ROTTEN SIDE HUSTLES AND THE BETTER ALTERNATIVES

They try to seduce you with promises that you can make money while having fun in your spare time. But in reality, dozens of online platforms that promise “easy” and “fun” opportunities are rotten side hustles.

To be sure, reasonable people can disagree about what makes a moneymaking opportunity good or bad. So it’s worth rattling through why we think these side hustles are just plain rotten.

In a rotten side hustle, you’ll earn less than minimum wage after accounting for expenses. Or your assets — worth many times your pay — are put at risk when you participate. Or the platform has the contractual right to take your accumulated wages and has a history of doing so. Or you have to pay upfront fees for largely worthless services.

Perhaps what’s most disturbing about the rotten side hustles is that there are almost always better options in similar industries or with different online platforms. But the better alternatives are less well known, so they’re often overlooked.

Here are some rotten side hustles and their better alternatives.

Survey sites

If you’ve been tempted to sign up for a survey site, you should know that no matter how smart and efficient you are, you’re not going to make even close to minimum wage there. Yet you’ve probably seen advertisements for sites such as Swagbucks, Survey Junkie, Mypoints, Perksy and Paidviewpoint, which all try to draw you in with promises of having fun while you earn gift cards and prizes.

Of these sites, Swagbucks and Survey Junkie appear to be the best, but they’re still not great

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