When school teacher Claire McCann turned a $65 used table set into $300, she discovered a profitable new side hustle.

Intrigued by the potential to multiply her money by flipping furniture, Claire set out to hone her skills and scale the venture up.

Just 15 months later, Claire has earned over $35,000 in profits from furniture flipping using Facebook Marketplace and other digital platforms.

Now she spreads her hard-won knowledge so others can succeed too through her The Furniture Flip brand.

Tune in to Episode 592 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:

Where to source profitable secondhand furniture pieces online for low buy prices
Strategies to customize your outreach messages and listings so your deals stand out
Which furniture styles and brands yield top resale prices?
The economics behind leveraging movers and staging help to scale
Best practices to avoid prevalent marketplace scams and fraudsters

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The Best Places to Source Profitable Furniture

Claire has had the most luck finding underpriced gems on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and the neighborhood site Nextdoor. Her favorite brands to flip include:

West Elm
CB2
Room and Board
Target
World Market

She keeps an eye out for mid-century modern, modern, and farmhouse styles, which are currently very on-trend. Specific pieces that sell well for Claire are the West Elm acorn wood bookcase and nightstands.

West Elm Mid-Century Bookshelf
Mid-Century Closed Nightstand

Her strategy is trying to purchase inventory for 50% or below retail value. For example, if she sees that a bookcase is listed new on the West Elm site for $799, she wants to buy it for $399 or less to maximize her profit spread.

Standing Out on Busy Marketplaces

With so many people selling furniture online, Claire customizes her initial outreach message so she stands out from the 50 other people asking “Is this available?” She’ll say something like, “Hi, this looks great! Is it still for sale?”

And she is not afraid to follow up multiple times, which bumps her message back to the top of the seller’s inbox.

As her side hustle took off, friends and family started asking Claire how she was able to find and flip furniture so consistently. Never one to shy away from sharing, she began posting her furniture flips on Instagram and TikTok to educate her growing audience.

Follow her on social media as she reveals sourcing tips, staging tricks, and even the occasional furniture flop. One of her TikTok posts highlighting a lucrative West Elm console flip now has over 700k+ views!

@thefurnitureflip

Current Profit: $21,900 in 9 Months! #thrift #reseller #midcenturymodern #secondhand #furniture #money #facebookmarketplace #furnitureflip #upcycling #fyp

♬ Dog Days Are Over – Florence + The Machine

So the next time you see someone trying to unload quality furniture for cheap online, take a cue from Claire and flip it to turn quick cash from your spare time.

Streamlining with Batch Processing

With her garage storage and movers in place, Claire batch processes incoming inventory for maximum efficiency. As soon as a new piece arrives, she stages and photographs it, then stores it in the back until sold.

This assembly line approach keeps things moving quickly. Claire allocates a window for her side hustle too—from 4:15pm to 4:45pm after her teaching job ends. It’s a whirlwind of activity but keeps her more organized.

Marketing Tricks to Sell Furniture Faster

To gain more local eyeballs on her furniture listings, Claire joins Buy & Sell groups relevant to her area. She’ll join 20 or more hyperlocal groups on Facebook, in addition to broader sites like Craigslist.

With so many competitors also selling furniture online, marketing is crucial. Claire builds customer trust right away in her listings by calling out dimensions, materials, and linking back to the original product page so buyers can independently verify her details.

She essentially adds a little “trust tax” by reminding shoppers about sales tax and shipping costs they would pay buying firsthand.

Claire suggests using additional keywords as a photo watermark, almost like Instagram hashtags about style, color, or room to catch more search traffic.

Moving Help for Heavy Lifting

As her inventory grew, Claire needed reliable and affordable moving help for heavy pieces. She loves Lugg, an on-demand moving service similar to Uber or Lyft.

After entering the details on what needs to be moved, you can watch as they accept the job and track the mover coming your way. Costs range from $50 to $75 per piece, and they offer various truck sizes.

