Corporations taking over side hustles seems to be screwing over people, since they take such a large cut and flood the market for that hustle.
But the ones I’ve personally seen people do that work pretty well (in USA) are:
Stay at home mom watching another kid (legally dubious depending on state/situation. But I ain’t no narc.)
A neighbor of my mom’s sends out a menu saying what she plans on cooking each night for that week, and for $X will deliver you some as well (Legal in Utah due to special laws, other states could be dubious. )
People who go pick up free furniture that is pretty trashed, and then refurbishes it and sells it. Or people with trucks who are like “Will deliver furniture for $30 in X area” is also pretty life saver for people without cars/trucks. Was able to get a super cheap/nice coach because of this.
People who just flip free stuff or stuff from thrift stores without doing any improvements annoy me greatly though. We broke and you’re just driving up the price!
None of these generate a ton of cash, but I like that they take very little up front cost, aren’t disruptive, and mostly take labor.
So what side hustles have you seen work out?
Ex con neighbor started a junk hauling business after he couldn’t get hired.
Dude was making it but was definitely busting his ass daily. Ended up needing to expand and get another trailer.
That’s awesome to hear!
I had to hire a junk hauler after I had to kick the guy living in my basement out because he decided he didn’t need to pay for 6 months (It was a full basement apartment with own bathroom/master bedroom/kitchen and I charged $600 flat) , and I realized that instead of taking ANY trash out for the last year, he simply stuffed all the trash into one of the rooms and it looked like a landfill. Including bags of used cat litter. He also broke basically every appliance including the washer and dryer and never told me (I was able to fix those pretty easily luckily), and left a broken down truck in the driveway. He of course also left a bunch of like really gross/broken furniture.
Then blocked me and my gf on all phones/social media… oops this is accidentally a rant of how me trying to help a guy with a negative credit score backfired terribly. I guess sometimes credit score is accurate and not BS.
Anyway, I was gonna have a mental break down realizing that my basement was a literal landfill, with like 20 weeks worth of garbage I would need to some how get out of my house and a bunch of junk that wouldn’t fit in a car. But then $400 dollars later the brave junk haulers made my problems go away (they had to call a second truck). They worked so fast, were super nice and open about price/time and what items they were going to try to sell. It’s an incredibly helpful business and I’m glad he found success by working for just normal people in a rough spot. I do in fact hope I never have to hire any of them again though.
Also, yes, the house had lots of bugs. Whenever I asked him if he had any idea where they were coming from or if he had any issues he assured me that, no, he didn’t. Luckily once all the trash was out of the basement, tons of normal traps, bug bombs, and a few weeks of only having packaged food made all the bugs go away. If I had to have it fumigated I probably would have had another break down.