Top 15 Future-Proof Side Hustles

1Local or Mobile Car Wash & Detailing

The Details: As with all businesses, gigs, and side jobs, you may or may not be required to obtain licenses and/or permits to legally operate.

Exterior Detailing or Interior Detailing?

• Exterior Detailing provides external car cleaning to the outer parts of the vehicle, including doors, tires, rims, passenger and driver side mirrors, headlights, and finer details like cleaning the windshield wiper area of debris
• Interior Detailing provides instead an internal car cleaning to the inner parts of the vehicles, including the seats, rear view mirror, dashboard, cup holders, ashtrays, floor and floor mats, and any cloth lining of the ceiling or miscellaneous armrests or door panels

Mobile or Stationary Service?

• Stationary option allows you to service your client's vehicle from a location that you can offer and provide car detailing to your customer on a commercial basis
• Mobile option allows you to service your client's vehicle at their home or an appropriate location in which you can operate and leave in a timely manner without causing a commercial level disturbance. You may still require permits and/or licenses to do business on these various premises

However you decide, make sure it puts your ability first because you're your own employee and boss.

2Lemonade, Fruit Punch, Water Stand

At the age of 9 years old, just like the Car Wash gig I was able to create for myself and my neighborhood friends, they had joined in for our next and best gig: the popup lemonade stand I designed with the same economics in mind.

Like the child you see above & with the right approachable marketing materials / product, you too can triumph in your journey in entrepreneurship. Margaret has a (reusable) banner, a wooden vendor booth, lemons for decoration, a menu, two flavors for sale, a tip jar, and accepts cash, digital and card for payments via Square. Did I mention she's wearing a mask and is also offering hand sanitizer? Now that's a 21st century business kid!

The Details: As with all businesses, gigs, and side jobs, you may or may not be required to obtain licenses and/or permits to legally operate.

What's your main soft drink to serve: Lemonade, Fruit Punch, Soda, Water, other Fruit Juices.

How do you intend to market your service: Local signage (like arrows in the direction of the sale, or even paid posted advertising), Social Media, School, your Apartment complex, etc.

When do you plan to provide your service: i.e. When do you want to go to work? What days and what hours of the day would you like to serve lemonade?

Your company might start off as a lemonade stand and become the next Jamba Juice or the Starbucks of juice and other drinks!

3Candy Bar & Concession Stand

Selling candy doesn't require much, because candy companies (at least in the US) are age-old favorites and the label is enough to remind them what they're in for. That's branding, and candy companies have put a lot of effort into branding their chocolates, sours, sweets, and other treats. 

Get you a box full of candies whether its wholesale or on sale, and start pricing it out. Make sure that you honor a price that actually creates a combination of conveniency and urgency so you can get rid of your inventory. Candy sells itself!

4Cooked/Prepped Food Stand & Food Catering for Events

Selling prepped or cooked food is sometimes the best way to someone's heart. Take it slow, cater to a few people you know already love your food or have a need for food already made (that's most of us, fortunately for whoever is interested in a food business). The key in this list isn't to find the most savory idea here, but the idea that can create an experience you'll enjoy enough to want to repeat and that will yield sales you can sustain yourself with. If it's just making sure the business can survive, it's not worth the suffering; so you'll need to manuver this disadvantage and explore if you want to take up an internship or apprenticeship and gain more from successful leadership rather than a fruitless endeavor.

Sandwiches, fruit pies, bread, cookies, brownies, pastries, breakfast plates, dinner plates, you name it! So many people are doing this right now and don't need a restaurant to make it happen. You do however need a kitchen, so they may be using their own inside their own apartment just to do so.

Create a menu and offer it to your potential clients. Your menu should consist of things you know you'll absolutely rock at so they'll come back for more and with their friends.

Tell people you know are likely to want your product from you. This could be people at an upcoming party or event, and you might be able to get in as a vendor or caterer. A vendor will sell to the crowd whereas a caterer is paid by the event coordinator upfront and brings a specific food setup for the number of people expected to dine.

Do you want to offer customized bags? Regular bags? Plates? I mean, it's up to you but just don't forget that you have every right to make yourself stand out even if this seems like a small gig to you. 