For multiple stops, Claire recommends checking out TaskRabbit.

Staying Organized in a Growing Business

As any solopreneur knows, orderliness is next to profitability when scaling a business. Claire renting that garage was just the start.

Her inventory storage and delivery logistics now include:

Rented garage to store, stage, and photograph pieces
Building relationships with reliable movers
Renting functional space – not wasting money on more than needed

Sadly, with so many online buyers and remote transactions these days, scams abound even on reputable platforms. Claire cautions that over 60% of incoming messages are fraudulent, especially anyone asking to continue the conversation via text off the marketplace platform.

Red flags for potential scams include:

horrible grammar
repeatedly addressing you as “Dear,”
limited profile history — often created very recently
anyone asking for money upfront
people asking for your phone number

Trust your gut, and don’t be afraid to block suspicious contacts. For local buyers, insist on in-person payment and pickup. 

Multiple Income Streams to Diversify

Claire estimates that about 50% of her social media content shows the full life cycle of a flip: finding the item, listing it for sale, and revealing the final profit numbers.

This glimpse behind the scenes builds trust and authority.

Her audience also responds well to more vulnerable “real talk” about the struggles of running this business out of her apartment. Stories of staging fails, occasional losses, and lessons learned connect on a personal level.

And aspiring furniture flip followers love her quick tips explaining how to spot marketplace scams. This free educational content prepares the audience for when they eventually avail themselves of her consultation down the road.

Digital courses are on Claire’s roadmap once she codifies her specific furniture-flipping framework, but she already monetizes her audience a couple different ways:

Free downloadable guides in exchange for email signup

Furniture Staging Checklist for Resellers
Top 20 Furniture Brands to Resell on FB Marketplace
The 7 Secrets to Furniture Reselling

Paid digital downloads
One-on-one consulting calls

These income streams allow Claire to hedge her reliance on the main furniture flipping business while leveraging her expertise.

A Day in Her Life

Claire is a teacher by day, before racing to her rented garage workspace. That’s when business explodes for a solid flurry of back-to-back decisions:

Scan incoming seller messages across various platforms
Respond to buyer inquiries and coordinate final details
Price newly acquired inventory for online listings
Photograph new arrivals while staging space allows
Meet scheduled movers dropping off latest finds
Help load pieces purchased by buyers

It’s an exhilarating routine, but exhausting. However, this drive ultimately enabled Claire to turn her $65 curiosity into over $35,000 profit so far…and she’s just getting started.

Learning Through Mistakes

While Claire makes furniture flipping look easy, she’s certainly made her share of mistakes along the way.

One expensive learning experience happened when she paid over $100 to have a used chair and carpet set professionally cleaned. Despite the sparkling makeover, the set attracted no buyers.

After eating that loss and learning larger upholstered pieces are harder to sell, Claire now follows the under 5-minute cleaning rule. If a piece can’t be quickly cleaned up herself, it’s not worth buying.

Early on, Claire also struggled to discern her own style from the latest trends. She admits to getting stuck a few times with purchases that seemed so stylish in the store, but gathered dust once listed online.

Trial and error is crucial, however, as Claire needed to find what furniture shapes, colors and brands resonate in her local market. She ate the losses from her design misfires in the name of research.

Now with tighter sourcing parameters in place and thousands of followers providing feedback, Claire rarely gets burdened with stale inventory.

What’s Next for Claire?

So now that business is humming along, what has Claire most excited these days?

For 2024, she plans to expand operations by renting a second garage. This will allow her to increase inventory and profit potential. Eventually, she may even need to hire a part-time property manager to wrangle 10+ hours of administrative tasks each week.

And Claire has aspirations to spread her wings beyond northern California one day soon. She and her partner may temporarily relocate to Europe in the coming year, transporting her entire furniture flipping enterprise overseas!

Follow along on social media to see if Claire takes her hustle global. Wherever she lands geographically, expect big things from this small business owner helping educate and enrich others along the way.

