Last Updated on April 24, 2025 by Jan Barley
If you’re looking for profitable side hustles for beginners, you’re in the right place. Whether wanting a bit of extra money to pay the bills or want to build a full-time income.
It doesn’t matter if you’re working full time, juggling nap times, school runs, or have some spare time in the evenings. We got you. Above all, this guide will walk you through realistic ways to make money from home, even if you’re starting from scratch.
Moreover, these aren’t just ideas—they’re tried and tested by budding entrepreneurs who crave more flexibility, freedom, and financial wiggle room.
Side Hustle #1: Start a Faceless YouTube Channel
Yes, you can earn money from faceless content on YouTube without ever showing your face! Faceless YouTube channels are ideal for beginners who feel camera-shy or prefer creating quietly behind the scenes.
For instance, one mum I know started a channel focused on relaxing music for toddlers. She used stock videos and AI voiceovers to create soothing bedtime content.
After uploading just a few videos, she began earning money through YouTube ads and affiliate links.
It’s a fabulous example of a profitable side hustle for beginners who want passive income.
You don’t need fancy equipment. Above all, with the right tools and a bit of creativity, you can launch a YouTube channel over the weekend.
Your primary focus must be to find a profitable YouTube niche and choose a channel that inspires you. The truth is, you may not see instant results. Few people do. Certainly, it takes time for the YouTube algorithm to understand your content and place it in front of the right audience.
Focus on learning the best tips for YouTube growth. I picked these tips from hugely successful YouTubers and am just starting to apply them to my YouTube channels.
AI Tools To Help You Get Started
- Pictory ai to turn your script into engaging video content
- ElevenLabs to create human-sounding voiceovers
- vidIQ to optimise your videos so more people find them
Other free tools are Capcut for editing video and Audacity for adding voice effects.
YouTube channel ideas
- Sleep music for babies
- Affirmations for mums
- Relaxing nature scenes
- Sleep stories for adults
If you’re creative and want to find profitable side hustles for beginners that can grow in the background, this one’s a gem.
Read: Profitable Faceless YouTube Ideas: 7 Amazing Opportunities
Side Hustle #2: Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a brilliant beginner-friendly side hustle. Primarily, you recommend products you genuinely use, and when someone buys through your link—you get paid.
Above all, affiliate marketing is low risk, easy to start, and can snowball into a solid income stream. However, don’t expect instant results. It can take time. Your affiliate marketing results depend on how much traffic you can drive to your offers.
Work on search engine marketing like Google (focus on writing SEO content for your blog), YouTube and Pinterest. Yes, I did say Pinterest! It’s a formidable search engine. Depending on your niche, it can start driving sales quickly once your account gains momentum.
I did several Pinterest courses that taught me how to create beautiful, inspiring pins and learn Pinterest SEO.
Unfortunately, I messed up my first Pinterest account. It got taken down after getting suspended because I made rookie errors.
Read: The Top 10 Profitable Pinterest Niches: What’s Trending
Benefits of affiliate marketing:
- No product to create
- No dealing with customer service
- You can start with products you already love
For instance, you could share links on your Instagram Stories, in a blog post, or on Pinterest.
If you’re a blogger or content creator, using Keysearch will help you find high-ranking keywords to drive more traffic. Keysearch is a quarter of the price of the expensive Ahrefs! Moreover, it’s beginner-friendly and can help you get more traffic by targeting the best keywords for your niche.
Side Hustle #3: Freelance Writing
If you’ve got a knack for words, freelance writing is a flexible and profitable option. You don’t need to be a perfect writer—just clear, helpful, and reliable.
For example, when I started out, I wrote blog posts for anyone who would pay me. Over time, my writing improved, and I increased my rates. I started in late 2020 at £30 per 1,000 words and now get paid ten times that amount!
Build a portfolio. Practice and learn from successful writers. It’s a lovely way to earn extra money. For me, it’s a full-time income working part-time hours.
