11 Best Side Hustles for Couples (Who Want to Earn Cash Together)

If you love spending time with your significant other, you may consider supporting each other in a joint business venture. Of course, starting a business requires effort, and often involves some risk — and it could put a strain on your relationship. That said, starting a side gig can be a great way for couples to create extra income. And that money might help you improve your personal finances or pay off your student loans.

So if you’re looking for a weekend side job or online business that doesn’t take time away from your partner, we’ve compiled a list of great side hustles to help you and your significant other put some extra money in your bank account. In fact, you may enjoy it enough one of these enough that your joint side hustle could grow into a full-time job if you end up loving it.

The best side hustles for couples

1. Provide childcare or pet care services

You can make money helping your neighbors by offering babysitting, daycare, dog-walking, or pet-sitting services. With the two of you, you’ll be able to handle more children (or fur babies) at once, which will increase your profits. You could choose to offer care in your home or in the customer’s home, and you can find clients through a platform such as Care.com or Rover.

If you don’t have any experience as sitters, you might want to offer to help your neighbors for free until you gather some testimonials. At Rover or Care.com, you are required to submit to a standard background check, but it could be helpful to choose the more thorough version of the background check so customers feel safe leaving their pets or kiddos in your care.

2. Start an Etsy shop

For all you crafty couples out there: Have you considered making extra candles, wine koozies, spice mixes, face masks, or anything else you’ve been creating in your spare time?

If you have a unique idea and can package it well, there may be a market for your product on Etsy. Many successful retailers get started on Etsy, and almost half of them have never sold goods before setting up their shop, according to an Etsy survey.

There are a ton of ideas for Etsy shops. You could sell things like printables, care packages, or collectibles you may have around the house — items that are great for beginners and easy to start from the comfort of your home. Check out how to start an Etsy shop for more details about how the platform works.

3. Get into real estate

Real estate investing has become more accessible over the years, and it’s no longer just for wealthy households who can afford to drop half a million on a rental property. Although if you want to start flipping houses, that’s still a viable option for investors.

But you might also choose passive investment opportunities such as real estate investment trusts. REITs typically allow you to buy shares of a portfolio of properties or to buy into real estate crowdfunding platforms. There’s a lot of detail to get into, so if you want to be prepared, sign up for our guide to starting real estate investing. It’ll help you choose the type of real estate investment that’s best for you.

4. Start a blog

Got something to say? If either you or your partner has a knack for writing, editing, and some digital marketing chops, starting a blog could be a great way to earn some side income.

However, it's important to understand that you likely won’t make much money blogging in the short term. You’ll need to establish yourself as a trusted source of content and provide plenty of useful information to consumers before you can consider monetizing your blog.

You’ll also need to heavily promote your blog through social media, newsletters, and other methods. Until they have a large active user base, bloggers typically find that attempts to earn money through advertising or affiliate marketing alone will come up short. For helpful tips, check out our guide to starting a successful blog.

If you truly enjoy writing and editing, you could also use your blog as a way to kick off a freelance writing career. Although being a freelance writer also takes some self-marketing, it can be a great way to pick up clients (and extra cash) when you need them. You could also save some of your creative juices for yourself and use your editing skills to work as a proofreader.

5. Get started in the stock market

One way to start planning for your future is to start investing money now. While investing in the stock market is inherently risky and there's no guarantee of high returns, it can be a great subject for couples to dive into together. It may be a way to help you plan for retirement or to set aside money for your kids — all while you're sitting at home together.

And while investing can seem overwhelmingly complicated, there are easy and inexpensive ways to start. Some of the best investment apps require just a few dollars to get started making trades and they even include educational info to help you learn.

6. Start selling on Amazon

Third-party sellers on Amazon earned a whopping $160 billion in 2018, showing just how much the platform has grown to be a way for small businesses to make money. It’s easy to reach millions of customers with Amazon’s Fulfilled By Amazon. When you use this service a lot of the hard work, like storage and shipping, is taken care of by Amazon.

Unlike traditional e-commerce startups, you can get started selling on Amazon with little capital. And you won’t even need to do your own product research. An online tool such as Jungle Scout can help you choose a profitable product and maximize your earnings, so you two can spend more time enjoying each other’s company. For more details, check out our complete guide on how to sell items on Amazon.

