May 6, 2024
Editorial GuidelinesKari is a writer for SideHustles.com. She previously managed a website in the privacy and digital compliance industry and...
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ProofreaderSide hustles are a great way to pad your income, whether you’re a student, an ambitious professional, or a stay-at-home parent. But many jobs require frequent interactions with people that can be mentally and emotionally draining for an introvert.
Thankfully, there are tons of opportunities to earn a supplemental income that require limited—or even zero—interactions with others. Here are our top picks for side hustles for introverts.
Average rates: $25–$35 per hour
If you’re a hardcore introvert looking for a side gig, one option is to focus on ways to make money from home, so you can better control your environment and limit your interactions with others.
One great at-home hustle is freelance writing. There’s a large market for this. Freelancing platforms need writers of all backgrounds, skill sets, and levels of experience, so there’s a job out there for you no matter your qualifications—as long as you can write.
Freelancing also gives you the chance to work with clients in a variety of industries and pad your resume and portfolio with valuable experience for your future endeavors.
Average rates: $25–$40 per hour or $0.02–$0.03 per word
If you prefer reading to writing, becoming a proofreader is a great way to work from home on your own schedule and make decent money. As a proofreader, you’ll read other people’s work and check for issues of spelling, grammar, and style.
Your feedback will be written, so you won’t need to talk to anyone face-to-face. Chances are, even audio or video calls will be rare to nonexistent.
Average rates: $19–$25 per hour
When you think of professional photography work, you might think of wedding photography and portrait-taking, which are both very social endeavors. However, there’s a wide world of photography side hustles open to introverts who prefer not dealing with people.
For example, you can take pictures of places, products, or concepts and sell them to stock photo sites or businesses (e.g., to use in their ads). If you love spending time by yourself in nature, you can also venture into wildlife photography (although this doesn’t pay as much as other types)
Taking up this line of work will require some dedication, as you’ll need to get the right equipment and photo-editing software for the job.
Average rates: $17–$26 per hour
Website testing is a one-size-fits-all side hustle, as business owners and web developers need input from anyone and everyone about their products.
The gig entails using a website or app, then providing feedback on the experience. Your feedback will probably be submitted through an online form, so you’ll interact with exactly zero people in the course of a day’s work.
Average rates: $1–$500 per test
Websites aren’t the only things you can test. Many companies will also pay you to review their products, which may consist of snacks, toiletries, or cosmetics, to name just a few. That entirely depends on what companies you work for.
They’ll send you samples of their products for free; you’ll then review them and give the businesses your honest feedback. At the end of it all, you’ll get to keep the products, and you’ll often also get paid. (Although not always—in some cases, the product itself will be your payment.)
Like website testing, this side hustle usually won’t require you to interact with anyone or even leave your house. You can make money on your own time and get free stuff for your trouble—what’s not to love?
Average rates: $15–$30 per hour
Are you—like many introverts—an avid gamer? If so, we have good news. Rounding out our trifecta of testing side hustles, we have video game testing.
If you land a testing gig, you’ll get paid to play games in an alpha or beta state, before they’re released. Your job will be to identify bugs or other issues (e.g., frustrating mechanics) and report them to the designers.
Testing is often a full-time (and entry-level) role in the video game industry, but you may also be able to find part-time and remote work in this field. Start your search on the websites linked below.
Average rates: $10–$18 per hour
If you’d rather spend time with animals than humans, become a pet sitter to enjoy time with furry friends and make cash on the side.
As a pet sitter, you can either stop by people’s houses for certain blocks of time (usually a half hour or a full hour) to check in on the pets, or you can stay overnight in their home and watch their pets while they’re away. In either case, the nature of the job means that you’ll be alone while working, although you’ll probably need to chat with clients while setting up your jobs.
Average rates: $10–$18 per hour
Dog walking is another good gig for the introverted animal lover. Often combined with pet sitting, a dog walking side hustle is a great way to spend time with animals and fit some exercise into your day.
Picking up and dropping off the dogs may require some light human interaction, but otherwise, your work will largely just be you and the pups.
Average rates: $8–$40 per hour
We’ll mention just one more pet-related side hustle: training dogs or other animals. This is a more challenging job than the other two we mentioned; it requires more education, and in contrast to walking dogs, there aren’t any gig apps that you can use to land work. You’ll have to find your own clients or get hired by a school or pet store.
However, if you’re a true animal lover, getting a job like this is a natural progression from dog walking and pet sitting. What’s more, as with those gigs, training dogs is mostly solitary work. If you develop a solid base of loyal clients, this could even become your new full-time career, freeing you from ever having to spend your working days around humans again.
