After years of the pandemic and the reassessment of what is most important in life, many people of all generations, from millennials to gen X to gen Z, have tried to figure out: have I need a secondary activity, and if I have one, can I make it my main activity?
Traditional career paths and what is expected of an average worker have kind of exploded and been redesigned to determine if every person can achieve financial freedom and start earning passive income.
Because the most precious commodity isn’t money, is it? It’s time.
Here are a few personal finance stories from 2022 that particularly resonated with our audience, including a story about the hustle and bustle of a big-money vending machine, to Etsy’s dream stories and beyond.
Tyler Norman When an abandoned high school went up for sale in Munhall, Pennsylvania, three real estate partners saw an opportunity to completely transform the space.
When an abandoned high school in Munhall, Pennsylvania went up for sale in 2019, Jesse wig saw an opportunity.
Sellers were only asking $100,000.
The 34-year-old realtor bought the school, then contacted a friend who put him in touch with Adam Colucci, a 35-year-old real estate investor and owner of an audio-video business.
Photo: Quinn Miller
“I read on Twitter that someone was making passive income by placing vending machines in office buildings. This immediately piqued my interest.
So, in June and July, I bought two machines for $5,000 to get things going. Things were slow at first, but I was hopeful that I could scale the business. I quit my day job that summer to devote all my time and energy to it.”
CNBC do it Nica Yusay’s business, FashioNica, earns $55,000 a week selling luxury designer handbags.
Sometimes Nica Yusay’s vintage handbag online store, FashioNica, sells out so quickly that she thinks there’s something wrong with her website.
A lifelong thrift enthusiast, Yusay developed a knack for finding high-end handbags at a fraction of their retail value from a young age. She’s amassed her own collection over the years, but never thought she could make money from her skills – until her fiancé suggested she make a business out of it.
Christian Sanya is working on his side.
Washing clothes might be your least favorite chore, but for Christian Sanya, it’s no longer a chore. In fact, she washes other people’s clothes and gets paid for it.
“I’m one of the highest earners with SudShare and I’m in the range of $1,000 to $2,000 a week,” Sanya said.
Sanya registered as a “sudster” with SudShare, a person-to-person marketplace for laundry. Think of it like Uber for laundry.
Courtesy of Swimply Jim Battan, pictured with his wife, Lisa Battan, says he is ‘loving the income’ from hosting a pool on Swimply, despite its growing competition.
When Jim Battan spent $110,000 to build a luxury swimming pool in front of his home West Linn, Oregon in 2012, he knew he was making an investment.
Little did he know that 10 years later he would be earning more than enough to pay for it by renting it out to strangers on the internet. Battan says that since September 2020, his pool has hosted about 9,000 swimmers through a platform called Swimply, which dubs itself the Airbnb of pools. The result, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It: $177,000 in revenue in less than two years.
Photo: Domonique Brown Domonique Brown earns $267,000 a year from her art business, DomoINK. She has collaborated with major companies including Disney, Target and Samsung.
“At the start of the pandemic, I was working 80-hour work weeks for two full-time marketing jobs. I was making a combined salary of $129,000 a year.
But part of me felt something was missing. I have always had a passion for art and I wanted time to devote myself to it. So in April 2020, I quit one of my jobs to start a side business. I wanted to see if I could really succeed as an artist.”
Photo: Jasmine McCall Jasmine McCall’s mission is to teach people how to create passive income, pay down debt, and build wealth.
“In 2021, I accepted a job at Amazon as a resource manager for an annual salary of $124,000. I was 29 and that was the most money I had ever been offered.
I also started two scrambles earlier that year to bring in some extra money. My husband Jay and I had just purchased our first home and was due to have our first child in September 2021.
The first stampede was a YouTube channel where I shared money and career advice, and the other was a digital guide to help people increase their credit ratingsbased on my personal debt repayment experience.”
Photo: Ryan Hogue Ryan Hogue started his print-on-demand business in 2016. He now earns $14,000 a month in passive income.
“In 2014, I was making $85,000 a year as a full-time web developer. While I was making enough to cover my living expenses, I felt like I was spending too much time on my job.
I knew there were opportunities to generate passive income in e-commerce. So in 2016, after experimenting with “dropshipping” (an economic model in which sellers do not need to keep products in stock), I came across a Reddit post which inspired me to start a parallel print-on-demand business.”
