Every single day, hundreds of new YouTube videos promise you $100, $500, even $1,000 per day from side hustles that amount to clicking buttons or watching ads. After 8 to 9 years in digital marketing and making money online, Alston Godbolt ranked every side hustle he had personally tested or studied from worst to first, using a letter-grade system from F all the way up to A. This post walks through all eight categories so you stop chasing bad bets and start putting your time where it actually pays.
The ranking is honest and blunt. The F-tier options will cost you time with no meaningful return. The A-tier options can build into real income that works while you sleep. Knowing the difference is what separates people who get traction online from people who grind for months and have nothing to show for it.
What You’ll Walk Out With
- The four F-tier side hustles that pay less per hour than a minimum-wage job at McDonald’s
- Why online surveys will eat hours of your time and still disqualify you for no payout
- The ugly truth about Fiverr and why even a highly technical certification can get lowballed to $50
- How YouTube and platform monetization can pay you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- Why affiliate marketing earns you a commission while someone else handles customer service and shipping
- How digital products let you keep 100% of the money and why you can build one in a weekend
- The free quiz that matches your specific skills and situation to the right online income path: finder.platformproof.com
F Tier: Side Hustles to Walk Away From Completely
The F tier is not a close call. These are options that, in Alston’s direct experience testing them, pay less per hour than the starting wage at McDonald’s. That comparison comes up repeatedly because it is the correct benchmark. McDonald’s in many markets pays about $11 per hour. If a side hustle cannot beat that rate while also teaching you a transferable skill, it is not a business opportunity. It is a time trap dressed up as one.
1. Online Surveys
The case against online surveys is not theoretical. Alston completed them and tracked what he earned. After countless hours spent attempting surveys across multiple platforms, his total payout came to less than $20. That is the real number from the actual experience of doing the work.
Here is how the experience plays out in practice. You find a survey listed as five minutes. You answer pre-qualification questions for 25 minutes. At the end of the pre-survey, a message informs you that you do not qualify for the actual survey. You receive no compensation. The platform logs your time and moves on. On other attempts, the website glitches or goes offline mid-survey and your progress disappears.
There is also a conflict of interest buried in who tells you to do surveys. Content creators who recommend survey platforms are typically earning a referral commission when you sign up. Their income depends on your registration, not on you actually making money. The advice is structurally biased in their favor. The person recommending surveys is getting paid. You probably will not.
The math is simple: if you are going to spend time doing something that pays poorly, a job at a fast food restaurant pays more per hour, gives you a guaranteed paycheck, and builds interpersonal and operational skills. Surveys do none of those things.
2. Watching Ads and Videos to Earn
Watching YouTube ads, TikTok ads, or Instagram content to generate earnings is active income at the lowest possible rate. The real numbers: figure 3 to 5 hours of active participation to generate $5. McDonald’s pays approximately $11 per hour. You would need to watch ads for more than 6 hours to match a single hour at that job, and watching ads builds no skill that carries forward to anything else.
The word “active” is the key point here. This is not a background task. The platforms require you to be engaged and interacting. The moment you stop paying attention, the earnings stop. Many people assume they can run this on a second screen while doing something else. That assumption is wrong. You are being paid to pay attention, and the rate for your attention is a fraction of a cent per minute.
As with surveys, the creators recommending this model are earning referral commissions when you join the platform. Their business model runs on your registration. Yours does not run at all.
3. Online Focus Groups
Focus groups sound reasonable on the surface. A company needs opinions, you provide them, you receive compensation. The problem is execution. These opportunities are rare, competitive, and highly specific about who qualifies. Each focus group recruits for a particular demographic profile. If you do not match that profile precisely, you cannot participate and you earn nothing for the time spent checking.
Because legitimate focus group slots are infrequent, you end up spending meaningful time monitoring multiple websites, refreshing listings, and submitting applications for opportunities that may never materialize for your specific profile. The high-effort, low-return structure is not fixable through greater effort. You cannot get better at qualifying for focus groups. Either you fit the demographic they need this week or you do not.
If someone’s recommending focus groups as a serious income path, look at their incentive structure. The referral commission pattern appears here too. Their gain does not depend on your success.
4. User Testing
User testing is the practice of visiting websites or apps, completing tasks, and providing feedback on the experience for a small payment per session. It pays fractional rates for active participation. The honest alternative Alston points to: if you genuinely enjoy evaluating digital products and providing feedback on user experience, train to become an actual UX designer or UX engineer. That career path pays $70,000 to well over $100,000 per year and rewards the same interests with dramatically better compensation and genuine skill development.
