18 Creative Small Town Side Hustles: Strategies to Make Money From Home

Introduction

In the middle of each small community is an unexplored mine of potential wealth and business acumen. The “18 Creative Small Town Side Hustles: Strategies to Make Money From Home” is a manual that provides you with tools to release this untapped treasure from your comfort zone if you are situated somewhere in the rural countryside or suburban areas away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

The post will look at ways to earn cash through innovation. To make money, we shall explore side hustles that can be scaled up online and appropriate for small towns. So, let us turn our hometowns into places filled with economic opportunities by considering these nineteen side hustles specifically handpicked to fit small-town entrepreneurs in every one of us.

1- Auto Detailing Business

The first make money from home idea on the list is an auto detailing business. Depending on the size of the town you live in, you could start a mobile auto detailing business or start a business at your house and then have people bring it there. Of course, you can start this out on a tiny scale, just having a couple of clients, and then later on, you can build your way up to having a full-blood business.

Auto detailing means cleaning, restoring, and enhancing a vehicle’s appearance inside and outside. So, this goes beyond just a regular car wash. You’d be waxing, polishing, and deep cleaning the outside of a car, and then you could also deep clean the interior.

You’d typically make between $60 and $450 for every car you detail, so this is a good one to get started, with many opportunities. It’s one where you do manual work; not everybody wants to do that, but that’s one of the easiest ways to make money. There are plenty of tutorials online on exactly how to detail your car. It’s a perfect one. I’ll give it an 8.5 out of 10 opportunity score.

2- Errand Running Business

The following make money from home idea is running an errand business. This is very common in bigger cities, but it’s not as common in small and medium-sized towns. An emerging market for it could be grocery shopping, mailing a package, or picking up some laundry.

Some people are increasingly money-rich but time-poor. Hiring senior citizens for these positions is widespread, and senior citizens tend to have more money than younger people. Running errands typically pays anywhere from $15 to $45 an hour, which doesn’t require much skill.

You will typically need a car, but it’s another one where, if you’re willing to put in the work, it’s a pretty easy way of making money. So, this is another good one. I will give it a 7.5 out of 10 opportunity score.

3- Furniture Refurbishing or Furniture Buying & Selling

The following make money from home idea is furniture refurbishing or furniture buying and selling. So this is a super, super good side hustle, guys. I know people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year doing this. You go and collect furniture that people throw away.

There are probably certain spots in your town where people just put couches on the side of the road, for instance. When the semesters end, you can also look at dumpsters outside fraternity houses or different scholarship halls or dorms. People often throw perfect furniture out, or you can buy cheap furniture on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.

Then, you fix it up, clean it, refurbish it, and then sell it for, sometimes, ten times more. Now, if you think about it, a brand new couch will cost a lot of the time, like $5,000. Then, after maybe five years of somebody using it, they throw it away because they think it’s too dirty.

So you clean the couch, refurbish it, fix it, and then resell it for two thousand dollars. The person you sell it to thinks they’re getting a great deal because it’s a five-thousand-dollar couch. I’ve seen a ton of people do this. It’s a great way of making money. I’ll give this one an 8.5 out of 10 opportunity score.

4- Furniture Carpet or Bed Cleaning Business

The following make money from home idea is to build a furniture, carpet, or bed cleaning business. This is like a cleaning business, but you focus and specialize in cleaning furniture, rugs, and beds. You focus on this because most cleaning businesses don’t do this; they’ll sweep, mop, vacuum, and do that kind of thing well.

But they don’t focus on cleaning beds, furniture, or couches. That is because you must have specific, specialized deep cleaning equipment. But that means you can come in charge three or four times more and clean those things for people. I used to live in a medium-sized town and was looking for somebody who did this, but I could not find anybody who did this.

It was ridiculous, and I was willing to pay them way more for hours than I paid for a traditional cleaning service, but I couldn’t find anyone. There are many opportunities for this type of business model, and this is a good one. I’ll give it a 9 out of 10 opportunity score.

5- Traditional Cleaning Business

The following make money from home idea is a traditional cleaning business. Even with conventional cleaning businesses, you can still make a ton of money, so this is where you’d be vacuuming, mopping, sweeping, dusting, Etc. This can be good, too. There’s still a lot of opportunities here.

I know plenty of people who started one-person businesses and make over six figures a year doing this. So, this is another perfect one. I’ll give it a 7 out of 10 opportunity score.

6- Help People to Organize Things

The following make money from home idea is to help people organize things. So, this is where you would go in, maybe into someone’s shop, workstation, or business, and you help them manage things. So that they are orderly, all in the right place, and look nice. So, most people’s garages are an absolute mess, and people don’t like to see that.

