Not sure if this a weird side hustle, but I figured I’d share it anyway. I started getting paid to pick up leftover pizza and give it to homeless people in my area.

I live a few blocks from Roosevelt Row in Phoenix, and there’s a little pizza place I pass all the time. I started noticing how much pizza they threw out after closing, so I started checking the dumpster and taking whatever was still wrapped or looked untouched. I’d put it in a clean box and take it around to the homeless people I usually saw in the area. I kept doing it because I hated seeing good food go to waste.

The owner noticed what I was doing and asked me about it. I told him I was taking the pizza to people who needed food. He liked that I was finding a use for the leftovers, so he asked for my number and offered to give me $25 to keep doing it. After that, his employees started setting the leftover pizza aside for me instead of throwing it away, so I didn’t have to get it from the dumpster anymore. They’d text me when they had some ready, and I’d stop by after closing, pick it up, and take it around to the same people. I was doing it for free before, and now I make around $300 a month from it plus it can cover my bills.

I work at a laundromat, and as a single mom with three kids, I'm always looking for ways to make extra money around my regular shifts. The whole thing came up when one of our regular customers, a nurse who works long shifts, came in with two huge bags of laundry. She asked if we offered pickup and delivery because she was too tired to make another trip back after work. We didn't offer pickup or delivery, so I told her I could bring it to her after my shift for $20. She gave me her apartment number and left the bags with me. I dropped the laundry off after my shift, and a few days later she asked if I could do it again.

A couple more customers started asking if I could do it for them too, so I started fitting a few pickups and drop-offs around my regular shifts. They pay the laundromat for the washing and drying, and I charge $15-$20 for the extra service. I usually make an extra $200-$300 a month doing it around my normal schedule, which helps with groceries and the kids' expenses. I did almost mess up one delivery when two customers had the exact same reusable bags. I was already halfway to the first apartment when I looked at the name tag and realized I had the other person's clothes in my car.

Now I check the name three times before I leave because getting someone else’s underwear delivered to your door would be a pretty bad surprise.

i booked out a 71 city tour myself and have just 5 shows left. its a lot of work and a lot of driving but i got it down to a system now.

i intro the movie and then go have dinner while it plays. then i come back for a Q&A and wrap it up with a meet and greet where i say hi to everyone at my merch booth. you don't have to buy anything for a selfie or to say hi but i let everyone know it helps pay my bills. i autograph the merch but i'll also sign anything people want and have signed plenty of weird shit like teeth, birth control, a squirrel, the hood of a car, and a bandage on someone's body from a gall bladder removal surgery they had the day before.

all the ticket sales for the movie and a chunk of the merch go into two buckets. bucket 1 pays off investors. i let all the cast and crew know right up front i couldn't pay them what they were worth but after the investors get paid back bucket 2 goes toward paying them what they would normally get on a bigger production. after those buckets get filled i'll start to profit although i will make some back for bucket 1 from my own investment and bucket 2 for my acting part.

in the meantime i take a cut of the merch. i gotta pay some expenses and my tour help out of that but it still leaves me with enough to pay my rent for the rest of the year.

I am working at a company that pays exactly just at the minimum, with no other benefits to enjoy. But at the same time, this side hustle is what keeps me afloat. I found this side hustle by accident when I was scrolling through job markets and saw one post looking for a mystery guest. It sounded weird and suspicious but as I looked through the description, it was just a mystery guest to rate hotel service.

So, hotel companies hire us (mystery guests) to evaluate the guest experience and how their hotel staff accommodate us. Of course, we’re not supposed to announce that we are evaluators, we should always act like a normal customer like someone on vacation.

You don’t have to be extra with your stay, the company will give me a set of assignments to do that I should pay attention to throughout my entire stay. Such as checking the booking process, check-in, staff communication, room preparation, and the overall experience. Then after all that, I will create a REALLY detailed report of what happened, even including timestamps and dates. I check-in pretending like a normal guest, but I’m observing like an evaluator then writing a report as if Karen was writing it on her Facebook posts with every necessary and unnecessary detail.

Lately I’ve also been thinking about making UGC videos for the hotels I stay at, just simple guest style videos of the room, breakfast, the view, etc. that they could use on socials or ads (I saw some guys make a lot from this) I haven’t pitched this to anyone yet, so no idea if it’ll work, but I found this guide while looking into it and it gave me a few ideas on how to approach hotels.

My parents own a local food stall and we typically sell the junk canned sodas people buy from us at a junkyard. But when I saw on Facebook that people in international craft groups buy thousands of tabs for their cosplay costumes and textured handicrafts, it gave me an idea to sell unbent and clean soda tabs from the canned sodas we sold every day.