Doing occasional user tests for small sums does not build toward that career. It consumes hours that could go into developing a real credential. The four F-tier hustles share a common pattern: they pay the minimum amount possible for your time, require your active presence throughout, and leave you with nothing useful when you stop. They are not building blocks. They are dead ends, and none of them are worth the time of someone who has read this far.
C Tier: Real Skills With Real Ceilings
The C tier holds two options that Alston groups together because they share the same core strengths and the same structural limitations. Both involve genuine skills that can produce real money, but both come with problems that cap early income and demand significant non-billable work alongside the actual skill work.
5. Freelancing
Alston’s personal entry point into earning online was freelance WordPress development. He built five-page WordPress websites for small businesses, medium-sized companies, and churches. A single project could bring in up to $2,500. That is a real number from a real sale, and the skill required to deliver it is genuine.
The limitation shows up in the economics of early-stage freelancing. When Alston was starting out, he did not yet know what his time was worth. He charged $300 for a five-page WordPress website that took him approximately 6 hours to complete. Divide that out: $50 per hour before accounting for all the time spent chasing the client in the first place. Cold calls, postcards, emails, setup meetings, follow-ups. A large part of the freelancer’s actual job is client acquisition, and that time is unpaid.
Freelancing improves with experience. As your portfolio grows and your reputation builds, your market rate increases and clients begin coming to you instead of the other way around. The model can develop into something more sustainable. But the baseline reality of early freelancing is trading significant active effort for a rate that starts lower than most people expect, while carrying all the overhead of business development on top of the technical work itself.
6. Fiverr
Fiverr carries all of the limitations of general freelancing and stacks one more on top: a race to the bottom on price. The platform is global, which means you are competing against skilled workers from markets with dramatically different cost-of-living baselines. A developer in a lower-cost market can undercut your rate substantially and still earn a wage that works for their situation. You cannot match that rate without working for almost nothing.
Alston held an Amazon Web Services certification, which is a highly technical credential that commands six-figure annual salaries in the job market. When he listed AWS-related services on Fiverr, buyers offered $50 to set up complex systems. That is the Fiverr reality for technical services. The platform’s pricing dynamic, especially for new sellers without established reviews, collapses the value of specialized expertise into commodity territory.
The C grade reflects real opportunity genuinely held back by structural problems. Freelancing and Fiverr are not worthless. They build real skills and produce real income. But they demand a strategic approach beyond simply listing your services and waiting for buyers to recognize their value. There are better versions of both that look more like B or A-tier businesses, and Alston points toward those in later content.
B Tier: Platform Monetization
7. YouTube, Twitch, and Google Ads
Platform-based monetization is where you earn a share of ad revenue generated by your content. YouTube is Alston’s primary example, though Twitch and other platforms that run ads against creator content operate on similar principles. The core mechanic is straightforward: create content, grow an audience, meet the platform’s monetization thresholds, and begin earning from the ads that run against your videos.
What earns the B grade is the earning structure. Each video Alston uploads functions, as he puts it, like a little worker running on his behalf while he is spending time with his kids, sleeping, or lifting weights. A video published two years ago can still pull ad revenue today without any additional work. That is a fundamentally different relationship with time than anything in the F or C tiers, where you must be actively present for every dollar earned.
The B rather than A reflects legitimate risks that come with building on a platform you do not own. YouTube has monetization thresholds you must hit before earning begins. The platform can and does change its policies, and it has issued strikes against creators for content that was acceptable under older rules. Algorithm changes can reshape your revenue without warning. You are operating inside someone else’s system, which means the rules can change without your input or consent. Twitch and TikTok carry the same risks.
The ceiling, though, is genuinely high. Creators who study the algorithm, consistently improve their content quality, and build a clear relationship with their audience can reach life-changing income through YouTube alone. The B grade is most accurate in the early stages of a channel. A well-built back catalog of quality videos over two or three years changes the math considerably.
Not sure which of these tiers fits your specific skills and situation?
Take the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com and get a personalized recommendation in under 2 minutes.
A Tier: Where the Real Money Lives
The top two entries represent the methods Alston returns to consistently across his content because they work, they scale, and they do not require you to trade time for money indefinitely. Both are online income models where the work you do once can keep earning without you being present.
8. Affiliate Marketing (A-)
Affiliate marketing is the practice of recommending or selling other people’s products and earning a commission when someone buys through your referral link. You do not create the product. You do not handle customer service, shipping, returns, or fulfillment. You identify products that your target audience needs, create content that helps people understand those products honestly, and earn a percentage of each sale that results from your recommendation.
