friend's mom had some organic dog biscuit bakery. So we went to this commercial kitchen, and I want to say I got paid like$10 an hour to cookie cutter the dough. The work was not particularly hard. It was just tedious and didn't smell great, but also didn't have to manhandle any chickens. So trade-offs there. This is Cody Berman, author of Retire By 30 and host of the Financial Independence Show.

5:02And my side hustle story starts in Australia. I moved over there for six months. My wife was studying abroad. I was living abroad and I needed a job. So I applied to probably over 15 different places, got rejected from all of them and decided to sign up as an Uber Eats delivery driver. But I didn't have my license, so I couldn't drive. So I decided to do Uber Eats bicycle. I also didn't have a bicycle. So I went on a website called Gumtree. It's basically the Australian Craigslist. Spent$25 and got a pink bike that only worked in one gear. And it was a bit too small. Mind you, the suburb I was delivering in was super hilly.

5:37I remember the end of that first shift. My legs felt like they were on fire. I wasn't making crazy money, but I told myself, hey, I'm getting paid to work out. The worst part though, after a couple of weeks, I had accumulated a couple one-star reviews. Why? Because I was sweating on people's food while I was delivering it to them. Today, my brand is all about passive income. This is probably the least passive side hustle in history. So here are my pro tips if you want to learn from my mistakes. If you're going to do Uber Eats on a bike, get a bike that works. If you're in a hilly area, consider something electric or just choose a different side hustle.

6:13I like the tenacity here, Cody. And maybe this was the spark to develop some more time leveraged income streams. If you want more Cody in your life, be sure to check out the FI show, but also his episode here on the path to an extra$1 ,000 a month with simple digital products. That's episode 665 in your archives. Now, side note on getting paid to work out. I love that mental shift. I read this study somewhere, maybe it was Atomic Habits or somewhere else, about hotel cleaning staff making beds, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms. All of that movement basically constituted a workout. So these researchers told the cleaners that their job counted as a workout, and the other half, they didn't tell anything.

6:57The half that they told that they were basically getting paid to work out ended up burning more calories than before and decidedly more than the control group. So that subtle mindset shift when you're doing any kind of manual labor, definitely worthwhile. My name is Chandler Bull, selfpublishing.com. the most random way that I ever earned side hustle money is selling snacks during lunch in school. And so it all kind of started when my mom sent me to scout camp and she sent me with a bunch of snacks and I came back with a wad of cash and a switchblade knife. And I think that was my first iteration of, hey, I can just sell this extra stuff for money.

7:37And then we turned it into a business in my entrepreneurship class in high school. We sold snacks during lunch. And so we would go to Sam's Club once every two weeks. We would basically load up my buddy's Prius till the wheels were about to scrub. And then we would go work the lunches and we would sell drinks, snacks, all that stuff. We ended up making$8 ,000 in profit in about two and a half months. I got to keep$2 ,000 of that profit. And so I got paid to go to school. I always thought that was the coolest thing ever. And it was so successful that the next year that they shut it down and they wouldn't let anybody run that kind of business, but two grand to go to high school.

8:14Chandler, I love this because I did pretty much the exact same thing at Scout Camp, load up from Costco before the trip with as much candy and junk food as I could pack in, undercut the camp run trading post or just offer the convenience of not having to make the trek over there. Easy money. It was great, but limited by how much you could carry in since it was, you know, a few miles of a hike. But now our youngest just had his first taste of this where together with a friend, they sold shave ice on the side of the road here in the neighborhood. Hot day,$3 shave ice. The friend's mom supplied the machine and they reimbursed her for the syrup.

8:47I think they made like 25 bucks each for an hour or an hour and a half worth of selling. Pretty good gig for an eight-year-old. And of course, now he just wants to do that like every day. What's going on, everybody? My name is Jason Butler. I run My Money Chronicles, which is a website that talks about personal finance and side hustles. I like to think of myself as a serial entrepreneur. I've done all types of things such as doing focus groups, selling things online, surveys and even running a website. My interesting random way to make money, extra money has to do with flipping things. And of course, I flipped like your normal items such as clothes, toys, board games and that type of stuff.