You may be sitting on top of a million-dollar food company and not yet know it! Expand your idea or perhaps bring in a business partner to help you map out your future together in food. Be sure to address what you feel is your unique offering that you bring to the table and what you feel is your creative ownership that won't change with or without a partner. These are parts you may need to consider not offering as they are actually your creative IP that you may wish to maintain 100% ownership of.

5Babysitting / Caretaking & Tutoring

Helping a family by offering babysitting and caretaking services can likely offer the family the room they need to run errands during the day and get things done more effectively while their child is safely in care.

Start with your closest family members and then ask your closest friends if they need the help. You can create your own availability, negotiate hours, shifts, and your whole work week. While you develop a business relationship with your clients, you can create an opportunity for yourself to babysit another family members' child on another day you're free, so you can maintain a cash flow. 

The reason starting with close family is so recommended is because while you work to create a business reputation, your family can support your business by shopping with you. They can help give you feedback and furthermore consider investing in your first aid skills, CPR skills, swimming skills, and more, so that you can continue your practice and perhaps continue your education in childcare to run a daycare.

6Household Errand-based Gigs + Housesitting

Buying groceries and running errands for a family can be a big deal depending on a number of things. Working, whether from home or not, running the kids to and from school, supporting extracurriculum activities, buying dinner, cooking it, cleaning up, prepping food for the rest of the week, et cetera. 

All families are different so you may want to look into your overhead of what it costs to run to the local stores and satisfy the errands on their to-do list. You might just need to walk around the block to a grocery and pick up a few things, who knows! Your clients won't always have a difficult list, but should they have a tedious one, you can adjust your price to value your efforts and labor.

7Customized Clothing & Tailoring

Customizing clothing, sneakers, accessories, and more, can be a fun and creative way to express yourself. Different tools allow you to create different clothing, such ass rhinestone bedazzling, sublimation press, heat pressing, embroidery, and so on.

Being a maker of cool is a responsibility that once people see you can maintain, they will expect you to. So why not manufacture some of the greatest custom clothing your local community has ever seen? They already probably are bored of seeing the same clothes from the Walmart they shop at to being in a few of their friends closets. They want something different because department stores do not offer tailoring and creative everyday wear like they once did. This opportunity is yours for the taking.

8Cleaning and Restoring Sneakers & Shoes

Bringing shoes back to life is one of the more rewarding feelings a person can have, especially someone who puts value into items of function. Sneaker restoration can have a low overhead to get you started, and by the time you've gained a small handful of clients, you can invest in higher quality cleaning equipment that will help you in two ways: 1. help you spend less time cleaning shoes, 2. get cleaner shoes than with your starter equipment.

Pitching different sneakers that you are able to clean can help you gain a place in the market. 

A lot of times people hesitate to get their shoes worked on because they don't believe the product can clean their specific shoe and not damage them or ruin them further. 

You can practice on your own shoes and prove them wrong, using before and after photos to build testimony to your skill. You can offer to a friend who doesn't mind, to practice and restore their shoes to redefine your results and perfect your craft.

9Lawn Care & Landscaping

Lawn care is more lucrative the more talented you become at making space look better than it was before. That may sound like an understatement, but like many things, landscaping, too is an art. 

You can pretty much cut someone's hedges and trees bald and rip up dirt all throughout someone's beautiful front lawn, or you can neatly trim up what they have, and make their space look brand new again. You can just cut down a lawn, trim the perimeter, water and trim plants and bushes, do all of the above, or one of a few of them. It's your choice to establish your hustle based on what you feel you'll do best. 

Your own uniforms will help you really establish your image, brand, and professionalism, even if this is just a side hustle for you. Remember you are the person who decides how far this can go and let's be honest, it could be worth millions for you and all involved.

10Furniture Packing and Moving

If you've ever moved before, that's enough motivation to understand how integral it is to have help when you need it. Starting a moving business even as a side gig to be there for friends could be an easy way to monetize your work truck if you have one. And if you're eager to help and just have a two-door car, you'll never know when that's exactly what someone needed because of the lack of options to begin with. Don't limit yourself, and don't be afraid to look into equipment to secure and fasten things on top of your car or truck.

