Since 2019 we've published 1,847 verified income reports from real hustles tested by our editors and readers. No screenshots we can't back up. No "passive" income without the active hours attached. Just the receipts — including the ones that flopped.
92% open rate · 87,400 readers · Winner, Best Personal Finance Newsletter (Plutus Awards 2023)
Filter the archive by what you actually came here for. Every entry links to the source spreadsheet where the math is published line-by-line.
Each entry links to the source spreadsheet row · Methodology Doc covers what counts as a "verified" report.
We don't pick "our best" because that would mean hiding the failures. These are the long-form reports readers emailed to friends most often in the past 12 months.
A 312-lot estate sale sourced from one closet, listed over 11 weekends. Gross revenue, platform fees, shipping, supplies and time — every line item tabulated.
We lost $2,140 net across 14 months, sold 31 boards, and learned what Etsy woodworkers won't tell you. Every cost including the unsold inventory we ended up donating is in the spreadsheet.
Subscriber growth, paid conversions, sponsorship reads, churn and the one decision that doubled paid rates in month 18. We publish the open rates by post.
The longest-running series in our archive. We update it annually — every sourcing run, every Amazon-vs-AbeBooks-vs-Bibliophile split, every surprise find from a $0.50 box.
A report counts as verified when the income and the costs can both be reproduced from primary evidence — a bank statement, a platform payout CSV, an Etsy or eBay sales ledger, a 1099, or a notarized screenshot of a marketplace dashboard. We accept self-reported numbers only when the underlying account can be inspected by our fact-checker under a signed disclosure. We never publish "to the best of my recollection" income.
We adopted a strict No Fake Screenshots policy in 2020 and have refused every screenshot we couldn't independently re-create from a live account. In 2022 alone we turned down $180,000 in ad revenue from sponsors who asked us to relax that standard. The rule isn't negotiable; it's in the contract.
“If a number can't survive a Monday-morning audit by a 25-year-old fact-checker with a spreadsheet and a bank login, it doesn't go on the site. That's the whole job.”
The full Methodology Doc — 47 pages, plain language, covers sourcing, sampling, what we exclude, and how we handle incomplete data — is free to read. It is the only thing on this site more important than the reports themselves.
Read the Methodology DocWe track 312 income methods in the public Side Hustle Scorecard. The numbers below come from reader-reported ROI across the full archive, updated quarterly and disclosed in our Methodology Doc.
A single income report — sources cited, spreadsheet linked, failures included — plus the one method we're about to test next month. No funnels, no upsells, no $997 courses attached.