9:28something that surprisingly sold were empty telephone boxes like iphone boxes or samsung phone boxes i read a while ago that somebody online was selling them so i figured that i should go on and try it as well i'm gonna listen a couple samsung boxes and they sell within a week so yeah that was my weird surprising way to make some extra money yeah have a good day thanks now jason's on to something a little bit bigger than just empty smartphone boxes by the way i went down a little bit of a rabbit hole after hearing his clip and it turns out there's this whole mini invisible economy built around stuff that should technically be worthless so here's the logic if you're selling a used iphone or even a used pair of sneakers a pair of jordans or something even a sought-after like lego set having the original box could potentially double maybe even triple the price that you can get for it.

10:27So the resellers are happy to pay 20, 25 bucks for a box that is empty, has got nothing in it. So same thing with vintage tech manuals. Like nobody really needs the paper instruction book for their 1980s VCR, but it has value for collectors. And if you're like me and you send all those boxes straight to the recycle bin as soon as you get them, you can also check your snack drawer because there was apparently a Cheeto shaped like Charizard, the Pokemon, Cheetosard, they called it, sold for$350 originally on eBay, but then resold at auction for$87 ,000. So I got to make sure to check those Cheetos before the kids eat them all.

11:07Hi, this is Donna Westerkamp at donnawesterkamp.com. I walked into a yarn shop that was going out of business. And when I was done purchasing my great deals of yarn, I asked them what they were going to do with the rest of their inventory. And she said, well, just put your name here on this list and maybe the owner will call you. And I said, okay. And so the next day I got a phone call from the owner and she said, you're interested in the store? And I said, yes. And how much do you want? And she didn't know. And so I threw out a really low price. And she said, okay, you can have it and come pick it all up tomorrow.

11:53And so I ended up picking up a fairly good size yarn shop and sold it all on eBay. And then when I was tired of it and didn't want to do it anymore because I got sick, And so I turned around and sold the rest of it on Craigslist. And I sold it for as much as I paid for it originally. The inventory was atrocious and very difficult to handle. But I did it and I made a ton of money. Donna, this is awesome. Way to take a swing and make some money. Now, Donna did mention she was in the crafting niche already. So this wasn't completely out of left field. and that's actually where Shannon Jean recommended people start with liquidation and clearance auctions.

12:44This kind of simple to understand buy low sell high type of model. Start with what you know versus going into a product category that you've never really dealt with. Our episode with Shannon from earlier in the year is one of my favorites. It's a great one to check out the video version for because he's neck deep in screen sharing all the different auction sites and showing you where to click to see what's in the lot, the actual product manifest, and how to do your due diligence on that stuff, what's it actually worth. But definitely a fan of these simple buy low, sell high types of side hustles.

13:15That one with Shannon is episode 731, if you want to go back and check that out about the clearance and liquidation and pallets and stuff like that. We've got more awesome random listener side hustles, including renting out your backyard as an impromptu dog park, coming up right after this. You know that feeling when you finally finish a cleanup project you've been putting off? That's what switching to our partner Gusto feels like. Payroll, HR, benefits, all that admin chaos that's been piling up, finally organized in one place. Gusto is the online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses.

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14:27That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash side hustle. One more time, it's gusto, G-U-S-T-O dot com slash side hustle. You work hard for your money. Let's make sure it works just as hard for you. With Wealthfront, you earn more on every dollar with sophisticated, easy-to-use products. Their cash account provides up to 4.3 % variable APY with instant, no-fee withdrawals. And when you're ready, you can easily transfer your cash into an expert-built Wealthfront investing account. On top of the 3.3 % base APY from program banks, you also get a Side Hustle Show exclusive 3-month 0.75 % APY boost on up to$150 ,000 as a new cash account client.

15:10Then add another 0.25 % APY increase by direct depositing$1 ,000 a month and maintaining a funded investing account. Claim your boost today at Wealthfront.com slash hustle. Terms and conditions apply. This is a paid Wealthfront non-client endorsement, creating a conflict of interest. Client experiences vary. Wealthfront brokerage is not a bank. Base APY as of January 30th, 2026 and subject to change. Please see details in the episode description. Hey Nick, this is Bill Fortenberry with Fortenberry Marketing. I developed my company based off of a strategy that I created for my dad's business. He had no marketing budget and he had a Facebook page.

