Remote and online side hustles, compared
Compare 7 online and remote work side hustles on startup cost, hourly pay, hours and work mode. Every figure links to the creator or dataset it came from.
Online and remote work splits on demand: BLS Employment Projections for 2025-35 show a stable trend for the employee occupation closest to freelance writing, and a declining trend for those closest to tech support and transcriptions.[1][2][3] Those projections describe employees in related occupations, not people doing this work on the side.[1][2][3] Work mode is listed as remote for freelance writing, tech support and virtual assistant work.[4][5][6] Freelance marketplace work is listed at a typical 1–2 hours a week, from spending 15-20 minutes on LinkedIn five days of the week.[7]
First published 2026-11-06 · Last reviewed 2026-11-07
All 7 side hustles
- AI Training: Providing human feedback to AI models Own schedule
- Freelance Marketplace: Online freelance marketplace Can go full-time
- Freelance Writing: Get paid to write articles, blog posts, web copy, or other content for clients on a per-project or per-word basis. From home
- Tech Support From home
- Transcriptions: Transcription for audio and video captioning.
- User Testing
- Virtual Assistant Can go full-time · From home · Own schedule
How do these compare?
| Side hustle | Typical hours per week | Work mode | Demand trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelance Writing | — | remote | stable |
| Tech Support | — | remote | declining |
| Freelance Marketplace | 1–2 hours/week | — | — |
| Transcriptions | — | — | declining |
| Virtual Assistant | — | remote | — |
| AI Training | — | — | — |
| User Testing | — | — | — |
Sources
- BLS Employment Projections
- BLS Employment Projections
- BLS Employment Projections
- Write For Money And Power: Becoming A Creator CEO With Amy Suto — The Creative Penn at 25:20
- 198: Turn Your Everyday Skills into Paid Offers — Side Hustle Hero at 2:57
- How My Client Went From Laid Off By Her Corporate Job & Desperate To Earning More Than Her Corporate Salary In Her Freelance Business [ Freelancing to Financial Freedom ] — Freelance to Freedom
- 221 | 6 Tips for Getting Clients on LinkedIn — The 6-Figure Freelancer Podcast