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GoPuff
Experienced delivery drivers can earn up to $21 per hour ($13 on average)
Choose when you want to work based on your schedule in 1000 cities
Delivery snacks, drinks, grocery, quick meals, cleaning supplies and more
DoorDash
Earn $25 per hour plus keep 100% of your tips (4000 cities in USA)
You can use any mode of transportation: your car, bicycle or motorcycle
You have the freedom to pick and choose which orders you want to accept
25 Most Lucrative Work-On-Demand Side Hustle Ideas
Deliver Food
(Average earnings: $10 – $18 per hour, +tips)
Technological development has changed our behavior – it changed the way we communicate, shop and even order food.
Accordingly, the demand for on-demand food delivery services has increased as well. In fact, according to the recent article by CNBC, customer order volume is up more than 500% year-over-year.
And the best thing is that there are various platforms that allow you to get on-demand food orders and deliver them. Plus, you’re free to choose when to work and can only accept orders in your free time.
Shop for Others
(Average earnings: $7 – $10 per order)
Instacart Summary
- 2 different types of work available
- Earn up to $10 per full-service order
- Get $10 for each friend you refer
- Work as much or as little as you want
Just like for food deliveries, demand for personal shoppers has increased as well. Instacart is one of the largest platforms that gives you an opportunity to shop for other people and deliver orders to their doorsteps.
In order to shop for others as a side hustle, you’ll need an active driver’s license and access to a car.
Working as a personal shopper with Instacart is convenient as you choose your own work hours. And you’ll earn money per item in an order and per delivery. So how much you’ll work and earn entirely depends on how many orders you’ll fulfill in a day.
Deliver Amazon Orders
(Average earnings: $18 – $25 per hour)
Amazon Flex Summary
- Earn between $18 to $25 per hour
- Flexibility to choose delivery blocks
- Keep 100% of all tips from customers
- Cancel up to 45 minutes before a block
Since Amazon is the largest online shopping platform, they regularly recruit independent contractors to deliver their orders.
That’s why they have created a separate platform – Amazon Flex – which gives you an opportunity to earn money while you deliver orders to customers’ doorsteps.
Amazon Flex makes a great on-demand side hustle opportunity as it doesn’t require your full-time commitment and allows you to only accept orders when it’s convenient for you.
Fulfil Professional On-demand Tasks via Thumbtack
(Platform fee: $1.50 per lead)
Thumbtack Summary
- Over 1000 different specialities
- It is completely free to join as a pro
- Only pay when customers reach out to you
- Lead is refunded if customer cancels
If you’re a professional in any niche, Thumbtack gives you an opportunity to offer your services to people who seek professionals like you.
This platform is best for you if you have in-demand skills but lacking leads as it can provide you over 30,000 leads daily.
Thumbtack lets you offer services in a range of categories, including:
- Home improvement/remodeling
- Repair and technical support
- Cleaning
- Pet training, grooming, sitting
- Wellness
- Business
- Events
- Design and web
- Lessons
- Crafts
- Photography
- Legal
- Writing, translation and transcription
Help People Move
(Average earnings: $13 – $15 per hour)
Bellhop Summary
- Flexible working hours that are up to you
- Earn up to $21 per hour as a mover
- Get reimbursed $0.30/mile after 15 miles
- Payment within 5-7 days of a move
Moving isn’t an easy task. That’s why people usually hire people to help them move from one place to another.
Whether you have a truck or a car, you can be a great help to someone who doesn’t. Even if you don’t have any kind of vehicle, you may still find a job as people need help lifting boxes as well.
Bellhop is one of the best platforms that gives you an opportunity to connect with people seeking for helpers.
Become a Rideshare Driver
(Average earnings: $20 – $28 per hour)
Ridesharing is a cheaper and more convenient alternative to Taxi. Since all processes starting from placing an order to paying for the ride is digital, using ridesharing apps like Lyft and Uber are in hype amongst people who need to transport from one place to another.
On the other hand, ridesharing is one of the most attractive ways for making money.
