5 Side Hustles To Start Now: What Works and What to Watch Out For

A YouTube channel with fewer than 2,000 subscribers posted a video about five side hustles. Six days later that video had 156,000 views. That is not a typo. That is proof that the internet still rewards good information regardless of who is delivering it, and it is exactly the kind of result that got Alston Godbolt to sit down, hit record, and react to it in real time. He paused the video at every major point and shared what he actually believes after years of testing these methods himself.

This post breaks down what Alston said during that reaction, organized around the three side hustles covered in detail: freelancing, influencer marketing, and starting a YouTube channel. You will get the original advice plus Alston’s real-world take on what works, what has limits, and what most people get wrong before they even get started.

What You’ll Walk Out With

Why the skills you already use offline are enough to start freelancing today
The real difference between Upwork and Fiverr and which one fits where you are right now
How to approach influencer marketing even if you are deeply introverted
Why niching down is more important in 2023 than it was ten years ago
The honest truth about which YouTube niches pay the most and which ones are the hardest to break into
What measurable progress actually looks like when you are starting out online
Why chasing money niches burns most people out before they ever earn anything
Not sure which of these three paths fits your existing skills? Run your situation through finder.platformproof.com and get a clear recommendation.

Side Hustle 1: Freelancing

The reaction video opened with freelancing and Alston agreed immediately, but he added something important that most freelancing guides skip. He had a person jump into his live stream the day before who said they were dead broke and on the verge of homelessness. They wanted to know what to do. Alston’s answer was freelancing. Not in six months after you take a course. Not after you build a personal brand. Right now, with whatever skill you already have.

The most common objection people raise is that they have no skill. Alston pushes back on that every time he hears it. If you have made it to your current age, you have acquired something useful. You might not place a high value on it because it comes naturally to you, but someone else out there has a problem your skill solves. Data entry is a clear example. It is not glamorous. It is not technical. But a small business owner who is drowning in spreadsheets will pay real money to not have to deal with it because it saves them time. People will pay for anything that saves them time or saves them money. That is the entire logic of freelancing.

The reaction video listed several specific freelance services: translating documents, translating video games and transcripts if you know a second language, creating logos and thumbnails in Photoshop, and editing videos. Alston paused on each of these because he has direct experience with all of them from the receiving end. He said he gets emails every single day from people who want to fix his thumbnails. They all start the same way. They compliment the content, call the thumbnails terrible, and offer to improve them. His click-through rate is between 10 and 14 percent depending on the video, which is solid, but the point stands: thumbnail designers who cold-email creators are finding paying clients because they are being proactive rather than waiting on a platform to bring work to them.

Video editing is the same story. Alston mentioned that he receives constant outreach from editors who want to work on his videos. The demand signal is real. If people are cold-emailing creators trying to find this work, that means there is more demand than supply and the supply side is not organized enough to meet it efficiently.

Upwork vs. Fiverr: Which Platform Fits You Right Now

The original video explained both main freelance platforms and Alston added texture to each. On Upwork, clients post jobs and you apply. It works like a traditional job board except the work is project-based and remote. On Fiverr, you post a gig and clients come to you. On Fiverr, Alston said your best move is to have something technical or specialized rather than offering something generic. He used his own experience as an example. He had an AWS (Amazon Web Services) certification and that let him land Fiverr clients much more easily than someone just listing general tech support. The more specialized your offering, the less you are competing on price alone.

Getting your first order on Fiverr is genuinely hard. Alston was clear about that. He went weeks between his first and second client. But once a few orders and reviews accumulate, the effect compounds. Reviews lead to more visibility, which leads to more orders. The rough part is the beginning when you have no social proof yet.

His most practical piece of advice on freelancing came in a pro tip: if you watch a video about how to make money on Fiverr, do not copy the exact method. Hundreds of thousands of people watched the same video and already set up the same gig. Instead, look for what nobody is covering yet. His example was NFTs when they were at peak momentum. Anyone who set up an NFT-related gig on Fiverr before the crowd caught up had a real window of low competition and high demand. By the time the crowd figured it out, that window was mostly closed.

