10 Realistic Recurring Revenue Side Hustles

Today we’re sharing 10 realistic, recurring revenue side hustles that can help you build that same predictability into your side hustle income.

No more feast or famine cycles.

No more starting from scratch every month.

The key to recurring revenue is simple: solve a recurring problem. When customers need you month after month, that’s when you build real financial momentum.

Table of Contents show

1. Software (White Labeling)

Software as a service tops everyone’s list for good reason. While AI has made creating your own software easier, one entrepreneur took an even simpler approach: white labeling someone else’s software.

Chris Lollini from episode 494 found reputation management software he liked — the kind that helps small businesses collect more positive customer reviews. All he had to do was go out and sell it.

Chris buys software licenses at wholesale prices and resells them at retail, making the margin in the middle while providing support and consultation. His business generates multiple six figures with extremely healthy profit margins.

His monthly recurring revenue grew 50% last year. The churn really isn’t there — he might lose 2-3 customers some months, but constantly replaces them with more.

The beauty though is you don’t have to stay local. Chris has clients down in California, Texas, Florida, New Hampshire, and Kansas because everything is digital.

2. Local Subscription Service

If you want recurring revenue, you need to solve a recurring problem. Local subscription services are perfect because stuff just keeps getting dirty or needing attention.

Erica Krupin from episode 614 runs Kroopin’s Poopin Scoopin, a pet waste removal business. As long as that dog is in that house, they’re going to have this problem. The customer base tends to be pretty sticky.

When she talked to us back in 2020, she was only charging $55 a month (about $13.75 per week). She gradually raised prices and now averages $99 a month per customer.

The last time she did a rate increase, she sent out a letter explaining the need to raise prices. Some customers canceled, but because she was able to bring on thousands more per month, it balanced out.

Other examples include house cleaning, daily commercial cleaning, parking lot litter sweeping, and personal chef services. Chef Jessica charges a typical rate of $500 per week per client.

Just because you’ve sold a subscription service doesn’t mean you need to do all the work yourself. Erica talked about bringing on other team members to help with the actual scooping, so she could focus on marketing and operations.

3. Online Subscription Service

Take the local subscription model and move it online. Eric Dingler’s digital marketing agency from episode 684 charges local SEO services at $500 a month or more.

We’ve seen productized service offerings in everything from content writing to graphic design to video editing. Recurring revenue comes from solving that recurring problem.

In Eric’s case, the Google ranking engine is constantly changing and evolving, so clients outsource that work to his team to stay on top of it. He’s got an amazing person on his team who creates content and meets with clients once a quarter for strategy sessions. She can do two of these a day and they typically charge around $750 a month.

Eric’s secret to retention: showing up proactively with results. Instead of just sending reports expecting clients to read them, his team calls directly: “Hey, we just ran your report, and on average, we’ve dropped three positions. Here’s what we’d like to do over the next six weeks.”

This builds trust because clients feel like the agency has their back.

4. Real Estate Rentals

By the numbers, this is one of the most popular side hustles in the world. One property can pay you month after month, year after year, slowly building cash flow and long-term wealth.

Dustin Heiner from episode 691 started investing back in 2006 with his first property. It made him $300 a month in cash flow.

His logic was simple: “If I make $300 a month with one property, then that’s $3,000 a month with 10 properties.”

He now has over 30 properties that are making him money. He still owns the ones he bought back in 2006. His 16-year-old daughter just bought her first property three months ago — it’s making $300 a month.

Dustin’s call is to focus on cash flow from day one, not appreciation. Use that $300 per month to save for the next property rather than spending it. Buy one property per year, and over 10 years you have 10 properties hopefully making you $3,000-$5,000+ a month in passive income.

This category can expand to include other rental businesses like mobility scooters, photobooths, and portable hot tubs. The return on investment math can be higher for those unconventional rental assets, though there’s usually more labor and turnover involved.

5. Membership Programs

Sometimes the path to recurring revenue starts with recognizing what you’re already good at. Liz Wilcox from episode 600 was doing client work in email marketing when she had a realization: instead of starting over every month with new projects, what if she could create something people would pay for month after month?

Membership programs typically range from $5-$100+ per month, depending on what you’re offering behind the paywall.

Liz chose a low-cost approach with her $9 monthly membership. Her reasoning: “Low cost equals low responsibility.” If she could get 100 members at $9, that’s $900 a month — nearly half a day of her day rate.

What members get: A weekly newsletter template to take and make their own.

The common saying in online business: people come for the content but stay for the community. Many successful memberships add member interaction through Facebook groups, private forums, or Discord communities.

