Top 3 Side Hustles in 2023

"What is the best side hustle?" This is a question that haunts the average entrepreneur every day. The truth is, you can make money doing anything, but your success depends on how good you are at it. Don't feel discouraged if we don't discuss your current occupation; chances are, you have the potential to be successful as long as you put in the work.

That being said, here are three side hustles that get Slash users the most money in the bank.

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Amazon FBA

Calm down Amazon Gurus, we're not selling a course. We're going to cover the pros and cons of selling on Amazon on the side. In this section, we will discuss retail arbitrage, where you find items on retailer websites or in-store and flip them for a profit on Amazon.

One big benefit of Amazon arbitrage is that you can source all your goods from the comfort of your phone or computer, so it isn't very labor-intensive. However, packing your inventory on your own can be time-consuming unless you have a preparation center. Most sellers tend to outsource their inventory preparation once they've scaled, which means they hire people to pack their boxes to ship off to Amazon.

Another pro of Amazon arbitrage is that you can genuinely scale this to 7 figures if you put enough time into it, but it would require you to put 100% into it, so don't think that you can get away with 7 figures while keeping this as a side hustle. Many Amazon sellers hire virtual assistants, who are normally outsourced from countries in Eastern Asia, Pakistan, India, etc., to help them find profitable flips. With relatively affordable salaries, this is a fantastic way to buy some of your time back.

So, we've established that Amazon has quite a lot of upside. You can scale it into a massive business and buy your time back while doing so. However, there are some downsides that we think you should understand. The first is that the big bucks in Amazon are really made by sellers with big amounts of capital. This means that for the average John Doe, getting into Amazon FBA can be less profitable in the short term. You would spend the first couple of months to years building your capital to continue investing. However, you can cancel this out with credit. You'd aim to get more volume going, as you'd need quick turnovers to pay off your cards without interest eating into your profit margins.

You can also run into issues like product ungating, where you need to prove that you're a legit wholesaler before selling in any real volume. Margins can also be pretty small, which follows back to our capital intensity downside above.

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Trading

Trading! You may have just watched "The Wolf of Wall Street" and think you're ready for the big time, but make sure you read this before making any further decisions.

Trading is pretty universal. It's based on analyzing graphs and linking them to probable patterns. Emphasis on the word "probable" because realistically, anything can happen. These patterns just make price action more likely. It takes a while to gain that instant decision analysis in your head as soon as you spot a familiar pattern, so it may take some time of learning, watching YouTube videos, etc., before you can start making money. However, the massive upside is that you work for nobody but yourself, meaning you can really clock in and out whenever you want. Most stock traders are active from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST on weekdays, since that's when the stock market is open in the US.

You also benefit from making money from your computer, which, unlike selling on Amazon, is absolutely labor-free (unless typing and clicking your mouse is labor to you). If you're able to perfect your craft in this niche, there really is a big benefit in the lifestyle that comes with it, especially giving you more time to spend with yourself or your family.

However, there is obviously a catch. Most traders who start tend to fail. In fact, statistically, it's known that 90% of traders fail, leaving just a 10% success rate. This is an extremely high barrier for entry and not a risk that many people are willing to take when going into a profession. This statistic doesn't provide much confidence, does it?

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Sneaker Reselling

The crème fraiche of the reselling niche, the most popular reselling industry in the world. This business model has been extremely popular for years now. First booming with the explosion of Supreme in 2016, sneaker/clothing reselling has been growing ever since. The business model of flipping sneakers and clothes is super simple - this item is extremely in demand, and the supply does not meet the demand. Which is the first step in determining whether a pair of sneaker should resell because there simply isn’t enough to go around. That leads to people bidding to get a pair, like an auction.

The real problem is not so much selling the item, but getting it in the first place. Normally super hyped releases have hundreds to maybe even millions of users trying to purchase all at once! Understandable, sites do crash and you can find yourself refreshing a site for 30 minutes at a time. However, that one lucky refresh that gets you through to the product link is a fantastic feeling. So nothing is really confirmed, it’s always a probability game.

A big pro for sneaker reselling is that it really is a pretty low barrier for entry, and unless you’re holding a massive amount of shoes it doesn’t really require a huge amount of capital. It also isn’t very skill intensive, many side hustles like trading for example require a lot of time and patience to learn though this is a simple plug’n’play operation.

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We have established that there is no perfect side hustle; all of them have pros and cons. The first step to making a decision is understanding which side hustle best fits your life and circumstances. Make sure to do extensive research on each hustle before making the jump. Remember, gurus will only show you what you want to see. Do your own research!

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