The outreach strategy he recommends as an alternative to waiting for clients: go to YouTube, find creators in your target niche, look for an email in their About section, and send a direct message. It is not passive. It is a spray-and-pray approach as he calls it, but it is faster than sitting on Fiverr hoping the algorithm puts your gig in front of someone. If you are willing to be the person who goes and gets the client instead of waiting, you will close work faster in the beginning.

Side Hustle 2: Influencer Marketing

The second side hustle covered was influencer marketing, and the original video framed it around one central idea: the only currency in the modern internet is attention. If you can make people stop scrolling and pay attention to you, there is money to be made. Alston pushed back on one assumption the original video made, though. The original suggested this method works best for extroverted people. Alston described himself as deeply introverted. He said if you catch him at the grocery store, he looks straight ahead and avoids eye contact because he does not want a conversation. Online is completely different. You are looking into a camera, and if your goals are big enough, you can get comfortable with that camera over time.

He did acknowledge a real downside of putting yourself online: you get criticism at a volume you would never encounter offline. The barrier of a screen lets people be worse versions of themselves. That is real and it is worth knowing before you start. But the same barrier also makes the best commenters and supporters more expressive than they would be in person. On his own YouTube channel, Alston said the audience is generally positive. On TikTok lives, the quality of comments is more variable. You learn to filter quickly.

Niche Down Further Than You Think You Need To

The original video recommended two niches for influencer marketing: fashion and animals. Alston’s commentary on both was the same: go more specific than the category itself suggests.

For fashion, he said if you just post about fashion in general you are competing with every fashion account that exists. But fashion for women over 50 is a much smaller pond. Fashion for professionals who need to dress for the office but cannot spend a lot of money is a smaller pond still. Four billion people have internet access. There are enough people in almost any specific sub-niche to build a real audience and a real business. You do not need all of fashion. You need one corner of it where you can become the go-to person.

For animals, the same logic applies. People who own Dobermans are a different group with different interests and different buying behavior than people who own Shih Tzus. If you create content for dog owners in general, you are talking to everyone and therefore connecting deeply with no one. If you create content specifically for Doberman owners, every Doberman owner who finds you feels like you made the channel for them. That feeling drives subscribes, shares, and purchases.

The monetization options the original video listed for influencer marketing included selling merchandise, brand partnerships, and launching your own clothing line for the fashion niche. Alston said he would not recommend starting your own clothing brand when you are also working a nine-to-five. Finding suppliers, picking colors, handling inventory, managing fulfillment — that is a full-time operation on top of the content creation. His recommendation was to start as an affiliate instead. Target, for example, runs an affiliate program. You recommend products you would have recommended anyway and earn a percentage of sales. You can do that while the audience is still small and still grow it into a bigger piece of the revenue once the audience grows.

Consistency is the skill that actually separates people who build an audience from people who do not. The original video said it. Alston said it several times. Post daily at the start. Post multiple times per day on social media platforms if you can. The grind in the beginning is how you build momentum, and momentum is the most important asset in online income. When you have it, opportunities feel like they are coming from everywhere. When you lose it, even a single piece of content can feel impossible to push out. Building it early, before you have much of an audience, is the fastest path to the point where you can pull back and sustain what you have built.

One underrated accelerator Alston mentioned: interact with everyone who interacts with your content. Reply to comments. Respond to messages. Platforms reward engagement signals and the people who commented on your video are the most likely to share it and bring new viewers in. Alston said this is something he himself is still working on doing more consistently.

Pick a Niche You Are Actually Interested In

This came up as a warning rather than a tip. Most people who start influencer marketing look at the biggest money niches, health, wealth, relationships, and technology, and decide that is where they should be posting because that is where the money is. Alston said this leads to burnout faster than almost anything else. He used his own experience with sound bars as the example. He had a blog in the sound bar space because he noticed low competition and saw an opportunity. He wrote ten posts, got good traffic, and started earning affiliate commissions. Then he burned out completely. He said he hated writing about sound bars by the end, stopped updating the blog, and the traffic dried up naturally. The commissions still trickle in but the opportunity is gone because he could not stay interested in the topic.

If you are passionate about something that does not look like a big money niche, go check whether people are buying products in that space. If they are, you can build affiliate income, sponsorships, and digital products around it. Homeschooling, specific cooking techniques, vintage watch repair, competitive crossword puzzles — these are all real niches with real buyers and real dollars attached. The passion keeps you posting through the slow months. The slow months are where most people quit. The people who post through them are the ones who get the momentum.