Before serving the sodas to the customer, I would offer to open it for them so I can keep the tabs. But when they don’t, I would just simply ask them to leave the tab or their finished soda on the table. After collecting every tab, I degrease them in warm water with soap, throw away the bent or damaged ones, and sort them dry into jars and zip-lock bags.

Those plain silver tabs in 300-count packs cost $30 while rare colored tabs from energy drinks would cost $50. Shipping won’t cost much since it’s weightless. I am also planning to contact other local stores nearby to be able to purchase can tabs so I can sell more.

My roommate makes 200 pesos a night pretending to be possessed at a provincial mega church
She works for some self-proclaimed prophet running a massive, slowly turning tent operation out here in the provinces, sitting in the front row of the Sunday night. When the pastor starts screaming into the mic about ancestral curses and barang, she drops to the concrete floor, convulses, speaks in fake tongues, and shrieks until the “prophet” slams a greasy hand on his forehead and "cures" him. He gets 200 pesos cash per service plus free food from the backstage tent.

Great side hustle for the Philippine economy, but its kinda weird tho.

Started doing this by accident when I lost a piece to an old 90s board game and found out someone was selling that exact replacement token on eBay for $8.

Now whenever I hit Goodwill or yard sales, I check the toy aisle for beat-up copies of popular or out-of-print games. Usually pay $2 to $4 a box. If the box is trashed, it doesn't matter. I just sort the plastic figures, dice, property cards, and odd tokens into ziplock bags, wipe them down, and list them individually.

Most people don't want to buy an entire $40 game just because their dog chewed one piece. Monopoly tokens, Catan road sets, vintage Clue weapons, and old 80s electronic components sell surprisingly fast.

It takes maybe an hour or two of sorting (depends). Not quit-your-job money, but it covers groceries and keeps junk out of the landfill:D

Signed up with a company called Wrapify last year. They wrap your car in an ad for free, you drive it like normal, and they pay you based on miles logged through their app, mine averages around $260 a month just doing regular errands and my commute.

Before I found the legit one though I almost got scammed by a knockoff company that wanted a $200 "processing fee" to reserve a wrap slot. Paid it, never heard from them again. Real companies never charge you upfront, that's the tell.

Car looks a little ridiculous with a soda ad plastered on the side but the check clears every month so whatever.

Florists donate their used candles to me that are going into the trash. I melt it down, double filter it, and make it into slabs of wax that I sell to candle makers. It’s a mess but good for the planet and doesn’t take too much time.

Okay, so, there is this person who is mentally like 8-12 and pretty disabled. But super chill and I actually enjoy her company haha,

My side hustle is to hang out with her and play games once a month, watch cartoons and movies, drink soda, eat pizza, and basically I stay till my partner calls and tells me to go home... about 6 hours a month, I make about 600 dollars for it. Her family pays me.

We do the call so she thinks I am being told to go home rather than "leaving", or she worries she did something wrong.

Other care staff are around so its not like I am alone with them, I am not sure of all her disabilities, but hey, I don't need to,

The best part though, there is a Big giant oled tv, a series x, a switch 2 a ps5, any game she wants to play she can get, free pizza, a fridge full of tonnes of soda, there is free coffee, chocolate bars, snacks and a movie collection that spans from the 90s till now,

Oh and there is this cat who like to sit and hang out with us, so thats pretty cool.

Lately we are playing Pokemon Fire red re-release on the switch, and her cartoon for the moment is Rugrats. lol But 2 months ago it was Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends, so you know, rotates. Last year we watched all the marvel movies up to end game, while playing on the switch in handheld mode lol

Anyway, my weird side hustle, I don't actually need the money anymore but I still do it.

The salon was already busy that Saturday when a guy came in asking if anyone could do a mobile waxing appointment. Nobody really paid attention at first because that wasn't something we normally did, but then he explained the situation. His friend was getting married, it was his bachelor party, and the groom's waxing appointment had just been cancelled. He was clearly desperate because he kept asking if anyone could do it. Nobody seemed interested until he said he was paying $400. So I volunteered. I mean, $400 is hard to turn down.

A few phone calls later, my brother agreed to come with me. He's a professional fighter, so I asked him to come with me just in case. We arrived and the groom was standing there looking like he could bench press both of us at the same time. He was a lot bigger than I'd expected. Once we started talking, I realized he was really friendly. He was laughing about the whole situation and seemed more embarrassed than anything. He paid the $400, thanked us, and off we went. The whole drive home, my brother kept laughing because neither of us had planned on doing anything like that.

Still one of the weirdest ways I've ever made money. My brother still brings it up whenever money gets tight and says, “Remember that $400 waxing job?”

My cousin works in high end real estate out here and hooked me up with his weirdest client about six months ago. Guy was looking to buy a multi million dollar hilltop property in the Hollywood Hills but refused to make an offer until he knew the place was completely safe from stalkers or break ins.

