9 Untapped Side Hustles for 2023: An Honest Review of Every Single One

Someone made a video claiming there are nine “untapped” side hustles for 2023, and that every single one can get you to $1,000 per day. That is a bold claim. As someone who has actually built income online, I watched the whole thing and gave each hustle a critical, honest review. Some of them are real. Some of them are nowhere near as easy as advertised. And one of them is basically just a fancy name for sales.

What I will not do in this breakdown is tell you to waste time on UserTesting websites, online surveys, or any other low-ceiling activity that people with no real internet experience keep recommending. The original creator at least avoided those, which was a green flag. Here is my full review of all nine.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A clear-eyed verdict on all nine side hustles in the original video
The real reason Fiverr and Upwork are the wrong starting point for service providers
Why digital products beat brand deals for Instagram theme pages every time
The actual math on thumbnail design: what it takes to hit $1,000 per day
Why web design is still one of the best first businesses to start online
What white-labeling software looks like in practice, including a real example
The one hustle on the list I consider my least favorite, and why
How to figure out which of these actually fits you at finder.platformproof.com

Side Hustle #1: Content Critic (Reaction Videos)

The original video calls this a “content critic,” but what it describes is a reaction channel. You pick a niche, find existing content on the internet in that niche, and you respond to it. You tell viewers who is right and who is wrong. This is actually the format of the video I am reviewing right now.

The mechanics are genuinely accessible. You can do this with a smartphone. TikTok and YouTube both exist and both pay creators. The YouTube Partner Program can generate real money once a channel builds an audience. Reaction content works especially well in relationship advice, celebrity news and gossip, and sports commentary like the NFL.

The key rule here is niche discipline. If you start a reaction channel about NFL commentary and then pivot to relationship advice, you will lose most of your audience because the overlap between those two groups is small. Pick one lane and stay there. The people who come to trust your opinions about one thing will not automatically trust your opinions about everything.

The honest ceiling check: $1,000 per day is a long way off when you are starting. This is a channel that can build to replacement-level income over time, but you will need to post a lot of content, stay current on your niche topic, and likely create multiple pieces per day in the early months. That volume can get draining. It works for some people, but it is not passive and it requires consistency that most people underestimate when they read a headline about reaction channels making money.

Side Hustle #2: Flipping Instagram Theme Pages

You build an Instagram account focused entirely on one niche, grow it, and then monetize it. The word “flipping” implies selling the account, but selling a 200,000-follower page when there are better monetization options does not make sense. If you have built an asset with that reach, you should be extracting recurring income from it, not cashing out once.

The two best monetization paths for a niche Instagram page are digital products and affiliate marketing. If you run a makeup-focused theme page, you sell a digital product like a makeup tips guide and you become an affiliate for Sephora, Ulta Beauty, or similar brands. When followers click your link and buy, you earn a commission without handling a single product.

Brand deals and sponsorships are the option I would push you away from. A one-time payment of $50, $100, or even $500 is not recurring income. You have to keep finding new sponsors and actively managing those relationships. Meanwhile, someone who set up an email list and is selling a digital product is making money in their sleep from the same size audience.

The niche discipline point applies here too. A pet page that posts about cats and then about fish and then about exotic reptiles is going to struggle. A page that only posts about cats is going to attract cat owners. Cat owners are a monetizable audience. If you can put a keto baking page in front of the right audience and offer a digital recipe guide, you have a simple and repeatable income machine. Broad theme pages feel easier to build but are much harder to monetize.

Side Hustle #3: Designing Thumbnails

Thumbnail design is real, active income. People reach out to me about doing my thumbnails almost every day. That tells you there is demand. The problem is the common approach: cold outreach, low conversion, and racing to the bottom on price.

If you go to Fiverr, Upwork, or PeoplePerHour and list your services, you are competing with thousands of people from around the world. When thousands of people compete, the price collapses. Instead of charging $25 or $30 per thumbnail, you end up charging $10, then the platform takes its cut, then PayPal takes its cut, and you are left with very little per thumbnail. To hit $1,000 per day at $25 a thumbnail, you need at least 40 clients paying you every single day. That is a lot of continuous active work.