Not sure which niche fits your background and interests?

Answer a few quick questions and find out which online income path fits where you are right now at finder.platformproof.com.

Side Hustle 3: Starting a YouTube Channel

The third side hustle the video covered was YouTube, which Alston treated as both the subject and the medium. He is creating a YouTube video while reacting to a video that recommends creating a YouTube video. The observation he made is worth repeating: YouTube has replaced television for a huge portion of the population. The only category where traditional live TV still dominates is live sports, because the conversation online moves faster than the game. For everything else, YouTube wins.

The original video’s advice on getting started was to pick a niche first. Alston adjusted that slightly. His recommendation was to identify your monetization goals first and then pick a niche that supports those goals. If you want to make 10,000 dollars per month, you need to know whether that is going to come from the YouTube Partner Program, affiliate marketing, merchandise sales, digital products, or some combination. Different niches are better fits for different monetization structures. Knowing how you plan to earn before you commit to a niche keeps you from building something that cannot pay you.

The Profitable Niches and What They Actually Pay

The original video put numbers on this and they are worth sharing. The most profitable YouTube niches are finance, investing, health, and fitness. In those niches, YouTube pays between four dollars and fifty dollars per 1,000 views. That is a wide range and the high end reflects how competitive advertiser spending is in those categories. Financial services and health products carry big ad budgets, so creators in those spaces earn more per view.

The least profitable niches, and also among the most competitive, are gaming, vlogging, and meditation. To make the same money in gaming that someone makes in finance, you need a much larger audience. Alston said if he were to get into gaming, he would not create a general gaming channel. He would pick one game, find the specific pain points inside that game, and make videos targeting exactly those moments. He used The Division as his example. That game had different bosses players needed to beat. A video titled something like how to defeat the Bullet King in under 30 seconds would pull search traffic from everyone stuck on that specific boss. They find the video, they solve their problem, they subscribe. Now you have a loyal viewer who also tells their friends who play the same game. That is how you build an audience in a niche where the general category is saturated: go one level deeper into specifics that people are actually searching for.

Coming In From a Different Angle

The point Alston hammered most in the YouTube section was about angle. If you enter a competitive niche and make videos that look exactly like every other video in that niche, you will create 200 videos and get 50 views. The algorithm rewards things that are different because viewers watch things that are different. You have to give people a reason to choose you over the person who has been doing this for three years and already has 100,000 subscribers.

His examples of channels that found a different angle were Spencer Cornelia and Coffeezilla. While most finance and business channels were telling viewers how to make money by following the same strategies the gurus were selling, these two channels asked the opposite question: are any of these gurus actually telling the truth? They investigated influencers who were showing off income on Instagram and showing viewers that the money being displayed often came from the customers buying the course, not from whatever the guru was supposedly doing. It was a completely different angle in a space where everyone else was pointing in the same direction. That difference earned both channels massive audiences.

Alston is doing the same thing with his reaction series. Instead of creating another standard side hustle tips video, he is reacting to existing videos and adding his own real-world commentary. The format itself is the differentiator. The channel he was reacting to had fewer than 2,000 subscribers when its video crossed 156,000 views in six days. That channel did not need a massive existing audience. It needed one video that was good enough to get shared and recommended. The content quality and the clarity of the angle drove the result.

Gear, Editing, and What to Spend Money On

The original video had a few production recommendations. A good microphone is essential because bad audio kills videos faster than bad video. Alston agreed. Buzzy, muffled, or distorted audio is the first thing that makes someone click away. You can get away with a decent phone camera. You cannot get away with audio that is hard to understand.

On editing, the original video said to edit your own videos at first and hire an editor once you are earning from the channel. Alston mostly agreed but with a caveat that he should probably take his own advice. He mentioned getting constant outreach from video editors, which suggests the demand exists for editors who can find clients, and the supply of creators who need help exists too. Doing the editing yourself in the beginning means you understand what your videos need. Handing it off later means you can reinvest time into content rather than production.

