Reliable side hustles for regular income

For a lot people, a side hustle is a great way to pay for things you otherwise couldn’t afford — luxuries like vacations and dinners out.

But side hustles are a necessity for roughly one-third of all Americans who engage in them because they’re using the money to pay day-to-day expenses, according to recent research from BankRate. So, while many workers may prefer higher-paying side hustles, even if they’re inconsistent, some side hustlers just need reliable side hustles for regular income.

Reliable side hustles

Reliable side hustles are not always the best paying. They involve providing help with a lot of day-to-day activities, from delivery to serving, tutoring to watching pets. However the best reliable side hustles pay considerably more than minimum wage — even after expenses — and can bring in between $500 and $1,000 a month like clockwork.

The one caveat is that it can take six months or so to get established before you start working regularly. That’s typically how long it takes to generate enough reviews and ratings to make your profile stand out on some of the top side hustle platforms. But after that, freelancers maintain these gigs are so reliable that they can turn into full-time jobs, if they want them to.

Here are six reliable side hustles worth considering.

Animal care

Walking and watching pets is one of the most pleasant and reliable side hustles for animal lovers. Even casual side hustlers tell us they regularly earn $500 to $1,000 with Rover, the largest and best established of the pet-watching sites.

Here potential dog walkers and pet sitters sign up and create a profile that tells about them and their experience with pets. Side hustlers also choose the type of pets they’re willing to watch, whether to offer ancillary services, such as pet grooming and transportation, and the rates to charge. You’re even able to set different rates for weekends and holidays, if you so choose.  Rover takes a 20% commission on all bookings.

Pro tip: Set your rates low — maybe $5 nightly below the median in your neighborhood — in the beginning to get those first customers. Once you have multiple reviews, gradually raise your rates. At that point, you don’t need to be the lowest-cost provider to continue winning business.

Tutoring

If you like academics more than animals, consider tutoring. With roughly 50 million school-age children in America, the need for academic tutors is great.

And tutoring opportunities have become more attractive in recent years as the world has increasingly moved to online tutoring, which saves tutors the time and expense of traveling to their students. They simply flip on a video chat and go.

There are a number of good online tutoring sites. Our personal favorite is the industry giant, Wyzant. What make Wyzant stand out? Millions of monthly customers; freedom to choose what you teach, when you teach and what you charge. The site takes a 25% commission on bookings.

Pro-tip: As we suggested to animal sitters above, the key to standing out in a crowded marketplace is reviews. But to get those reviews, you probably need to offer your services a little more cheaply than the better-established competition. But that’s temporary. Once you’ve got good reviews and a regular stream of students, you can start raising your rates.

Freelance writing

Despite worries that artificial intelligence was going to eliminate freelance writing jobs, there’s still plenty of regular work, particularly for people with experience and talent in niche fields. For instance, there’s plenty of work in financial writing, medical writing, and in technical writing in fields like aerospace, agriculture, education and oil.

There’s also demand for people with unique perspectives and life experiences, whether these involve raising special needs children or dealing with your own gender identity. The trick to finding these opportunities is to simply dive into your specialty with enough vigor to understand what publications cover your specific topic and how. You can then pitch editors of those publications directly or work through an online platform, such as Contently, Skyword, NDash, or ServiceScape.

Pro-tip: The best way to make freelance writing a reliable gig is to get repeat business from the same publications. If you avidly read the publications that you want to pitch, you’ll become well-acquainted with their style and coverage. This boosts your chance of acceptance — and of impressing the editors enough to get regular work.

Food service

Restaurants continue to struggle filling shifts with enough willing waiters, waitresses, bartenders and other food service staff to keep their facilities running smoothly. If you have experience in the service industry, it’s pretty easy to find regular work. Hourly wages are notoriously low for tipped workers, but tips can make the job worthwhile.

Good sites to find on-demand work in this industry are Jitjatjo and Qwick. However, if you have favorite local restaurants and bars, it’s also worth checking directly with the businesses where you’d like to work.

Food service is an industry well used to catering to part-time workers, so there’s no huge need to pick up work through online platforms. But there is one benefit to the online platforms: They operate in many states, so if you move a lot, you can simply change your location on the app. You don’t need to reapply for work.

Pro-tip: Apply with your favorite restaurants first. Most restaurants provide free meals to their wait staff.  What could be better than earning money and getting to eat at your favorite restaurants for free?

Delivery

There were far fewer regular delivery jobs before the Pandemic. But three years of lock-downs got Americans accustomed to ordering meals, groceries, and household items online. And the trend has accelerated partly because discount retailers like Target and Walmart have started offering free delivery as a way to compete with Amazon.

Nearly all the delivery services, with the exception of AmazonFlex, pay relatively modest delivery fees and rely on the customer’s tip to make the job worthwhile. (Amazon pays roughly $18 to $25 per hour.) Generally speaking, this process works because drivers can see the tip before they agree to the trip. And, not surprisingly, cheap customers have a tough time finding a driver.

Pro-tip: Sign up for multiple sites and cherry-pick your gigs. We recommend DoorDash, GrubHub and UberEats for meal deliveries; Instacart, Shipt and Dumpling for grocery delivery. And AmazonFlex, GoShare, Frayt, Citizen Shipper, and uShip for heavier items that require a truck or cargo van.

Rideshare

Driving for Uber and Lyft won’t make you rich. But if you’re in a major metropolitan area, you can generally find a fare within seconds of opening the app. And, metro drivers say that if they’re willing to take all fares, they typically have back-to-back fares from the moment they start to the moment they sign off.

Experiences vary based on your location, however. And ride share gigs are often not reliable side hustles in rural areas.

Pro-tip: Some rural drivers tell us they make it work by commuting to the nearest urban center, where they can drive all day. “It’s not much different than commuting to any job,” one Tennesse ride share driver told us. Getting from his home near Franklin to Nashville took less than a half-hour, he added. And that was well worth the time because not only got more fares, each fare paid more per mile because there was a greater need for drivers.