12 Unique and Easiest Side Hustles for Smartphone

Let’s be honest: if you’re reading this article, you probably have a phone, and with this thing, you can make as much as $600 per day with the following 12 side hustles I’m telling you about in today’s article.

1- Virtual Friendship

Well, we are starting strong here. This might sound straight out of a Sci-Fi novel, but nowadays, you can get paid to be someone’s virtual friend, and yes, you read me right: websites like Friend PC, Rent to Friend, and Papa are a part of this new trend, and before you start imagining all sources of wild scenarios, let’s keep it simple. These sites are 100% legitimate; you can earn money simply by texting or chatting with someone feeling lonely.

But, of course, as with anything on the internet, there’s always a bit of the weird and wonderful mixed in, and as you can see from just scrolling through, it’s like finding a unicorn in a field of horses. But,  from all the platforms, Papa is probably the most trustworthy, and to get started with Papa, all you need to do is visit Papa.com, register on Papa.com by clicking on the option “be a papa pal,” and finally click on apply now. 

It’s almost as easy as ordering a pizza online, except instead of getting a pizza, you get to make someone’s day a little bit better and get paid for it on average by being a Papa Pal. You can make up to $3,000 per month. Now, remember that? It is the internet. So, when you build these online friendships, keep it strictly conversational. Imagine you’re talking to a friendly stranger on a bus or something. So, common sense is your best friend here, not just the virtual one. 

2- Google Opinion Rewards

Now, you have probably heard people talking about survey sites, and let’s be honest, most of them are scams, but this is entirely different. Something from a company you all know, Google, yes, the same Google. That owns the YouTube platform right now. I’m talking about Google Opinion Rewards, an app you can download. After you sign up, you answer questions and get paid directly by Google. 

Yes, it is as simple as that. This probably won’t replace your full-time job, but it’s a perfect way to make some money, and here is how it works. Download the app, and then Google sends you surveys; the questions can be random. For example, they might ask which places you want to visit: Machu Picchu, the Grand Canyon, or Dubai. You pick an answer, and you’re done now. As I said, the income is not the best with one dollar per survey, but you can answer surveys quickly and do this directly from your phone.

3- Buying Human Stool

Well, now brace yourself because this might sound like a joke for you, but it’s very real ready for it. You can make money by selling your poop. I know it sounds wild, but it’s real. A company called Human Microbes is in the business of buying human stools, and they do so for science. I’m not sure exactly what they do with it, but it’s all written on their website, and they have some pretty strict criteria for the kind of stool they accept.

Believe it or not, it’s like the Olympics of bowel movements, and I guess not everyone will qualify for the team, but this is not even the best part. This company offers $500 for each stool donation, so you could make up to $180,000 per year if you have a regular daily routine. That’s right. Your bathroom could be the next Wall Street. So next time you’re in there. Just think about the potential cash flowing away.

4- Voiceover

Now. Have you ever thought that your voice could make you money? Well, with voiceovers, you can make more money than you think, and you don’t need any fancy high-tech microphone to get into this. You can use your phone, and that is more than enough. You can go on websites like upwork.com or Fiverr. That is like eBay for skills, where you set up a gig that is just a fancy way of saying, create a little page where you advertise your voice and then record a few samples.

These samples could be anything like you narrating the Epic tale of how you found your lost sock or something. And even if you’re stuck for ideas, look at other voiceover gigs on Fiverr for inspiration. When someone buys your gig, they’ll send you a script you read aloud, record on your phone, send it back to the client, and get paid. I have some friends who are actually in this business, and they have turned this into a full-time job.

5- EyeEm

Imagine turning the photos on your iPhone or Android into real money. Well, I’ve talked already about similar websites that do exactly that. In one of my articles, like Foap, I found a site that takes this to the next level and pays even more. It’s called EyeEm. EyeEm is a stock photography website that specializes in authentic, high-quality imagery. And guess what? Many stunning photos that look like Pros shot them could be taken with your phone. Since the camera is a modern phone, it can take high-quality images.