Pricing your labor would be dependent on market value and what people are usually going to spend. The reason being, most people aren't just rental trucks and they aren't just movers, but they're both. So make sure you understand if you want to offer your vehicle or offer your labor or both so that you can calculate the worth of your labor. There may be lots of stairs, or furniture they request for you to disassemble. Add it up!

11Junk Removal

Removal of junk can be a big deal as far as vacating a space or moving into one; having unwanted scraps of old furniture and appliances that weigh just too much. An eye sore to say the least, but just inconvenient and a waste of the real estate it takes to create a functioning business. You can assist businesses and help individual households on a 1:1 basis. 

Like moving furniture into a new place, junk removers help get trash or unwanted stuff from one location and out to the dump or a recycling plant. Many times you can get a return on the old junk if it doesn't work, and eventually you'll develop a trained eye for appliances that could be in great condition after a little TLC. These are all up sides for the junk remover because of the many different ways you can monetize your labor and the junk!

12Buy / Sell Used Goods

Buying antiques and goods from someone can sometimes be a quick way to make a return on eBay, Amazon, Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, and Craigslist.

You might get your hands on something rare but in the same breath, you might come across something unused and useful in it's current condition. The value is in what you narrow your sights to, because one person's trash can also be another person's trash. Do you have an eye for quality? Try pawning the things you buy in garage sales, but before you do, give it a bit of research. Video games are high in value especially if they have the original case. Playstation 2 games, you say? Relics! You might spend at most $5 on it at a garage sale, but the resale is upwards of $20-30 depending on the condition, and if you have the inside booklet, it could be worth $50 and up.

13Dog Walking + Pet Sitting

Dog walking helps those busy owners who love their pets but can't be there every minute as they'd like, probably more than being at work.

Pet sitting is normally in the same pocket as dog walking, as it is based in tending to the pet's needs. Depending on the type, like whether the pet is exotic and stays home in a tank or cage, or can freely leave home and be cared for in a different location, you can narrow down your service to your personal pet knowledge and understanding so you can grow from there with clients on a one on one basis.

14Room & House Cleaning

House cleaning may sound like a luxury, but it's the 21st century, it's 2021 and it's one of the best services you can get when it becomes a need. Sometimes it's great to say let's just clean the house together, but like the magic of all services, someone else is going to do it for you. Now imagine this as a pitch, and all it takes is a good 45 minutes to sort someone's living room, dishwasher & kitchen, and maybe fold a few clothes and be onto your next $50-80. Whenever you want, for however long you want. The money is yours, once you build the business relationships.

15Computer & Tech Repair

Repairing gadgets, laptops, phones, and other daily tech devices people use on the regularly, can be all types of confusing, problematic, buggy, slow, and other miscellanious nuances that come with new tech. As a person taking on tech repair as a freelance gig that pays off, you'll be pleased to know that it's actually not as hard as it seems. A good majority of people need to validate their issue before they can even fix it, and that's called a troubleshoot, i.e. evaluation, leaning towards refurbishment depending on the issue or possible damange. 

Replacing a screen for example is one YouTube video and some 8-12 screws away, with a special screwdriver that comes in an easy kit from retailers online and in stores. One of the perks of business is not just doing a good job or a great job, it comes with the savviness of accurately troubleshooting a problem that likely won't take too much labor to solve, and you'll save the client the time and nerve they probably can't spare and would be more than willing to pay you for.

16BONUS: Recycling Cans, Bottles

How much are cans and bottles worth and where can you recycle them for a return? In 11 states including one U.S. territory, you can recycle your cans and bottles for a return fee of no less than 5 cents and no more than 10 cents, with exception to Maine which issues up to 15 cents in return for wine and liquor bottles.

Unfortunately there may be a bigger process to recycle your old cans and bottles in states not listed, and recycling plants may or may not require a larger bulk to valuate your refund, or better yet quote you for your scrap metal and plastics. Furthermore, there may not be a valuation on the plastics, but just the metal.

You are urged to research in your local area if there are consumer recycling plants where they would normally be nearby a grocery or an industrial district.

Below is a chart quoting the refund you'll receive in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregan, Vermont, and Guam.

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