Key Takeaways

If Claire’s explosive furniture-fueled success story inspires you, here are some key takeaways as you launch your own side hustle:

Put on your marketing hat – Stand out on busy selling platforms with customized outreach templates, relentless but polite follow-ups, and attention-grabbing listings.

Mind your margins – Billionaire investor Warren Buffet famously advised that you make your money on the buy side. Be disciplined in your product sourcing, negotiate better bulk deals, and don’t overpay just because something is trendy.

Gather your “board of trustees” – Even solo entrepreneurs need their team. Build your personal mastermind group of trusting friends, family or colleagues to bounce ideas off and provide emotional support during the inevitable entrepreneurial rollercoaster ride.

And above all, now is the time to start – today. Identify that first profitable flip find waiting to be unearthed, set up your seller accounts, and change your family’s financial future for the better.

To learn more furniture flipping fundamentals from Claire, check out her website TheFurnitureFlip.online or find her social channels.

Episode Links

The Furniture Flip
Facebook Marketplace
Craigslist
Nextdoor
West Elm
CB2
Room and Board
Target
World Market
Lugg
TaskRabbit
Furniture Staging Checklist for Resellers
Top 20 Furniture Brands to Resell on FB Marketplace
The 7 Secrets to Furniture Reselling

Looking for More Side Hustle Help?

Start Your Free $500 Challenge. My free 5-day email course shows you how to add $500 to your bottom line.
Join the free Side Hustle Nation Community. The free Facebook group is the best place to connect with other side hustlers and get your questions answered.
Download The Side Hustle Show. My free podcast shares how to make extra money with actionable weekly episodes.

What are the best side hustles for women? What can moms do to make extra money?

When people ask me those questions, I’ll be honest, my first reaction is … why the qualifier? There’s no reason women can’t run any of the businesses or side hustle ideas featured on Side Hustle Nation.

Why is this so important? For one, the wage gap is real. For every dollar a man earns, women make $0.82.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Whether you’re doing research for yourself or for a loved one, know that you have the power to increase your income.

In this post, I’ll share some of the amazing female entrepreneurs I’ve met over the years — and invite you to learn more about each of their businesses.

1. Selling Printables on Etsy

Julie Berninger started her Etsy shop, The Swag Elephant, a few years ago. She specializes in automatically-delivered digital downloads called “printables.”

Her bestselling product — which has earned over $1700 — is a bachelorette party scavenger hunt. Not bad for something that took less than two hours to create!

Recently, I sat down with another mom, Rachel Jones, to learn how her printables business was earning $10,000 a month.

2. Blogging

Blogging has long-been a popular side hustle for women (and men!), but the days of treating your blog like an online diary are over.

Instead, aim to create a helpful resource for a specific audience on a specific topic. For example, Katie Emery helps women make a joyful transition from dyeing to natural gray hair.

She started her site in 2018 — long after the blogging ship had supposedly sailed. When we spoke in late 2020, she’d managed to grow it to around $6k a month in revenue.

For more on starting a blog, check out my free video course or some of the excellent case studies and success stories on Side Hustle Nation.

3. Flea Market Flipping

What’s one of the fastest ways to make extra money? How about the age-old business model of “buy low, sell high.”

Stacy Gallego is a master of this, earning several thousand dollars a month from her part-time product flipping business. She sources undervalued inventory nearby, and then taps into eBay’s audience of 180+ million potential buyers.

Among her favorite places to source are:

Yard sales
Thrift stores
Facebook marketplace
Local buy/sell apps (like Offerup.com)

Some of her profitable flips include:

a motorcycle side car
a collectible skateboard
several Sleep Number beds!

Related: Here are some of the best items to flip for a profit.

To learn more about this business, Stacy recommended checking out Flea Market Flipper. Here’s a free training they put together on how to get started.

4. Email Newsletter

Despite the rise (and fall?) of social media, email is still a juggernaut. Email is a daily communication tool for billions of people worldwide and no social channel can rival its return on investment from a marketing perspective.