15:51And so I thought, why don't we try to use Facebook to market his business? And I came up with a strategy I call the 1-10-10 strategy. And it's simply one post a week. You put at least 10 pictures in the post and you share it in at least 10 local groups. And so that worked great for my dad's business. And that's not really my point that I want to make in this, but they worked great for my dad's business. And I thought, why don't I turn that into my own business as just running that strategy for people? And so I started to do that and I needed some test cases. And at the same time, my wife and I were downsizing and moving.

16:27We were also planning to take a missions trip to Ukraine to help out with a youth camp for kids that had been suffering from the war. And we needed to raise the funds to pay for that trip. And so we decided to have a yard sale and sell everything that we were getting rid of in downsizing the house. And I thought, why don't I try my marketing strategy for this yard sale? And so I did. So I used my 110-10 strategy for the yard sale. I did a single post. I ended up taking like 30 or 40 pictures, threw them into that one post, and then I shared it in all the local what's happening type of groups and community groups around our area.

17:06And just said, we're having this yard sale to raise money for sending us to Ukraine to help kids in the war. Here's some pictures of what we have for sale. and we ended up making more than$5 ,000 off of that yard sale just from that single post on Facebook. And so that's the most random way that I've made extra money. It wasn't really random since I already knew the strategy, but it provided me with a really good case study that I could then present to business owners when I was talking about my new business. One post, 10 pictures, 10 local groups. Bill, I like it. both the$5 ,000 yard sale and that cool free Facebook marketing strategy.

17:46Thanks for sharing that. We've got a few episodes on making money on Facebook with or without physical products. I'm happy to link those up in the show notes for this episode. Just hit the link in the episode description and it'll get you right over there. Most recently, we had Jeff Rose on late last year about the Facebook content monetization program. In Jeff's case, making something crazy like$1 ,000 a day. And we've had other episodes related to building an organic audience and marketing funnels as well. I actually tried out Jeff's strategy for a few months and did make some money with it.

18:19But the daily grind of having to source and create the curate the content, it was just that it was it was a grind. Now our next callers have found that some side hustles may or may not be at the same scale, but they do have sort of an elegant efficiency to them the kind where you can get paid for the same asset over and over again. Hey Nick, this is Brian Sadler from Wisconsin. I thought I'd share my latest side hustle. I'm doing e-bike rentals. I've got a couple state trails near me and a lot of campers, private campgrounds, state park campgrounds, and also water park resort area. And I thought after hearing their LA Scooters podcast, I actually reached out to that person that you had on and spoke to him a little bit and I tried out the method that he did of building a website before investing in any kind of e-bikes and really learned a lot from doing that and the other thing I did was I actually borrowed a neighbor's e-bike that happened to be the same brand that I was looking at trying to use and actually toured around to several campgrounds and took photos and got to know some of the owners, whether it's through email or in person.

19:35And they all love the idea because they thought it was a great thing that they could offer their guests also. Going into my second summer, it's been picking up a little bit more and really learned a lot. And it's been kind of a neat experience so far. Now I'm already thinking, how do I get this a little more self-sustaining and maybe step back from the actual deliveries and just focus more on growing it a little bit, but having someone that's a little more flexible that can maybe do half day rentals or hourly rentals, that's just something that I'm not willing to offer now because of my normal day jobs.

20:08So thanks for your podcast and take care. Thanks for that, Brian. The marketing lesson I'm hearing is go where target customers already are. In Brian's case, these state parks, private campgrounds, water resort areas where people might want to rent an e-bike. Like, it's a big, bulky, heavy, expensive item. They probably didn't bring them with them, but it would be fun to ride around while they're there. Not sure if Brian is doing any rev share with those venues, but it might make sense to make it a win for them to promote the bikes on site. And for reference, that mobility scooter rental episode is number 564 in your archives.

20:45It was a really fun one where Lenny Tim, my guest, didn't buy any scooters until he'd proven there was consistent demand for them, which actually sounded like it took a couple years of this low overhead local SEO effort, built out the site, followed the best practices, and then eventually started to get booking requests. And only then did he go out and buy the first scooters and begin fulfilling those booking requests. Sounds like Brian's business is more of an impulse rental rather than a book in advance type of thing like the mobility scooters would be. It probably needs to have more inventory on the ground that people can see and say, oh yeah, I want to go do that this afternoon.