Now, here comes the exciting part. Some of these images are sold for around $300 each, and to join in, it is straightforward: head over to EyeEm.com, click on contributors, and then tap sell your work. Creating an account and uploading your images is easy, but here’s the deal. The amount of money you make depends on how aesthetically pleasing and eye-catching your Forest is, and you get a 55% cut from EyeEm, so you can expect to earn around $192 per photo. It’s not too bad for something you might have done just for Instagram.

6- Ibotta

Now, probably a lot of you go grocery shopping. Well, picture this: every time you go grocery shopping, you potentially leave money on the table, and I’m not talking about finding a dollar bill on the floor. I’m talking about earning cash, back on the things. You are already buying anyway. Well, Ibotta is an app, and here is how it works. All you have to do is download Ibotta on your phone. And next time you go grocery shopping, open the app and scroll through to find products you plan to buy anyway.

Big stores like Target, Walmart, and many more are on it. Ibotta also throws in these bonus items, paying you for buying almost anything. But after shopping, don’t forget to grab your receipt because you need to scan it with the app to receive the cash back. I’ve been using Ibotta for almost one year, and this time, I earn 684 dollars and 92 cents, but honestly, it is not too bad for just scanning. Some receipts are not life changers but, indeed, grocery game changers.

7- YouTube Thumbnail

Many of you probably know you can make money on YouTube with ad revenue affiliate marketing. Still, it’s also true that one of the keys to a successful YouTube video is the thumbnail, that little image you click on. When you choose a video, it’s like a book’s cover or a shop’s window display pushing you to take a closer look right. But many YouTubers don’t create these thumbnails themselves; they outsource them to other people, and since the thumbnail is such an essential part of their job, they are willing to pay a lot of money for this service, and this is where you come in.

You can either set up a shop on Fiverr or find jobs on Upwork, where YouTubers search for thumbnail designers. When you get your first clients, you can then use the app. Canva, for example, has pre-made templates that you can modify and spice up with your touch. Many people have turned this into a full-time job, but even if you’re looking for a side, you can easily make one thousand dollars or more weekly once you’ve got a steady flow of clients.

8- Instagram Shoutouts

Now, we have Instagram; I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t Instagram just for posting selfies and food pigs? Well, there’s a whole other side to Instagram that could transform it into a money-making machine, and you don’t need to be an influencer with millions of followers, either. I know many people who make a ton of money with what is known as faceless Instagram team pages, and these are pages where you post content, focus on a specific niche, and don’t even have to show your face.

For example, consider “success_tips,” which has over 1.5 million followers within the business niche. As you can see when you visit this example account, the posts are often stacked on a picture, and the best part is that you don’t need to be a graphic designer to create these images. You can use tools like Canva, Snappa, or even Paint.net. You were probably asking, but Arsallion, how do you make money with this method then? Well, it’s through something called shoutouts. This is usually an advertisement for a company or another account where you shout them out and link back to their account in the description of your posts.

So it’s just like saying, hey, check out the school account but getting paid for it. So once you build up your page, you can start charging for these shoutouts, believe it or not. There’s a ton of money involved with this, and I spent over 90 thousand dollars buying shoutouts to promote some of my accounts, which I then used to sell products. Let me give you some suggestions if you want to try this method. You can list your shoutout services on sites like shoutcart.com, and with your Instagram page, you’re not just limited to shoutouts.

You can also do affiliate marketing or even promote your products. So, how do you grow your Instagram account quickly? You might ask to post two to three times a day. Please stick to one niche and mix it with feed posts, reels, and stories. Also, don’t forget to use relevant hashtags, and you can also engage with other big pages in your niche by commenting. Some of the posts, and nothing is stopping you from running a personal page, too, if you want to be an influencer.

