The Hustle Daily Show Your side hustle blueprint: Scaling beyond pocket change
How to Choose and Scale the Perfect Side Hustle in 2025
Nick Loper explains that the best side hustles often start as service-based businesses due to their low overhead and quick customer acquisition potential.
He advises choosing ideas grounded in your curiosity and expertise combined with solving a real problem people will pay to fix. Validating ideas quickly by making your first dollar fast is key to motivating continued effort without wasting time on premature branding or websites.
Scaling from a few hundred dollars a month to a full business hinges on identifying bottlenecks and breaking through them by building systems and teams that enable growth without being trapped in time-for-money trade offs.
AI tools have lowered barriers to entry but also displaced many low-end freelance services, meaning operators must level up skills or shift to higher value offerings to thrive.
Finding side hustles that aim for passive or time-leveraged income streams—whether through agencies, product sales, or content audiences—can create sustainable, scalable businesses.
Why Services Lead Side Hustles
- Most people begin side hustles with service-based businesses due to low overhead and ease of customer acquisition.
- These businesses don't require extensive upfront investment or a large audience to get started.
Video Game Classes Side Hustle
- Devin Ricks, a mom from Utah, makes money teaching online video game classes on OutSchool.
- She built a business around kids and video games, subcontracting other teachers to scale.