Are you looking to generate additional income by taking on a new side hustle? Side hustles are the perfect opportunity to bring in a little extra cash flow. They can help achieve your long-term financial goals, be put toward events and travel, or simply provide you with a bit of extra spending money.
Side hustles can provide you with a lot of freedom, including the freedom to work around your busy schedule and desired hours. If you’ve ever wondered how to start a side hustle, this list will cover all the bases. Whether you’re looking for weekend side hustles, part-time side hustles, or anything in between, we’ve got you covered.
Summary of Best Side Hustle Apps
- Rideshare [Uber or Lyft]
- Food and Grocery Delivery [DoorDash, Instacart, UberEats, Postmates]
- Freelancing [Fiverr, Upwork]
- Parcel Delivery [Amazon Flex, Roadie]
- Dog Walking [Wag!]
- Moving, Furniture Delivery, and Everyday Tasks [Dolly, TaskRabbit]
Rideshare
If you enjoy people, driving, and working around a flexible schedule, rideshare might be the right side hustle for you. Many drivers consider rideshare not only to be one of their side hustle jobs but to be a full-time source of income.
Driving with a rideshare platform provides incredible flexibility, which is great for new parents and college students as you can drive any time. You can drive at 10 am, or 2 am; it’s entirely up to you. Say you’re planning on going for a night drive anyway, why not earn some cash?
An additional factor to consider while choosing if Rideshare is right for you is the bonus pay that you will receive.
YouTuber, YourDriverMike discusses bonus pay and states, “when I’m thinking about side hustle apps and the bonus pay (because that’s what’s going to make me the most money) what I’m thinking is: Is it frequent? Is it predictable? And is that bonus pay higher than $2? If we’re trying to get good money, which for us is $25 an hour, $2 plus bonuses are what’s going to do it for us.”
Our top picks for rideshare side gig apps are Uber and Lyft.
Pros:
- Flexible scheduling
- Ability to turn into a full-time gig
- In certain cities, a minimum wage is offered to drivers
Cons:
- May deal with unpleasant customers in your personal space
- The driver is in charge of covering their costs, including potential heightened auto insurance for carrying passengers or car rental if necessary
Food and Grocery Delivery
If you enjoy driving but don’t necessarily want to interact with passengers, food and grocery delivery might be the right side hustle for you. While food and grocery delivery are more generally constrained to certain peak days and hours of the day, the undeniable positive side of delivery is that you do not have to face the unpredictability of passengers and potential confrontation.
YouTuber, Tanner Markley provided tips, tricks, and best practices for earning the most with food delivery. His recommendations included:
- Driving to the nearest hub for takeout to be close to incoming orders
- Only accepting orders that are in your area
- Only accepting orders that pay over $2 per mile if they are outside of your delivery area
- Make sure you have multiple apps open at once to select the best opportunity.
Some of the best side hustle apps for food and grocery delivery are
- DoorDash
- Instacart
- UberEats
- Postmates
- Grubhub
Pros:
- Can use a bicycle or e-bike instead of a car depending on order size
- Flexible scheduling
Cons:
- Demand may significantly decrease as restaurants, and grocery stores close for the night
- Have to stop your car and get out to deliver to the door of the customer
- Long pick up times and often large orders
Freelancing
Opportunities in freelancing are endless. Depending on your skills, you could design websites, produce songs, manage social media, and so much more. Some popular methods of online freelancing include transcribing audio content or becoming a virtual assistant.
It may be more challenging to secure freelance gigs than rideshare and delivery gigs. However, the opportunity to earn far more per gig is presented, depending on the gig.
Our top picks for freelancing platforms are Fiverr and Upwork.
Pros:
- Can have higher payout
- Can work from home
- Ability to turn into a full-time business
Cons:
- It can be slower to bring gigs in
- It can be difficult to price your services
Parcel Delivery
If you enjoy driving, then parcel delivery may be a good side hustle for you. Parcel delivery is one of those side hustle ideas that you either love or hate. Some may call it repetitive and mundane, but others enjoy being on the road and will use this as an opportunity to make some good money while driving and listening to music.
Depending on the parcel delivery app you choose to use and the size of your transport vehicle, you can receive up to $650+ on long-distance deliveries with large parcels.
Our top picks for parcel delivery platforms are Roadie and Amazon Flex.
Pros:
- It can have quite a high payout
- Orders may be sporadic
Cons:
- You might need a van, truck, or trailer to fit oversized items in your vehicle.
- The pickup and delivery points may be out of your way.
Dog Walking
Calling all dog lovers! Do you love dogs and enjoy exercise? Dog walking is the gig for you. Depending on the number of dogs you take per walk and per day, you can earn a great deal of income. Dog walking is one of the more lucrative side hustles on this list, as you can turn your dog walking side hustle into an entire revenue-generating business. One gig worker, Ryan Stewart, makes over $100,000 annually through his dog walking business.
This side hustle requires you to be in good physical shape and understand dogs, including breaking up dog fights if necessary. Thankfully, before beginning your dog walking business, there are courses you can take to become trained on dog walking and canine behavior.
Our top pick for a dog walking side hustle is Wag!
YouTuber, Millennial Life Crisis signed up for Wag! to see what it’s like, and this is what she had to say about the sign-up process: “It’s really easy, you just have to answer these simple questions and pay 25 dollars for a background check. I think it took me about three days to hear back that I was officially a Wag! walker.”
Pros:
- Dogs (Duh!)
- Opportunities to walk multiple dogs at one time to maximize revenue
Cons:
- May need a large car or van to pick up and drop off many dogs at once
- Physically draining
Moving and Furniture Delivery
The final side hustles on this list are moving and furniture delivery. Moving and furniture delivery is pretty straightforward. Your task will be to transport (often oversized) furniture and carry it between destinations. You will then have to bring the furniture inside the space and place it to the homeowner’s liking. The challenge with this kind of gig is that it does not come around as often. Moving and delivery gigs can often be found on task completion apps.
You can make money doing everyday tasks on these apps for people who do not want to complete these tasks themselves. From skilled trades to manual labor, task completion platforms have it all. Some people will even pay you to stand in line for them. A bonus here for task completion apps is that you can set your geographic boundaries and will only be presented with gigs in your locale.
Gig apps that support furniture moving and task completion hustles are Dolly and TaskRabbit.
Pros:
- Can have a large payout
Cons:
- More sporadic work
Getting Started With the Best Side Hustle Apps
Whether you’re looking for side gigs to make a few extra bucks or for a side gig that can translate into a full-time career, we hope that this list has proved helpful. Be sure to incorporate tips like multi-gigging and using multiple apps at once to compare opportunities and see where you will take home the most cash.
If you decide to add any of these side hustle apps to your roster, try the Moves app to help manage your gig business and earnings. We also have a list of published articles that discuss getting started with various side hustles! Check them out for some guidance on getting started:
- How to become a Roadie driver
- How to become a dog walker on Wag!
- How to get started as an Upwork freelancer
- How to become a GrubHub driver
- How to become an UberEats driver
- How to become a DoorDash driver
- How to become a Lyft driver
Let us know which side gig you try out!
Emilie has been with Moves since January 2022 as a Growth Marketing Intern. She is in her fourth year of university and is passionate about exploring the world of personal finance. As a self-identified hustler, when Emilie is not at Moves, she can be found teaching beginner marketing boot camps at her university or working at one of many local concert venues.