The best part? You can turn on and off your availability and can only accept orders when you don’t have other commitments. This makes driving for Lyft or Uber a great option for an on-demand side hustle.
Pro tip: sign up for both Lyft and Uber to understand which platform works best for you.
Become a Freelancer
(Platform fees: up to 20%)
Upwork Summary
- Earn up to $34 per hour as a freelancer
- Get 10 free Connects every month
- Get 40 extra Connects when you pass a test
- Time tracker ensures you get paid
Fiverr Summary
- Set your own prices for your services
- Choose from over 500 service categories
- 3 different options for cashing out
- Protection from fradulent chargebacks
If you’re a business professional, freelancing might be a great side hustle opportunity. With more and more businesses going online nowadays, business owners seek more freelancers.
Upwork and Fiverr are 2 of the major freelancing platforms where you can find clients and take jobs relevant to your expertise.
Freelancing lets you provide your services in a large range of business categories, including:
- Marketing and sales
- Development and IT
- Design and creative
- Video and animation
- Customer service
- Legal
- Finance and accounting
- Engineering and architecture
- Writing and translation
Pro tip: focus on receiving positive reviews as it’s the key to success on both Upwork and Fiverr.
Become an Online Tutor: Teach Whatever You’re Good at
(Average earnings: up to $50/hour)
Online tutoring is an excellent on-demand side hustle whether you’re an established teacher or just feel passionate about educating others.
And there are almost limitless opportunities when it comes to tutoring online. In fact, the demand for online learning increases day by day and according to the Research and Markets prediction, the online education market will hit $350 Billion by 2025.
So no matter what your expertise is, you can find your way to develop an additional income stream along with your main commitments.
Create an Online Course
(Average earnings: $1,000 – $5,000 per month)
If you like sharing your expertise and experiences to people, you could create an online course and sell it unlimited times.
Some of the most profitable online course niches include:
- Education
- Career development
- Computers and technology
- Health advice
- Business and entrepreneurship
- Arts and crafts
- Content creation
- Personal development
Become a Babysitter or an Elder Companion
(Average earnings: $15/hour)
Care Summary
- Earn $15 to $20 per hour on average
- Payments processed quickly within 2 days
- Get up to $500 in benefits each year
- All caregivers get 4 different benefits
Whether you feel comfortable babysitting or being a companion for elderly people, Care.com provides a platform where you can find families seeking someone like you.
The biggest advantage of Care.com is that it gives you a great range of job categories you can choose from.
Jobs you can find on Care.com:
- Babysitting jobs
- Child care jobs
- Nanny jobs
- Tutoring jobs
- Senior care jobs
- Special needs jobs
- Pet care jobs
- Housekeeping jobs
- Other part-time jobs like after school jobs, driving kids, weekend and night jobs, etc.
Walk Dogs or Pet Sit
(Average earnings: $30/hour)
Rover Summary
- 6 different ways to earn money available
- Get up to $25,000 pet care coverage
- You get to decide how much to charge
- 24/7 support, Including vet assistance
Wag Summary
- On average make around $17.50 per walk
- Set your own schedule and manage your services
- Dog owners can tip you via app
- Company donates meals to rescue dogs
If you love dogs, then walking dogs or pet sitting is probably the best side hustle idea you can do on demand work.
And the good news is, the demand for pet sitting service is only going up. American Pet Products Association (APPA) has conducted a study which showed that American people spent $10.3 Billion on pet walking and sitting services in 2019.
But how do you find clients who need dog sitters?
Rover and Wag are 2 of the largest platforms that connect you with pet owners so you can start taking care of their dogs on demand.
Pro tip: sign up for both Rover and Wag to reach even more pet parents.
Create Stuff to Sell on Etsy
(45.7 million active buyers on Etsy)
Etsy Summary
- Easy to set up & maintain your store
- Market to a large audience – 45+ million active Etsy buyers
- Built-in analytics to analyze your performance & make data-driven decisions
- No shop fees
Etsy is a great platform that allows you to sell handmade crafts. So whether you’re already selling your crafts locally or doing it just for a hobby, Etsy is a good option to make money doing what you like.