So my cousin calls me up and asks if I can break into the house in the middle of the night and leave subtle proof I was there.

Long story short I started a full time hustle doing security audits disguised as professional home intrusions. Clients pay me up to two grand to sneak into their empty houses or new properties while they are out of town. I pick the locks, leave fake muddy bootprints near the balcony, rearrange some items in the master bedroom just enough to cause panic, and text them a blurry photo from their own hallway at 3 am.

If they find the entry points, the security company failed. If they don't find them and my cousin’s rich clients hire me to test their fortresses, I get paid a fortune. It started as a joke to scare a realtor friend and now I have a waiting list of paranoid tech founders and actors wanting me to burglarize their mansions legally.

While looking for unusual ways to earn money, I found out that acting as a patient for med students to practice on is a thing. And no, being a fake patient doesn’t mean you have to be sick and let students treat you with actual medicines.

In this, I am called a standardized patient wherein I am given a specific case to portray consistently. Before meeting the students, I was given a specific background of my character, symptoms I should be experiencing, information I am only allowed to reveal, and how I should behave in front of the students. Of course, the students know that I am only a standardized patient, it’s just that they have to examine, diagnose, and provide proper treatment. It is for the students to learn how to properly communicate with their practice patients instead of doing it to mannequins and dolls.

The hardest part here is your consistency, you have to provide the same information, give the same reaction, and be consistent with your behavior for the next few students who will obviously ask you the same questions and give you the same approach.

This is a weird side hustle for me because while they are training to be future healthcare workers, here I am training to be a future hospital patient one day lol

I honestly didn't know this was a thing until a few months ago. From what I know, there are a lot of vending machines that are just sitting around in old laundromats, apartment buildings, repair shops, and other places where nobody really pays attention to them anymore.

What I do is basically check if those machines are still being maintained or not. Someone sends me a list of locations and I go there, take pictures, see if anything changed, check if the machine is still plugged in, and report back what I found.

Some people might think it sounds boring, but it is actually interesting because you find some weird stuff. One machine I checked was behind an old car wash and it looked like nobody touched it for years. There were weeds around it and the drinks inside looked really old. I honestly could not tell if it was still active or if everyone just forgot it was there.

From what I know, the owners need the information because sometimes it is hard to know if a machine is still being serviced or completely abandoned. My part is just collecting the information and sending it over.

Last weekend I checked 17 machines and made about $146. I never thought driving around looking at vending machines would make me money, but somehow it does. :PP

It is definitely one of the weirdest side hustles I have ever heard of, and now it is one of the ways I make extra cash.

Every red X is a house that told me no. Some politely, some with a shotgun reference on their Ring doorbell lol

Here's the hustle: every door-to-door company (solar, security, pest control, roofing... religious) eventually knocks on the same angry houses. None of them talk to each other, so they all waste gas, time, and morale getting yelled at by the same people over and over.

So I started keeping score :)

Every door I hit gets tagged: slammed door, dog, "call the cops," or just a firm no. Over time that turned into a live "don't bother" map of a whole city.

Now I license that map to canvassing companies who have nothing to do with each other. A solar company and a security company don't compete, but they both want to skip the same porch. I'm the guy quietly selling both of them the same "skip this house" list.

I'm making $100 to $400 a month per company, 6 companies right now across 3 cities.

I found this subreddit on tiktok and read a few posts here, might as well share a side hustle that I had a couple of years back. I took a part-time gig helping out a real estate guy. He was rich, like ridiculously wealthy. He pays me great for an oddly specific task which is replicating his wardrobe/supplies across his houses.

He owns houses in different cities. Every week, he travels from one house to another with nothing but just his phone. He wants to travel without luggage to carry. And my task here is to make sure every single thing he owns has an exact replica on each of his houses. From the clothes, to the shoes, tees, workout shorts, socks, even to the medicine cabinets and electric gadgets. Everything that he owns from the other house, should be found in the other.

Every week, I’d visit his main house and update an inventory spreadsheet of what’s new. He also updates me on the items he just bought recently so I had to look and buy the duplicates and ship it to the housekeepers of his other properties with complete info on which drawer or part of the house the items belonged to. Every time I shop for his things, I have to stand at checkout counters buying the exact same clothes that sometimes other people wonder if I have twins.

This started because I bought some random stuff from Facebook Marketplace and had to figure out how to get everything home.

While I was picking it up, the seller mentioned that people sometimes bought things from her and then backed out because they couldn't pick them up.

A few days later, I posted in a local Facebook group saying I could pick up Marketplace purchases for people who didn't have a car or just didn't have time to go get them.

I started with $10 for nearby pickups and $15-$25 for places farther away.

I didn't really expect anyone to message me, but someone asked me to pick up a few boxes and some household stuff.

Then I got another request.

