It’s the most wonderful time of the year… to go broke. 

It’s also the most wonderful time of the year to start a side hustle!

If you’re doing math gymnastics trying to figure out how to buy Christmas presents for all your nieces and nephews without having to do porn, you’re in the right place. This list features some of the best ways you can make extra money this holiday season, even if you only have a couple of hours a week to devote to a side hustle.

(This post contains some affiliate links. A girl’s gotta eat.)

First things first: let’s talk coupon and receipt-scanning apps. Most of them are terrible and not worth the time, but I use all of these on a regular basis: 

• Ebates/Rakuten: This company has cashback offers through hundreds of stores like Amazon, Walmart, Ulta, and Etsy. Install the browser app and it’ll automatically pop up when you’re on a store’s website that has a cashback offer. They’ve sent me $40 in payouts since I’ve been using the app. Sign up for Ebates here.

• Honey app: Install Honey on your browser and it’ll pop up when you reach a store’s checkout page. Honey will then scan all available coupon codes so you know you’re getting the best possible deal. I’ve used this and it’s found me anywhere from free shipping to 30% off a purchase I was already about to make. Install the Honey browser app for Chrome here. 

• Receipt Hog: I really don’t like the receipt-scanning apps that only accept receipts with certain products on them. It’s a lot harder to reach the payout threshold and not all shopping trips will qualify if you don’t buy the products on their list. With Receipt Hog, you collect points for every receipt you scan, no matter what’s on it. Once you get to 1,000 coins you can request a payout in the form of Paypal cash, Amazon gift card, or Visa gift card. I just checked and I’ve received $30 in payouts from Receipt Hog this year, and I’ve been pretty lazy about remembering to upload receipts. If you shop a lot, your points will accumulate quickly. Check out their website here.

10 Holiday Side Hustle Ideas

Pet Sitting

Travel is at an all-time high this holiday season, so you might as well make some money watching your neighbor’s pets. Find available jobs in your area through Care and Rover.

Gift Wrapping

Have you SEEN some people’s gift-wrapping abilities? It’s… concerning. If you’re good at wrapping gifts and enjoy doing it, set up a small gift wrapping business for the season.

If I was capable of wrapping gifts that look like an adult wrapped them, here’s how I’d do it:

Go to Marshall’s and TJ Maxx to buy cheap rolls of that nice thick fancy paper with the cutting grids, plus some ribbon, bows, and gift tags.

Write on my personal Facebook page, Instagram page, and any neighborhood Facebook pages that I’m offering gift-wrapping services with an invitation for anyone who’s interested to contact me. Include a picture of some sample gifts to show what you can do. You could probably use an app like TaskRabbit or TAKL to advertise these services.

Make an appointment time for people to drop off their gifts. They can drop them off and come back at a designated time to pick them up. Maybe offer to wrap them on-the-spot for a few bucks more. Offer a lower rate if they bring their own paper.

 Decorating and Party Setup Services

Do you love to decorate? Plenty of people would love to hire someone to decorate their home, office, or event space for holiday parties/Instagram photos. Promote your services on local Facebook pages and TaskRabbit. People could always use a second set of hands this time of year, and they’ll never know yours available unless you put yourself out there.

Traveling? Rent out Your Home or Car

If you’re leaving your space empty for a time, rent it out on Airbnb and make some extra money while you’re gone. You can even rent out your car with Carma if it’s just sitting in your driveway.

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Mturk is a program where you can get paid to perform micro-tasks, called Human Intelligence Tasks, that AI can’t quite accomplish on its own. This is one of the easiest ways to make fast money online. Here are some of the tasks I’ve completed on Mturk while watching TV:

Flirted with a chatbot for 10 lines

Said “ok Susan” into my microphone 5 times in a row

Taken countless surveys for university research, nonprofit research, and even some high school classes

Drawn a circle around a dog’s tail

Verified whether a certain product is on a receipt 

Verified whether two images were of the same person or not

I recommend Mturk because even though you’ll rarely get paid more than $1 per task, the tasks only take a couple of minutes and you can literally request a payout the second the money is paid by the requestor, no matter the amount. If you spend an evening on the couch performing Mturk tasks, you could probably make $10-15 and have that money in your bank account within a couple of days. Check it out and sign up here.

Affiliate Marketing

You don’t need a blog or huge following to make money with affiliate marketing. You can share links to products you like and recommend to others on your personal Facebook or Instagram pages.

Here’s an easy affiliate marketing method you can try if you don’t have a blog:

Create a post on your Instagram with pictures of a few different products. Maybe a group of products like “the coolest home decor I bought this year” or “the most helpful products I use in my business/workout/whatever this year” or even “here’s everything I want for Christmas this year.” Then you get paid when Mom buys your gift through the link (or when anyone buys through the link).

Once you make the images, get a free Linktree account. You can add up to 5 links and place this page in your Instagram bio with affiliate links to all of the products. This is where you’ll direct people if they want to buy something.

You could also do this on your regular Facebook page and post an image of a product with a paragraph or two about why you like it, then the affiliate link at the end.

Find affiliate programs by Googling “product name affiliate program” to see if the company has an affiliate program. If the brand doesn’t, check if you can buy it through a store that does accept affiliates, such as Amazon, then you can link to the Amazon affiliate listing. 

You can make anywhere from 10-60% in affiliate commissions when people click and buy through your link. Interested in learning more about it? Check out my post on how to monetize your content with affiliate marketing.

Sell clothes and household items on Poshmark and Facebook Marketplace

The holiday season is a great time to do this because everyone is already shopping, so you might as well get rid of stuff that’s cluttering your home and closet.

I love listing things on Facebook Marketplace because it’s one of the fastest places to declutter and get cash in your hand. If I’ve learned anything from selling locally on Facebook, it’s that people will buy ANYTHING. If your city has a local Facebook sellers group, join it and find some nerd to buy your T9 calculator from high school.

I also sell clothes on Poshmark, which I recommend if you have decent quality clothing and you’re willing to drop your sales off at the post office. It’s an easy way to dabble in e-commerce.

Interested in taking your e-commerce venture a little more seriously? Here are some of the easiest ways to create your own products to sell:

Sell Printables on Etsy

Digital products are booming on Etsy, and you can quickly make your own to sell in Canva. They’re great because you make the product once, then sell it an infinite amount of times. Here’s a list of 20 types of digital products you can make and sell on Etsy, and some information on how to make and sell printables.

Start a Print-on-Demand Shop

If you’re hoping to make money fast, printables aren’t the only thing you can sell. You can also take those designs and sell them on apparel, bags, mugs, prints, and more using a process called print-on-demand. With this process, you outsource the printing and shipping of your products so all you have to do is make the designs. Check out my other posts on print-on-demand and how it works here.

Sell Freelance Services 

What better time to start a freelance business than the holidays? I’ve been a freelance copywriter for 10 years and it never fails that November and December are my busiest months – it’s like suddenly everyone’s scrambling to finish all the business ideas they started before the end of the year.

What can you do that others would rather pay someone to do? Content writing? Editing? Transcribing? Data entry? Graphic design? Start simple by making a profile on Upwork or Fiverr, or start your own website and create content around the skills you’re selling.

I hope this list helps you make more money this season. Do you have another holiday side hustle you recommend?