What’s best about Etsy is that you don’t have to hold any inventory of your items. You can just set up your listing and create stuff when someone purchases your product.
Become a Call Agent
(Average earnings: $12/hour)
If you’re a good communicator and enjoy talking to people over the phone, you can become a call agent. As a call agent, your main duty is to call the list of leads your clients to provide and talk to them on your clients’ behalf.
VOIQ is a silicon valley platform that’s hiring call agents who can work from home making outbound calls using their smartphones.
The best thing about VOIQ is that it has everything you need to do your job. Clients upload their list of leads and their own scripts, so you don’t have to worry either about the leads or the script. Plus, you have to call the leads through the VOIQ mobile app, which simplifies things for you even more.
Become a Photographer
(Average earnings: $32/hour)
Photography is a broad specialty. It gives you the freedom to express your visions and make money out of it.
No matter what you enjoy photographing, you can definitely find your niche and monetize your skills.
Some of the most popular on-demand photography niches include:
- Wedding photography
- Events photography
- Food photography
- Fashion photography
- Portraiture photography
- Real estate photography
- Fine arts photography
- Editorial and press photography
- Medical photography
But the most important question is, how do you find clients who need you as a photographer?
There are a number of platforms where you can find photography jobs according to the niche you’re interested in.
Participate in Surveys & Focus Groups
(Average earnings: $5 per survey and up to $700 per focus group)
Participating in paid online surveys and focus groups can make a good side hustle idea. All you have to do is provide your honest opinion about certain topics or products to get paid.
There are number of platforms like Branded Surveys, SurveyJunkie and InboxDollars that offer various online surveys.
While most online surveys pay a little amount (up to $5) for each completed questionnaire, participating in focus groups is a much more lucrative way to make some additional money.
Typically, focus groups last anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes, consist of 8-12 participants and are either held online or in-person.
Most common payout for participating in focus groups is $100/hour while Respondent.io gives you an opportunity to earn up to $700.
(Average earnings: $10 – $90+ per hour depending on your technical background)
Whether it’s a website, software, app or a game, developers need testers who can test their digital products before they roll it out to the public.
And while there are jobs that require technical background to find bugs and assist in fixing them, some jobs can be done by anyone. In this case, all you need to do is use the website, app or a game like you normally would and report any issue to the developer.
Do Micro-jobs on Mechanical Turk (Mturk)
(Average earnings: $2.50 per product review or 8 cents for describing an image shortly)
Amazon Mturk is a platform that lets you earn money for completing quick basic tasks like labeling images for Amazon or transcribing receipts.
While it’s not as lucrative as other side hustle ideas in this article, you still have the opportunity to do as much or as little work as you like. Accordingly, the more tasks you complete, the higher your earnings will be.
Become a Digital Marketing Manager
(Average earnings: up to $25/hour)
With so many businesses going online day by day, the demand for digital marketing managers is increasing as well.
Digital marketing is the form of marketing that includes taking advantage of technology and the internet to reach consumers online.
There’s a huge range of digital channels nowadays, including email, social media, search engines, etc. Therefore, you can choose from a great variety of opportunities when it comes to digital marketing jobs.
As a digital marketing manager, your main responsibility is to set up and manage businesses’ online presence. And what’s best about this position is that it can be done 100% remotely and you can only work on-demand – whenever your client needs your service.
Do Mystery Shopping
(Average earnings: up to $30/hour)
Large companies need to maintain great customer service. And to reach this goal, they hire mystery shoppers to help them analyze their current efforts.
Your responsibility as a mystery shopper is to act like a real customer in certain shops, restaurants or service providers’ and monitor their work.
For example, you may get a task to go to the nearest bank and assess their customer service. Another task may involve ordering at McDonalds and monitoring the time it takes for your order to arrive using a stopwatch.
Once you leave the venue, you’ll also need to complete a questionnaire detailing your customer experience.
Along with additional payment, you’re usually reimbursed for the lunch as well.
