How 7 Real People Built $100K+ Online Side Hustles From Scratch With Zero Experience

The most dangerous lie ever told about building wealth is that you need a ground-breaking, never-seen-before idea to get started with an online side hustle — and that lie has kept more people broke than they will ever know.

A millionaire once shared a piece of wisdom that completely changed the trajectory of the young person we will be referencing throughout this article, and that wisdom is worth repeating here because it applies to every single person reading this right now.

He said, “You don’t need to reinvent success.

Just recognize the patterns that are already working and make them your own.”

That one sentence is the entire foundation of this article.

Instead of chasing shiny objects or waiting for lightning to strike, the smartest thing any beginner can do when starting an online side hustle is to study what is already working, copy the structure, and execute with everything they have.

That is exactly what you are going to learn here today — seven real-life examples of young people who are currently generating over $100,000 a year from their online side hustles, and the exact pathways they took to get there.

Each one has been rated across three critical areas: how long it takes to learn, how much money is needed to start, and how realistic it is to hit $10,000 per month.

And if you are someone who is serious about launching your own online side hustle, especially one built around connecting brands with creators, make sure you explore flipitai — a platform that is quietly becoming one of the most powerful tools for people looking to profit from the creator economy without being a creator themselves.

Let us get into it.

Online Side Hustle #1 — eBay Reselling

From $400 to $317,000 in One Year

Kai Towers did not grow up with a safety net.

His mother passed away when he was still a child, he never knew his father, and by his late teens he was stuck in a dead-end job that paid just enough to keep him comfortable enough not to change, but not enough to build anything real.

One day, something clicked inside him.

He decided he was done waiting for someone else to hand him a better life, so he sat down at his computer, listed some items on eBay, and never looked back.

Within twelve months, Kai had turned an initial $400 investment into $317,000 in revenue — an achievement that most people would not believe was possible on a platform many had already written off as obsolete.

Here is the truth that most people miss about eBay: it is not dying.

In the second quarter of 2025 alone, eBay reported $2.7 billion in revenue, which represents a 6% increase year-on-year — and that number is only going in one direction.

The reason eBay is still thriving while most people assume it is irrelevant comes down to a strategic pivot the platform made years ago when Amazon began dominating retail through speed and Prime delivery.

Rather than competing head-to-head with a logistics giant, eBay doubled down on the niches — collectibles, vintage items, refurbished electronics, trading cards, and rare hard-to-find products where passionate buyers will still choose eBay over any other platform every single time.

Kai understood this better than anyone, which is why he focused entirely on dominating the gaming accessory niche, selling replacement thumb sticks, retro memory cards, and performance-enhancing gaming peripherals — products with loyal, repeat buyer bases and almost zero serious competition from major retailers.

The riches truly are in the niches, and this online side hustle proves it.

Ratings:

Time to learn: 1 out of 5 — spend one focused month learning how the platform works and you are already ahead of most sellers.

Money needed: 1 out of 5 — before you spend a single penny on stock, walk around your home and list what you no longer use; this warms your eBay account up, builds positive feedback history, and generates your starting fund risk-free.

Ease of hitting $10,000/month: 2.5 out of 5 — it is completely possible, as Kai proved, but it requires staying on top of listings, pricing competitively, and consistently restocking profitable niches.

Online Side Hustle #2 — Brand Deal Flipping

How a 16-Year-Old Cancer Patient Built a $4 Million Business from a Hospital Bed

Suhit Amen was sixteen years old when he received a cancer diagnosis.

Most teenagers would understandably fall apart under that kind of pressure, but instead of letting his illness define his future, Suhit used the hours he spent lying in hospital beds to study a concept that most people have never even heard of — brand deal flipping.

The model is beautifully simple: you act as the middleman between a brand that wants to reach an audience and an influencer who has that audience, and you take a percentage of the deal value for facilitating the connection.

Suhit had no contacts, no experience, and no money when he started — just a phone, a laptop, and the kind of quiet determination that serious illness sometimes forges in a person.

Six and a half years later, he is generating over $4 million annually, working with global brands like Ubisoft, Netflix, and ASOS, and negotiating partnerships between those brands and some of the biggest names on the internet.

The opportunity he tapped into is only growing, because in May 2026, the New York Times confirmed what many people in the creator economy already suspected — Americans now consume more streaming content than cable and broadcast television combined, and the leading platform is not Netflix or Disney.

It is YouTube, commanding a remarkable 12.5% of all television viewership in the United States, with Netflix trailing at 7.5%.

Brands are responding to this shift by pouring more money than ever into creator partnerships, and the person who can consistently broker those deals — who understands both the language of the creator and the expectations of the boardroom — is in an extraordinarily powerful position.

Think about how the most valuable companies in the world operate: Airbnb does not own a single property, Uber does not own a single car, and Amazon started simply by connecting buyers with sellers.

