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6 Side Hustles Students Can Start in 2026

2023-09-15 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Drew Birnie · recording, 25:30 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship (also: YouTube, writing online and creators) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Aimed at students, His own numbers, His medical past, Sponsor segment present

Ali argues that side hustles buy freedom and follow the first law of making money (provide value to people delighted to pay for it), explains why content businesses are slow J-curve businesses while services pay quickly, and gives six side hustles for students: writer, content curator, thumbnail designer, research assistant, remote sales rep and web designer.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — No magical way to make money; making money is a skill

  • ★★ Ali says there is no magical way of making money, so a list of side hustle ideas is no magic bullet. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Making money is a skill, Ali says: once you understand its laws, you can apply them to your own skills and life instead of watching videos of side hustle ideas. — 00:00:29

00:01:03 — Why side hustles: freedom, more than one source of income, his own side hustles from 13 to 26

  • ★★★ Side hustles are about the freedom money buys, Ali says: income should not depend on one employer, as many found when they lost jobs in the pandemic, especially in the US where health insurance is tied to the employer. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Even people who enjoy their jobs would appreciate an extra 2K a month, Ali says, and one to a few extra sources of income let you live life on your own terms. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Ali's first side hustle was web design, which he started at 13 and did for about six years; it made him his first few hundred dollars on the internet. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Ali's second side hustle was private tutoring in maths and science for exams, earning between $5 and $20 an hour from about 14 to 21. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ Ali's third side hustle was a company he started in medical school to help people get into medical school; it ran courses around the country and made him about $40,000 a year in profit while he was a student. — 00:02:55 · 6med
  • ★★ Thanks to his medical-admissions company Ali did not worry about money at university, and combining his income with his brother's from a real job, the two got a mortgage on a flat while Ali was a student. — 00:02:55 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★★ Ali started his YouTube channel as a side hustle in 2017; after three years it was making over a million dollars a year while he was a student and then a full-time doctor. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ Because his YouTube channel and the business around it made so much money, Ali decided to take a break from full-time medicine and go all in on the channel; he quit medicine at 26. — 00:03:24

  • ★★★ Ali's first law of making money: you make money when you provide value to people who are delighted to pay for it, and he underlines "delighted". — 00:03:53 · first law of making money

    “You make money when you provide value to people who are delighted to pay for that value.”

00:04:04 — How to make money: services, products, content; flexibility, fun and finance; internet side hustles

  • ★★ Ali names three vehicles for providing value: services, products and content; in a content business you make free content and advertisers pay, through the platform, for the attention it generates. — 00:04:25
  • ★★ Ali leaves product businesses out of this video and says he will cover them in a different video. — 00:04:54
  • ★★★ Ali wants a side hustle to meet three needs: flexibility (unlike supermarket shifts tied to a place and time), fun (it feels like play to you but looks like work to others) and finance (a reasonable return over the long term). — 00:04:54
  • ★★★ Ali still recommends side hustles enabled by the internet: you can work whenever you want, there are many fun ways to do it, and you can attract buyers from all around the world rather than your local area. — 00:05:23
  • ★★ Ali's first side hustle idea for students is to be a writer, which fits the content branch of making money. — 00:06:21

00:06:34 — Side hustle 1: be a writer (Jack Raines, Nicolas Cole, how to reach a writer)

  • ★★ Jack Raines started a newsletter on finance and travel about two years ago as a student and now has a few tens of thousands of readers and charges about $1,400 per ad; Ali counts four issues a week as $5,600 a month. — 00:06:51
    • a number in question (doubtful): "$5,600 a month" — check against the recording
  • ★★ The classic content model of a writer, Ali says, is to write regularly, build an audience over time, then monetise by selling sponsorships to companies. — 00:06:51
  • ★★ Jack Raines also sells 45-minute consulting calls for $300 through a tab on his website; Ali calls newsletter sponsorships plus consulting a really solid business model. — 00:06:51
  • ★★ For the ways to make money as a writer, Ali points to his Deep Dive podcast episode with Nicolas Cole, author of The Art and Business of Online Writing. — 00:07:41 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ Writing as a side hustle has a barrier to entry of basically zero, Ali says: a free Substack or Beehiiv account gives you a website, and a computer or phone with internet is all you need. — 00:07:41
  • ★★★ To get in touch with a writer like Jack Raines, Ali suggests reading everything he has written, starting your own newsletter, then emailing him with your specific questions and asking for a quick 20-minute call. — 00:08:10
  • ★★ Reading all of someone's work filters you from almost everyone, Ali says, and people who have done the work are far more likely to say yes to meeting someone who shows they are doing the work too. — 00:08:39
  • ★★ Ali has written his weekly newsletter Sunday Snippets every week for five and a half years, since April 2018. — 00:08:39 · Sunday Snippets

