The $72k “Secret” Side Hustle, $90k/mo Selling Baby Sleep Masks, $500k in Print on Demand Candles, and more

What do a baby sleep mask, a detail van, and a print-on-demand candle have in common?

They’re all quietly generating serious income for real people — and in this episode, we dig into the numbers behind six of the most interesting side hustle stories making the rounds right now.

I’m joined by Cody Berman — co-host of The FI Show and author of Retire by 30: How to Build Wealth, Gain Freedom, and Live Life on Your Own Terms — for a roundtable breakdown of the latest Side Hustle Headlines. Each story comes with real numbers, honest reactions, and ideas for how the same model might work in your own life.

Listen to Episode 742 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:

how a first-time mom built a $90k/month business in 20-minute bursts between feedings
why a “boring” service side hustle is quietly keeping pace with a six-figure salary
what the print-on-demand candle boom reveals about finding underserved niches

Table of Contents show

Round 1: Side Hustle Headlines

1. Baby Sleep Mask: Up to $90k a Month

Julia Holden is a New Jersey mom who noticed her newborn fell asleep faster when his eyes were covered. She couldn’t find a product she liked, so she made her own: a baby hat with an attached eye covering called Sleepy Hat.

The product:

costs $28 to $29
required $16,000 to launch
and was built in 20-minute bursts between feedings while Julia worked full-time

It now brings in up to $90,000 a month in peak season ($69,000 after the holidays). At conservative 20% margins, that’s around $10,000 a month in profit from a single product.

Marketing runs through Amazon and TikTok.

The baby product space has strict safety regulations — a natural barrier for copycats.

And the market psychology is simple: parents will pay almost anything to help their kids sleep. For the service side of this niche, check out the episode with Jayne Havens on sleep consulting.

2. The $72k “Secret” Detailing Business

A 26-year-old in finance posted on Reddit about a side hustle he’s “too embarrassed to talk about.”

Working nights and weekends (roughly 8 to 9 months a year), he built a mobile car detailing business that did $72,000 in revenue last year, nearly matching his $85,000 day job salary.

He drives a fully wrapped Ford Transit Connect with a custom trailer, has locked in around $5,000 a month in recurring maintenance contracts, and has invested his profits into two rental properties.

Cody raised the bigger question: at what point does a business this profitable stop being something to hide?

The longer-term play is to build systems, hire a team, and move into an operator role, which also makes the business more sellable.

In a previous mobile detailing episode, one operator shared that 70% of his customers had never gotten their car detailed before, a clear sign of a still-growing market.

3. $500k in Print-on-Demand Candles

Emily, who works with Cody at Gold City Ventures, has sold over 22,000 candles through Etsy, generating more than $500,000 in revenue at around 30% margins — roughly $150,000 in profit over a few years of part-time work.

She never touches the candles. Every order is fulfilled through Printify, which prints and ships each product when an order comes in.

Emily designs listings using Canva, uploads them to Etsy, and organic search does most of the selling — no paid ads. Some older listings are still making sales years later.

As Cody explained, the key is treating Etsy like a search engine: nail the keywords, titles, and listing images, and the platform brings buyers to you.

Read the full breakdown in the Making Sense of Cents article.

The Specificity Edge

Emily’s edge is going narrow. Instead of a generic graduation candle, she targets exact occasions:

a nursing school graduation gift
a bridesmaid proposal
a Father’s Day message

The more specific the listing, the less competition and the better the chance of landing in front of the right buyer.

And while candles were her niche, the same model applies across the full Printify catalog:

doormats
drinkware
garden flags
slippers
and whatever new categories the platform adds.

The niche changes — the strategy doesn’t. For more from Cody on this space, check out his previous episode on mini digital products.

4. Chicken Sitting: A Business Built on a Growing Trend

Chicken Tenders is an Austin business that sits backyard chickens, cleans coops, and consults with new chicken owners through those first four to eight weeks.

Pricing:

chicken sitting at $35/day
coop clean-outs at around $150
and startup consultations at $350 to $600

Clients must be within 10 miles.