One way side hustlers can take advantage of the ubiquity of email is to start a niche newsletter. Curate the best stories on a topic of interest, share your favorite tips, or teach something you know.

Newsletters like The Skimm are big businesses with relatively low overhead. (I really like the curated/commented content model!)

For Codie Sanchez, her newsletter on “contrarian” investing grew from zero to 55,000 subscribers in 8 months, and generated $50,000 in revenue.

You can even get started for free with tools like SendFox.

5. Real Estate

With an estimated 10-12 million landlords in the US, rental property investing remains one of the most popular side hustles.

For women like Elizabeth Colegrove, it became a full-time focus. When we spoke, she already had 7 houses in her empire, and was transitioning some to short-term vacation and corporate rentals to boost the income.

If your local market isn’t a great investment, take a look at Arrived. The marketplace makes it easy to buy shares in cash-flowing rentals — starting with just $100.

Personally, I like the built-in diversification of a platform like Fundrise. Plus, you can get started with just $10.

I’ve been a Fundrise investor for years, and they’ve consistently paid dividends every quarter.

(Disclosure: I earn a referral fee if you sign up for Fundrise through my link. Opinions are my own.)

6. Custom Cookies

My friend Jenn Fei is a self-described “cookier.” With a cottage kitchen license, she creates awesome custom cookies for a growing base of local customers.

Using Instagram as her primary marketing channel, Jenn charges $50+ per dozen cookies, and routinely sells out in minutes of a new release.

7. Virtual Assistant Service

For Abbey Ashley, starting a virtual assistant service was her way of not having to go back to a job she hated after her maternity leave was up. Within just a couple months, she’d booked enough work to replace her old income.

Virtual assistants are administrative professionals who can earn $15-50+ per hour, working from home. Common tasks include:

Email and calendar management
Social media strategy and account management
Customer support
Data entry and reporting
And lots more

To learn more about becoming a VA, check out the free video training Abbey put together. In it, you’ll learn:

Where to find potential clients.
How to make a full-time income from home.
What clients are really looking for in a VA. (hint: it’s not prior VA experience)

8. Bookkeeping

If you have an accounting background, or just find satisfaction in making numbers add up, a bookkeeping side hustle might be worth a look.

Virtual bookkeepers like Kate Johnson can earn $60 an hour or more. What’s more interesting, is that (in US at least) there are no formal certifications required to call yourself a bookkeeper.

Still, Kate emphasized the importance of education for your own comfort level. You’ll also need to be familiar with your bookkeeping software of choice.

Here’s a free preview of the course she “credits” (pun intended!) with helping her get started.

9. Mobile Notary Service

Mobile notaries like Kristin Barker Stauffer walk new homebuyers through their mortgage documents. The gig requires professionalism and attention to detail, but can be quite lucrative.

Appointments typically pay $75-150, and Kristin reported earning up to $8000 a month as a part-time loan signing agent.

(And she’s not alone — several other members of Side Hustle Nation are earning thousands of dollars with this side hustle.)

Check out some of the resources from Loan Signing System to learn more.

10. Sleep Consulting

Are your kids professional sleepers? Other parents are happy to pay for your secrets!

For Jayne Havens, sleep consulting turned into a $10k a month business. In our interview, she shared how she found her clients and delivered the service — all remotely.

After fielding lots of questions from other moms, she created the Center for Pediatric Sleep Management to help others get started in this business.

11. Freelance Writing

Freelance writing is a great, low-overhead side hustle. You can use skills you already have and just need one client to get started.

Free Resource: Your 9-Step Blueprint to Making Money as a Writer

For example, Rosie Greaves took her passion for writing and began earning $50-100 per 1000 words. When we connected, she’d quit her job to pursue her writing side hustle full-time.

With so many websites needing content, there’s never been more demand for writers!