21:24But still, I love an unconventional rental business. It's this game of acquisition costs versus rental rates versus depreciation versus resale. And we've seen guests doing it with everything from portable hot tubs to bridesmaid dresses, unconventional cash flowing assets. Now here's another example you might already be sitting on. Hi, I'm Marie Frey from Nova Scotia, Canada. Over the last few years, I've been really interested in creating new streams of income for our family outside of our day jobs, especially passive income, as we have three young kids, four and under, including twins. So obviously not a lot of spare time.

22:03So passive has really been the key. I will say the most random way we have made money over the past couple of years has been through an app called Sniff Spot. Essentially, an Airbnb for dogs. Conceptually, dog owners book our backyard on an hourly basis. It's very simple, very easy to set up. We just had to take a couple pictures and set the earlier price. All bookings are automatically accepted. So there's really no management whatsoever. We can, however, block off sometimes. It is particular days of particular hours where we want to keep use of our yard. But for the most part, between work and day-to-day life, we don't actually use it the whole time.

22:47So it's very easy to have some movable spots without affecting our enjoyment of our yard. So it's been a really, really easy way to make extra money. We made about$500 in the first year. We made a little less in the second year, but to be honest, on the basis that this is super passive, literally hard to imagine it could be any more passive, any extra money made is a win for us. So really, it has been a really great option. Thanks for sharing that, Marie. Sniffspot.com was that private dog park rental site. It doesn't require a ton of acreage, but I have to imagine the more space or the more unique the space that you have, probably the better rates you might be able to command.

23:31And hopefully the owners are picking up after their pets and not leaving you with any surprises back there. And what's cool here is there's no labor involved on Marie's part. Sure, you can come and play. No dog walking, no dog boarding involved. A couple other similar marketplaces that might be worth a look. Swimpley is Airbnb for pools if you have an underutilized backyard pool. I've seen stories of hosts making$5 ,000 a year or more on there. And like other peer-to-peer marketplaces, Swimpley has the insurance in place to protect you as the homeowner. And the other one that comes to mind is Neighbor, which is like Airbnb for storage.

24:07Think parking spaces, garage storage, backyard sheds, side yards, maybe even your attic. If you have extra unused space, you can list it on Neighbor. I've heard from side hustlers making thousands of dollars a year on that platform as well. And I have to imagine it's pretty passive once somebody parks their boat or RV in your side yard. Probably not a lot of upkeep or time required on your part. Now, what if the asset that you have doesn't have an established marketplace yet? Well, one option is to build it yourself, like our next caller is doing. Hi, I'm Trish, and I'm here in Kitsap County, Washington State, which is Seattle adjacent.

24:44My side hustle is a board game rental business. I rent out board games like they're DVDs from 2004 I run the business through my Kitsap Daylight Society Board Game Geek Guild And I rent via the Libbit map I'm building a subscription service where people pay$20 a month to borrow four games I now have over 300 games all labeled, scanned, and organized like a tiny blockbuster but for board games My side hustle takeaways? Your weird hobby might be someone else's missing puzzle piece Random ideas become real businesses the moment you put them in motion. Thanks for having me. And if anyone needs a board game, I know a guy.

25:24Trish, way to take action and scratch your own itch. And also try to monetize some of the inventory related to your hobby. I like the line on the Board Game Geek site, your profile there, that says you have a collection that long ago crossed the this is fine threshold. And now is somewhere in the this is a lifestyle zone. and the truth is you're not alone in board games being a lifestyle. Joe, who we heard from at the top of the show, is part of that lifestyle. My brother's part of that lifestyle. There's definitely a market for this and I like the subscription model as opposed to paying per rental.

25:59There are obviously a lot of challenges to address as well like how is shipping going to work? How do you account for missing pieces? These games are a lot bigger and more complicated than Netflix slipping DVDs in the mail. But we're rooting for you because this feels like a great niche audience to build a service for. And some of these games can be pretty expensive. So it makes sense to playtest it first to see if you like it, see if it's worth adding to your collection. Now, so far, we've heard from listeners sweating it out, delivering takeout orders on a bike, buying low and selling high, and renting out a wide variety of different assets.