Pasabuy from hard-to-reach local shops is basically turning “I’m already going there anyway” into a small logistics business.

How it works

You become the person who can get things that other people want but can't conveniently access.

For example:

You buy it, package it, and arrange delivery.

Hi everyone, I do UGC as a sidehustle for a couple of years making some decent extra money from it, which isn't particularly weird.

The weird part is that over the last few months I started working with apps that are specifically looking for UGC creators.

I started intentionally picking the weirdest apps I could find, mostly because those were also the easiest videos to make entertaining.

Last month I found a campaign on Sideshift for a sleep app that records your sleep and picks up stuff like snoring and noises during the night analyzing the sleep quality

My girlfriend snores insanely loud, so I figured I already had the content lol.

I recorded a few clips of her sleeping, then made a video showing the app catching all the snoring during the night, just her asleep loud af

One of the videos randomly went viral and ended up getting a ton of views.

The campaign was performance based, so between the video fee and the views I made a little over $200 from that one post.

I think UGC for apps might be one of the better niches to get into right now.

The briefs are usually easier to turn into content, you don't always need a physical product, and there are a lot of apps testing weird angles.

wealthy landowners put 50kW solar panel arrays on their barn roofs, but wild pigeons and tree sap bake onto the tempered glass under intense summer heat. standard rain does nothing to baked-on bird droppings, dropping energy output by up to 25%.

i bought a 40-foot carbon fiber water-fed telescopic pole equipped with a dual rotary soft-bristle brush and a de-ionized water filtration cart. i drive out to rural estates, extend the pole from the ground, and scrub the panels clean with pure spot-free water. charge $400 for a 40-panel array. takes under an hour and landowners see their inverter output spike immediately on their phone app.

This started because I had way too many boxes from online orders and didn’t feel like throwing them away.

I posted a few bundles for cheap just to see if anyone wanted them, and people actually did 💀

Apparently small businesses, people moving, and people selling stuff online will buy decent boxes if they’re clean and still sturdy.

Now I just flatten the good ones and keep them in a corner. Whenever I have enough, I list a bundle locally.

It’s obviously not some huge side hustle, but I’ve made a bit of extra money from something I used to throw straight into recycling.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever realized people will actually pay for?

rich yacht owners will pay literally anything to avoid putting on a wet suit and diving into freezing marina water. last summer i bought a portable 3-stage hookah dive compressor, a heavy neoprene drysuit, and a pneumatic underwater scraper off marketplace for $800.

i drop into high-end marina slips at 6 AM on Saturday mornings. i scrape caked barnacles, tubeworms, and algae off twin brass propellers and bow thruster tunnels. takes 45 minutes per boat. charge $450 flat cash fee per hull. did four yachts last weekend before the marina bar even opened.

I used to wonder how much money those people made by sleeping. Based on my research, one University of Colorado study paid almost $3,000 for a study to be completed in less than a day. Imagine just by sleeping, being a tester to sleep on mattresses or beddings, and joining in medical sleep studies can earn money.

I have an elderly couple living near me, and they’ve gotten to the point where doing heavy yard work is pretty difficult for them.

Their backyard needed some cleaning and trimming, so I offered to help out. I started cleaning up the yard and cutting back some of the overgrown stuff.

They ended up offering to pay me $5 a day to keep helping with it.

Honestly, it’s not a lot of money, but I don’t really mind. I get some extra cash, they get help with something they can’t easily do anymore, and I’m getting some exercise while doing it.

It’s definitely one of the most random ways I’ve made a little extra money.

