If you need to earn extra money, but don’t have the energy to add more hours to your work day, check out weekend side hustles. Weekend side hustles are mostly available anytime. However, demand for these jobs tends to peak on the weekends. And that provides plenty of opportunity for people who prefer to side hustle on Saturdays and Sundays.

What are the best weekend side hustles?

Animal boarding

Pet-owners who want to get away for the weekend turn to sites like Rover to find someone willing to take in their pets while they go on vacation. If you like animals, boarding pets in your own home can be the ideal weekend side hustle, allowing you to earn hundreds of dollars a month without a lot of additional work. 

Rover allows freelance pet sitters to sign up, create a profile, and set their own rates and terms. Those terms might stipulate that you only watch small dogs, cats, or animals that get along with other pets and children. Want to offer additional services, such as grooming, dog-walking, drop-in-visits, or pick-up? You set the rates for those too.

Realistic expectations of what you can earn vary by location. Boarding services tend to cost more in urban areas. However, it’s not unusual to see rates ranging from $35 to $75 per night. And, if you have the space, you can book multiple pets at the same time. You decide how many animals you can accommodate.

Rover markets your services and collects payment, deducting a 20% – 25% commission from your pay.

Coaching

Young athletes often enlist sports coaches on weekends, when school is out, to help improve their game. Although outside coaching can be expensive, some parents consider it an investment likely to pay off with college scholarships and preferred admission standing.

Several sites allow coaches to market their services through big sites that provide marketing and collection help in exchange for a portion of the coach’s fees. Some good sites to consider: Wyzant, which books both academic tutors and athletic coaches and CoachUp. 

With Wyzant, you set your own rates and availability and pay the platform a flat 25% when it books customers for you. CoachUp, meanwhile, has a staggered commission formula that costs coaches more when they’re working with new clients, but drops sharply for repeat bookings. 

Babysitting

Parents may want a “date night” anytime, of course. But commonly, they wait until the weekend when they can stay out late without interfering with the next morning’s work. Babysitting kids has become a well-paid side hustle, too. In today’s market, babysitters earn between $15 and $30 per hour. And it doesn’t matter if your charges sleep through most of your work period, leaving you to watch t.v. or read.

Why does babysitting pay so much? There’s a babysitter shortage that’s partly caused by a dearth of teens willing to do the job.

Teens who want to babysit can sign up with Bambino, which uses social media to connect you with amenable families. Adult sitters can sign up with Care, and set their own rates and availability.

Bambino charges about $2 for each booking. Meanwhile, Care works on a subscription model. You don’t pay a fee or commission on your earnings, but you will pay either a monthly or annual fee to communicate with parents on the platform.

Event staff

‘Tis the season for holiday parties and family get-togethers which means there’s also great demand for chefs, bartenders, and servers of all types. Not surprisingly, most events are hosted on weekends, which is also when restaurants are the most in need of servers year-round.

Sites such as Qwick, Jitjatjo and CafeTemps can connect freelancers willing to provide food and beverage services with restaurants and event managers needing help. Expected pay ranges from minimum wage to $30 an hour. And, you can sometimes earn more through tips.

Odd jobs

If you have handyman skills, you can make extra cash on the weekends by helping others with random tasks like hanging lights and television sets; assembling furniture, painting, swapping out electrical fixtures and the like. While there are dozens of sites that promise to connect customers with handymen and women, the best site for freelancers wanting to offer these services is TaskRabbit.

TaskRabbit encourages freelancers to sign up, create a profile that highlights what you do and set your own rates. You can set different rates for different tasks, too. So, you might charge $50 an hour to handle electrical issues but only $40 an hour to assemble IKEA furniture. The site charges nothing to freelancers. The site’s fees are paid exclusively by customers, so freelancers receive 100% of the rate they set.

12/6/2022