12. Reselling on Amazon

If you love to shop and find great deals, Amazon retail arbitrage might be worth a look. Amazon resellers like Jessica Larrew source discounted inventory from local stores, and sell it online.

With help from the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program, Amazon ships the items to customers on your behalf.

Check out my full interview with Jessica to hear how she gets it done.

13. A Local Facebook Group

With over 2.9 billion Facebook users, some of those are bound to be local! That’s what Melissa Fassel Dunn found when she started a group for her local Boston suburb.

She described it as a place to share information and recommend local services. When we spoke, it was an “almost” 6-figure operation, monetized mostly from sponsorships from local businesses.

14. Handcrafted Jewelry

Rhonda Newsome is a self-taught metalsmith who started making and selling jewelry and other crafty items. Her upfront investment was just $200 in materials and tools.

Relying on YouTube to learn the techniques for this money-making hobby, it wasn’t long before Rhonda started going to craft shows with her mother.

At that first craft show, she made over $600, and has gone on to earn up to $1000 a day at different shows.

15. Pet Waste Removal

It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to to it!

In Michigan, Erica Krupin turned the poop-scooping chore into a thriving pet waste removal business. She relied on some savvy social media and local marketing to build a roster of 80+ recurring weekly customers.

When we first connected, she reported earning up to $50 an hour on her route! (She’s since hired some reliable “scoopers” to help out, and even expanded to a new location.)

16. Delivery Gigs

These app-powered side hustles are popular with both women and men, and are pretty easy to get started with. Requirements typically include:

Reliable transportation (car, bike, electric scooter, etc.)
Being 18 or older
A background check

Once onboarded, you’ll be picking up and delivering take-out orders or groceries. Earning power is typically in the $14-25 per hour range, and you can set your own schedule.

Here are a few delivery apps to consider:

Instacart – Full-service Instacart shoppers pick up and deliver groceries around town. Check out our full Instacart shopper review for more.
DoorDash – Make up to $25 an hour as a food delivery driver for DoorDash. For more, check out our full DoorDash review.
Uber Eats – Deliver takeout orders around town through the mega-popular Uber Eats app and cash in up to $25 an hour.

17. Sell an Online Course

Kelly Snyder “teaches women how to get dressed in the morning.” (Or at least, that’s how she introduced herself and her work at AdoreYourWardrobe.com.)

Her flagship product is a paid online course, and she used free Facebook challenges to grow the business. Revenue-wise, she reported earning “multiple 6-figures” in under two years.

To find out what you could teach, think of what people already ask you for help with? What are you a relative expert in?

18. Consumer Research

Participating in online focus groups or paid research panels is a fun and interesting way to make extra cash. After all, market research is a $20 billion market!

My two favorite services that facilitate these types of studies are User Interviews and Respondent. When you sign up, they’ll ask for your profession and job title, since some of the highest-paying studies target employees in specific roles.

When I scroll through, most studies seem to pay in the range of $50-200 an hour. 

Note: If it matters to you, most User Interviews studies pay via Amazon gift card instead of cash. Here’s my full review for more.

19. Survey Apps

While these options don’t pay nearly as well as the more specialized paid research study options above, they are a viable way to make a few extra bucks in your spare time.

Here are some of our top choices.

20. FlexJobs

With over 50 career categories, FlexJobs is the leading work from home jobs site. You’ll find jobs ranging from entry-level to executive and freelance to full-time.

FlexJobs charges a nominal monthly fee to access their listings, but you’ll easily earn that back and then some with one job.

21. Consulting

Sylvia Inks knew she wanted to run her own business, but wasn’t quite sure what path to take. “You’re great with finances, and have great research skills,” her friends told her.

Armed with that feedback, Sylvia started a small business financial consulting practice. She mostly targets customers locally by speaking at local events and showcasing her expertise.

One benefit of that strategy is what call the “Triple Dip”:

She can get paid to speak
Audience members or event organizers buy copies of her book
Attendees often end up hiring her for consulting afterward

22. Local Experiences

Could you host a local food tour or nature walk? Michele Mattix had been teaching guided meditation for a while, but Airbnb Experiences helped her reach a huge new audience.