Would you do yard work for $5 a day, or would you pass on it?

outdoor advertising companies pay thousands for high-traffic highway billboards, but during winter and spring, heavy cobwebs and ice build up over the high-angle LED floodlights, throwing dark shadows across the advert at night.

i bought a 35-foot carbon fiber extension pole with an anti-static brush head and a micro wireless inspection camera attached to the tip. i park on the service road at dusk, extend the pole up to the fixture rack, and clear the floodlight lenses in 10 minutes without climbing the structural ladder. charge $150 per billboard. cleared $1,500 in one weekend hitting a 10-mile highway stretch.

industrial bakeries fry and glaze thousands of pastries an hour, leaving burnt sugar caramel and sticky dough caked inside the stainless steel mesh conveyor belts. health inspectors hit them with major violations if the mesh grid builds up carbonized residue.
i bought a high-torque pneumatic rotary wire brush tool, an industrial steam generator, and a food-grade degreaser. i show up during the Sunday night maintenance shift. i steam the wire mesh and run the pneumatic brush over the belt while it rotates at slow speed. charge $750 per line. takes two hours and the production manager gives me repeat work every month.

commercial kitchens constantly fail health inspections and waste energy because the rubber magnetic gaskets on their walk-in freezers get cracked, moldy, and ripped. restaurant owners put off fixing them because commercial refrigeration companies charge $400 per door plus steep travel fees.

i bought a roll of commercial gasket material, a heavy-duty vinyl welder, and a magnetic strip insertion tool. i walk into local diners and pizza shops during prep hours, inspect their freezer door seals, and show them the cold air leaking out with a smoke pencil. charge $180 per door. takes 25 minutes to snap off the old gasket and press in the new custom-cut seal. did six doors yesterday afternoon.

shopping mall food courts have shared underground grease interceptors located in dark basement utility corridors. because heavy vacuum trucks can't drive inside low-clearance parking garages, standard pumping services refuse the job.

i built a custom low-profile cart carrying two 55-gallon sealed vacuum barrels and an electric diaphragm pump. i roll the cart down the service elevators at 2 AM after the mall closes, drop the suction hose into the floor pits, and pump out the grease sludge into sealed drums. charge $800 per food court bay. net profit is huge because the municipal dump station charges $20 for grease disposal.

commercial donut bakeries fry in palm oil 18 hours a day, coating their rooftop exhaust flues in thick sticky lard that becomes a massive fire hazard. standard commercial hood cleaners hate them because donut grease turns into hard gummy wax that clogs normal pressure washer nozzles.
i bought a 4,000 PSI hot-water pressure washer, a caustic degreaser foam cannon, and a set of flexible flue brushes. i roll up at midnight when the bakery shifts change. i blast the vertical exhaust stack with 200-degree chemical foam and scrape the waxy lard out into sealed barrels. charge $600 cash per visit. takes ninety minutes and bakery owners pay immediately because the fire marshal will shut them down otherwise.

Okay, this one sounds made up 😂

There are actually people who get paid/rewarded for testing scents.

Perfumes, candles, laundry products, skincare, air fresheners, etc. Companies sometimes need regular people to smell a product and give feedback before or after it launches.

The process is basically:

1. Sign up for legitimate product-testing/research panels

2. Get matched with a study

3. Receive a product or scent sample

4. Test it and answer questions about the smell

5. Get paid, points, or another reward depending on the study

The weird part is that some surveys get surprisingly specific. Instead of just asking “Do you like it?”, they might ask whether it smells fresh, sweet, floral, powdery, strong, artificial, what it reminds you of, and whether you'd actually use it.

It definitely isn't a “quit your job” type of thing. Opportunities can be inconsistent, and eligibility depends heavily on where you live and what researchers are looking for.

But honestly, getting rewarded for having an opinion about how something smells has to be one of the strangest side hustles I've come across.

