7 Remote Side Hustles You Can Start With No Money In 2025

Around this time of the year, you’ve likely spent your salary, some of your savings, and perhaps maxed out your credit cards, on purchasing gifts for loved ones, traveling, and ensuring you’re well prepared for the Christmas holiday season. Which means that by the time the new year pops around the corner, you won’t have anything left to invest in building supplemental income to boost your salary for the coming year.

7 Side Hustles You Can Start With $0 In 2025

To prevent you from being stuck financially (while at the same time working in a job that you absolutely hate), here are seven work-from-home side hustle ideas that you can start right away, even if you have little to no money, in 2025:

1. Freelance Writing

Freelance writing doesn’t acquire any setup costs at all. If you’re sitting here reading this article, chances are you already have all you need to start a lucrative side hustle as a freelance writer—your device and reliable internet.

Although it would be helpful to have your own website, to begin with you can advertise your services and search for freelance writing jobs on platforms like ProBlogger, Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer, as well as LinkedIn Services, without needing to pay anything upfront. Other platforms such as FlexJobs require you to pay a small subscription to access the roles advertised.

2. Virtual Assistance

Another popular side hustle is providing virtual assistance to small businesses and entrepreneurs, as these will likely not have the time for admin and marketing-related tasks. Your services could include social media management, responding to inquiries and emails, and handling scheduling. You can take care of all these responsibilities for them, charging a retainer fee, or working out your rates per project.

3. Podcast Editing

Using free tools such as Audacity or any existing audio editing software that you currently use, you can offer a service that involves cleaning up and making adjustments to improve the audio for podcasts. This saves podcast creators time so they can focus on recording and marketing.

4. Voiceover Acting

With practice and training you could use your voice to narrate audiobooks for Amazon Audible, and eventually even expand your services to voiceovers for commercials, or for narrating videos.

5. Essay Writing Tutoring

If you love writing and have a knack for creating the best essays with top marks when in college, or have a background in teaching at the higher education level, you could use your expertise to review student work and coach them to perfect the art of essay writing so they can excel in their studies.

6. Instagram Management

Another fantastic side hustle idea that you can start without any money is becoming an Instagram manager, or Instagram engagement manager. This is where you would provide a service to businesses where you’d manage their Instagram presence and optimize their account for visibility to reach their target audiences on the platform. You’d also build a community through their Instagram engaging with others using the brand’s profile and foster relationships (and even partnerships) with followers, in addition to creating a content schedule and strategy.

7. Coaching

Another no-cost side hustle idea you could try in 2025 is coaching. Coaching is an in-demand industry that is estimated to be worth $4.5 billion worldwide. Since the life coaching industry is for a large part unregulated, there are lower barriers to entry and you can make money coaching clients online for virtually any area that is in demand, using your specialism. You could decide on a niche such as business coaching, career coaching for specific jobs, or health and wellness coaching.

The fantastic thing about all seven of these side hustle ideas is that you can take them with you anywhere across the country or around the world. You just need a clearly defined niche and sub-niche, a well-defined strategy to market your services, thorough research, and of course, relevant skills, to make these work. As you earn more, you can reinvest in scaling your remote side hustle if you wish, into a fully-fledged business.