How to Get Started as a Writer
Pick a niche you enjoy. I mostly write for dog publications and life coaches in the mindset niche because I enjoy both. For instance, I’m a qualified dog behaviourist with multiple qualifications relevant to psychological businesses.
Focus on writing content that people love to read. Make your writing relatable and talk to one person. Identify their problems and provide a solution with your writing.
Where to find beginner gigs:
- Facebook groups for bloggers or small businesses (get access to 600 Facebook groups to promote your writing business)
- Freelance platforms like Fiverr or Upwork (these aren’t great, but they get you experience)
- Reaching out directly to brands you admire
Once you have a portfolio of published work, register with Clearvoice. I don’t write for them now, as I have dedicated client work. However, I got quite a lot of work from that platform in the beginning.
To speed up your writing and optimise it for SEO, try SEOWriting.ai. Primarily, this AI tool helps you write quicker and smarter—not harder.
Read: 38 Websites That Pay Bloggers To Write
Side Hustle #4: Selling Digital Products on Etsy
Selling printables or digital downloads on Etsy is a fantastic way to create passive income. Once it’s made, it can sell again and again.
You can design things like:
- Habit trackers
- Digital journals
- Meal planners
- Vision board kits
- Affirmation cards
- Budget templates
- Kids activity sheets
- Printable invitations
- Routine charts for kids
The scope is infinite for what you can create and sell on Etsy.
Tools like Canva make designing easy, and Keysearch helps you find what buyers are searching for. For instance, with just a few listings, you could have a little digital shop running in the background of your day.
Try not to copy other Etsy accounts just because they’re successful. Focus on providing digital products or printables with a unique touch and make your mark on the platform.
Above all, you will need to stay consistent and list new products regularly. That way, one or more products could take off and start making money fast.
Although Etsy is one of the profitable side hustles for beginners, there is a caveat. Etsy can be unpredictable. Some Etsy sellers have no issues, but others experience all sorts of annoying problems, such as Etsy randomly closing their accounts.
My advice for pursuing profitable side hustles for beginners is NEVER to put all your eggs in one basket. Have at least two side hustles; if one falls by the wayside, you aren’t left without an income.
Side Hustle #5: Blogging for Passive Income
Any idiot who tells you blogging is dead can do one. Blogging was and still is one of the best profitable side hustles for beginners. That said, low-value blogging content has had its day.
In addition, Google and most ad-revenue platforms now want quality blogging websites for their advertising partners. With all the Google updates since 2022, the focus is on helpful content that satisfies user intent.
Blogging can start small and build into a beautiful business. Meanwhile, each post is like planting a seed that can grow over time. Most importantly, once you gain traffic, you can earn money from affiliate links, ads, or your own products.
Read: How To Create Evergreen Content That Ranks For Years
I started working seriously on my blog in April 2024. A year later, I got monetised with Journey by Mediavine, which was my goal for a passive income stream. You can install the Grow plug-in on a WordPress site to get approved once you have sufficient traffic. The plug-in has a few helpful tools to boost your website.
Journey by Mediavine recently removed 500 websites from their platform. Apparently, the reason is because they no longer support the flaky, sparse content (notably lengthy listicles) you see on some AI-written websites like the home décor niche.
Write quality content from the start, content that helps the reader and you stand a chance of getting approval. Don’t bother with Google Adsense. I tried that first, and it looked so clunky and intrusive on my website that I removed it.
In addition to ad revenue, I have 40+ affiliate partnerships and a ton of traffic coming in daily.
Was it hard work? You bet. Often, I did not want to write blog content or research user intent and keywords. Still, I set my goal to write one hundred blog posts within my first year, and I achieved that. It’s now paying off.
So, my friend, prepare for the long haul because the rewards are fantastic if you work hard now, preparing for the future passive income you crave.
To start a money-making blog, you’ll need:
- A topic you’re passionate about
- A simple WordPress site
- Tools like SEOWriting ai help you write SEO-optimised content that ranks FAST. Keysearch is an affordable and user-friendly SEO software that allows beginners to research the best keywords. It’s a fraction of the price of most SEO tools and does equally as good a job as more expensive SEO tools.
