5 High-Paying Side Hustles You Can Start Within A Few Hours

Your bills are soaring. You can’t keep up with rent payment or mortgage rates. The prices for gas and everyday living items are so ridiculously high, it’s virtually impossible to keep your head above water on your limited salary.

In 2024, one thing is clear: when it comes to making money, time is of the essence.

This is why many people turn to “quick-fix” solutions, such as side hustles and passive income ideas that can generate income with relatively little financial or time expenditure.

But is this a good thing?

While there are undoubtedly a variety of side hustles and money making ideas that you can launch with minimal ongoing effort or upfront capital, you need to steer clear from the “get rich quick” mentality. Any entity promoting a scheme or business idea that guarantees you overnight success, is likely hiding a major part of the truth or is not legitimate.

The reality is, regardless of what side hustle you decide to embark on—even if it requires only a short time to set up—you still need to invest your brain capital. This means you will need to conduct some market research, evaluating trends, creating a business plan, and being strategic. The longest time expenditure is post-launch, where you will be experimenting, using trial and error until you have figured out the business model that is sustainable and works for you.

High-Paying Side Hustles To Start Right Away

With that being said, there are a few lucrative side hustles that literally only take a few minutes or hours at most to get started. All you need to launch these are:

• Your existing domain expertise
• Solid internet connection
• Laptop
• AI tools such as ChatGPT to help accelerate some parts of the process
• Freelance platforms (detailed below)

Once you are set up and live for business, you can tap into your network, LinkedIn, social media following, email subscriber list (if you have any), etc., and even utilize the premium listing options from the platform you’re using to get your side hustle off the ground.

1. Sign Up To Freelance Platforms

Have a knack for writing, graphic design, web development, or any other in-demand skill? You can sign up on freelancing platforms like Upwork, Freelancer, or Fiverr. Once you can create an account and profile on freelancing platforms (the set-up is usually very straightforward and can be accomplished quickly), they can take a few hours or days at most to approve your profile, before it is publicly available.

2. Start Online Tutoring

If you’re knowledgeable and confident in a particular subject, you can register an account on tutoring platforms such as Tutor.com or VIPKid to provide your services. To help draft a catchy profile description, you can use generative AI tools, of course sense-checking and adding your human touch to ensure it sounds like you and describes your methodology and expertise well. Upon approval of your profile, you can start tutoring.

3. Sell Digital Items

Gumroad, Amazon, and Etsy are two platforms that allow you to sell digital products such as e-books, printables, and templates. If you already have specific knowledge to share with a hungry market and know that what you have is trending, you can quickly create digital products using AI-powered design tools including Canva, and generative AI technology. Both the creation and listing of the product (with the exception of e-books) can be done within a few hours.

4. Become A Delivery Driver

Sign up to delivery driver platforms such as DoorDash and Instacart. These apps are relatively easy to set up and once you are approved, it’s possible to start earning once orders roll in, as long as there is demand and space in your area.

5. Sell Print-On-Demand Products

With printing on demand platforms such as Printiful or Printify, you can design a product or integrate existing custom designs, and sell a range of items via Etsy, Amazon, or Shopify, such as mugs, posters, and even t-shirts. This is easy to set up as you will not need to hold any inventory.

These five options can help you get started quickly, but the work doesn’t end here. Now that your profiles and accounts across these platforms are live and you’re on the journey to financial freedom, take time to craft your unique brand, get the message out there that your business entity exists, and continuously update your services so you’re always on-trend.