At the same time, they’re too busy to fix it, but they will pay you to organize things for them. In many cases, this involves color coding, labeling, bundling wires together, cleaning things up a little bit, organizing them, putting them in a place that makes sense, etc.

So, if you like to do this anyway, which I know many people out there do, this could be an excellent business for you to start. So, I’ll give this one an 8 out of 10 opportunity score.

7- Becoming a Local Tour Guide

The following make money from home idea is becoming a local tour guide. So, this one is perfect if the town is more medium-sized. When they first move to or visit the city, people can hire you as a local tour guide to show them around, and this saves them a lot of time, effort, and money in knowing what good restaurants to go to.

What stores are worth shopping at? What fun things to do in the town are there? The half-day tour with a private guide usually runs for $100 to $300. Think about all the value you give and the time you save that person. It makes sense to do this. I will hire a local tour guide whenever I go to a new place so you can start this business.

Chances are you’re not going to get jobs all the time, but this is a good way of making some extra money. You can post these jobs on Facebook or Craigslist, maybe once every two weeks. So, I’ll give this one a 7 out of 10 opportunity score. This can be a full-time job if you live in a bigger city.

8- Selling Home-Grown Veggies or Something Like Healthy Chickens

The following make money from home idea is selling home-grown veggies or healthy chickens. Many people are concerned about all the pesticides and chemicals pumped into our foods. Many people have allergic reactions to them or are just very sensitive to them. They have a lot of inflammation, so there’s a lot of opportunity for people to sell these things.

If you can raise non-industrial-grade chickens or make vegetables that don’t have a bunch of pesticides on them, that can be incredibly valuable to other people, and they’re willing to pay a premium for that. Of course, you could sell this on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, or go to a farmer’s market, so this can be a good side hustle. I’ll give it a 7 out of 10 opportunity score.

9- Raising & Selling Chicken or Eggs

The following make money from home idea is raising and selling eggs. Or you can even go as big as cattle if you have room. Again, you want to do this healthily; you don’t want to do it where there’s a bunch of slaughterhouses, and the cows are just all in together, and you’re feeding them steroids like a lot of the big corporations do, and that’s why the meat is so unhealthy.

Then, people will be willing to pay a premium for that. So this one’s even a little bit better, in my opinion. I’ll give it a 7.5 out of 10 opportunity score.

10- Retail Arbitrage

The following make money from home idea is retail arbitrage. If you live in a small town, there’s a good chance that certain items are difficult to get there. They’re either difficult to obtain, rare, or unique, and people in the small town haven’t seen them. So you can find those items and then do what’s known as retail arbitrage.

So, I did this when I was young, and I found this item called a credit card knife. I would go to all kinds of different fairs and festivals, and I would sell these credit card knives. This was just a little knife that looked like it was in the form of a credit card, and it fit in your wallet. But if you folded it up correctly, it would be a knife that could be used for self-defense.

I guess, but mainly, it’s just used for day-to-day things like cutting up an apple. So I would buy these knives in bulk, and I think I would pay 10 or 15 cents for each of them, and then I would end up selling them for $5 each. So, I was making a ridiculous profit on these knives. So, yeah, retail Arbitrage is excellent. I’ll give this one an 8.5 out of 10 opportunity score.

11- Flipping

The following make money from home idea is flipping. You could flip just about anything. I’ve done this since I was a kid; you could flip cars, bikes, video games, phones, and gaming consoles. You need to know the value of these items and buy low and high. It’s as simple as that.

If they’re moving from one town to another, some people might have a garage sale and sell something like 50% lower just for the sake of time. You can buy and resell that for 50% higher, making a 50% profit margin. So this one is really good.

I’ve done one of the oldest side hustles known to man my whole life. It’s amazing. I’ll give this one a 9 out of 10 opportunity score. 

12- Renting Out Your Car or Truck

The following make money from home idea is renting out your car or truck. So, this is one area where you need to be careful. Ensure you have insurance and that you’re doing it legally. You can rent out your car and truck relatively easily. Turo may or may not be available in your area; that’s an app you can use to do this. If not, you can always go through Facebook or Craigslist.

People often need a truck, and you can rent it to them. So, this one could be pretty good. I’ll give it a 7 out of 10 opportunity score.

13- Renting Out Equipment

The following make money from home idea is renting out equipment. This could be renting out unused tools, such as a lawnmower, a chainsaw, a power drill, a leaf blower, a pressure cleaner, Etc. You can also rent out things like baby gear. This lady does, and she makes $5,000 a month doing that. She used a website called BabyQuip.

There’s another website called rentmyequipment.com where you can rent out all kinds of different stuff. There are examples where you can write out things as simple as a bucket. People sometimes just need a bucket, and they’ll pay you five or ten bucks to use your bucket, right? So this is a legit side hustle. People are making really good money doing this.