Brand deal flipping follows the exact same middleman model, and it works because it solves a real problem on both sides of the transaction — brands want reach without the complexity of managing creators, and creators want revenue without the distraction of business negotiations.

For anyone serious about launching this online side hustle, flipitai is worth exploring as a dedicated platform that brings the infrastructure of brand deal flipping into one professional environment, giving flippers the tools and connections they need to start building deals faster.

Ratings:

Time to learn: 2 out of 5 — your primary skill is understanding both worlds: the creator space and the corporate brand world; if you already consume content on YouTube or TikTok, you are halfway there.

Money needed: 0 out of 5 — Suhit’s first six months required nothing but a laptop and consistent outreach; he followed creators on Instagram, used the suggested accounts feature to find related creators, and made $30,000 in profit before his first year was out.

Ease of hitting $10,000/month: 2 out of 5 — the hard part is landing your first client, and everything after that becomes a matter of scale; one brand booking just five influencer partnerships per month at an average deal value of $7,000, with a 30% margin, puts you at over $400,000 in annual revenue and around $10,000 in monthly profit — from a single client.

If you are a creator looking to get brand deals secured for you, or a flipper looking to start building that pipeline, flipitai exists specifically to bring those two sides of the equation together in a way that makes the whole process more efficient and more profitable for everyone involved.

Online Side Hustle #3 — Video Editing

How a University Student Made His First $100,000 With Nothing But a Laptop

Tom Natras was sitting in his university bedroom staring at a growing pile of student debt and asking himself a question that millions of students around the world are asking at exactly this moment: is there a better way?

With nothing but a basic laptop and an internet connection, he decided to teach himself video editing — a decision that turned out to be worth far more than anything he was learning in his lectures.

Before long, he had crossed the $100,000 annual profit threshold, working with globally recognised brands like Coca-Cola, Nintendo, and Gymshark, editing high-quality influencer collaboration content, and building a lifestyle that allowed him to work from anywhere in the world.

The demand for skilled video editors is not slowing down.

Video content now accounts for 82.5% of all global internet traffic, which means every business — from a local restaurant to a multinational corporation — needs compelling video content or risks becoming completely invisible to its potential customers.

The most common objection people raise about this online side hustle is the rise of artificial intelligence, and it is a fair question: will AI replace video editors?

The honest answer is no, and here is why.

AI can cut clips, sync footage to a beat, and apply filters, but it cannot feel the moment that gives a viewer goosebumps, it cannot build anticipation through the careful pacing of a sequence, and most importantly, it cannot innovate — it can only imitate what has already been done.

Real editors do the opposite: they create what has never existed before, and that skill will be more valuable than ever as AI-generated content floods every platform and human creativity becomes the rarest commodity of all.

Tom’s advice for beginners is clear and practical — forget the fancy transitions and complex effects that beginners obsess over, and master the fundamentals first: how to cut cleanly, how to pace a sequence, and how to use music to carry an emotional arc.

If you can make someone feel something or keep them watching until the final frame, you have already mastered 80% of what makes an editor genuinely valuable to a paying client.

Ratings:

Time to learn: 3 out of 5 — video editing is not mastered overnight, but it does not take years either; the basics are learnable within weeks and marketable within months.

Money needed: 1 out of 5 — some of the most successful editors working today started on laptops that could barely export a 1080p file; start with what you have and let your income fund the upgrades.

Ease of hitting $10,000/month: 3 out of 5 — begin with smaller clients to build your portfolio, stack those testimonials and results, and use them to attract higher-value brands; multiple clients per month at competitive rates gets you to that number faster than most people expect.

Online Side Hustle #4 — Branded Dropshipping

From a Broke Student to $40,000 in Monthly Profit

Jimmy Barlow was the kind of student most people would look at and never predict greatness for — broke, stuck in a neighbourhood he desperately wanted to leave, with no money, no connections, and no relevant experience.

What he did have was a laptop and enough motivation to figure things out as he went, so he started branded dropshipping, made every beginner mistake in the book, kept going anyway, and is now regularly generating around $40,000 in monthly profit.

Most people have heard of dropshipping in its original form: a customer buys a product from your online store, you order the same product from AliExpress for a fraction of the price, and the supplier ships it directly to the customer.

On paper it sounds clean, but in practice the margins are razor thin, the competition is brutal, shipping delays destroy customer trust, and refund rates can wipe out an entire month of work in a single week.

Branded dropshipping changes everything about this equation.

The backend logistics look similar, but the way you present and position the product is completely different — instead of being another anonymous store selling a generic item at a slightly lower price, you build a brand around the product that makes people want to be seen using it.

That $30 item from AliExpress becomes an $80 product in a well-designed store with a strong brand story, professional photography, and a consistent visual identity that builds trust and loyalty.