Then another.

Most of the stuff is pretty random. I've picked up chairs, boxes, small appliances and furniture. One time I had to pick up an inflatable dinosaur that was way bigger than I thought it would be. I still have no idea how I got that thing into my car.

I've made about $117 so far.

I've also started combining pickups when they're in the same area. If I'm already driving somewhere, I'll take another pickup nearby instead of making a separate trip.

The funny thing is I thought people would just ask a friend to help them.

Apparently some people would rather pay $15 than spend an hour driving across town for a used table.

It's not a huge amount of money, but I wasn't making anything from those trips before, so I figured why not.

My buddy asked me to do this last year and now I have like 4 regular clients.

Basically, whenever a tenant has a landlord who claims they "came by and fixed the leak" or "checked the HVAC" while the tenant was at work, I go park on the street or walk by the building during the window they said they’d be there. I take a quick timestamped photo of the empty driveway/front door and text it to the tenant.

If the landlord actually shows up, I just walk past, say hi, and snap a quick photo of their van. If they don't show up, the tenant has proof when the landlord tries to claim they visited.

Last week a landlord tried to charge a $75 "missed appointment fee" claiming he knocked and nobody answered. I sent my client a photo of the completely empty porch taken right in the middle of the scheduled window. Saved her the fee and got $35 for sitting in my car eating a burrito for 45 minutes.

I call it spot-checking. Weirdest part-time thing I’ve ever done but people actually pay for it because landlords lie so much.

My business card says "Blossom Pollinator" and it is just as ridiculous as it sounds lol.

Rich people build these massive glass greenhouses for organic tomatoes, but the places are sealed tighter than a vault. No wind, no bugs, and absolutly zero bees ❌🐝

Tomatoes are self-pollinating, but they arent magic. The flowers need a physical shake or vibration to actually release the pollen and grow the fruit. If nothing shakes them, they just turn brown, fall off, and you wasted ten grand on a glass room full of sad leaves 💀

That is where I come in. I bought a pack of fluffy makeup brushes, printed some sketchy business cards, and convinced a wealthy neighbor to let me vibrate her plants.

Now I have a whole roster of clients. Twice a week, I drive to these giant mansions, walk into a greenhouse, and spend like two hours tapping and swirling little yellow flowers with a blush brush 🖌️🍅

I look like an absolute lunatic standing there whispering “come on little guy” while a hedge fund manager watches me from his kitchen window.

But hey, it works! Their plants are exploding with fruit, I get paid to hang out in a warm room listening to podcasts, and I get to tell people my career path is substitute insect 🤷‍♂️

it started as a hobby in high school and i would just make them as gifts for birthdays, christmas, etc. after i started college, i didn’t have time for them anymore and decided to start charging $5 a lighter (totally underselling myself as they take up to 2 hours a lighter. i now charge $10 a lighter which is still nothing because i only sell to friends and feel bad charging more because supplies are so cheap (i get everything off temu so i make about a 80% profit ratio). i think it’s fun and i only make like $10 a month lol because i just get uninspired and sick of it sometimes but any advice tho on how to make more money off this? here’s some pics of lighters i’ve made feel free to share any tips too!

I keep a few aquariums and spend a lot of time in fish-keeping communities. If you keep Betta fish, freshwater shrimp, or rare wild-caught fish, you usually need to create a "blackwater" tank. This means the water is heavily tinted with natural tannins, which lowers the pH, reduces stress, and acts as a natural anti-bacterial medicine.

The gold standard for blackwater is the Catappa leaf (also known as Indian Almond leaves). If you go to a fancy pet shop, they will sell you a crushed-up 3-pack of these leaves in a glossy cardboard box for $7.

I happen to live in a tropical area where these trees (we locally call them Talisay) are planted everywhere for shade along sidewalks and near the beach. They drop massive, plate-sized leaves year-round.

Attending webinar meetings can be boring sometimes, I mean you would just sit in front of your screen listening to someone else yap. But, ironically, my side hustle is literally attending webinars but the thing here is I’m not even one of the crucial people who must attend the meeting, but just there to sit and muted until the session ends.

I just got this job through an email, literally just signed up my account on different job sites and when I got this email, the subject just said be a webinar attendee for $50 per session. It’s an organization where companies and event organizers would hire us to be paid audience participants to help with the webinar set-up, ensuring that the audio and presentation is working properly, answer on polls, report technical issues, and help the event feels more active and engaged because even though we are muted, we can still engage with them.

It’s basically when the presenter would ask if they are audible or if their screen is visible, I would just send a thumbs-up emoji. And if they ask to answer a poll, I would send out my vote, and submit questions during the Q&A, like I am actually a part of the webinar. The thing here is that we are like fillers, since most participants usually just stay quiet or won’t even attend, at least, we are still there in their presence.