7. Become a virtual assistant duo

If you each have organizational or administrative skills you could offer, consider marketing yourself as virtual assistants (VAs). If you know how to handle things like scheduling, travel arrangements, and email communications then you may be able to do VA work remotely. You may even do things like bookkeeping, social media management, or graphic design. It all just depends on whom you end up freelancing for.

You can get started looking for clients on Upwork or Fiverr as a freelancer, but be aware that these platforms take a cut of your pay. Ultimately, you may want to launch your own website to help clients find you.

It can be helpful to choose a niche if you’re getting into a virtual assistantship. You might choose to work with professionals in a certain industry or focus on female entrepreneurs, for example. When you’ve been working with a client for a while, make sure to get a testimonial that you can share with future prospective clients.

8. Sell online courses

If you or your partner have picked up a skill worth passing on, you could earn a significant chunk of change selling online courses. People are willing to pay for quality education, whether it’s something as simple as making sourdough bread or as complex as quantum field theory. You can get started selling online courses on an online platform such as Teachable, Udemy, or Thinkific, but ultimately you’ll want to create a blog to promote your course as well.

The best part of making money online with courses is that it can become a passive income stream once you’ve created all the course content and materials. If your course is popular, it can continue to make money without any effort on your part.

9. Start a cleaning, landscaping, or home improvement service

If you and your partner enjoy the time you spend maintaining your own home or garden, you might enjoy offering your services to others. You can reach clients with an online platform like Care.com, TaskRabbit, or Thumbtack, or advertise in your local community. You might choose to offer a single service, such as room painting, or offer a range of services. You could also combine your different skill sets and offer home improvement packages.

Reviews are important when offering these types of services, so be sure to ask satisfied customers to leave feedback. And collect photos of finished work to share on your profile, website, or blog.

10. Become resellers

You can easily get into reselling if you start with items you no longer need around your home, things you find at local garage sales, or stuff you find for free on Craigslist. It helps to have two people for this one, especially if you’re reselling larger items locally. You can also sell on websites like eBay, apps like Poshmark, and secondhand or antique stores.

The first step is choosing what kind of items you’re going to sell. You could get into the sneaker trade, repurpose old furniture for resale, or simply sell your gently used clothing. Check out our guide on how to resell for more details.

11. Lead online activities

Maybe you and your partner would enjoy teaching virtual salsa lessons, leading meditations, providing walking tours of your city, or hosting cocktail parties from the comfort of your own home. Almost any experience you can dream of can be sold through Airbnb. That’s right, Airbnb isn’t just about vacation rentals anymore.

You’ll be able to set your own rates for the experience you’re offering, engage with people around the globe, and choose an activity you and your partner already enjoy doing together. You may need to start by offering low rates until you can garner some reviews of your offering.

Managing your side hustle expenses

Some side jobs may require purchasing supplies, inventory, and more. Here's a card we recommend:

Methodology

The best side hustles can be done on your own time with a great degree of flexibility, so we made sure to pick opportunities that fit that description. Any of the ideas on our list can be started part-time without requiring either partner to leave their day job.

We also picked side hustles that we believed couples would have fun doing together and would benefit from having two people contributing. You can divide up the work for any of our ideas based on your individual skills and interests and find opportunities to work side-by-side.

In addition, we chose a wide selection of ideas so you’re more likely to find something that appeals to you. You might select one of our side hustle ideas and run with it or use this list as a jumping-off point. Everybody’s perfect side hustle will be a little bit different.

Bottom line

Picking up new ways to make money often means more time spent apart from the people you love. But if you and your partner pursue a side hustle together, it might not even feel like work — especially if you feel like what you’re doing also allows you to help others. 

And if you learn how to make money in a way that's compatible with your relationship, then you’ll be able to earn the extra money you need to meet your financial goals, whether you have your sights set on home-buying, saving for a growing family, or building toward financial freedom. 

To help you be successful, don't just pick up a weekend side job, but also consider incorporating some budgeting strategies to reduce your spending. Also, watch the money from your new side hustle grow by opening a new savings account.