The better path is creating content about being a thumbnail designer. Put time-lapses of your design process on TikTok. Post YouTube videos showing how you go from a blank canvas to a finished thumbnail for a specific channel style. Show the before and after. When people see your work in action, they come to you. You are not cold calling anymore. You are attracting clients who already trust your taste.

One more thing: if someone hires you to design thumbnails and you just copy what is already popular in their niche, you are not actually helping them. You are making them look like every other creator. Good thumbnail designers understand the specific style of their client, the tone of their content, and what makes their face or their visuals different. That understanding is what gets you repeat clients and referrals.

Side Hustle #4: Tutoring

Tutoring has become more viable since the COVID years shifted people’s comfort with remote learning. You do not need to be an expert in the traditional sense. In fact, experts are often poor teachers because they explain things at a level that assumes too much prior knowledge. If you can break down something complex into simple, clear steps, you can tutor people in it and charge for your time.

Websites like Chegg exist and list tutors, but they put you in a pool with everyone else. The better strategy is to create short-form content on TikTok, YouTube, or Facebook Reels where you explain one hard concept at a time. A math teacher could make a TikTok breaking down what E=mc squared actually means in plain English. At the end: “If your student needs private one-on-one tutoring, click the link in my bio.” That is a funnel. People who see your explanation and still feel stuck will pay for personalized help.

The honest limitation with tutoring is that it is active income. The only time you are making money is the time you are actively tutoring a student. This is why I push people toward course creation or digital products that can run on autopilot. Tutoring is a solid starting point, especially if you already have subject knowledge, but it has a ceiling tied directly to your available hours.

Side Hustle #5: Creating Logos

Logo design is a real skill with real demand. Every small business needs one. The problem, again, is the platform trap. If you open a Fiverr account and list logos at competitive prices, you are going against thousands of designers who will undercut you. That is a race to the bottom. The platform takes a cut. PayPal takes a cut. You end up working hard for not much.

Create a TikTok account instead. Show yourself designing a logo from scratch for a Thai restaurant, a barber shop, a landscaping company. Walk through the naming idea, the color choices, the font decisions. People watching are small business owners. Some of them are thinking: “I need something like that.” They reach out to you. You set your price because you are not competing with a hundred other people on the same screen.

Here is a real tip from the original video that I want to build on: if you need to work for free in the early days to build a portfolio, record the process while you do it. Post that as a time-lapse or a tutorial on YouTube or TikTok. You are not working for free anymore because the content itself can earn revenue through the YouTube Partner Program or the TikTok Creator Fund. You are building a portfolio, building an audience, and potentially earning ad revenue simultaneously.

Not sure which of these side hustles actually fits your current skills and situation?

Answer a few honest questions and get a clear recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

Side Hustle #6: High-Ticket Closing

“High-ticket closer” is a polished name for a salesperson. Sales has existed for thousands of years and it is a real skill. You can do it from home, over the phone or video call. Some people are genuinely great at it and make serious money. But this is my least favorite item on this list.

Here is why. You are going to hear a lot of no. You are going to hear “let me talk to my partner” as a smoke screen for “I don’t want to spend this money.” You are going to spend real time and energy on calls that go nowhere. High-ticket sales is market-sensitive too. When people feel like a recession is coming, they do not want to spend $10,000 on solar panels or any other high-ticket item. Your commission flow can dry up when the economic mood shifts, even if your skills stay the same.

This is also not a side hustle. It becomes a primary activity fast. To earn meaningful commissions consistently, you need to be on the phone a lot. For someone who genuinely loves sales, enjoys the psychology of persuasion, and has thick skin for rejection, this can be lucrative. For everyone else, there are better places to start.

Side Hustle #7: Web Design

Web design was one of the first ways I personally made money online. I would find small businesses with ugly websites or no website at all, and I would reach out. The pitch was not “I build websites.” It was: “Here is the money you are leaving on the table without one.” Small business owners do not care about websites. They care about revenue. If you frame a website as a revenue tool, the conversation changes.