Before looking for work as a dog trainer, consider taking a course from one of the following organizations:
Average rates: $10–$19 per hour
One of the more popular side hustles these days is driving for apps like Uber and Lyft. However, these gigs are inherently people-centric, and you never know what kind of passengers you’re gonna get and what kind of interactions you’ll need to navigate (some people will insist on talking during the ride and won’t tip well if you’re quiet).
Doing deliveries is a better option if you like driving but don’t want to spend your day around people. You can deliver food, groceries, or personal items. In many cases, you’ll just leave the deliveries at the door of the orderer, so no awkward small talk required.
Average rates: $15–$25 per hour
Exercise your creative talent and avoid interactions with the public by being a freelance graphic designer. Designers can create logos, web pages, marketing materials, graphics, and much more.
All you’ll need to get started is graphics-editing software like Photoshop or Canva. While you’ll need to communicate with clients about their needs and requirements, the bulk of your work will be done on your own time and in peaceful solitude.
Average rates: $5–$50 per hour
If you’re good at something—practically anything will do, as long as there’s demand for it—you can market your skills to a digital audience by selling your services online. Freelancing platforms like Fiverr connect people working in all industries and of every background with service-seekers who need them.
You can post any digital service you can provide, such as web design, editing, SEO, or illustration, for an hourly or per-project rate.
The platform you sign up for will only be a middleman, so how much work you take on and what schedule you work is entirely in your own hands.
Average rates: 93.5% of the sale price (on Etsy)
Some people claim that introverts are naturally creative. If you’ve been blessed with an artisan’s eye, use your talents to create handmade goods and sell them online. You can craft art, woodwork, metalwork, glassware, jewelry, bath products, and anything else you set your mind to, then turn a profit on your creations.
While you can take your goods to local farmer’s markets, flea markets, and craft fairs, a surefire way to steer clear of others is to post your items online and ship them off to the lucky buyers.
Average rates: $100 per month
An eye for fashion goes a long way in the side hustle economy, as used clothing is a growing market.
To flip clothes, you can simply clear out your own closet, or you can hunt for finds at Goodwill, Craigslist, flea markets, garage sales, and Facebook, then resell your buys for a higher price online.
How you choose to find clothing to resell will determine how much you need to get out into the world, so you can tackle your whole endeavor from home or go bargain bin hunting when the mood strikes.
Average rates: $12–$22 per hour
If listening to people talk without needing to respond sounds good to you, consider becoming a freelance transcriptionist.
Transcription is when you listen to audio recordings or watch videos, then type out what you hear into a document. You don’t need experience to break into this field—just fast fingers and a reliable computer.
If you’re interested in a particular industry, you can look into a transcription specialty, like legal or medical transcription.
Average rates: $11–$22 per hour
Get out your laptop, queue up some background music, and settle into the solitary work of data entry.
Data entry entails moving information from one format to another. In its simplest form, it consists of simply typing into a spreadsheet or a form.
You may be asked to collect data and input it into a system or simply to transfer already-collected data into a database. This is a good job for lone wolves, and it’s relatively easy (if painstaking) to do, making it a great choice for entry-level side hustlers.
Average rates: $13–$25 per hour
If you’re a bona fide homebody, why not get paid for it? House sitting, by nature, is people-free, as you’ll be tasked with taking care of someone’s home in their absence.
Whether you’re checking in for a few hours or staying overnight for the week, you’ll just need to grab the keys and get the rundown from the homeowner, then enjoy quiet time taking care of their property.
Average rates: $20–$29 per hour (highly dependent on the popularity of your content)
Share your thoughts with others from the privacy of your home by starting a blog or YouTube channel.
You can create content about anything you’re knowledgeable or passionate about, whether that’s books, video games, fitness, parenting, or anything in between. As a creator, you can establish an audience and then monetize your content through viewership, ads, sponsors, and affiliates.
Be warned, though—to really gain a following, you’ll need to interact with your community and plug your content on social media. While these are all virtual interactions, this may not be the right line of work for you if the thought of talking to people online wears you out.
Whatever gig you pick, stick with it. If you’re truly introverted, getting your hustle set up (which might require marketing yourself) may be difficult, but with the right approach, you’ll be able to make plenty of money—and recharge socially while you’re doing it.
This list features the best side hustles for introverts, but it’s by no means exhaustive. You can explore even more gigs below.
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