For stock footage in automation-style channels, Alston recommended Storyblocks over free sites like Pexels or Unsplash. His reasoning was simple: if you use the same free stock photos as every other YouTube automation channel, your video looks like every other YouTube automation channel. Storyblocks is a paid subscription that gives you access to footage most automation channels are not using, which means your videos look different in the thumbnail and in the content. YouTube favors unique content, and a paid stock subscription is one of the lowest-cost ways to create that visual uniqueness.

What Measurable Progress Actually Looks Like

Alston made a point about expectations that is worth its own section because it is the thing most people get wrong at the start. Creating ten YouTube videos and expecting money to come in immediately is not a realistic goal. It is also not a fair standard to hold yourself to. But neither is grinding for months with no sense of whether anything is working.

His recommendation was to define measurable results that are proportionate to where you are. At the very beginning, measurable results look like this: your first view from someone you did not personally send the link to. Your first comment from a stranger. Your first subscriber you do not know personally. Your first email opt-in. These are not vanity milestones. They are proof that what you are making is reaching real people and connecting with at least some of them. Every single one of those events is evidence that you are building something real, and the accumulation of them gives you the motivation to keep going through the months when growth feels invisible.

People fail at YouTube and affiliate marketing and almost every online income method not because the methods do not work. They fail because they expect the result before they have done enough work to earn it. Five uploads is not enough. Ten is not enough. The channels that succeed are the ones that kept going after the tenth video with nothing to show for it and kept going after the fiftieth. Consistency over a real period of time is the actual skill that matters. Everything else is just a tool that either works or does not depending on whether the consistency is there to back it up.

Honest Drawbacks to Know Before You Start

Freelancing has a ceiling. You only have so many hours in a day and your income is capped by how much work you can take on before quality or delivery suffers. Most freelancers either stay at that ceiling or use their savings and reputation to hire other freelancers and take a cut. Getting to the second option requires a lot of trust built up first and usually takes years.

Influencer marketing on social media platforms is entirely dependent on those platforms. If a platform changes its algorithm, reduces organic reach, or your account gets flagged, your income exposure changes overnight. Alston mentioned that TikTok live audiences can be unpredictable compared to YouTube. Building an audience you also own through email or a community means the platform changes hit you less hard.

YouTube takes time. That is not a secret but it bears repeating plainly. Most successful channels you can find today published consistently for a year or more before they saw significant traction. If you need money in the next 30 days, YouTube is not your answer. Freelancing is, which is why Alston listed that one first when someone told him they were on the verge of homelessness. YouTube is a long game. It can pay very well if you stay consistent. But it requires patience that most people are not honest with themselves about having before they start.

All three of these side hustles also have a learning curve. Fiverr gig optimization, niche research, audience-building, video editing, scripting, SEO — none of it is intuitive in the beginning. The people who treat the learning curve as part of the process rather than an obstacle to get past quickly are the ones who stay long enough to start earning. The people who expect to skip the learning curve are usually the ones who quit after a month and say the method does not work.

Find Your X

Alston’s core message across this entire reaction was that the right starting point depends on where you are right now. If you need money today, freelancing with skills you already have is the answer. If you want to build an audience around something you care about, influencer marketing with a specific niche is the path. If you want long-term income from content that keeps earning after you make it, YouTube is the long game worth starting now.

Not sure which one fits your situation? Answer a few questions at finder.platformproof.com and find out which online income path fits the skills and time you actually have right now.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a specialized skill to start freelancing or can I start with something basic?

Basic skills work fine for getting started, especially on Upwork where clients post jobs you apply to. Data entry, basic transcription, and scheduling tasks all count as real services that save business owners time. Specialized skills give you a significant edge on Fiverr specifically because that platform is more competitive and technical skills attract higher-paying clients. If you have something like a certification in cloud services, coding, or a design tool, lead with that. If you do not, start with whatever you already know how to do well and look for a technical skill to develop on the side.

How long does it typically take to get the first client on Fiverr?

It can take weeks. Alston went a couple of weeks between his first and second client. The early period is the hardest because you have no reviews, no order history, and the algorithm has no reason to surface your gig to buyers. The fastest way to speed this up is to complement your Fiverr presence with direct outreach. Find creators or business owners who need what you offer and contact them directly through their email listed in YouTube About sections or business websites. Once you land a client outside of Fiverr, ask them to leave a review on your profile. That review is worth more than almost anything else you can do to build early momentum on the platform.

