The best side hustles for 2023 combine hot trends with well-paid work to provide side hustlers with ample opportunity to profit. Here we examine a half-dozen social, demographic and economic trends, and the opportunities these provide, to come up with the best side hustles for 2023.
Best side hustles for 2023
What trends dominate 2023?
On the social side, the trends can be summed up with one sweeping statement: People are getting out more. They’re traveling, going to restaurants and theaters, playing outdoor sports, and getting married in massive numbers.
Economically, they’re harder pressed for cash because of inflation and higher interest rates, which makes everything from groceries to houses more expensive.
And demographically, the country is getting older and younger thanks to the giant Baby Boom and Millennial generations.
What does that mean in terms of opportunity for side hustlers? We break it down by the type of trend.
2023’s social trends
It appears that the entire world is over Covid. Millions of people engaged in “stay-cations” over the past three years. Now they’re traveling all over the world. Couples who postponed nuptials are getting married in droves. Parties. Restaurants. Concerts. Conventions. Car shows. People can’t seem to get enough of them. And, when not engaged in entertainment or travel, Americans are getting together for group sports.
The upshot? There’s huge demand for hospitality workers of all types, whether its to serve at hotel reception desks, clean rooms, staff events or provide tours. And, the hot group sports craze — pickleball — has sparked demand for coaches to teach millions of acolytes how to play the game.
And, since you need something to wear when you’re going out, fashion side hustles are also thriving.
How do you profit from these trends?
Hospitality and tourism
Sites that will allow you to sign up as a tour guide include Viator, WithLocals and Tours By Locals. All three sites allow tour guides to set their own agenda, determining what type of tours to offer, when and what they charge. The sites are paid through commissions and services fees after a customer books.
Interested in helping staff events? These jobs can range from being an usher, ticket-taker or concession stand worker at concerts and conferences to serving drinks and making food at restaurants and weddings. Some places you can find this work include BlueCrew, Wonolo and Qwick.
Coach pickleball
Several online platforms allow coaches to sign up to teach amateur athletes how to improve their game. But most, such as CoachUp and Athletes Untapped, offer only better-established sports, like baseball, basketball, soccer and la crosse. But a relatively new coaching site — TeachMeTo — focuses on pickleball, golf and tennis.
Coaches on this site generally charge $40 per hour and get more for group lessons. However, the site adds a $100 registration fee for new clients and a 20% commission to the coach’s rates, so first-time lessons can be costly to the end consumer. However, there are huge discounts for multiple-session packages, which make classes more affordable — and boost the chance of repeat business for coaches.
Fashion
If you design and make clothing, you can sell it on Etsy, eBay or Amazon. Artists who simply want to make their art available on other people’s t-shirts, hoodies and other apparel can upload designs to print-on-demand sites such as FineArtAmerica and Society6. These sites pay royalties to artists, whose designs are used to decorate a wide array of products. Most interested in fabric design? Check out Spoonflower.
Economic trends
Inflation and higher interest rates are the dominant economic trends of 2023. That’s throwing more people into side hustles to make ends meet. That’s likely to mean that Americans are more time-stressed, which makes using newly-sophisticated artificial intelligence tools to automate regular tasks a highly attractive idea. Not surprisingly, interest in AI side hustles has soared 3,800% over the past 18 months, according to Semrush, a search engine optimization tool.
However, higher interest rates also makes it harder for homeowners to move. Why? Three years ago, 30-year-fixed mortgage rates were under 3%. Now they’re nearly 8%. That means for each $100,000 borrowed, the homeowner pays $733 at today’s rates versus $422 at 3%. In other words, even if you borrow the same amount for a new home, you’d pay nearly twice as much for the monthly mortgage. That makes trading up prohibitively expensive.
Thus, homeowners are fixing up and adding on instead of moving on. Handyman/woman services of all types are a hot commodity.
Artificial intelligence
If you have experience with AI and prompt engineering, you can find side hustles in almost any industry. Fiverr, a broad-based job platform, is a good place to market these skills.
You can also find great job opportunities with big technology and staffing firms such as Robert Half, Toptal and Braintrust.
Construction and repairs
Whether you’re skilled at building bookshelves or fixing plumbing and electrical glitches, you’re likely to benefit from 2023’s remodel and repair trend.
The best place to offer these services is TaskRabbit, a national site that allows freelancers to set up profiles and set their own rates for a variety of in-person services. These include hanging television sets, building shelves, fixing appliances, deep cleaning and painting.
Demographic trends
Americans are getting older and younger. And it’s all because of the two biggest demographic groups in the nation’s history — the Baby Boomers and the Millennials.
Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, were once the biggest generation in U.S. history with some 76 million members. But with the oldest segment of this population now in their late 70s, the size of the Baby Boom population has dropped to some 69 million. And they’ve reached a point where they’re increasingly looking for help. Whether it’s running errands or helping with activities of daily living, caregivers are in demand.
Meanwhile, the Millennials born between 1981 and 1996, have finally settled down and started having kids. So they, too, need help with caregiving for both their children and pets, which they brought home en masse during the pandemic. Not surprisingly one of the best side hustles for 2023 involves providing care to kids, elders and pets.
Providing care to kids and adults
If you’re able to provide caregiving services for seniors, kids and pets, the one-stop shop to list your services is Care. This national site charges both caregivers and clients a small monthly membership fee. However, for long-term caregiving relationships, this fee is far less costly than the commission structure imposed by many other sites.
Other sites to sign up for babysitting include Bambino and UrbanSitter.
The best site when you’re solely interested in petsitting is Rover.
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