Early in my career I charged $300 for a five-page WordPress website because I undervalued my skills. Later I charged $3,000 for the exact same five-page build. The difference was not the work. It was knowing that the value I was delivering justified the price. One thing that matters here: geography. A business owner in Chicago will not blink at $3,000. A business owner in Topeka, Kansas may think that is outrageous given the local cost of living and business scale. Know your market.

The longer-term opportunity with web design is recurring revenue. Once you build a site, offer a monthly maintenance package. Offer to add blog posts, update product listings, or handle plugin updates. A one-time client can become a monthly recurring client if you position the relationship correctly. That is the version of web design worth building.

The content creation angle applies here too. Create YouTube videos showing how to build a five-page WordPress site from scratch. Do case studies: how a restaurant added an online menu and started taking reservations. Some viewers will think, “This looks like too much work, I just want to hire someone.” Those people become your inbound clients. You are not cold calling. You are attracting.

Side Hustle #8: Selling Digital Products

This is the one that changed my business. Digital products are things you create once and sell unlimited times. There are no shipping costs, no inventory, and you keep close to 100 percent of the revenue minus payment processing fees. You can sell a digital product at 3 AM on a Tuesday while you are asleep and wake up to money in your account.

The model works in almost any niche. Baking, fitness, personal finance, relationship advice, career coaching, pet care. You create content consistently in your niche, you build an audience, and you build an email list. When you understand what your audience is struggling with, you create a product that solves it. They pay you. You deliver the product automatically. Then you ask your customers what else they need and you create that next thing.

An example from the transcript: if you are creating content about relationships, you could sell a guide titled “20 Ways to Make Her Fall in Love With You.” The people who buy that guide have already proven they trust your advice and are willing to spend money. From there you can offer one-on-one consulting, a more comprehensive course, or affiliate products that serve the same audience. The customer who buys once is far more likely to buy again than a cold prospect.

You do not need to spend money on ads. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter already have the people you want to reach. Create content where they already spend time. Build an email list from that content. Sell to the list. This is the approach that scales without requiring an ad budget.

Side Hustle #9: Starting a Software Business

The original video includes this one and it is worth discussing carefully. Building software from scratch is technically demanding and expensive. Most people who want to start a software business are not developers, and even developers often underestimate the time and money required to launch something from zero.

The realistic version of this for most people is white-labeling. Companies like HighLevel let you resell their platform under your own brand. You are not building software. You are selling a software solution that already works, branding it, and charging clients a monthly fee. I actually did this with web design clients early on, reselling white-label tools alongside website builds. The recurring monthly income from software clients is one of the most stable income streams you can build because clients do not cancel tools they are actively using.

The original video also uses this section to mention affiliate marketing, which is worth addressing separately. Affiliate marketing means recommending other people’s products and earning a commission when someone buys through your link. You do not need to build a product, handle customer service, or manage returns. You create content about what your target audience already wants to buy, include your link, and collect a percentage of every sale. As an example: if you help people start YouTube channels, you can recommend the camera, microphone, and lighting setup you actually use. People click those links, buy the gear, and you earn a commission. That commission compounds as your audience grows.

Honest Drawbacks: What the Original Video Got Wrong

None of these nine are actually “untapped.” Reaction channels, Instagram theme pages, logo design, and web design have been around for years. The creator was honest enough to avoid recommending survey sites and UserTesting, which is worth noting, but the $1,000-per-day claim applied to every single hustle is not realistic for a beginner on most of these.

The bigger pattern I noticed is that the original video consistently recommended Fiverr, Upwork, and PeoplePerHour for service businesses. That is outdated advice. Those platforms were useful in 2019. Today they are crowded, they compress prices, and they put you in direct competition with thousands of people globally. The better answer for almost every service business on this list is the same: create content, demonstrate your skill publicly, and let clients come to you.