This is a classic case of selling shovels into a gold rush. Care services haven’t caught up to the growing backyard chicken trend — and that gap is the business.

Cody saw immediate extensions:

ducks
rabbits
micro goat herds
horses

These are animals traditional pet sitters don’t cover.

For a related deep dive, check out the pooper scooper episode, where one operator scaled to over $3 million in revenue by building recurring cleanups and a labor-layer model from the start.

5. Appliance Rentals: $10k a Month, 5 Hours a Week

Kyler Liston is 23, works about 5 hours a week, has zero employees, and earns around $10,000 a month renting washers and dryers to apartment renters who don’t want to deal with a laundromat.

He sources machines for free or up to $150 from Facebook Marketplace and used appliance stores, then rents them out for $50 to $60 a month.

With roughly 200 clients and a monthly churn rate of just 1.5%, the business runs close to autopilot. About 3% of units need attention each month; he recommends Whirlpool direct drive washers for their durability and ease of repair.

Cody connected this to the broader sharing economy and flagged other potential niches:

portable AC units
generators
exercise equipment
and moving totes

The “Post, Rent, Buy” Method

The clever part is how Kyler de-risks each acquisition. He posts a rental listing first, waits for a confirmed renter, collects the first month’s payment, and only then goes out and buys the machine.

He’s already made money before spending a dollar.

The value proposition is easy to sell: if a renter is already paying $100+ a month at a laundromat, $50 to $60 a month for in-home convenience is a no-brainer.

And once machines are in an apartment, the next tenant usually just keeps renting them too.

6. AI Music on Spotify: Real Income, Real Risks

Xania Monet has 650,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, 14 million plays on her top song, and a $3 million record deal. She isn’t a real person.

Xania is an AI-generated artist created by Telisha Jones, who fed her own poetry into Suno — an AI music tool costing around $10 to $20 a month — and uploaded the results to Spotify.

Using her own poetry as the source material, rather than generic prompts, is what helped her stand out.

But there are still risks at hand: Suno faces legal challenges from major labels, and Spotify has been removing AI-generated tracks and tightening disclosure requirements.

Cody’s take: the more sustainable angle is building a full persona across multiple platforms — music, social media, affiliate marketing — rather than relying on royalties alone.

The Numbers Behind AI Royalties

You need roughly 250,000 streams to earn $1,000 on Spotify, and 87% of all tracks fall below the 1,000-stream minimum to earn any royalties at all. The $3 million deal is an extreme outlier.

More modest cases do exist — creators making $3,000 to $5,000 a month from large catalogs in niches like lo-fi, meditation, and sleep music.

The strategy that seems to work: volume plus a specific, underserved niche rather than chasing viral moments.

Round 2: Donate a Business Idea

AI Virtual Staging for Real Estate

Traditional home staging can cost $10,000–$20,000 per listing.

Cody’s pitch: a done-for-you service where sellers upload empty room photos and get back photorealistic, AI-staged listing images.

He’s looked — a convincing, seamless version of this doesn’t exist yet. Whoever builds it has a ready market in real estate flippers and sellers.

AI Video Packages for Marketers

Tools like HeyGen already let you create an AI avatar for marketing videos.

Cody’s extension: pre-packaged, attention-grabbing video scenarios (action scenes, dynamic backdrops, high-energy B-roll) that a marketer just drops their CTA onto.

Right now, that kind of content means doing it yourself or hiring on Fiverr. A done-for-you menu solves that bottleneck.

Round 3: Triple Threat

Marketing Tactic

Leaning into personal connections and real relationships, especially during his book launch. In a world that defaults to automation, direct outreach to people who already trust you still cuts through.

Favorite New Tool

Vibe coding with Replit and Claude Code. Cody started with a Gold City Ventures project and got further than expected: “You could have an idea for an app and have something somewhat operational within an hour or two.”

Other samples: browser extensions, automations, small apps. It’s not as instant as YouTube makes it look, but it’s genuinely possible now in a way it wasn’t a year ago.

Favorite Book (Last 12 Months)

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss — a reread. Cody traces several of his core beliefs about business and lifestyle design directly back to it.

Episode Links

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