The side hustle has become a common fact of life in recent years. Economic pressures, shorter tenures and greater workplace flexibility have driven people with regular jobs to earn extra money on the side.
According to a November 2024 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 5% of America’s employees have more than one job. And at least 12.8% or 1.1 million of these multiple jobholders have a second job involving short-term contracts, working on call or as a temp.
Online freelancer platforms make it easier than ever. You can sign up on a network like Upwork or PeoplePerHour, browse opportunities, get hired and get paid in just a few hours. However, to do so reliably and with a decent level of compensation usually requires longer-term dedication to the pursuit.
If you have an underused skill or area of expertise and a few hours a week to spare, a side hustle can help shore up your finances and even improve your performance in your main job. But side hustling requires strategy and commitment.
To help you focus on the best side hustle opportunities to pursue, we have trawled through thousands of publicly available job ads to find the single-day gigs that pay the most — including those side hustles that require little to no experience.
What We Did
We analyzed publicly available data on U.S.-only freelance ad rates from Fiverr for 144 common side hustle jobs across multiple categories. Then, we ranked the side hustles based on the average base price for all services advertised within a specific category with express 24-hour delivery time. We also conducted manual research on common no-experience-required side hustles to identify the highest-paying casual side hustle jobs based on the freelance rates gathered from Fiverr.
Key Findings
- The best-paying side hustle for a single day’s work is Marketing Strategy ($150.00 per day).
- Writing Website Content earns an average of $107.50 per day — the most of any writing side hustle.
- The top-paying AI-related side hustle is to make AI Spokesperson Videos ($110.00 per day).
- The best pay for a side hustle that requires no experience involves doing Focus Group work ($28.00 per day).
Marketing Strategy is the Best-Paying Side Hustle
First, we ranked the best-paying side hustles overall. Marketing Strategy is number one, offering an average of $150.00 per day. An effective digital marketing strategist has experience, networks and specialist knowledge that a small business might not have internally. A company that reaches out to a marketing expert expects to make a profit on its investment in digital marketing, and you can factor this into the fee. While it may be desirable to study at college to become a highly paid marketing strategist, you can also attain competitive skill levels by learning at work or studying online at home.
Marketing roles feature prominently among the 20 top side hustles, with Social Media Marketing and Influencer Marketing joined by supporting tasks such as AI Spokespersons Videos, Website Content and Paid Social Media, which Fiverr defines for employers as hiring “paid social ad experts and campaign managers to promote your business.” The average rate for Paid Social Media is $80.00.
Writing and Editing Side Hustles: Website Content Pays the Most
We all learn to write at school, and many freelance gigs can be completed from the comfort of your armchair. However, writing to a high standard requires skill and practice. And as our research shows, different types of writing gigs come with widely varying rates of pay.
While you may find a low-paying role with relative ease, you will need to build an impressive portfolio and a network of connections to climb past the competition to more worthwhile assignments. The top-paying gig is writing Website Content ($107.50 per day). Clients might require content to inform their website visitors about their product, as original information or opinion in its own right, or as part of a content marketing strategy. Usually, there is some overlap between the three.
Design Side Hustles: Web Design Roles At Top of Pay Scale
Even as the rise of AI makes work in the industry more precarious, hirers are figuring out that good design involves a range of factors that go beyond putting digital ink on the screen. Good taste, an organic response to context, passion and an ingrained working knowledge of the history and principles of the form keep freelance designers head and shoulders above regular employees with access to AI tools.
Right now, the best-paying design side hustle is Website Design, at an average of $130.00 per day, with Landing Page Design not far behind. These are roles that involve storytelling, audience awareness and branding. Designers in these fields must have a good sense of creating work that is both impactful and accessible.
AI Side Hustles: Spokesperson Videos Are Most Lucrative
“As an advocate for human talent, allow me to assure you that we come in peace,” wrote Micha Kaufman in an “open letter to AI” in January 2023. “You are a unique and powerful tool, capable of extraordinary feats. However, after reviewing some of your work, I believe it could benefit from a human touch to avoid coming across as too, ahem… robotic.”
The letter was printed in the New York Times, Don Draper-style. It was an act of marketing intended to capitalize on the new economic opportunities offered by artificial intelligence. It put a humorous spin on the controversial announcement that Fiverr’s marketplace would encourage AI-oriented assignments.
As we have found in recent years, AI Spokesperson Videos continue to be the most lucrative way to make quick cash using AI on Fiverr. The current average day rate is $110.00. Several services allow users to create avatar-fronted announcements or how-to videos. However, this takes skill and work, particularly to create a video that does not look overly generic. Since these videos may be of great marketing value to those who commission them, recruiters pay reasonable rates for freelancers to make them on their behalf. However, since these services often require a subscription, the employer must clarify who pays the fees.