9- Google Ad Specialist

Google is like the internet’s attention magnet, and a big chunk of its massive Revenue comes from those ads. You see, many companies are ready to pay a lot to people who create these simple ads for them on all the search result pages. These people are called Google ad specialists; they make a perfect amount of money, and you can see it yourself. Just go on upwork.com, type in Google ad specialist, and see specialists earning over $100 per hour; some have over 1 million dollars.

I know what you’re thinking, but Arsallion, I don’t have any experience when it comes to creating Google ads. I don’t know anything about it, so I guess I can also start doing the side hustle, and that’s not true because becoming one is way easier than you think. You can go on skillshop.withgoogle.com, where Google itself will train you to become a Google ad specialist and everything for free.

10- Proofreading

Proofreading is another side hustle you can easily do from your phone, but it has a high earning potential. It’s pretty much what it sounds like you go through various documents and printed materials, and you keep an eye out for errors, and when I say errors, I mean anything from spelling mistakes to grammatical slip-ups. The beauty of this side hustle is that you don’t need to be a walk-in English dictionary or have an English degree. You’re set to go as long as you know English and understand basic writing, but it gets even better. There are tools, like Grammarly, that review spelling, grammar, punctuation, and much more. 

It’s like having a safety net and ensuring that what you proofread is 100% correct. Now, finding work is easy. Head over to websites like Clickworker, Fiverr, or Upwork that directly connect you with people who need a second pair of eyes on their work. And this is precisely where you come in, as the earnings can range from $15 to $100 per hour. So, let’s say you spend six hours a day proofreading some documents. Well, that could potentially be an $18,600 per month side hustle you can do from your phone, not bad.

11- App Tutorials

Now, we have a side hustle that involves creating how-to videos about using apps on your phone. Nowadays, most phones have built-in screen recording apps. And so, with this tool, you can record yourself navigating to different apps, tweaking settings, or just showing off the cool features of your phone. And the idea is to show you your knowledge and help others understand their devices better.

Let’s be honest: almost everyone has a phone these days, and so many people are unaware of the many different features of these devices. And so, by uploading these screen-recorded tutorials on YouTube, you can make money with the ad revenue system platform because every time someone watches your video and sees an ad, you earn cash. As you can see, many of these videos get millions of views, making hundreds of thousands of dollars every month. You can do everything from your phone by showing people how to use different apps.

12- Etsy

Etsy is a platform you might associate with handmade crafts and vintage items. But you can also use the power of Artificial intelligence or AI to create a successful business on Etsy. The idea here is simple but genius, and this is how it works: after you download the FC sellers app on your phone, create a listing, and as you can see, it says, turning your photo into a painting that sounds high-tech. But it’s effortless to do, and there are a lot of AI tools out there that can do just that. One example is mid-journey, but you can find many more apps just by searching in your App Store for AI art generators or painting generators.

If you ever tried one of these tools, you know how amazing they are in two transforming ordinary photos into outstanding pieces. So, let’s do some quick math to understand the earning potential here. Let’s go back to the Etsy store. We checked our earlier that has over 50,000 sales, and assuming they made ten dollars profit per sale, which is quite conservative, and it’s probably way more, we’re talking about $500,000 by doing this. 

A Final Thought About Side Hustles

Here, we have talked about 12 side hustles; the remarkable thing is that you can work on them from your mobile phone and make good money. It is about working, and it is caused by working. If you work, you will be able to earn something. If only you know, it is only knowledge, and you do not put the learning into practice, then it will not be helpful to you. It will be handy as soon as you place your knowledge into practice.

The point of talking is that if you just come to my blog and learn about ways to earn online, it will not benefit you. But if you implement what you learn and know from my blog posts, it will be so beneficial that you will not believe it.

There is a lot of research when it comes to writing these articles. So, consider following us on social platforms and allow web notifications if you want to stay updated with new money-making methods. Also, if you have enjoyed this article, you will probably enjoy it right here, where I tell you seven high-paying side hustles you can start in 2024. I will appreciate every single one of you reading. Take care.