3 ways to make money this weekend

Happy Friday everybody!

Most side hustle advice tells you to build something.

Start a channel. Launch a store. Find your niche.

All of which take months before they pay you a single dollar.

Sometimes you don't want to build something. You just want to make some extra money this weekend.

No following. No setup. No skill required.

That's what today is about.

A new thing I'm trying, three tools every Friday, picked around a single theme.

This week: side hustles you can start tonight.

All three are remote. All three are flexible. All three pay you actual money for actual work, no "build an audience first" runway required.

Companies pay real people $50 to $150 an hour to talk to them about products, habits, and decisions. These are paid online focus groups and research interviews.

The pay is real. The catch is finding the studies — they're scattered across dozens of research firms with no central place to look.

StudyScout fixes that. It pulls every study from every firm into one feed. You filter by topic, payout, and time commitment, then apply through whichever firm is running the study.

A 30-minute interview at $75 isn't unusual. A few of those a month adds up.

Best for: people with flexible windows during the day.

👉 Browse StudyScout

This one's specific but worth knowing about.

AI labs (the ones building ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) pay real human experts to train and evaluate their models. The work pays up to $100 an hour and is fully remote.

Handshake AI runs the program that matches those experts with the labs. You pick projects, work async on your own schedule, and get paid hourly.

Two important things to know upfront:

If that fits you, this is one of the better-paying remote gigs going right now. If it doesn't, skip to tool 3.

👉 Apply to Handshake AI

Trymata pays you to test websites and apps.

You get a short task ("find the cheapest pair of running shoes on this site"), record yourself doing it, and talk through what's confusing as you go. Companies use the footage to fix their products.

Tests pay $5 to $30 each and take 5 to 30 minutes. You do them whenever a test invite hits your inbox.

It's the lowest barrier to entry of the three. No degree, no audience, no on-camera focus group required — just a microphone and 20 spare minutes.

Best for: people who'd rather earn a quick $10 in their lunch break than scroll their phone.

👉 Sign up to Trymata

The internet has changed what counts as a side hustle.

You don't need to build a brand. You don't need to launch anything. You just need to know where the work already exists.

These three are a starting point.

Pick one. Sign up tonight. See if it fits before next weekend.

Catch you Tuesday, Max

Catch you next week,
Max