I’ll give this one a high rating because there’s all kinds of equipment out there that people need, and it’s really difficult to rent it. So, I will give this one a 9 out of 10 opportunity score. The key here is to find the right equipment people are searching for and willing to pay good money for. That’s going to be the best way to make money.

14-  Farm Sitting

The following make money from home idea is farm sitting. This is basically where you take care of someone’s farm while they’re out on vacation. So, this one requires a little knowledge about caring for a farm. It doesn’t take that much, but just some basic stuff about how to feed animals and check on them to ensure they’re okay, Etc.

But farmers will pay you a lot of money to take care of their farm while they’re gone. This is kind of like house-sitting on steroids. You can get paid even more money than that. Farm-sitting jobs usually pay about $19 per hour, and you just get to hang out on their farm. So, this one’s pretty good. I’ll give it a 6 out of 10 opportunity score.

15- Rideshare Driver or a Grocery Deliverer

The following make money from home idea is a rideshare driver or a grocery deliverer. Of course, there are a million different apps out there you can use for this: Uber, Instacart, GrubHub, Etc. But, you just deliver food to people or help them get from point A to point B, a classic side hustle. Millions of people, do it, very easy to make money.

There’s even a guy who made a hundred thousand dollars delivering groceries, who’s using the app shipped. It is pretty rare to make that much money, though. But in certain areas, you’re in, they pay more for delivery drivers and deliverers because not many people do it. So, depending on your area, not many people are doing it, and that could be a great opportunity for you.

Many rideshare drivers make anywhere from $22 to $40 per hour when you count tips. So, this one’s pretty good and very solid. Also, it is one that everybody knows about. So I’ll give it a 7.5 out of 10 opportunity score.

16- Tutor

The following make money from home idea is the tutor. Now, you could be an online tutor or a local tutor. What you want to do is specialize in a specific subject. That’s how you get paid the big bucks for tutoring. I did this myself, making over a hundred dollars per hour. What I did is I would tutor people on how to pass specific tests.

One test was the PCAT or the pharmacy college admissions test, and I would charge over a hundred dollars an hour to tutor people on it. Another test that I tutored on was the ACT. You’re probably very familiar with that. It’s a standardized test. Almost everyone takes it in high school, and I also charge really good money for that.

You want to niche down and be a specific type of tutor. However, in a smaller town, you could probably be more of a generalist, and you’d be fine. Many tutors make between $25 and $80 per hour, which is perfect. I’ll give it a 9 out of 10 chance to score.

17- Pet Sitting

The following make money from home idea is pet sitting. In this method, you go to someone’s house while they’re out of town and take care of their pets. You ensure they have food and water and are properly taken care of. This is becoming increasingly common in small and medium-sized towns and is a great way to make money.

You can also turn this into a full-time business if you’d like. There’s a story about this person who started an $8,000-per-month in-home pet care service. So yeah, you can make money doing this at the bare minimum. You’ll be making about $15 an hour for small towns. I’ll give this one a 7.5 out of 10 opportunity score.

18- Dog Walking Service

The following make money from home idea is a dog walking service. So this is where you go, and you walk someone’s dog, while they’re at work, or maybe when they’re out of town, and in this one, you do have to deal with, you know, cleaning up the poop of the dog.

It’s a little more intensive, and you typically get paid a little more per hour for doing this, so this is an even better opportunity. I will give this one an 8 out of 10 opportunity score.

Empowering Your Future: Thriving with Small Town Side Hustles

After exploring various Small Town Side Hustles scenarios, it is evident that the possibilities of development and income are as enormous as our inventiveness and tenacity. These 18 approaches mean more than just ways to make money; they epitomize the imaginative force abounding in small towns worldwide.

Adopting such side hustles is like enabling oneself to build a future that is not only financially profitable but equally gratifying. It implies optimizing the assets, sense of community, and distinct allure of small towns. Any one of these endeavours, be it craft making, virtual services, or supporting local businesses, has the likelihood of growing into a sustainable business.

However, remember that enthusiasm for this endeavour will bring success, while flexibility will offer a learning opportunity. During your journey in side hustling, be proud that you are contributing to your small town’s economic strength while taking control over your career path.

So, go ahead and turn those dreams into reality. Your small town is not just a place you live; it’s a canvas for your entrepreneurial spirit. Let the world see what Small Town Side Hustles can achieve when driven by the heart and soul of a visionary. Here’s to your success and the bright future ahead!

By the way, I wrote an article about High-Paying Work-from-Home Jobs that went viral. It’s titled “Untapped 19 High-Paying Work-From-Home Jobs to Boost Your Income in 2024.” You have to read this article, too.