Your margins expand, your refund rate drops, and your store starts to feel like a real business rather than a temporary arbitrage play.

Jimmy’s journey through branded dropshipping is a masterclass in patience and consistency — month one is about building the store and learning the mechanics, month two is about finding what works and doubling down on it, month three is about proving the concept, and by month six, a focused and adaptable operator can have a store generating reliable monthly profit.

The key to making this online side hustle work is remembering that $10,000 a month is just $333 a day, and $333 a day at $25 profit per sale means you only need around thirteen to fourteen sales — not thousands of customers, just a small, steady stream of the right people finding a product that solves a real problem for them.

Ratings:

Time to learn: 4 out of 5 — not because it is complicated, but because it takes time to build momentum; treat the first six months as tuition and the returns afterward as the reward.

Money needed: 1 out of 5 — because you do not pay for inventory until after you have already made a sale, the financial barrier to entry is almost non-existent.

Ease of hitting $10,000/month: 2 out of 5 — far more achievable than most people believe, especially once a winning product and a reliable ad strategy are in place.

Online Side Hustle #5 — Brand Identity Design

From a Negative Bank Balance to $20,000 in a Single Month

Jack Watson grew up without money, left school without prospects, and found himself sitting at a desk in an accounting firm watching years of his life pass by under fluorescent lights, knowing deep in his gut that this was not what he was built for.

So he did something that most people in his position never do — he locked himself away for six months and studied obsessively, reading everything he could get his hands on about graphic design, branding, and the visual language that makes companies instantly recognisable.

That six-month investment took him from a negative bank balance to his first $20,000 month, and he has never looked back.

Brand identity is the practice of designing the complete visual and emotional language of a business — not just a logo, but the entire system of colours, typography, imagery, tone, and style that makes a company feel like a coherent, trustworthy, and recognisable entity the moment someone encounters it.

It is one of the most profitable areas of the design world precisely because it sits so close to the money — a strong brand identity directly influences how potential customers perceive a business, which directly influences how much they are willing to spend with it.

The global brand identity market was valued at over $9.5 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $40 billion by 2032, which means the opportunity is not shrinking — it is expanding at a pace that most freelancers have not caught up to yet.

To put the value of brand identity into real-world terms, consider this: the UK government recently commissioned a redesign of the gov.uk logo and spent approximately $650,000 on the project.

That is not an anomaly — it is a reflection of how seriously large organisations take the question of how they are perceived.

Most designers are charging $50 for a quick logo or a social media template, but very few are offering the full strategic brand identity package that transforms how a business is seen and valued by the market — and that gap is exactly where the real money lives.

At just $2,500 per full brand identity package, landing four clients in a month produces $10,000 in revenue — and that number grows quickly as your portfolio builds and your reputation spreads.

This is also an online side hustle that pairs naturally with platforms and communities built around the creator economy, and flipitai is worth bookmarking as a space where creators and professionals are increasingly connecting to build long-term working relationships.

Ratings:

Time to learn: 4 out of 5 — brand identity rewards depth of study and every project teaches you something the last one could not; the learning curve is worth the income on the other side.

Money needed: 1 out of 5 — a laptop is all you need to start; the real investment is your time and your willingness to practise relentlessly until the work speaks for itself.

Ease of hitting $10,000/month: 2 out of 5 — four clients per month at $2,500 per project is the target, and once your portfolio starts attracting higher-value clients, the ceiling disappears entirely.

Online Side Hustle #6 — Short Form Content Strategy

How a Teenager Made $100,000 Before His 18th Birthday With Just a Phone

Noah Bryley was an ordinary student doing what most ordinary students do — scrolling through social media in a passive, almost unconscious way — until one day something shifted.

Instead of scrolling to be entertained, he started scrolling to learn: studying every hook that stopped his thumb, every caption that made him click, every transition that kept him watching until the end.

He reverse-engineered the formula for virality, tested it on TikTok, and it worked.

Within months he was helping creators, tech companies, and banks grow their audiences through short-form content strategy, and he crossed $100,000 in earnings before his eighteenth birthday, using nothing but his phone.

Short-form content is not a trend — it is the operating system of modern attention.

The average TikTok user opens the app twenty times per day, spending an average of ninety minutes inside it, and that level of habitual engagement is what every brand in the world is trying to tap into.

The short-form strategist’s job is to understand what makes content stop a scroll and then package that understanding into a repeatable system that businesses can deploy month after month — without ever needing to go viral themselves.

The opportunity is hiding in plain sight for anyone willing to look: your local gym needs content, the coffee shop on the corner needs content, the estate agent down the road needs content, and almost none of them have any idea how to create content that actually captures attention.

You do not need a massive following or a fancy studio to offer this service — you need a deep understanding of the platform, a strong sense of what makes people stop and pay attention, and the discipline to analyse and create consistently.