Does influencer marketing work if I am introverted and uncomfortable on camera?

Yes, with practice. Alston describes himself as someone who avoids eye contact at the grocery store and does not want conversations with strangers. He also has a YouTube channel with regular uploads. The distinction he draws is between social situations you cannot control and a camera you are looking into alone in a room. On camera, you control the environment. If you mess up a sentence, you start over. Nobody is responding to you in real time. The discomfort fades with repetition. The first ten videos will be awkward. By the fiftieth, you are comfortable enough that it is not something you think about anymore. If going on camera is a hard line for you, there are formats like faceless YouTube automation and text-based social media posts where you never have to appear on screen.

Which YouTube niches pay the most from ad revenue alone?

Finance, investing, health, and fitness are the highest paying in terms of ad revenue, with YouTube paying somewhere between four dollars and fifty dollars per 1,000 views depending on the content, the audience, and the time of year. Gaming, vlogging, and meditation are on the lower end of the ad revenue scale and also happen to be highly competitive. That combination means you need a much bigger audience to earn the same amount. Higher ad rates plus a well-defined audience is the most efficient path to meaningful income from YouTube ads alone, but many creators earn far more from affiliates, sponsorships, and products than they ever do from the ad program itself.

How do I stand out in a niche that already has a lot of creators in it?

Find the angle that nobody else in the niche is taking. Look at the twenty most popular channels in your niche and ask what point of view is missing from all of them. Alston’s reaction format is one answer to that question — instead of creating another tips video, he layers his own real experience onto someone else’s content and creates something that could not exist without him specifically. Coffeezilla and Spencer Cornelia found the opposite angle to the mainstream guru world. You do not have to disagree with everyone to have a different angle. You can go deeper on a specific sub-topic, serve a more specific audience, or deliver the same information in a format nobody else in the space is using. The angle matters more than the niche at the start because the angle is what makes new viewers feel like they found something different.

How important is consistency and how often should I post when starting out?

Consistency is the single most important variable in building any online income that depends on an audience. Alston recommends daily uploads at the start on YouTube and multiple daily posts if you are building on social media platforms. This feels like a lot, and it is, but the reasoning is about momentum. Early momentum is much harder to build than it is to maintain once you have it. The daily habit also forces you to get better faster because you cannot overthink every piece of content when you have to publish one every day. Once your numbers start hitting the levels you set as targets, you can start reducing frequency without losing what you built. But pulling back before you have that base usually means the momentum stalls before it ever really got started.

Can any niche be profitable online or are some niches just too small?

Almost any niche that involves buying and selling products is profitable if the creator is consistent enough to build an audience in it. Alston’s position on this is clear: if you are passionate about something and people buy things related to it, you can build income around it. You do not need millions of viewers. Five thousand people who trust your recommendations in a specific niche can generate significant affiliate commissions, sponsorship income, or digital product sales if the products are priced appropriately. A channel for people who collect mid-century modern furniture, a blog for parents who homeschool kids with specific learning differences, a social account for competitive disc golf players — all of these have real buyers, real products, and real affiliate or sponsorship income available to the creator who shows up consistently and knows the audience well.

Should I start a YouTube channel or focus on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram instead?

It depends on your goals and how you want to spend your time. YouTube has a longer earning curve but the content keeps earning for months or years after you publish it. A YouTube video that does well in year one can still bring in views and affiliate commissions in year three. Social media platforms, particularly TikTok and Instagram Reels, reward posting volume and recency much more than YouTube does, which means the content treadmill is faster and you need to keep feeding it to stay visible. If you have a limited amount of time, YouTube gives you more long-term return per hour of work. If you are early in building a following and want faster feedback on what resonates, short-form social content gives you data faster because you are posting more often. Many creators start with social platforms to build an initial audience and then use that audience to seed a YouTube channel.

Sources

YouTube video: 5 Side Hustles To Start Now in 2023 (reacted to in this video)
Alston Godbolt reaction commentary, original video at https://youtu.be/T4gfA0uHcJc
Upwork freelance platform: upwork.com
Fiverr freelance marketplace: fiverr.com
Storyblocks stock footage service: storyblocks.com
YouTube Partner Program monetization rates, publicly documented by YouTube