It’s officially summer, and with the heat comes travel and expenses like concerts, amusement park trips, and a new wardrobe. To avoid breaking the bank, you might want to consider starting a side hustle during the summer to make some extra cash.
CNBC Make It spoke to a number of real people who show you can more than just make a few extra bucks here and there—their side hustles often bring in over $100,000 a year.
“I’ve been doing it [my side hustle] For about three and a half years, I was doing nothing,” Sophie Riegel, a part-time online clothing dealer, told Make It. “I like it very much. It makes me happy.
Here are four ways you can start making money this summer—and even have fun doing it.
1. Resale Clothing
Spring cleaning doesn’t have to stop when summer begins. In fact, you might be able to turn selling unwanted stuff into a sustainable, year-long side hustle.
As a bored freshman at Duke University during the 2020 pandemic, Riegel began selling used clothes from her childhood bedroom.
She began scouring thrift stores for items she could buy cheaply and resell at a profit. In 2023, she earned $123,800 selling clothing on online marketplaces such as eBay, Poshmark, and Mercari.
Riegel’s primary occupations include professional author, mental health coach, and speaker. She told Make It that she spends about 25 hours a week working on her side hustle.
Riegel owes much of her success to her research on everything from merchandise values to local store restocking schedules.
“Technically, frugality takes the most time,” Riegel told CNBC Make It. “But it doesn’t feel like work to me.”
2. Rent your pool
Back in 2012, Jim Battan spent $110,000 to build a swimming pool at his home in West Linn, Oregon. Costs were reduced and more money was made.”
Battan made $177,000 in less than two years by renting pools by the hour on an app called Swimply.
Not everything is smooth sailing, Bartan warned. He had to learn a lot about pool chemistry and management, and estimated that he checked the pool chemistry five to 10 times a day. It’s a time-consuming side hustle, but if people put in the extra effort, they can do it, he said.
“I consider my pool an investment, and I take it very seriously,” Batan said. “But I saw all kinds of moderators on Facebook groups posting, ‘Hey, I put a bunch of chlorine in. Is that enough?’ and I said to myself, ‘This is just the beginning of it all.
3. Showcase your career through content creation
By day, Kelly Gordon is a superyacht captain. Additionally, during the day, she spends about five hours a week creating social media content, a side hustle that brings in $10,300 a month, she told Make It.
Gordon stumbled into the yachting industry in 2007 after attending a wedding reception on a boat. All information about the boat.
Now, Gordon is sharing details of the yacht with viewers on Instagram. In 2023, she brought in $124,000 through sponsorships, merchandising, advertising, affiliate marketing, and public speaking engagements.
Despite Gordon’s success in content creation, she hasn’t given up her day job. Her side hustle works because she’s still sailing yachts.
“I’m not going to stop operating boats anytime soon,” Gordon said.
4. Rent your car
With summer travel on the rise, people taking road trips across the United States often consider renting a car. Andrei Echeverria’s side business offers an alternative to traditional car rentals. He rented out six of his cars through an app called Turo, which brought him as much as $14,000 a month, according to financial documents reviewed by Make It in 2023.
Echeverria lives near Boston’s Logan International Airport, which gives him an advantage over other Turo users when it comes to finding rentals. Because the app allows him to set prices, Echeverria can offer more attractive prices than at a rental car counter.
He spends eight to 10 hours a week cleaning, managing and booking his cars, in addition to spending time building relationships with local repair shops. Echeverria told Make It that the success of his side business depends on “meeting the right people and building trust with them.”
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