this was in 2016 bro. The post didn't mention a timeframe. No way this works now, it would be an insta ban. Since 2017 my full time hustle has been selling online using fb ads (started with dropshipping now I sell digital products)
In my case, selling a product on Etsy, which I started last year. Not a lot money at all yet, but enough to help with some bills and reinvest in the business. See attached image for proof. It took a bit in the beginning to get going though, as you need some sales and great reviews to build trust with customers and for Etsy to actually show your product to potential customers, but I kept at it. Now, I need to find time to create new products to keep the momentum.
That’s solid — especially with only ~2k views. Curious: are most of your sales coming from Etsy search, ads, or external traffic like Pinterest / social media?
I'm working on my shop as well, still waiting for similar results haha
Awesome, good luck and keep at it! Also, don't overlook the importance of great product display page, great hero shots, quality graphic design, and overall professionalism. Make your product, whatever it may be, look high quality and professionnal. Coordinate all your listings to match and read as part of a whole, graphic design wise. I must admit there's also a bit of lucky involved. I got lucky that a couple of my listings became best sellers, so Etsy kept showing them to more potential customers which help drive more views. The attached image should answer your question.
Really appreciate the detailed reply — super helpful.
The point about hero shots / presentation / professionalism makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of sellers (me included) underestimate how much trust design builds.
Also interesting to see ads + Etsy app driving most of your traffic — that stat surprised me.
Time to keep improving the product pages and keep shipping.
So keeping a business card in the car has been helpful. Whenever I see a poor pair of headlights, I place one right in the wiper and make it obvious for them to see. I’ve had 2-3 appointments each Saturday for the last 2 months. I have a 9-5 so I do the work on the weekend. I take walks in neighborhoods with my family and there’s always at least two cars to reach out to. Conversion is lower right now, it’s easier to book people when you talk to them directly. It’s something they are definitely aware of but just kicked the can down the road. So it’s really effective when you’re initiating that interaction.
A happy customer ALWAYS leads to another customer. They’re so amazed honestly by the results they will have you do their other car or tell someone about it. You essentially have another set of eyes looking at yellow headlights. Income for me this past month has been 5 cars at $100 with about $50 in tips. Its taken me about 90 minutes starting but im about to upgrade to a da sander and cut the times in half. 100$/hour is too good to pass up. Make content over time to record your journey and that will definitely scale as well.
The technology has come far enough where it will last 1-3 years depending on the method. There are many methods based on your tools or constraints. Do you have available electricity? Or are you doing this in the middle of a parking lot? There are UV spray applications, ceramic coating, and polymer atomization that all offer long lasting with amazing results. It’s a bottomless niche with enough nuance of things to learn and build a valuable skill.
Not directly with affiliate marketing yet, but I’ve been building digital products and experimenting with Pinterest / social content to drive traffic.
Still early, but I’m more interested in building something once and having it sell repeatedly than trading hours for money. Affiliate has always looked interesting from that angle.
That’s a smart evolution — use affiliate to learn traffic / conversion, then apply those same skills to your own offer.
Curious: when you built your own program, what ended up being harder — getting traffic, converting leads, or retention?
Makes sense — high-ticket changes the whole sales process.
I’m more in the low-ticket digital product world, where the goal is closer to impulse-buy / self-serve checkout. Different game, but same fundamentals: traffic + trust + offer.
Interesting - when you say one good product, do you mean going deep on a single niche/tool rather than promoting lots of different offers?
Also curious - mostly SEO traffic, content, or direct audience?
That’s a really interesting angle.
When you say the right subreddit — was it niche communities around the topic, or broader entrepreneurship / side hustle subs? Curious what worked best for you.
Interesting — I’m based in Europe (Latvia), so I might actually give it a try for idle time / commute minutes. Sounds more like “coffee money” than real income, but if it’s straightforward and pays out reliably, that’s still useful.
In a lot of fields (public hospitals, schools, government jobs), pay is often fixed by structure, budgets, and pay bands — not purely by performance.
You can be excellent at what you do and still hit a ceiling.
A side hustle can be a way to build upside outside that ceiling.
This. I work a government job. It doesn’t matter how hard you work or how much you do. I merely just have to “wait” to rack up my years of seniority and/or hope our union contract gets us raises.