Most importantly, if you love writing or sharing tips with others, blogging for passive income is one of the most rewarding long-term profitable side hustles for beginners, especially if you want to maximise earnings without working longer hours.
Side Hustle #6: Voiceover Work Using AI
Voiceovers aren’t just for radio pros anymore. With tools like ElevenLabs, anyone can create polished audio—even if you don’t love your natural voice. The platform has hundreds of unique voices for every genre.
Best Applications for AI voiceovers
- Podcasts
- Presentations
- Video Courses
- Guided meditations
- Audiobooks or children’s stories
- YouTube channels (see my Simply Manifesting channel and Soulful Entrepreneur channel, which I have used ElevenLabs for a chunk of the content
In addition, you can clone your voice with ElevenLabs. It takes a bit of time to get the right sound, but that alone can save hours of recording time. It’s surprisingly affordable, too.
The scope for profitable side hustles for beginners using voiceovers is unlimited. Therefore, with AI text-to-speech tools, creating top-quality audio content in minutes has become possible. No more bumbling with repeated takes, cutting out background noise, or the annoying space fillers like “ums” and “ers”.
Voiceover work is perfect for mums who want to work quietly behind the scenes. Once set up, it’s fast and fun, and you can even build recurring clients.
Side Hustle #7: Social Media Management
If you’re already spending time on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Pinterest, why not turn that into income? Social media management is one of the profitable side hustles for beginners that many people have fun doing. They earn a good income too.
Many small businesses have no idea how to manage their social media accounts. It’s time-consuming and tricky understanding the different guidelines for each platform, so they’ll happily pay someone who “gets it.”
Beginner-friendly tasks include:
- Writing posts
- Writing captions
- Designing Canva graphics
- Scheduling content using free tools
Start by choosing which social media platform to focus on. That way, you can make more money as a specialist, and it’s easier to get referrals. For instance, offer to help a local business or friend. As you gain confidence, you can offer packages or monthly retainers.
Once you gain a good reputation, you will receive referrals from your happy clients. It’s a job most business owners find frustrating and time-consuming. Therefore, if you love content creation, it’s one of the best profitable side hustles for beginners.
Above all, make your job easier by using a scheduling tool like the popular Metricool. You can post fifty pieces of content each month entirely for free. After that, the price is much more affordable than other scheduling platforms.
Read: How To Save Hours Repurposing Content On Social Media
Conclusion
In conclusion, I hope you enjoyed reading about 7 of the best profitable side hustles for beginners. I think you’ll agree that they are simple, realistic, and totally doable, even with a busy mum’s life.
You don’t need to do them all. Indeed, that can only lead to feeling overwhelmed.
Above all, choose one that speaks to you, permit yourself to start small, and trust that it will grow. Every business begins with that first brave step.
So, make a cuppa, pick your hustle, and let’s make that extra income a reality.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a commission if you sign up for a program or make a purchase using my link.
FAQs
Which Profitable Side Hustle Is the Fastest To Start?
Affiliate marketing or freelance writing—you could literally start today!
How Long Until I Start Making Money With a Side Hustle?
Some side hustles (like freelance writing) pay quickly. Others (like blogging or YouTube) take a few months to build up.
Will These Profitable Side Hustles Work If I’m Not Tech-Savvy?
In short, don’t worry! Most tools listed here are beginner-friendly, and many have tutorials.
Can I Start a Side Hustle With Young Kids At Home?
Absolutely. For instance, committing to even one hour day when the kids are asleep or at school can get you started on the path to profitable side hustles for beginners.
How Do I Stay Consistent With My Side Hustle?
Primarily. pick one idea, block out 30 minutes daily, and treat it like your time to grow something just for you. Remind yourself that it takes time and anticipate feeling deflated if you don’t see results at first. Indeed, accept that as a fact and just keep going.
Do I Need To Register A Business?
Once you start earning regularly, you must register with the tax office. Still, don’t let that stop you from getting started—it’s easy to set up later.
