Side Hustle annual income

By the Numbers

Business experts warn that many popular side hustles may be overhyped compared to what they actually pay. With that in mind, a new analysis has discovered the ten most Googled ‘side hustles’ in 2025, and how much they actually paid on average last year:

$68,714 YouTuber

$59,432 Voice over artist

$57,520 Proofreader

$47,500 Affiliate marketer

$43,925 Uber (or Lyft) driver

$42,098 Data entry specialist

$41,995 Transcriptionist

$40,970 Dropshipper

$38,383 Delivery driver

$37,137 Mystery shopper

Source: Falcon Digital Marketing

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@maverick1 wrote:

By the Numbers

Business experts warn that many popular side hustles may be overhyped compared to what they actually pay. With that in mind, a new analysis has discovered the ten most Googled ‘side hustles’ in 2025, and how much they actually paid on average last year:
........
$37,137 Mystery shopper

Source: Falcon Digital Marketing
^^^^^^they must've obtained the Mystery Shopper quote from KaylaLaughsOutLoud, lol!! ^^^^^^
Oh geeze...she makes 50K/year PART TIME! How could we ever forget?!
@guysmom wrote:

@maverick1 wrote:

By the Numbers

Business experts warn that many popular side hustles may be overhyped compared to what they actually pay. With that in mind, a new analysis has discovered the ten most Googled ‘side hustles’ in 2025, and how much they actually paid on average last year:
........
$37,137 Mystery shopper

Source: Falcon Digital Marketing
^^^^^^they must've obtained the Mystery Shopper quote from KaylaLaughsOutLoud, lol!! ^^^^^^
@BarefootBliss wrote:

I wonder how Falcon Digital collects their data lol.

Maybe with mystery shopping auditors? ROFL
I question how accurate the average pay is for most of these side hustles. How did they compute the average for a YouTuber? Is it just the pay from Alphabet or does it also factor in sponsorships and other money they get outside the YouTube platform? Does the average include the top 1-2% that could really skew the average higher? Some in this class make millions a month. I saw a Youtuber say in a recent video they used to make $1500 per month and it has dwindled to a couple of hundred a month. All on a part time basis. There are many that make less than that.

I would tend to believe the driver categories since there are probably very few people earning over 2 or 300,000 that would skew the numbers. There are youtubers that show how much they earn as a dasher to leverage their driving earnings. So how does that factor into their findings? Did the article state the number of hours worked by the average person per category?
@Momomomo wrote:

I question how accurate the average pay is for most of these side hustles. How did they compute the average for a YouTuber? Is it just the pay from Alphabet or does it also factor in sponsorships and other money they get outside the YouTube platform? Does the average include the top 1-2% that could really skew the average higher? Some in this class make millions a month. I saw a Youtuber say in a recent video they used to make $1500 per month and it has dwindled to a couple of hundred a month. All on a part time basis. There are many that make less than that.

I would tend to believe the driver categories since there are probably very few people earning over 2 or 300,000 that would skew the numbers. There are youtubers that show how much they earn as a dasher to leverage their driving earnings. So how does that factor into their findings? Did the article state the number of hours worked by the average person per category?

Oh, mom...face it, no one wants to see mom on YouTube doing mom things. It doesn't pay. Ok, mom? smiling smiley

Note: it's likely the average is skewed by a few top earning YouTubers. In such cases it's better to look at the median value.
Does it also account for the costs of doing business such as vehicles, devices, gas, insurance maintenance, taxes...
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