Marketing Side Hustles: Social Media Gigs Among Best Paid
The top paying marketing side hustle is Marketing Strategy (see Marketing Strategy is the Best-Paying Side Hustle, above). But notably, three of the top five jobs are social media-related. Some of these roles depend purely on your expert social media knowledge, while the price for Influencer Marketing depends on your clout as an influencer or your influencer contacts.
“Influencer marketing costs vary, ranging between $1,000 for a simple campaign to $500,000 for a large, more comprehensive campaign,” says Fiverr, “Or as little as $20 for one image post.” The platform suggests that a nano influencer (less than 1,000 followers) can charge $20-$100 per Instagram post, while a mega influencer (one million+) can charge over $1,200.
Social Media Marketing ($120.00) is significantly better paid than the other social media roles. Sellers in this category offer social media management or ad management to buyers. Tasks and expectations can vary widely from client to client, since each will have different goals and brand strategies — or require you to establish them. “In case you’re planning to manage all social media interactions for the client, you should be familiar with any FAQs in advance to promise a fast and easy delivery,” suggests Fiverr.
Business Side Hustles: Top Rates for Applications and Project Management
In the first four months of 2024 alone, American entrepreneurs made 1.75 million new business applications, and there are now 33.2 million small businesses in the U.S. Naturally, not all of them can afford to maintain a full staff of administrative and accounting professionals. Writing applications and completing registrations for businesses pays an average of $97.50 per day on Fiverr — the highest rate of any task in the business category.
The second highest-paying side hustle is Project Management. Since this is such a high-responsibility role, you will likely secure better pay and bigger projects if you can demonstrate your experience as a project manager. The work also involves a good deal of trust, so building a network that can vouch for you and a portfolio of your successes can help you find project management gigs on freelance platforms and beyond.
No Experience, No Problem
Finally, we identified the side hustles that pay the most when you have little or no experience. Some of the best among these are gigs where the buyer just needs a ‘regular person,’ and lack of experience is actually an advantage — the top paying area is Focus Groups ($28.00 per day), while number three is Website Tester ($25.00).
Other “no experience” work makes use of the background and skills you may not have considered for their value. For example, while experience as a Virtual Assistant ($26.63) may help you find better-paid work in that role, if you have no direct experience you can still capitalize on the fundamental software and communication skills you’ve picked up at school or doing other, apparently unrelated jobs.
6 Tips to Grow Your Side Hustle into a Successful Business
Gig work like this used to be “a means of economic survival,” but professionals are increasingly using these assignments to bolster their main income. “These workers are higher up the job value chain,” Meredith Meyer Grelli, Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, told the BBC. “[T]hey can now figure out how to combine roles and side projects in their lives as a way of maximizing income against their skills.”
To earn a worthwhile income with a side hustle, it is preferable to treat it as a small business, complete with a business plan, accounting and marketing strategy. Here are six tips on how to get started.
1. Prioritize feedback, significance and skill variety
Harvard Business Review recommends choosing a side hustle that provides these three values. Freelancing, in addition to your main job, can be draining — but finding a side hustle that complements your core career and personal needs can be enriching.
2. Build slowly
While it is advisable to take your side hustle seriously from the beginning, in practical terms, it is more manageable and less intimidating to grow incrementally.
3. Grow your network
Freelancing platforms make it seem like finding good work will be automatic, but the reality is that the majority of your work may come through word of mouth or from repeat clients.
4. Keep it official
Register your business and keep your accounts to help avoid nasty surprises later. It will also make you look and feel more professional in the eyes of your clients.
5. Manage your time
Schedule your work so that you make the best use of your energy, and remember to ringfence time for rest and relaxation.
6. Build a tool stack
Explore the available tools you can use for the job and find the ones that will make your side hustle easier to complete. For example, you can identify repetitive areas of your work that you can automate with the help of software or AI tools.
Some of these tips come from our guide to growing your side hustle as a business — do check it out for more tips and greater detail.
Methodology
To determine the highest-earning side hustles for a single day of work, we analyzed publicly available data on U.S.-only freelance ad rates as of October 2024 from Fiverr across 144 common side hustle jobs in multiple categories. Side hustles were ranked based on the average base price for all services advertised within a specific category with express 24-hour delivery time. Only ads from level 1, level 2 or top-rated sellers were considered. Side hustles with fewer than 10 ad listings were excluded from our analysis.
To uncover the highest-paying side hustles that don’t require experience, we conducted manual research to find out the average hourly pay for side hustle jobs with no experience required, using data from authoritative sources for each job (e.g., we gathered childcare rates from care.com).
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