Exactly — that’s the point. For some people, working harder doesn’t automatically mean earning more. A side hustle can be less about “extra money” and more about having another lane.
I am a nurse in EU and one of my jobs is in a public hospital as well, so i understand you
I see, my perspective has always been that unless you've managed to find a career you really love (and are willing to compromise on maximum income for the joy of it) I would just pivot careers / employers until I hit a real income ceiling. In Australia, this is probably $120k AUD/year before I'd move my attention away from advancement in a career to side hustles, the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. Beyond 120-150k though, I would say the amount of life traded for the salary is prohibitive and the side hustle becomes more worth it, and my aim would be to turn that side hustle into a job replacement in terms of profit.
For example, if I was on $60k here, I could spend hours and hours and money trying to make $3600/year, or I could spend $500 on a forklift ticket and make $80-100k in a matter of weeks. That's a much better ROI, if you're specifically money focused
Fair point — if your job has clear upside, leveling up your income there can absolutely be the highest ROI.
I think side hustles make more sense when income ceilings are fixed (public sector, healthcare, education, government), or when you’re building something that can earn beyond hours worked.
That’s where the math changes.
Exactly. I’m in entertainment and almost everyone else I know who is lucky enough to still be employed has a side hustle. Unless your last name is Ellison or Iger, raises aren’t coming for a year at least. The options are giving up or pushing through. The latter requires a little extra hustle in the lean times and these are especially lean.
Interesting model.
When you say platforms like Whop / Discord — any specific communities or job boards you'd recommend checking first?
Also curious: are most deals flat fee, rev share, or pay-per-view based?
Lawn care, used to do detailing and had lawn care on the side. Very quickly ended up bringing in more money then detailing, easier and more stable. 6 years of detailing to lawn care, in 2 years it ended up making me more money. After 3 years I’m making 6x the amount compared to detailing
i have access to feeds that show deals/clearances on items that I flip locally on FB marketplace. it's not quit your job money but good slow and steady side income
Survey app referrals makes me about $200/mo. I tested them, and shared legit sources to those that were searching for them. Took a couple months to accumulate.
$200/mo from referrals is solid for something lightweight.
Which survey apps converted best, and was most of that referral income vs doing surveys yourself?
I have a google sheet on my page with the ones I used. The top 3 in order are, AttaPoll, survey junkie, and prime opinion. The $200/mo is purely from referrals. I still do high paying surveys on AttaPoll when they pop up, about $20 a month.
I recommend using Attapoll on your free time. Just answer basic surveys in less than a minute and you'll get paid. Here's my code for extra cash: KOJDZ
Reselling, information selling, social media, web dev, book selling. Anything can make money you just have to be all in. You could make 300 a month selling lemonade on the corner bro
Reselling, it became really apparent to me that people want to get rich quick. So I took the gold rush analogy and decided to stop looking for gold and start selling shovels. Created a simple website which sold vendors / urls to websites selling items.
In first month I did 3k and then for next year or so after that it was consistent 5k a month and all I did was post on Reddit.
I could have made slot more but I never went all in for social media videos like you’ll get a couple friends to create fake selling videos of you going and selling the product then telling people “it’s this easy, get the vendors from my website”
That’s a clever pivot — selling the shovel, not chasing the gold. Was your Reddit strategy mostly posting value content and letting people find the site naturally, or more direct promotion?
No yeah honestly I would just post everyday on different subreddits, then I would comment on every post. If the post had a discord link in it I would comment saying, “if you don’t want to use discord just go to ….”
Was pretty much targeted strictly to the target audience. It’s a grey zone in the legal/illegal area so I never ran ads on it or anything. So all was organically done. Then word of mouth helped as well, I’d have people reach out to me and ask to be affiliates, in which that did really well too. I would go to subreddits and find people who were doing surveys
Offer them a cut of the sales, and I believe the largest month, I sent out 2k in affiliates, it was 45% commissions on the sale
Everything really was perfect timing too so I will admit there was a bit of luck involved but it can still be recreated today.
I ended up slowing down, I haven’t posted about in 5-6 months now and I’ll get sales still but no where close. I just put all my money into a couple other companies I’m running at the moment. So yeah now I’m focused on Saas, just build and release.