Other examples include:

6. Websites and Directories

Traditional informational content sites have been having a hard time lately, but websites can still be a recurring revenue asset. One AI-resistant model is directory websites.

Frey Chu from episode 692 proves there’s still good money to be made with directories. The key is finding underserved niches and building something genuinely useful with value-added data.

The major turning moment for his thrifting directory was six months in when he randomly pulled up Google Analytics and noticed there were 1,000 people coming to that website that day. He started putting ads up the following month and made $1,200 that month without really doing anything.

Frey found existing directories that were pretty ugly and not that helpful, with better information that was also out of date and missing locations.

His strategy: “I could do better than this.”

He’d post on Reddit saying “Hey, I made a website to make XYZ easier” or “to find XYZ locations easier.”

Success comes from being genuinely more useful than what exists. If people can get all the info they need from Google Maps, there’s no reason to come to your directory.

7. Product Licensing

This side hustle probably doesn’t get enough airtime: product licensing. You can turn your ideas into recurring revenue and get paid every time a major company sells your product idea, without worrying about manufacturing.

Stephen Key has made a career out of renting his ideas to companies that have the distribution and manufacturing power to bring them to market.

5% of gross sales is a pretty typical product licensing agreement. While that may not seem like much, when you think about the distribution and economies of scale that larger brands have, it can really add up — especially for something with super low startup costs.

Many companies already have a process for this. Hasbro Spark is a structured program that lays out how it works and how to submit your proposal.

8. Web Design and Hosting

Ryan Golgosky from episode 550 discovered something interesting: instead of selling websites for thousands of dollars upfront, what if he charged a few hundred per month for ongoing design, hosting, and maintenance?

This model makes websites more accessible to small businesses while creating predictable monthly revenue.

Ryan’s value proposition: If having a better website that’s going to offer a better user experience is going to better your SEO, even if it’s just generating one extra sale a month, the service is already being paid for and then some.

While selling a website for $5,000+ feels like a huge number to most small businesses, $180-$300 a month feels manageable. They’re not only going to get more leads, they’re also going to look better and be perceived as the high-end, luxury, most professional service provider.

Ryan does 20+ new signups per month. The initial development takes about a week max, then back-and-forth with clients. He shoots for about a four-week timeframe from signup to launch.

Fixed costs should be covered by about two months of customer payments, meaning the next 22 months are almost pure profit.

9. Subscription E-Commerce

Think Amazon subscribe-and-save, subscription boxes, or replenishable products. It’s easier to sell the same thing to the same customer again than to sell to a brand new customer.

Ben Feys and his partner Kevin from episode 581 built PrettyBoy, a replenishable product in the skincare space for men. They found success by focusing on one key metric: making sure customer lifetime value exceeded customer acquisition cost.

From a profitability standpoint, they want to be in the mid-20s for customer acquisition cost because their LTV hovers in the $70-$80 range. About 60% of their revenue on a given month comes from subscribers.

Their subscription model allows customers to pick frequency (30, 45, or 60 days), manage everything via text, skip orders, cancel anytime, or pause subscriptions for 1-3 months. They’re making it as easy as possible for customers to do business with them.

Think about replenishable products you buy regularly: toilet paper, coffee, protein powder, greens powder like Bloom or AG1, shampoo, deodorant.

10. Coaching and Masterminds

Our final example takes a traditional high-touch service and makes it surprisingly scalable.

Steven Foust from episode 570 found a clever way to scale personal mentoring using technology in the military career niche.

Instead of traditional group calls (which he found he didn’t love doing), Stephen offers unlimited one-on-one mentoring through an asynchronous video platform for $39 a month, plus access to digital products and monthly workshops.

How it works: Stephen uses VideoAsk to create an asynchronous funnel in his membership. Members can leave video, audio, or text messages. It sends him a notification on his phone, and he can respond from anywhere.

The high perceived value (“unlimited one-on-one mentoring”) keeps members subscribed even when they’re not actively using it.

This creates what we might call “utility pricing” — it’s barely a blip on the credit card statement, so members keep paying because they plan to use it more “next month.” Similar to Planet Fitness’s business model.

The Common Thread

All these recurring revenue models share one thing: they solve recurring problems.

Start by looking at problems that keep coming back in your own life or industry. What do people need to pay for over and over again? What processes could be simplified or automated? Where are there gaps in the market for better service or products?

Remember: it’s easier to sell to an existing customer than to find a new one. Focus on retention and customer success, and you’ll build a business that pays you while you sleep.

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