00:09:27 — Sponsor read: Trading 212

  • ★ About 400,000 people get Ali's weekly newsletter Sunday Snippets, he thinks. (hedged) — 00:09:27 · Sunday Snippets
  • ★★ Ali's second side hustle idea is to be a content curator: someone who curates what other people have already created. — 00:10:55

00:11:06 — Side hustle 2: be a content curator; J-curve businesses and the friction of the sales process

  • ★★ Eduardo grew Pinlord, an Instagram account that curates and sells enamel pins, from zero to over 100,000 followers in under two years and, according to an article, makes $3,500 a month from it. — 00:11:24 · Instagram
  • ★★ Making money takes time, Ali says: in the UK medicine takes a six-year degree and a ten-year training pathway to earn 3K to 5K a month, so you cannot want money and freedom without putting in work for a long time. — 00:11:53
  • ★★ Alex & Books built an audience on Twitter, Instagram and, Ali thinks, LinkedIn by curating insights and summaries from books he read, and Ali follows him for book recommendations. — 00:12:52 · Instagram, Twitter
  • ★★★ Content businesses are generally J-curve businesses, Ali says: at the start, for an unspecified time, you are in the negative from the time and effort put in, then hope to hit an inflection point. — 00:13:21 · J-curve
  • ★★ Ali's YouTube channel took 52 videos and six months to reach its first thousand subscribers, and was not monetised until 12 months in, while he made one or two videos a week. — 00:13:21
  • ★★ Content is not a quick way of making money and comes with no guarantees, Ali says: the work also has to be good and reach the right audience. — 00:14:40 · J-curve
  • ★★★ For quicker money, Ali says, look for a non-J-curve business that makes money basically immediately; such businesses tend to be service businesses. — 00:14:40 · J-curve
  • ★★★ Services, products and content can each be J-curve or not, Ali says; the deciding factor, a model he credits to Daniel Priestley, is the friction of the sales process. — 00:15:09 · J-curve
  • ★★ A low-friction sales process, as at a supermarket checkout or on Amazon, tends to make a J-curve business: a supermarket invests a lot in premises and stock before it makes money. — 00:15:53 · Amazon, J-curve
  • ★★ In a high-friction sales process a business must convince someone to pay, as a web designer finds clients, calls them and sends a proposal; service businesses like this tend not to be J-curve businesses. — 00:16:22 · J-curve
  • ★★ Ali's third side hustle idea is to be a thumbnail designer for YouTubers, who have money and are delighted to pay because they know how important thumbnails are. — 00:16:51

00:16:59 — Side hustle 3: be a thumbnail designer

  • ★★ When Dill Toma started designing thumbnails for YouTubers, he sold one for about $15. — 00:17:20
  • ★★ Dill Toma now charges over $250 for a single thumbnail and has multiple big YouTuber clients. — 00:17:50
  • ★★ Matt Brighton, a Part-Time YouTuber Academy alumnus now a YouTuber, made over $10,000 designing thumbnails for other YouTubers on Fiverr, according to an article. — 00:18:19 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ To land a YouTuber as a thumbnail client, Ali says, recreate some of their thumbnails better than the current ones, keeping their vibe and brand. — 00:18:48
  • ★★ Ali's team is still looking for thumbnail designers and considers anyone who emails redesigned thumbnails, but usually says no because most are not very good. — 00:18:48
  • ★★ Ali's fourth side hustle idea is to be a research assistant, like Drew Birnie, who landed a job as Mark Manson's research assistant while in a PhD program. — 00:19:17