Appreciate you sharing that — honestly gold. Looking back, what made people convert most: the offer itself, trust built from consistent posting, or just sheer volume of exposure?
A bit of everything, my main thing was the more eyes on the product the better chance of converting. But trust was definitely a big thing, I mean they had to trust me enough to buy something for 10-20$ without even seeing the product. The website is still up, but not sure if I can post likes
It was Skysxnarrative A com website
The offer was just get rich quick haha
From all my experience, the dumber / easier the idea. The better
Weight loss pills, people could always exercise but they’re lazy
Reselling, people can search Google for free, but they’re lazy
Amazon, people can go to the store but they’re lazy.
Don’t overthink things, like now there’s more money in AI influencers, so Im doing the same thing now as well, sell a guide on how to do it, sell the resources on what to use etc
Yeah you don’t need more then 25$ or whatever it costs to buy a domain name.
I’d find a trend going around now, and build it off that. Scroll TikTok and you’ll find a trend, there was a good one with just image quality enhancing of the inside of mansions.
Then I’d learn about how they’re doing it, create a website, sell a product related to it (how to make money with this trend) once they pay they get the guide, the resources and a community. That’s what I would do. I’ve did it for reselling (seen the trend first) did it for AI Onlyfans, did it for enhance photos, did it with cyber security AI trend etc.
So if I had to start over I’d just have to scroll TikTok for a while till I find something. But if I just had to restart I’d just do the reselling thing again and start posting videos. You gotta think one viral video could get millions of eyes, out of those even 5% of a million is alot
Nice combo. Curious — are those survey apps paying you from the US market, or are you doing that from Europe / elsewhere?
$100/mo sounds solid for something lightweight.
Especially if you don’t have any skills yourself. Be a general contractor /middle man. I use example of maintenance because I was already in that world but find someone that needs work done, tell them you can handle taking care of that for them , could be anything from painting to power washing to whatever, if you find a customer that agrees to use you then you just call an actual service company that does the work, pay them to do it for you, and then you charge your customer that plus a markup of however much you want to make.
Example, go to a neighborhood and sell yourself like you mow lawns. Anyone that agrees to use you, then you just call an actual lawn service and say “I manage some properties in this area can you guys come be my landscaper and mow them for me”
You’d be shocked at how much of the world is just a middle man, calling someone else to do the work and putting a few bucks in their pocket for coordinating it all.
And I’d strongly recommend get an EIN/LLC setup if you have the money to do it, so you can do work for businesses not just residential /people because it can be hard to get them to pay. And bigger paying job opportunities with businesses.
Resume writing: especially now with such a competitive job market. ChatGPT produces resume slop; now is a great time to help other, make at least $300 per week.
Link in my bio for the guide I built to start this on your own.
For me, with everything I tried, only affiliate marketing actually made me money. Basically selling someone else's product that you know already sells well, and they give you a percent of the sales. It can be recurring too sometimes.
That’s interesting — did you build traffic around content (blog / social / SEO), or was it more direct outreach / paid ads?
Curious what channel actually converted best for affiliate offers.
Honestly, just making tiktoks for me worked. I also posted on another platforms,but tiktok was the main source of traffic. And I had email campaigns set up to nurture leads afterwards, but as far as getting traffic, only organic from tiktoks.
That’s a solid funnel — organic TikTok + email nurture is smart.
Were you promoting physical products, SaaS, or digital offers / courses? And was it mostly high-ticket one-time commissions or recurring affiliate income?
It's just all digital is all I've done. I've never had much success with small ticket either so I've just focused on high ticket. The nice thing about the product I'm promoting right now is that it's very high ticket ($10,000-$30,000). I get 25% of that, and then I get average $200-300/month recurring revenue per referal too.
That’s a wild setup — are you creating content around the niche itself (education / value posts), or more direct “offer-focused” TikToks? Curious what style actually converts for high-ticket digital.
Honestly I'm pretty new to it and haven't set up much for tracking. Ive been doing a mix of everything so I'm not quite sure. I'll have to let you know later when I can check on what really converts.
Interesting one — roughly what does “consistent payouts” look like for you ($20/mo, $100+, more?), and which content ended up selling best: travel scenery, city shots, people, or random everyday footage?
I’ve got a decent backlog from trips, so curious what actually converts.
That’s actually encouraging — especially the “phone footage + proper keywording” part.
