My Favorite Subreddits to Find Side Hustle Ideas

When you’re getting started out with creating a side hustle it can be hard to find ideas. Of course, after you’ve got 1 or 2 (or 10) side hustles going, it feels like you have more ideas than time. But avoiding shiny object syndrome is a whole ‘nother fight and one I haven’t figured out how to win yet.

So I’m going to cover my favorite subreddits I use to find ideas and inspiration for my side hustles.

First – What Is a Subreddit?

A subreddit is just a small community within www.reddit.com. These subreddits are focused on specific topics. There’s a subreddit for everything from birds with arms to cooking. When you first sign up on Reddit, you get automatically subscribed to a bunch of default subreddits, most of which are crap/filled with stupid memes. But by customizing your subreddit subscriptions you can turn Reddit into a super useful, hyper focused community with a steady stream of new, interesting things to learn. Here’s what I’d recommend adding to your Reddit feed.

/r/JustStart

JustStart is easily my #1 choice for interesting ideas and motivation. The subreddit was created based on the motto “just start”. Don’t ask questions and try to plan everything out, just get out there and go. Most people on this subreddit are creating websites for their side hustle so the just start motto means “create content”. One of the biggest reasons most websites fail is because of laziness (like I am with this site) and lack of content.

The members of the JustStart community will post monthly reports on the progress of their website. These include all sorts of juicy graphs and tables that show huge growth in page views and revenue, but the best part is seeing people post their word counts. I usually struggle to write more than 10k words of content in a month but tons of people on JustStart are creating 20k-30k words per month and these are usually the people who end up succeeding in creating $5k per month in “passive” income.

There are some other side hustles people on JustStart do like Merch by Amazon or paid advertising affiliate offers but most of it is affiliate websites which is my main focus. If you’re interested in starting a website as a side hustle you should check out some of these popular threads on /r/JustStart:

• /u/bprs07 case study – how he went from $0 to $10k per month in 18 months.
• /u/omglia making $10k per month with a travel blog and the URL is disclosed!

There are a ton of other case studies that are really helpful and fun to follow along. There are also new people showing up every month starting their own case studies so it’s never too late to get started.

/r/Entrepreneur

/r/Entrepreneur is a little hit or miss. Since it’s the largest entrepreneur focused subreddit it gets some really high quality content but it also gets a lot of hucksters trying to rip off noobies. A good rule of thumb is if you see a post with very generic info then a link at the end to “check out my website”, it’s probably someone trying to sell you stuff.

But in between the noise and hucksters, there is some awesome content. The best thing about this subreddit is that it has the widest range of businesses. A lot of these could be side hustles but for the people sharing on the subreddit they’re usually full time jobs. One of the best stories is the guy who started his own window washing company.

Here’s his first post where he says he just found out he’s losing his job and will be starting a window cleaning company as his own business.

And here’s his most recent post from October where he cleared $39,000 in revenue.

This is a good example of the crazy variety in different business ideas that pop up. One of my other favorite posts is from /u/minimaterials who sells miniature cinderblocks and has done over a million dollars in revenue so far.

If you’re looking for new ideas, this is the place to go. You’ll get more ideas than you’ll have time to execute. Just keep an eye out for the people shilling their own courses and guru ebooks and you’ll be fine.

Niche Specific Subreddits

This isn’t a specific subreddit but more of a general idea. One of my affiliate websites (the one I started from scratch earlier in 2018) is in the outdoor/camping space. So I subscribed to 3 different subreddits focused on that topic like:

• /r/campinggear
• /r/ultralight
• /r/campingandhiking

This is a great way to become an expert in your niche. If you’ve ever been really deep into a hobby then you go to a website on Google and you instantly recognize that they’re talking out of their ass, you’ll leave their site. But if you’re an expert in your niche and you can speak the same language as the people who will use your website, then you’ll be able to keep them on your site and build trust. They’ll come back to you as an expert in the space and you’ll have enough credibility that they’ll click on your links and you’ll earn commissions when people end up purchasing stuff.

In addition to learning and becoming an expert, you’ll find out what kind of issues people care about or have questions around. If you see a post with tons of upvotes and comments about a specific question someone posts, that means it’s a popular topic and one you should probably write about on your website. This is an endless well of content ideas and it also doubles as a great way to research before you write about a topic.

Go Do It

So in the spirit of my favorite subreddit, just start 🙂 Go to Reddit and find some communities that are related to your interest, whatever it is. Subscribe and start following along with what people are talking about and use it to start your own side hustle.