For anyone building this online side hustle, flipitai is a platform that is actively building infrastructure around the creator economy and is particularly relevant for anyone working at the intersection of content strategy and brand partnerships — which is exactly where the most lucrative short-form opportunities exist.

The smartest pricing model for this service combines a flat monthly retainer with a view bonus — a performance-based payment triggered when a piece of content goes viral — which aligns your incentives with your client’s goals and makes it easy for both parties to agree to the arrangement.

Ratings:

Time to learn: 1 out of 5 — one hour per day of deliberate analysis and content creation will put you ahead of most people trying to break into this space within just a few weeks.

Money needed: 1 out of 5 — your phone is the only tool you need, and most people reading this already have one in their hand.

Ease of hitting $10,000/month: 3 out of 5 — a flat fee retainer combined with regular view bonuses from viral content makes this number very achievable once you have two or three consistent clients.

Online Side Hustle #7 — Investing

The One Online Side Hustle That Every Single Person Should Have, No Matter What

Every online side hustle on this list has the power to change your financial situation, but investing is the one that changes your relationship with money entirely — because once your money is working for you, you are no longer entirely dependent on trading your time for income.

The millionaire behind the journey that inspired this article currently generates over $17,000 per week in passive income from his investment portfolio — a number that represents not just financial freedom, but a complete restructuring of what his time is worth and what he chooses to do with it.

The two questions that people most commonly ask about investing as an online side hustle are simple: when is the best time to start, and how do you actually begin?

The answer to the first question is always the same — right now, because the single greatest advantage any investor has is time, and every day you delay is a day of compounding growth that you will never get back.

A decade ago, getting started with investing meant navigating brokers, meeting minimum deposit requirements, and spending hours researching individual stocks before you could even place your first trade — but today, most major platforms allow you to begin with fractional shares for as little as one dollar or one pound, with everything managed through an app on your phone.

The answer to the second question depends on your goals: if you want to begin immediately with minimal risk, index funds are the most accessible entry point, offering broad market exposure without requiring any advanced knowledge.

If your ambition is to pick individual stocks and build a portfolio that significantly outperforms the market, you will need to invest real time into learning both technical and fundamental analysis — reading charts, understanding financial statements, studying market cycles, and developing the emotional discipline to hold through volatility rather than panic-selling at the worst possible moment.

This online side hustle is worth pursuing alongside every other opportunity on this list, because the income generated from your other ventures becomes the capital that funds your investments, and those investments eventually generate income that funds your life — regardless of whether you are working or not.

And for those who are building in the creator economy space — whether through brand deal flipping, short-form strategy, or brand identity design — flipitai is a platform that connects the right people with the right opportunities, helping both creators and flippers build sustainable, scalable income streams that can eventually fund a serious investment portfolio.

Ratings:

Time to learn: 4 out of 5 — index funds are learnable in an afternoon, but building the analytical depth to pick individual stocks and manage a portfolio with real conviction takes months of consistent study.

Money needed: 1 out of 5 — most modern investing platforms now offer fractional shares starting at just $1, meaning there is genuinely no financial barrier to beginning.

Ease of hitting $10,000/month: 4 out of 5 — this takes the longest of any online side hustle on this list, but when you get there, it is the most passive and the most sustainable form of income that exists.

Final Thoughts — The Pattern That Runs Through Every One of These Success Stories

Every single person referenced in this article started from zero.

No trust fund, no connections, no unfair advantage — just the willingness to study what was already working and the discipline to execute until the results came.

Kai Towers turned $400 into $317,000 on eBay by dominating a niche no one else was paying attention to.

Suhit Amen built a $4 million brand deal business from a hospital bed with nothing but a laptop and a phone.

Tom Natras learned video editing in a university bedroom and turned it into a six-figure career that lets him work from anywhere in the world.

Jimmy Barlow used branded dropshipping to climb from broke student to $40,000 in monthly profit.

Jack Watson spent six months studying brand identity in isolation and came out the other side earning $20,000 per month.

Noah Bryley reverse-engineered virality on TikTok and crossed $100,000 before he was even legally an adult.

And the millionaire whose wisdom sits at the heart of this entire article used investing to transform his already-successful businesses into a machine that generates $17,000 every single week without him having to lift a finger.

The pattern that connects all of them is not talent, luck, or timing — it is the willingness to find a proven online side hustle, study it with genuine intensity, and keep going when most people would quit.

If the brand deal flipping model resonates with you — whether you are a creator looking for brand partnerships or someone who wants to build a business connecting creators with brands — flipitai is the platform built specifically for that opportunity, and it is worth starting there.

Creators can get started at flipitai, and flippers ready to start building their own brand deal pipeline can join at flipitai.

The only question left is which pathway you are going to choose first — and the only wrong answer is doing nothing at all.

We strongly recommend that you check out our guide on how to take advantage of AI in today’s passive income economy.