If you live in New York, you know it can be an unforgiving city. It’s cold in the winter, blazing hot in the summer, and rent is constantly increasing. Inflation drives up the cost of groceries and other necessities as well.
You might work hard at one job, or two, or some people even have three. If you’re still finding that money is tight, you might look into that most American of activities, the side hustle.
You can work all kinds of side hustles in New York, so let’s look at a few of them now.
Flipping Antiques
You might go antique shopping and search for bargains. You can learn to watch for particular brands. When you find them, you can see if they’re underpriced. If they are, you can buy them and list them for sale on eBay or Etsy.
Learn to shop at secondhand stores, flea markets, and estate sales. Watch your step while you’re prowling through stores, on the hunt for undervalued merchandise. Slip and falls make up 12% of ER visits, and you don’t want to step on a wet floor because you don’t notice the signs.
You can read books that will tell you what brands to locate. Often, you can find dishes, plates, and jewelry from bygone eras. If you have a store, flea market, or estate sale that underprices some merch, you can flip that and make a tidy profit.
Flipping Clothing
Flipping clothing is another easy way to make money as a side hustle. You can use the same principle as antique shopping. The idea is to find scarves, dresses, shirts, etc., that cost less than you can sell them for online.
Secondhand stores are sometimes a goldmine in this department. Keep an eye open for estate sales as well.
If you stay within the five boroughs, you might not do so well in this area. That’s because estate sales and secondhand clothing stores will often price their merch at the same price point that you’d try to sell it for online.
You might do better if you have a car and you can go to areas outside the city limits. The estate sales, auctions, and secondhand clothing stores outside of New York City often undervalue certain items.
Can and Bottle Collecting
Collecting cans and bottles is not exactly glamorous. However, you can make some ready cash that way if you’re in a tight spot and need to pay your rent or keep the electricity on.
You can go through your neighborhood and surrounding ones and keep an eye open for any discarded cans and bottles. You can get five cents each for them, but check each one to see if the recycling centers accept them. You can’t recycle certain strange or exotic brands.
Make sure to wear gloves when you undertake this side hustle. You don’t want your hands to get all sticky, and you don’t want to touch anything gross if you spot a can or bottle in commercial outdoor trash cans or Commercial outdoor trash receptacles with other refuse touching it.
Website Testing
You can sign up for services where you can test various websites before they go live. If you want to do this, you will need to have an internet connection. For some of the tests, you will also require a working headset so you can relate to the site owner what’s wrong with it.
You’re trying to tell the company or site owner about the website’s UX, or user experience. That matters a lot since a site with poor UX will not do so well. Usually, the site owner or creator wants you to mention if you find any part of the site poorly constructed.
You might get as little as $10-15 for some of these site reviews, but some pay as much as $20. You might even get one every once in a while that brings back $50 or more.
The only thing to remember with this side hustle is that you’re competing with other individuals who want to get money from these same gigs. You should be ready by your computer at all times if you hope to snag some of these jobs when someone posts them.
If you’re not there at that moment, you can miss out. The site owner or operator will use another tester.
You might try several of these side hustles if you’re short on cash in NYC and the rent is due.