Content creation is not just one hustle on a list. It is the distribution strategy that makes every other hustle on this list work better. A thumbnail designer with a TikTok showing their process will out-earn a thumbnail designer on Fiverr. A tutor with a YouTube channel will attract more private clients than a tutor listed on Chegg. A logo designer who posts their work will find clients who already love their style. This is the unifying thread across almost all nine.

Find Your X

Nine options is overwhelming if you are trying to figure out where to start. The question is not which side hustle is making money for other people. The question is which one fits your current skills, your available time, and your tolerance for active versus passive work. A few minutes at finder.platformproof.com will ask you the right questions and give you a clear recommendation based on where you actually are right now.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you really make $1,000 per day from any of these nine side hustles?

Some of them can get there eventually, but not quickly and not for most beginners. Digital products and software white-labeling have the most realistic path to high daily income because they are not capped by your hours. Thumbnail design and logo work require a large volume of clients at most standard rates to hit that number. Reaction channels can get there after building a substantial audience. High-ticket closing can hit it if you have the right clients and the right skills. Treat $1,000 per day as a long-term target, not a month-one outcome.

Why is selling digital products better than brand deals for Instagram?

Brand deals pay you once. A digital product pays you every time someone buys, indefinitely. With brand deals you also have to keep actively finding and pitching sponsors. A digital product sitting on a landing page, promoted by your content, generates income without you taking any additional action. You also control the price, the terms, and the relationship with the buyer. Brand deals give you a check and someone else’s marketing priorities.

Should I use Fiverr or Upwork to find clients for thumbnail design or logos?

Not as your primary strategy. Both platforms are useful for proof of concept, but they put you in price competition with a global talent pool. When hundreds of people offer the same service, prices fall. Build a content presence first, whether on TikTok or YouTube, and let your work attract clients to you. The clients who come to you through content have already seen your skill and are not comparing you to ten other options on a grid.

What does white-labeling software mean in practice?

You resell an existing software product under your own brand without building the underlying technology yourself. HighLevel is one example: it is a marketing and CRM platform that lets agencies white-label the product and resell it to clients at a monthly fee. Your client pays you $297 per month, you pay HighLevel a lower rate, and you keep the difference. The software handles the product, you handle the client relationship. It is one of the more accessible paths to recurring software revenue without engineering skills.

Is high-ticket closing a good first side hustle?

For most people, no. It requires comfort with rejection, strong persuasion skills, and resilience through long streaks of no’s. It is also income that can slow down when economic conditions make people more cautious about large purchases. If you have a sales background or genuinely enjoy the process of persuading people, it is worth exploring. Otherwise, the other eight options on this list are likely better starting points.

How much should I charge to build a five-page WordPress website?

It depends heavily on where the client is located and the scale of their business. A Chicago-based restaurant will pay $3,000 for a basic five-page site without hesitation. A small business in a lower-cost-of-living market may push back on anything above $500 to $800. Know your local market. Do not undervalue your work the way most people do when they start out. And always pitch the website as a revenue tool, not a technical deliverable.

Do I need to spend money on ads to make any of these work?

No. Organic content creation on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn can drive traffic and clients without an ad budget. The trade-off is time. Ads can accelerate growth, but if you are starting with no capital, consistent content creation is a real alternative. Build the audience first, then consider ads once you have something to scale that you know converts.

What is the single most important rule that applies to almost all of these?

Pick a niche and stay in it. Whether you are building a reaction channel, growing an Instagram theme page, tutoring students, or selling digital products, a focused audience that trusts your expertise in one area is worth far more than a broad audience that has no strong reason to follow you. Niche discipline is not a limitation. It is the foundation that makes everything else work.

Sources

Original video reviewed on this channel: “9 Untapped Side Hustles For 2023 ($1,000 Day) | How To Make Money Online In 2023”
YouTube Partner Program monetization requirements: youtube.com/creators
TikTok Creator Fund program information: tiktok.com/creators
HighLevel white-label platform: gohighlevel.com
Freelance platform comparisons: Fiverr (fiverr.com), Upwork (upwork.com), PeoplePerHour (peopleperhour.com)
Chegg tutoring platform: chegg.com/tutors