Arash Lahijani During his senior year of high school, Arash Lahijani realized he could make money through an unusual side hustle: writing stories for video game characters. Two months after launching his business on Fiverr, he learned nearly $10,000.
Arash Lahijani was in high school when he learned he could make money writing stories for video game characters.
A friend of his had paid a Fiverr freelancer $70 to do it for a Grand Theft Auto character, he recalls — so he started researching and realized there was a market. Even better, it was something he could do as a hustle after school and on the weekends.
Beauty Araceli Araceli Ledesma, Founder and CEO of Araceli Beauty
Born in Jalisco, Mexico, Ledesma and her family moved to California for a better life when she was just 5 years old. Even then, she had an immense love for makeup.
“When I was really young, I got a little lipstick sample. And I would take the bus home,” Ledesma shares. “I remember I put it on and as soon as I got home I just threw it out the window because I was afraid I’d get in trouble with my mom because she was wearing red lipstick, but I’ve always loved makeup.”
Now, four years after starting her business, she has made over $2 million in revenue and has amassed over 160,000 people on Araceli Beauty’s social platforms.
Nicole Tocci Nicole Tocci started turning vintage Chanel buttons into necklaces in 2016. That year, she brought in more than $352,000 from the side hustle.
In 2016, Nicole Tocci painstakingly removed the buttons from her vintage Chanel clothes, spent about three hours polishing them, added a hook and attached them to thin silver and gold chains.
She started selling the pendant necklaces at her Berkeley Heights, New Jersey-based tanning salon, Nikki Tans, and at pop-up events. Their popularity eventually convinced her to start a standalone website for her side hustle, called One Vintage Button, in late 2020. In the first full year of business, the side hustle grossed $90,000, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
CNBC do it Paulana Lamonier, founder of Black People Will Swim
In 2019, a tweet sparked Paulana Lamonier’s small business debut.
When she tweeted that she wanted to teach 30 black people to swim on Long Island, New York, the response was overwhelming: she received hundreds of requests for lessons from all over the country. There are still people on the waiting list, she said.
Tim Riegel Tim Riegel, 59, started making fire pits out of propane gas tanks a year ago. Now he earns up to $16,000 a month from his side business.
With inflation on the rise, Tim Riegel wanted a side project for extra income — so in September 2021, he bought seven propane tank ends for $90 on Facebook Marketplace.
The 59-year-old intended to reuse the ends of the tank as fire pits – an open, self-contained metal container for fires, usually for backyards or patios – and sell them for $400 each in his hometown of Lamar, Missouri. The fireplaces proved popular: they sold out in just 10 days, and Riegel was inundated with requests for more.
Courtesy of Rachel Jiménez Jiménez and his daughter.
Rachel Jimenez had long dabbled in side hustle when she started her Etsy shop in 2019. The 34-year-old mother of two had tried dog sitting and babysitting. She had taught courses on business creation and budgeting. She has also contributed to various blogs. She did much of this while working full time, most recently as a higher education administrator.
“I think that’s part of my success,” she says. “I was slowly testing different things over time, and then eventually all the information and knowledge came together.”
Jimenez sells printables or downloadable materials that people buy and print themselves. Her store has a range including Christmas scavenger hunts and digital planners.
Photo: Charlie Chang After being rejected from more than 15 medical schools, 29-year-old Charlie Chang decided to start his own online teaching and content creation business.
In 2014, I was fresh out of college and thought my life was set: go to medical school, get a six-figure job as a doctor, and make my parents proud.
None of this worked. I realized that I hated blood and needles and was kicked out of over 15 medical schools. My parents weren’t so happy.
From 2014 to 2019, I took tutoring side shoves, did a few modeling gigs, started a drop-shipping business, and even worked as a real estate agent. But nothing was consistent to bring me a steady stream of income.
Olivia Hilliard Medical student Olivia Hillier, 26, says she stocks her Poshmark store with vintage clothes that “bring me joy”.
Olivia Hillier’s secondary hustle started with a $5 t-shirt she found at a thrift store.
Hillier, a medical student at Oakland University, based in Rochester, Michigan, has had some experience selling a few of her own vintage clothes on resale app Poshmark. She never gave it much thought. But at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, she noticed other Poshmark sellers taking advantage of “flipping” trendy thrift store finds.
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