The example Alston uses: if you are creating content to help people start a YouTube channel, you build videos around topics like the best lighting equipment for beginners or the 10 best microphones under $1,000. The content is genuinely helpful. People who watch it and trust your perspective click on the affiliate links. When they buy, you earn money. You do not need to be a major influencer for this to work. You need to be specific and credible within your niche. You can partner with name brands people already recognize, like Sony, without a massive platform behind you.
The A-minus rather than A-plus reflects one real limitation: you do not keep 100% of the proceeds. Commission rates vary dramatically by program. Amazon’s affiliate program pays between 1% and 5% on most product categories, which means you need substantial volume to generate serious income from it. Other programs pay far better. Bluehost pays a flat $65 per referred customer. The gap between 1% on a $20 product and $65 on a single referral is substantial, and picking the right affiliate programs matters as much as the quality of your content.
One more practical note from the transcript: some affiliate programs have application and approval requirements. You can get rejected from a program you want to promote. That is a real constraint. The next option on the list does not have that problem.
9. Digital Products (A+)
Digital products are Alston’s top-rated online income model. The definition is deliberately broad: anything that is delivered online qualifies. That includes ebooks, planners, checklists, workbooks, online courses, one-on-one coaching programs, memberships, Patreon subscriptions, and digital audio or music files. If you can package your knowledge or creativity and deliver it digitally, you have a digital product.
The income structure is what earns the A-plus. You keep 100% of the revenue, minus payment processor fees. You set the price. You own the product entirely. Nobody rejects your application to sell your own creation. You are not splitting the margin with an affiliate program or giving a platform cut of ad revenue. The full sale price comes to you. That difference compounds substantially over time and volume.
The creation timeline is also significant. A genuinely useful digital product, depending on the format, can be built in a weekend. The process: identify a problem your target audience is actively asking about, create content that solves that problem directly, and sell the solution as a digital product. The product then continues earning as long as people keep encountering that problem. It works at 2 in the morning without your involvement.
This model is not locked to any specific niche. Digital products exist in fitness, personal finance, cooking, parenting, gaming, real estate, music production, software development, productivity systems, and virtually every other area where people have knowledge that others want. There is almost certainly a digital product format that fits the niche you already know something about. That is the core argument for why it sits at A-plus: the entry point is your existing knowledge, and the return is uncapped.
Honest Drawbacks: What the Tier List Does Not Tell You
The tier list gives you a clear starting point, but it assumes you are comparing these options from a similar position. A few honest complications are worth naming directly.
Affiliate marketing requires an audience or traffic source before it earns anything. You cannot recommend products to people who have never found your content. Building a content base through a blog, YouTube channel, email list, or social media takes months, not days. The affiliate commissions come after the audience exists. Most people underestimate how long that phase takes and give up before the compounding starts.
Digital products require market research before the creation phase. The weekend creation timeline applies to the production work itself. Identifying the exact problem your audience is willing to pay to solve, and pricing the solution correctly, requires research first. A digital product built around a problem nobody is actively searching for will not sell regardless of how well it is made. The product creation is fast. The problem validation is the work that comes before it.
Freelancing at the C level can fund the A-level goals. Alston explicitly notes that freelancing and content creation can work together rather than competing with each other. Creating content about your freelance specialty is one of the most effective ways to find clients who already trust you before the first conversation. That is a meaningfully different version of freelancing than cold calling, and it starts to look more like a B or A-tier business when the content is consistently generating warm leads.
Platform monetization compounds significantly over time. The B grade is most accurate in the first year or two of building a channel. A creator who has published consistent, quality content for three years is operating in a fundamentally different position. The back catalog has accumulated views, the algorithm has indexed the channel’s topic authority, and new videos benefit from that foundation. The B grade is a starting-point assessment, not a permanent ceiling.
A Simple Framework: Which Tier Fits Your Situation Right Now
Here is how to read this tier list based on where you actually are:
- If you need income in the next 30 days, freelancing at the C tier is the most realistic path. You can land your first client faster than you can build an affiliate audience or a digital product customer base. Accept that the early rate will be lower than you want and treat that gap as the price of building the skill.
- If you have 3 to 6 months and a skill to teach, build the digital product and the content that sells it simultaneously. The content creates the audience. The audience buys the product. This model takes longer to start paying, but the ceiling is much higher and you own what you build.
- If you already create content for another purpose, add affiliate links to what you are already doing. Choose programs whose commission structures match your niche. Do not build a content strategy around affiliate marketing; build the content around genuine help and let the affiliate income follow from that trust.
- If you want to test what topics resonate before committing, platform monetization through YouTube lets you earn from ad revenue while simultaneously gathering data about what your audience responds to. Early income will be small, but the feedback from the algorithm about what content works is worth more than the initial ad revenue.
