I earn $200,000 from my couch – my side hustle is so simple I’m even able to do it with a newborn and a full time job

A BUSINESS owner has revealed how she started to make more money through her side hustle than her full-time job.

Side hustle savant and YouTuber Elena (@ApprenticeDiary) first got her start in 2022 with the hopes of earning enough money to take her family on a trip to Europe.

Rather than spending thousands of dollars on flights, Elena looked for a way to increase her business expenses in order to increase travel points that could go toward a trip.

As she looked for the best side hustle to start in addition to her full-time job, Elena stumbled across Fulfillment by Amazon programs, she explained in a recent video uploaded to YouTube.

Also known as Amazon FBA, the program lets Amazon sellers send products to the e-commerce giant's fulfillment centers and warehouses where the products will be packaged and shipped to customers.

One strategy Elena used to obtain the products was retail arbitrage.

Retail arbitrage is the process of purchasing – often discounted – products from physical retailers and then reselling them – often at a higher price – in a separate marketplace, such as Amazon.

To get the best products, Elena began driving all across her town for hours at a time, visiting popular stores like Marshalls, TJMaxx, and Walmart – while being one week away from having her baby.

She quickly set up an independent business, opening a bank account and business credit card.

By her third month of doing retail arbitrage, Elena was raking in more than $7,000 in revenue, and $1,500 in profit.

At the same time, she also opened up more business credits around every 30 to 60 days to score welcome bonus offers.

Opening several credit cards at once can potentially hurt your credit score.

Be sure to consider your personal needs before opening another line of credit.

While Elena began to see more success, the new business owner saw how much time the side hustle was taking away from her family and sought to make some changes.

“This made me realize how much time I was spending away from my newborn just to make a few hundred a month,” the YouTuber explained.

“I couldn't keep spending hours just like driving around hopping from one store to another trying to find profitable inventory, but only getting one or two of each product,” Elena said.

Side hustles and tax implications

The extra income made from side hustles may need to be reported to the IRS.

If you receive more than $600 in gross payouts from a selling platform like eBay, the site will issue you a Form 1099-K to use in your tax return.

Individuals should calculate their adjusted gross income, taxable earnings, and deductions for the year.

Once they have that, they can use the 1040-ES form to calculate estimated taxes.

“That was not very scalable. That's when I actually decided to invest more in my education.”

She ultimately decided to purchase a course on Amazon FBA to learn how to transition to online arbitrage.

This would allow her to do essentially the same thing of purchasing products from other retailers and reselling them – but doing the entire process from the comfort of home.

“The time that I spent driving around on the weekends was now spent basically going over hundreds of thousands of products online,” she explained.

Through online arbitrage, Elena saw her revenues and profits soar.

She began to regularly see monthly revenue hitting more than $18,000 – once reaching as high as $51,000.

In total for her first year, the businesswoman raked in $203,000 with a profit of around $34,000.

She revealed that much of the profit went towards taxes, business travel expenses, new equipment, virtual assistants, and outsourcing prep work to a prep center that received and prepared her products for the buyers.

As of July, Elena had brought in around $70,000 in revenue for 2024 so far and expects to see that number soar later in the year around the holiday season.

With her business continuing to grow, she credits consistency as a key reason for her side hustle success.

“I know this is kind of cliche, everyone talks about it, but it's important,” she said.

“There will be days with good results that reinforce your belief in the business and there will be days where you will feel guilty about not spending enough time with your family making you want to give it all up.

“However, staying consistent helps you learn and become more efficient in the end.”