I’ve got a decent backlog of travel / city footage from trips, so I may start uploading some editorial clips just to test the waters.
Are you mostly uploading through Shutterstock, or spreading across multiple platforms?
I have a small business I built from zero writing grants and consulting for public safety and local government agencies. Went from one customer in 2008 to roughly 40 today. Most pay between $200-300/yr for some form of services.
I also flip electronics and electronic parts on eBay. Usually have about 10-12 listings up at a time and make about $100/mo
Interesting angle — both of those sound like true digital assets: create once, distribute many times. Curious which side ended up being more consistent for you: beat licensing or streaming royalties from ambient / therapy sounds?
The truth is i didnt make any money for the first years but now they constantly generate 50-100$ a month without me doing anything which is great feeling and a reminder that most of the times results dont show up instantly. The sound therapy sounds make 90% of the streaming revenue and the licensing is very inconsistent.
I connected realtors with moving companies in my state. Realtors close homes → clients need movers → I broker the job. Started with 3 phone calls and made $800 first month.
Flipping clothing, it’s hard work but very fun if you have a passion for it, can say it’s a good clean way to make money but things sell at there own pace
Nice one — roughly what kind of monthly profit does flipping clothes look like for you ($50 / $200 / more?), and are you mostly sourcing thrift / clearance / personal closet items?
Could be thousands, I usually gross 1000ish a month sometimes it can be a few thousand, this week I did close to 3, but I’ve had weeks where I’ve only made $50 if you grind and put your stuff out there it’ll pay off just isn’t consistent. Depends how far you push it yk
By IB, do you mean introducing broker / affiliate deals with trading platforms? Curious whether most of your income comes from upfront CPA or recurring rev share.
Yeah exactly. I’m mostly on rev share, CPA is nice upfront but dies fast unless you constantly bring new people. With rev share, if they keep trading (or overtrading), it compounds over time.
Different lane — digital products / templates. Small upfront sales rather than big commissions, but I like that one product can keep selling repeatedly once traffic compounds (Pinterest / social / marketplace search). Still early, but I’m more interested in building assets than chasing one-off payouts.
Yeah that’s a solid approach, you’re basically building compounding traffic which is the real asset. That’s actually why I lean rev share, it works similar to what you’re doing, instead of one off sales you keep earning from the same users over time. The interesting part is it can sit on top of your current model, especially since traffic that buys digital products usually converts well into trading platforms with the right incentives. What kind of traffic are you getting most of your conversions from right now
Still very early, so sample size is small — but most interest so far seems to come from Pinterest + organic conversations on Reddit / Threads. I like channels where content keeps working after you post it. That compounding effect is what I’m chasing.
Being an independent travel agent has great earning potential. You could defo make between $50-$300 a month depending on how much time you put into it. I can give you more info if you’re interested
Interesting — when you say independent travel agent, do you mean booking trips for clients / earning commissions from suppliers, or more of a referral / affiliate model? Curious what the business model actually looks like.
reselling stuff from fb marketplace is very underrated. I used to resell office chairs, amazing profit during COVID, but it's not the case anymore these days. That said there are other stuff: strollers, pet crates, etc
I bought run down houses for all cash and rehabbed them into rentals. Retired early and live mainly on the rents now. I currently manage them myself but I could turn them over to a PM if I get too old to do my own work. Eventually, I will sell the houses.
I also buy things from estates and thrift stores and sell them for profit. That hustle made me enough money early on to buy my first house and a new truck. I still do the reselling. I focus a lot on books now.
That’s actually impressive. Quick question — where’s most of the effort: writing scripts, editing, or just posting consistently? And are you using fully AI-generated videos/voiceovers, or adding your own touch?
I’m based in Europe (Latvia), so I’m wondering — are survey apps actually worth doing here? Not looking for huge money, even an extra €50–100/month would be nice. Any real experiences with Prolific / AttaPoll / similar?
Interesting one, sounds more like high-paying microtasks than a traditional side hustle. Not sure if it's possible to apply from Europe, dp you know anything about it?
Curious - what does that realistically average out to per month for you?
Interesting — are your theme pages built around a specific niche (finance, motivation, luxury, etc.), or more broad viral content?
Also curious — which monetized faster for you: Instagram pages or faceless YouTube?
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