- No matter which path you pick, skip the F tier completely. There is no realistic scenario where your hours are better spent completing surveys, watching ads, waiting on focus groups, or doing user tests at cents per session.
Find Your X
The tier list tells you which categories have real income potential, but it does not tell you which specific path is the right fit for your skills, your schedule, or the amount of time you have available right now. That question has a different answer for everyone, and knowing the tier list alone does not answer it.
The free quiz at finder.platformproof.com takes your existing skills and current situation and points you toward the online income path most likely to work for you specifically. If you finished this post knowing the tier list but not knowing your own next step, that is where to go.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you actually make money with online surveys?
Technically yes, but the amounts are too small to be useful as an income strategy. Alston tracked his own survey results and earned less than $20 after significant time spent across multiple platforms. The combination of pre-qualification screening, frequent disqualification mid-survey, website glitches, and penny-level payouts makes surveys a poor use of any time you could spend developing a real skill or building an actual online business.
Is Fiverr worth it for beginners?
Fiverr becomes more viable as you accumulate reviews and completed orders, but the early experience is difficult because of global price competition. Even highly technical skills like Amazon Web Services certifications can get lowballed to $50 for complex work on the platform. If you want to freelance, building your own client base through content and direct outreach tends to produce better results than relying on Fiverr before you have established social proof there.
How much can a beginner expect to earn from affiliate marketing?
Early affiliate income depends almost entirely on your traffic source and which programs you choose. Someone starting fresh with no existing audience may earn nothing in the first few months while building content. Programs like Bluehost pay $65 per referral, which means even modest targeted traffic to well-matched content can add up quickly. Amazon’s 1 to 5% commission structure requires much higher volume to generate meaningful income. Choosing programs that match your niche and pay reasonable commissions is as important as the quality of the content itself.
What digital products can a beginner realistically create?
The range is wide. Ebooks, checklists, planners, workbooks, templates, online courses, one-on-one coaching programs, memberships, Patreon subscriptions, and digital audio or music files all qualify. A checklist or workbook covering a specific problem can be produced in a day or two. A comprehensive online course takes longer but commands higher prices. The starting point is identifying the specific question your target audience is actively asking, then choosing the format that answers it most directly.
Does YouTube monetization require a large channel to be worth pursuing?
You need to meet YouTube’s Partner Program thresholds before ad revenue begins: currently 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the trailing 12 months for full monetization eligibility. Those thresholds are reachable for a channel posting consistent content on a topic with genuine search interest. Early income on a small channel is modest, but the compounding nature of a growing back catalog means the math improves substantially as the channel matures.
Is freelancing a stepping stone or a long-term strategy?
It can be either, but it works best as a stepping stone with a clear plan for where it leads. The early phase builds your portfolio, teaches you what clients actually pay for, and develops the core skill itself. The structural limitation is that freelancing remains active income until you build systems around it. Creating content in your area of expertise is one way to move from cold outreach to inbound clients, which changes the economics considerably and starts to look more like a B-tier business.
Which of these side hustles are actually passive income?
Surveys, ad-watching, focus groups, and user testing are purely active: you stop working, you stop earning. Freelancing and Fiverr are also active, though you can develop recurring client relationships over time. YouTube platform ad revenue and digital product sales are genuinely passive once the content or product exists. Affiliate income sits in between: creating the content is active work, but the links continue earning while you are not working once that content is live and indexed.
Which side hustle has the highest ceiling?
Digital products, because you keep 100% of the proceeds and the product can sell to an unlimited number of buyers without additional cost per unit. A $97 course sold to 500 people generates $48,500 with no inventory, no shipping, and no marginal production cost. Affiliate marketing also scales well but is always capped by the commission rate the program pays. Platform income from YouTube can reach very large numbers over time as the channel grows. The F and C tiers have much lower practical ceilings by design, regardless of the time invested.
Read Next
You now know where each side hustle ranks and why affiliate marketing earns an A-minus on this list. The next step is understanding how affiliate marketing works in practice, with a specific platform you can start testing today.
How To Make Money As An Affiliate For The TikTok Shop walks through the TikTok affiliate system step by step: how to find products, how to get accepted, and what the commission structure looks like for new affiliates starting from zero.
Sources
- Alston Godbolt, “Side Hustle Ideas Tier List For Beginners | 8 Best Side Hustles For Beginners To Make Money Online,” YouTube, youtu.be/sUemQPyuH5g
- Bluehost Affiliate Program commission structure, as cited in video
- Amazon Associates commission rates, 1 to 5%, as cited in video
- YouTube Partner Program monetization thresholds, YouTube Help Center
Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.