3 YouTube Side Hustles You Need To Try In 2024

With its estimated 2.7 billion active users and the soaring influencer marketing industry, there has never been a better time to be a YouTube influencer. “The global influencer marketing market size has more than tripled since 2019. In 2024, the market was estimated to reach a record of 24 billion U.S. dollars,” says Statista.

The most popular influencer marketing platforms include TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Being the second largest search engine, YouTube has a thriving userbase of 122 million viewers globally through its web and mobile apps, and boasts a multibillion-dollar ad revenue thanks to its community of creators.

This makes it a compelling choice and worthwhile pursuit when considering side hustle ideas, or even when considering freelancing ideas as a full-time career.

YouTube Side Hustles

There are a number of ways you can do what you love and make money on YouTube, but below are just three of them:

1. Educational Tutorials

Being the second largest search engine in its own right, many people searching for an answer to a problem, or a how-to on Google, head to YouTube and type their query. YouTube is an excellent educational resource which people use to find quick answers, for a wide range of problems. From cooking, to DIY, to coding, to gardening to career advice and job searching to finance tips and even educational content for kids, producing tutorials and educational content will be sure to keep your viewers hooked.

Ensure that you only record content that you are knowledgeable and passionate about, and stick to your niche. Otherwise your lack of confidence may show on camera (or on audio if your face is not being seen). And most importantly, it will affect the quality of your output, which translates to low views.

It’s also worth bearing in mind, that to deliver educational content, you do not need to have a good camera all the time. Depending on the topic you are teaching, you might be able to have a faceless YouTube channel—one in which you generate videos using a combination of stock video clips and images, a voiceover (or AI voiceover), or a screencast.

2. Product Reviews

Select a niche and upload product reviews. Product reviews are wildly popular because people often want to know how good or effective something is before committing to spend money on it. By doing product reviews you are essentially the guinea pig in exchange for receiving free products from brands looking to partner with influencers, money through affiliate links, or payment via advertising companies.

These products should ideally be relevant to your industry or background, so that you can discuss them from an active user or expert perspective.

For instance, if you are reviewing a camera, it would be ideal if you already have experience as a photographer or are a vlogger, since you can then speak to details that avid vloggers or photographers would be familiar with, or look out for.

Some examples of products you might consider reviewing are:

• Fitness gadgets
• Photography equipment
• Makeup and skin care products
• Text gadgets and software tools

3. Teach Languages

If you’re fluent in multiple languages, why not create content to help others learn? Research shows that being multilingual is in high demand for 90% of employers, while the job demand for interpreters and translators surges over the next few years.

Through uploading language learning content to YouTube, you might be able to support thousands of people to have access to better pay and career opportunities through their unique language skills.

The YouTube content you provide can include language lessons (live and recorded), cultural and historical insights, or tips for easy language acquisition.

How To Make Money On YouTube

Views and audience metrics are one of the most essential ingredients to a successful YouTube channel. This is because they are your key to making money, due to the payment and advertising structure of the platform. The more subscribers and video content you have, the more opportunities you have to make money through several mediums including:

• YouTube Partner Program (ads revenue)
• Affiliate marketing
• Partnerships and collabs
• Course signups (external links to a course you’ve created)
• Channel memberships

All three of the above YouTube side hustles will take time and patience to grow, but with persistence, planning your channel content and strategy, and researching your target audience and the keywords they search for, you will be on your way to a lucrative side hustle.