Back when we were starting out, a “side job” usually meant waiting tables or picking up weekend shifts. But today’s younger workers have created a whole new world of income streams that barely resemble anything familiar. From monetizing hobbies to building entire businesses online, these modern gigs can leave many boomers wondering how it all works.
Here are 13 of the most puzzling ones.
Featured Image Credit: Milkos/Depositphotos.com.
Selling AI Prompt Packs
Some Millennials are making money by selling packs of prompts for AI tools like ChatGPT & Midjourney. They’re carefully written commands to help people get better results, like creating resumes or writing emails—sellers upload them and charge a few bucks per pack. It’s all digital, and once it’s up, there’s nothing else to do, although boomers don’t really understand why someone would pay for help talking to a robot.
Running Niche Substack Newsletters
Speaking of writing, there are also millennials who will write a weekly email about weird vending machines in Japan, then charge people $8/month to read it. Substack newsletters are all over the place and in all kinds of niches, like true crime or plant care. These newsletters often come with bonus content like private Q&As, with some writers quitting their jobs to do this full-time. Yet many boomers ask, “Why wouldn’t you just Google that?”
UGC Creator for TikTok Ads
You don’t need followers or fame, you just need to look like a normal human using a skincare product and act as though it’s the best thing on the planet—brands eat this up. Millennials film it & send it in, then get paid, while most boomers believe you need a million followers to make money online. The content gets posted under the brand’s account, not yours, and you get hired through agencies or post your rates on UGC (User Generated Content) marketplaces.
Renting Out Stuff On Fat Llama
Despite what you might think, Fat Llama isn’t a petting zoo, but rather a site where people rent out their stuff, such as camera gear or projectors, and get money for doing so. Many older people feel nervous about loaning a shovel to their neighbor, so lending out a $2,000 DSLR sends them into total panic. But renters leave reviews, and there’s also insurance—some millennials make hundreds a month without selling anything.
Selling Digital Notion Templates
Lots of younger people will sell pre-designed planners and dashboards on Notion for productivity nerds—try explaining this to someone who still uses sticky notes for everything. Sellers add clickable buttons & mood trackers, as well as weekly logs, to make these templates the best that they can. They’ll sell the cheaper ones for $5, while the most detailed ones often go for $40, and once they’re made, there’s nothing else to do but let the sales come in.
Moderating OnlyFans Creator Communities
Boomers hear “OnlyFans” and assume you’re doing something rather risque, but quite a few millennials use the site to make money without creating content. They run the fan channels on Discord & moderate Reddit threads, with their job being to keep things friendly and ban the occasional troll. They may also organize contests & monitor leaks in a way that’s essentially like customer service.
Flipping Viral TikTok Products On Amazon
As soon as millennials see something blowing up on TikTok, they’ll buy a batch of this product and sell it on Amazon before people’s interest dies down. Of course, boomers may wonder how younger people know what will go viral—they don’t, they just hope that their gut’s right. Some resellers check hashtags every day and use bots to monitor what’s trending because the window to sell is tiny, perhaps just a week.
Creating Aesthetic Lightroom Presets
Take a photo and add some peachy tones, then make the whites extra white, and you have a “coastal chic” preset, which people will pay money for. Quite a few young people are happy to buy these filters and put them on their own pics, so millennials have turned selling them into a genuine side hustle.
Running Etsy Shops That Sell Digital Stickers
Digital stickers sound fake, but they’re not, as people use them in apps like GoodNotes & Procreate—to start selling, you design a cute iced coffee sticker and upload it. Then, someone in Germany buys it while you’re asleep, meaning that you sold something without any shipping or handling involved. Sticker packs usually come in themed sets and are sold as PNG files in ZIP folders, with some sellers also selling matching wallpapers or planner pages alongside.
Voice Acting For YouTube Animations and AI Training
Millennials are making money just reading scripts into a microphone, which are sometimes for cartoon YouTube videos and sometimes for AI testing. Boomers hear this and assume you need an agent and a studio, but that’s not true—just a quiet closet & a mic. The work comes from freelancer sites or direct requests from small creators, and rates range from $10 per clip to over $100 for long scripts.
Building and Selling Instagram Meme Pages
People literally grow meme accounts to 100,000+ followers by posting funny junk every day that’s not even theirs, then they sell the whole account to a brand that wants instant attention. Essentially, it’s like flipping real estate, but for memes, which is as odd as it sounds. Most boomers will ask, “So… someone buys an account full of pictures with text on them?” Yes, yes, they do. The buyers usually rebrand the account & use it to sell stuff, and growth happens fast when a post goes viral, so the goal is quantity.
Creating “Lo-Fi” Study Beats And Uploading To YouTube
Low-fi music is quite relaxing and usually involves looping animations that are easy enough to create on a regular laptop. People listen while working or pretending to study, and millennials make these tracks at home & upload them to YouTube—then, they earn from ads and streams. Channels with steady views bring in monthly income from YouTube’s partner program, although a few boomers may not understand why people would want to listen to music with no lyrics or chorus.
Selling Course Bundles on Gumroad or Teachable
Selling courses isn’t all that new, but the kind of courses millennials are selling sure is, as they’ve begun teaching mini-courses on topics like editing CapCut videos & organizing your fridge. You could just learn about these topics on YouTube, yet videos on there are usually 40 minutes of filler and one useful tip—mini-courses usually come with slides and PDFs. And best of all, you just have to record them once, then sell them forever.
Disclaimer: This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information.
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