Wash & Detail Cars
(Average earnings: up to $11/hour + tips)
It’s definitely not mandatory to be a car wash employee to wash cars. In fact, mobile car washing and detailing services are growing. Most people are busy, others are lazy, which gives you an opportunity to offer your service and wash cars on-demand.
To get started with car wash and detailing side hustle, you can hand out fliers in your neighborhood or post on social media announcing what you have to offer.
You can also click the button below to take a look at 15 best platforms that can help you offer your car wash services.
Pro tip: provide both car wash and detailing services to maximize your earnings.
Become a Virtual Assistant (VA)
(Average earnings: $10 – $15 per hour)
Most entrepreneurs and small business owners prefer to hire a virtual assistant (VA) to assist them on basic daily tasks. A virtual assistant position gives you the freedom to work on your own schedule from anywhere you like to.
Plus, you’re not required to be a professional in any specific niche as the tasks assigned to you are mainly basic.
Some of the most common tasks assigned to VAs are:
| Task Category | Daily Tasks |
| Social media management | updating business profiles, posting, replying to comments |
| Research | sourcing the web information, digging through sites like Reddit and Quorra, etc. |
| Administrative | managing calendars, emails and appointments |
| Customer service | receiving phone calls and answering emails |
| Personal tasks | booking hotels and restaurants |
| Simple digital marketing tasks | checking web analytics data and interacting with online communities |
Become a Transcriptionist
(Average earnings: $3 – $25 per audio hour)
Helping organizations transcribe an audio recording to a text document is a great work on-demand side hustle idea. As a transcriptionist, you won’t be attached to a company on a full-time basis, rather you’ll only receive the tasks on-demand.
And since you’ll be working as an independent contractor, you’ll be able to provide your service on your schedule.
Become a Translator
(Average earnings: up to $20/hour)
If you’re a multilingual, becoming a translator is a lucrative side hustle option that gives you the freedom to choose your work hours.
Translator’s main duty is to convert information from one language to another in a written form. So all you need to become a translator is to be proficient in 2 languages.
In fact, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that translator jobs will grow by 20% by 2029, while the average growth rate for other occupations is only 4%.
Become a Professional Cleaner
(Average earnings: up to $50/hour)
Whether it’s a clean home or a tidy workplace, cleaning is a vital part of our lives. Plus, it’s the job that doesn’t necessarily require your full-time commitment.
However, while cleaning may seem like an easy job, there are some crucial skills that will skyrocket your success as a professional cleaner:
- Punctuality and reliability
- Trustworthiness
- Good time management
- Orientation to details
- Ability to work independently and efficiently
- Physical resistance and stamina
- Basic knowledge of different cleaning materials and agents
Help People
(Average earnings: $15/hour)
Salary is usually the number one thing many people consider when they think of a potential job or a side hustle opportunity.
However, it may not be your only consideration. Maybe you want to feel the satisfaction helping other people gives you.
In fact, according to the Harvard Business Review, 9 out of 10 people are willing to accept less salary if their job involves helping people.
The good news is, there are a number of side hustle ideas you can choose from when you want to have a social impact.
Here are just some of the examples:
- Teacher
- Personal trainer
- Customer service representative
- Rehabilitation specialist
What is a Side Hustle & What is an On-Demand Side Hustle?
The general definition of a side hustle is any type of employment you take in addition to your part or full-time job. The purpose of a side hustle is typically to increase your income along with your other commitments.
Side hustles are often gig jobs a person is passionate about, rather than a typical 9 to 5 job they work to make ends meet.
And on-demand is any job or side hustle that you’re doing only when it’s demanded. This means you’re not a regular full-time employee, rather an independent contractor who gets orders upon their availability.
Is it Possible to do an On-Demand Side Hustle with a Smartphone?
Absolutely! There are a number of work on-demand app jobs that make great side hustle opportunities you can do 100% using your phone.
While some of the ideas require your physical presence, there are number of side hustle opportunities you can do entirely on your phone, including:
- Participating in surveys and focus groups
- Tutoring
- Being a call agent