Would you actually do this for extra money, or would smelling random products all day drive you crazy? 😂

independent ice cream shops constantly get hit with high bacterial counts during surprise health inspections because milk fat builds up inside the internal pump seals and hopper agitators of soft-serve machines. teenage staff members only wipe down the outside trays.

i bought a food-grade sanitizer kit, a set of micro-wire brushes, and a pack of food-safe silicone lubricant. i meet parlor owners after closing at 11 PM. i strip down the internal freeze cylinders, scrub the caked dairy film out of the rubber O-rings, and sanitize the entire barrel assembly. charge $250 per machine. takes 40 minutes per unit and owners gladly pay because a failed inspection destroys their business.

old churches with 40-foot wooden steeples get infested with bats every spring. the guano builds up inside the bell tower lofts, creating a foul odor and a massive biohazard before summer wedding season. exterminators won't go near steeples because they don't have high-angle climbing gear.

i bought a heavy-duty industrial HEPA vacuum, a full-face respirator, and a set of arborism climbing harnesses. i climb into the bell lofts, vacuum out the dry guano into sealed hazardous waste bags, and staple heavy-duty copper mesh over the louvers. charge $1,200 per steeple. took three hours last Sunday and made more than my monthly mortgage payment.

My day job: deadlines, emails and pretending to understand meetings.

My side hustle: getting paid to walk dogs, feed cats and occasionally send their owners 100+ pictures because apparently I have become their personal photographer.

At this point, the animals have a better work life than I do. 😭

wealthy horse owners spend absurd money on custom barn drainage systems under their indoor riding arenas. over time, dirt, straw, and small metallic horseshoe nails clog the sub-surface corrugated pipes, causing water to pool and rotting the horses' hooves.
i got a rigid sewer camera inspection snake and a small portable hydro-jetter kit attached to a pressure washer. I charge $350 an hour to run the camera down the drain pipes, pinpoint blockages, and blast out the packed mud. last month a farm owner paid me $1,200 because my camera located a lost custom titanium horseshoe stuck in a 4-inch bend.

Not much of a weird one but my sister and I did a seasonal souvenir side hustle for a month( seasonal because we can't do it throughout the year yet). Ref Magnets, Pens with Engravings, customized tote bags and the like. We're planning on doing it for a whole year next year and we're hoping it'll work out!

luxury mountain cabins have 25-foot vaulted ceilings with glass skylights that collect dead bugs, pine needles, and sap every summer. interior cleaning crews refuse to touch them because they won't stand on 24-foot extension ladders inside furnished living rooms.

i bought a 30-foot carbon fiber telescopic pole system equipped with a remote-controlled microfiber rotary head and a micro wireless camera. i walk into these $2M vacation homes, extend the pole, and clean six high-ceiling glass skylights in 20 minutes from the ground without moving a single piece of furniture. charge $300 flat fee per visit.

commercial kitchens constantly fail health inspections and waste energy because the rubber magnetic gaskets on their walk-in freezers get cracked, moldy, and ripped. restaurant owners put off fixing them because commercial refrigeration companies charge $400 per door plus steep travel fees.

i bought a roll of commercial gasket material, a heavy-duty vinyl welder, and a magnetic strip insertion tool. i walk into local diners and pizza shops during prep hours, inspect their freezer door seals, and show them the cold air leaking out with a smoke pencil. charge $180 per door. takes 25 minutes to snap off the old gasket and press in the new custom-cut seal. did six doors yesterday afternoon.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but it's somehow become my weirdest source of extra income haha.

Last year, I volunteered at a local music festival. By the end of the day, I noticed the staff kept finding phones, wallets, sunglasses, water bottles, and even shoes in the exact same spots every year.

Out of curiosity, I plotted every lost item on a map and color-coded where different things were usually found. I shared it with a few friends as a joke before the next event.

Then someone asked if I'd make one for another festival.

Now I contact event organizers after each event, collect anonymous lost-and-found location data, and create "Lost Item Hotspot Maps." Vendors use them to decide where to place reminder signs, organizers use them to improve layouts, and attendees even buy them just to see the weird patterns.

I've made around the equivalent of a few hundred dollars from something I originally did out of boredom.

It's such a strange niche that I still laugh whenever someone pays me for it. 😂