When travelers book a stay a Sedona Airbnb, the site suggests some local “experiences” to enhance their stay. Among those is Michele’s. When we spoke, Michele had hosted hundreds of guests — at $49 apiece!

23. After School Programs

May Najafabadi earned $12,000 in 8 weeks — working just 1 hour a day. Her series of after school enrichment classes teaching crafts and jewelry making were a hit with both kids and parents!

May explained there was a bit of a process to get on the school’s list of approved vendors, but this could be a great business to explore your creativity and work with kids on a very part-time basis.

24. Teaching on Outschool

The fast-growing Outschool platform allows you to set up both live group classes and pre-recorded classes for students age 5-18.

Jade Weatherington of Atlanta is one of the top teachers on Outschool, and reported earning $10,000 a month on a part-time schedule. She specializes in English writing, but there are classes in a wide variety of academic and extra-curricular topics.

25. Mystery Shopping / Field Agent

When I’m out running errands, I make a point to check the free Field Agent app to see if there are any quick “missions” I can tackle on my route.

The app matches you with quick product audit and mystery shopping jobs that generally pay between $3-12 each. It won’t make you rich, but is a fun and interesting way to get paid and test new products.

26. Website Investing

If you have an understanding of online marketing, buying a website that already has traffic and cash flow can be a quick way to make extra money.

In fact, for Stacy Caprio, this was her fast-track to financial independence. Instead of investing in traditional assets and waiting 30+ years for retirement, Stacy figured she could “buy” enough cash flow in the form of online businesses to escape the rat race — at a much lower cost.

Do your due diligence — this model involves risk, maintenance, and upfront investment. But when established sites that earn $12,000 a year cost just $24,000-48,000 to buy, you can see how that might make an interesting and attractive path.

27. YouTube Host

There’s no denying the popularity of YouTube. The video site is the world’s 2nd biggest search engine, which spells big opportunity for female content creators.

Among the women and moms turning YouTube into an income stream is Meredith Marsh. Her videos have been viewed over 7 million times!

The self-described introvert earns money from advertising, affiliate recommendations, and her own products.

28. Teaching Online

Another popular side hustle for women (and men too) is teaching online. For actress Anna Williford, online teaching was a great way to earn extra cash in her spare time.

With companies like BookNook, you’ll connect with kids in kindergarten through 8th grade to help with reading and math. The pay rate is $15-22 per hour, plus bonus opportunities.

29. Get Paid to Go On Dates

I couldn’t resist throwing this one in. The dating site What’s Your Price lets you “get reimbursed for the time and effort it takes to prepare for a date.”

It’s free for women to join, and the average first date incentive is $125 — paid for by the guy.

The Best Side Hustles for Women: Your Turn

Which of these side hustle ideas appeals the most to you? Hopefully this list sparked some inspiration.

Any ideas I missed? Let me know in the comments below!

Looking for More Side Hustle Help?

Start Your Free $500 Challenge. My free 5-day email course shows you how to add $500 to your bottom line.
Join the free Side Hustle Nation Community. The free Facebook group is the best place to connect with other side hustlers and get your questions answered.
Download The Side Hustle Show. My free podcast shares how to make extra money with actionable weekly episodes.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I make an extra $1000 a month?

To make money quickly, freelancing or flipping products are your best bet. If you get one or two clients at $25 an hour, you only need to work an extra 10 hours a week to find that extra $1000 a month.

What are the most profitable side hustles?

The most profitable side hustles are ones that scale without directly involving your time. In most cases, that means something like selling a digital product like a course or printable, or making money from YouTube views or advertisements on a blog.

How can busy moms make more money?

Freelance writing, virtual assistance, graphic design, creating digital products, and participating in focus groups are all viable ways moms can make more money. Check out the full list on Side Hustle Nation for more.