5 Side Hustles Quietly Making People Over $50K a Year
Written by
Rebekah Evans
Edited by
Amen Oyiboke
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Want to make extra money without causing a fuss or letting it overwhelm your life? According to PR Newswire, nearly one-third of Americans had a side hustle as of November 2025, with financial necessity driving most participants (73%) — whether to earn more, support their families or offset rising living costs.
Here are five side hustles that are quietly making people more than $50,000 a year, often requiring minimal self-promotion while maximizing additional income.
1. Technical Consulting
Large companies typically have lots of staff to keep up their technical operations, such as full-time jobs for already well-established companies. However, some for low-tech companies might need extra support to keep the data flowing and the systems up to date.
“Working with small businesses that need support upgrading their tech stack but either can’t afford a full-time engineer or don’t know how to hire for one can be lucrative,” said Lacey Kaelani, CEO of Metaintro.
Kaelani shared that project-based scopes may include fixing databases, integrating CRMs, automating workflows, building and managing cloud infrastructures, and more. “We’ve seen side hustles in this category pull $75,000 [to] $150,000 [a year] depending on the number of clients,” Kaelani added.
2. Freelance Graphic Designers
According to Mercelyn “Kerry” Francis, founder of Clever Hustle Wallet, being a freelance graphic designer is a job or side hustle that has been around for years and is still big in the buyers’ market.
“Designers are taking home over $50,000 per year and can do it from anywhere in the world,” said Francis. “Think about companies that need branding, a logo, a brochure, or flyers. This job silently makes people money up to $100 per hour.”
3. Grant Writing
Producing online articles, editing text for content, and other writing-based jobs are always a good way to make a little extra cash. That said, knowing how to write and ask for money in the form of grants is a special skill in itself that can make you a decent amount of income each year.
“Quality grant writers make $60,000 [to more than] $100,000 a year writing proposals, charging $500 [to] $10,000 [per] grant,” Kaelani said. “It’s relatively quiet work because everything happens behind the scenes and companies won’t broadcast who wrote their grants.”
4. Virtual Assistant
Companies will pay a virtual assistant (VA) based on their location, but from Francis’ experience creating a VA company, clients will pay for value and to save their time.
Many businesses pay $40 to $50 an hour for skilled assistants who manage social media, cold calls, email campaigns and organizational tasks.
5. Fractional Executive Work
Many times, companies that are just finding their feet need people in leadership with experience and skills to oversee the growth of the business. If that sounds like something you’ve had on your resume, you can put your CFO or CMO skills to work part-time as a fractional executive for an up-and-coming business.
“Startups or small businesses pay $5,000 [to] $15,000 a month to outsource executives for 10 [to] 20 hours of work,” Kaelani said. “You’d be working behind the scenes at private companies on a project on a rolling basis.”
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