00:19:27 — Side hustle 4: be a research assistant

  • ★★ Drew Birnie says he saw Mark Manson's "I'm hiring" post, asking for someone who can research, write and work as a self-starter, while waiting for a study session in his PhD program. — 00:19:46
  • ★★ Billy Oppenheimer, a friend of Ali's team, is Ryan Holiday's research assistant and landed the job through a cold email. — 00:19:46 · Ryan Holiday
  • ★★ Ali recommends reading Billy Oppenheimer's cold email to Ryan Holiday in full for lessons on how to send a good cold email that makes it easy to say yes. — 00:20:28 · Ryan Holiday
  • ★★ Inez, Alex and Mike do research-assistant work on Ali's team; any big content creator, and especially an author of multiple books, always needs help with research, Ali says. — 00:20:28
  • ★★ Researching online, reading books and scientific articles and drawing insights from them is an incredibly high-value skill to sell as a service, Ali says. — 00:20:58
  • ★★ Ali's fifth side hustle idea is to be a remote sales rep, a new fad he calls pretty legit: companies need people on Zoom calls and the phone to sell their product to customers. — 00:20:58

00:21:12 — Side hustle 5: be a remote sales rep

  • ★★ Wouter Toinissen (as heard), a 20-year-old student in the Netherlands, tweeted free thumbnail advice at Shaan Puri and was offered an internship with his company. — 00:21:27
  • ★★ That student, Wouter Toinissen (as heard), now sells ads for Milk Road Daily and has sold $250,000 worth of ads in 60 days while studying full time. — 00:21:56
  • ★★ If you enjoy talking to people and selling on the phone or Zoom calls, Ali says, you can make a lot of money as a remote sales rep. — 00:21:56
  • ★★ Ali's sixth side hustle idea is to become a web designer: it is old school, but there are ridiculously few good designers and startups are willing to pay a lot for them. — 00:22:25
  • ★★ At a business conference a couple of weeks earlier, Ali met the head of a $100 million startup who said they were trying to hire six designers but could find no one good. — 00:22:25

00:22:36 — Side hustle 6: become a web designer

  • ★ Ali thinks he knows someone who hired a web designer full time for their startup at $400,000 a year. (hedged) — 00:22:55
  • ★★ Chris Misterek taught himself to code and build websites with Codecademy's free tutorials, worked for friends and family for free, then found clients on Upwork and reportedly earns over $3,000 a month. — 00:23:24
  • ★★★ Ali dislikes selling services on freelance platforms like Upwork or Fiverr because too much competition makes it hard to stand out; he is pretty sure Chris Misterek could earn far more by leaving Upwork and finding clients directly. — 00:23:24
  • ★★★ The path Ali would take is his friend Henry's: six months learning to design websites in Webflow, his own portfolio website, then engaging with web designers on Twitter until he landed high-paying clients. — 00:23:53 · Twitter
  • ★★ Ali paid Henry a lot of money to design feelgoodproductivity.com, the website for his book Feel-Good Productivity. — 00:23:53 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Henry had no background in coding or web design and in six months taught himself to the point where people paid him over $10,000 per website. — 00:24:22

00:24:37 — Comment your action point; products in the next video

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: first law of making money · J-curve · Jack Raines

Also: People: Alex & Books · Billy Oppenheimer · Chris Misterek · Daniel Priestley · Dill Toma · Drew Birnie · Eduardo · Henry · Inez · Mark Manson · Matt Brighton · Nicolas Cole · Ryan Holiday · Shaan Puri · Taimur Abdaal

Projects: Deep Dive · Part-Time YouTuber Academy · Sunday Snippets

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book) · The Art and Business of Online Writing

Organizations: 6med · Amazon · Codecademy · Fiverr · Instagram · Milk Road · Twitter · Upwork

Concepts: cold email · freedom profile

Products: Beehiiv · Substack · Webflow

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