Six Dollar-a-Day Side Hustles, Per NetCredit

Everyday prices keep climbing, and for a lot of Americans the answer has been extra work on the side. A recent report from NetCredit, the online financial technology platform, names six dollar-a-day side hustles for this year. The Sun, reporting on the research, notes that several of the gigs are built around artificial intelligence, including entries whose finished product can be rendered in minutes on a laptop.

"Side hustles are here to stay, especially for younger workers," said Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor, in a recent statement. It is the kind of line that lands when you consider how many young workers are already piecing together their income from multiple sources.

The timing makes sense. The Sun notes that some workers, including many younger ones, are exploring new career paths to earn more quickly or to protect themselves against AI job replacement. A gig that pays the daily rate above will not make anyone rich, but it can be the difference between falling behind and staying even.

How the AI gigs actually work

The most unusual entry on the list is AI spokesperson videos. The Sun describes them as digital recordings built around a computer-generated presenter rather than a real human actor. The recording delivers a script using a synthetic voice, natural body movements, and realistic lip-syncing. According to the report, some workers take a script from the client or write it themselves with the help of an AI chatbot, then pick a pre-made photorealistic presenter and generate the video on a platform like HeyGen. The finished product is usually a product ad or an explainer, and companies will pay the fee for it. With low overhead and a quick turnaround, it ranks among the more accessible entries on the list.

The remaining AI-flavored entries are AI applications and generative AI lessons. The first covers a mix of digital services, from copywriting to workflow setup, video and audio editing, search optimization for both traditional and AI-driven search, and website and landing page design. The teaching gig is simpler to describe: teaching other people how to use popular AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Meta's recently launched Muse, covering prompt engineering, workflow integration, tool navigation, and custom training. NetCredit puts the median daily rate at roughly the same mark as the rest of these dollar-a-day side hustles.

The paperwork and strategy plays

The remaining entries have nothing to do with AI at all. The business planner gig is essentially part-time consulting: writing formal business plans, financial projections, or growth strategies for entrepreneurs or small startups. It is straightforward work for someone who has spent time around small businesses or studied finance, and it trades on knowledge rather than software.

The applications and registration category is about paperwork. As the report notes, citing Forbes, the work involves helping individuals or small businesses create, organize, and submit complex forms or official filings. Registering an LLC or filing a trademark would count, as would assembling private-sector grant proposals or college and scholarship applications. The typical charge matches the rest of the list, at the same rate per completed task.

Marketing strategy rounds out the list, and it is the entry with a warning sign attached. The work itself is familiar: helping companies run customer-reach campaigns through social media management, SEO consulting, paid ads, and short-form content like photos, videos, and blogs. But NetCredit found freelancers charging the going daily rate this year are taking home about fifty dollars less than the twenty twenty-five findings, which suggests the field has crowded quickly. That is worth knowing before anyone buys a course on it.

The report also gestures at where the safer money sits. It names at least ten people-skills jobs it calls AI-proof, with pay topping out near a quarter of a million dollars a year. That is a different universe from a daily side gig, and most readers will not be swapping gig work for those roles overnight. The pattern across the data is consistent, though: GenZ NewZ recently reported that side hustlers using AI reported roughly double the median monthly income of those who did not. For the wider job picture, our pieces on Gen Z job hopping and skilled trades are worth a look.