Eddy Rich in his “workshop” for Cameo videos.
Gift wrapping saved Michelle Hensley's side hustle — and turned it into a full-fledged business.
Her gift basket business, called Nifty Packaging Co., had a small profit margin. In 2018, after three years of running it, she started posting photos of her meticulously wrapped boxes on Instagram. Brands and celebrities — including Kim Kardashian — flocked to hire her for her "blind-edge" wrapping style, she says.
Since then, Hensley has grown Nifty Packaging Co. into a full-time job. The business brought in over $466,000 in sales last year, and gift wrapping — at a minimum of $180 per hour — makes up roughly 70% of its revenue, she says.
Nearly one in five Americans planned to start a side gig to help cover their holiday spending, like travel and gifts, according to a Sidehustle.com survey conducted in October. Gift wrapping is just one example: Plenty of holiday-themed side hustles use skills that anyone can learn and get paid for.
Perhaps more importantly, some of them are relatively easy to step into for just a few weeks every year.
CNBC Make It spoke with people who earn money from easy-to-learn, holiday-themed skills, including house decorating and gift-guide curation. Here are the side hustles they recommend picking up to earn some extra cash around the holidays.
1. Wrapping gifts
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Hensley, 60, who still works as a part-time financial coach, now manages nearly 70 Nifty employees between corporate staff, contract workers and wrappers she's trained across the U.S. Her company's profit margins hover around 18%, she estimates.
Individual gift wrappers have the potential for more cash flow, says Hensley, who is in the process of franchising her business. But you have to have a sought-after style and understand how to reach clients on local or social media platforms.
"It's a very profitable business [on a smaller scale], but you have to do the right things," she says. Gift wrapping and running a business are different, she adds: "It's not about whether you love it. It's about whether the client loves it.'"
The average gift wrapper in the U.S. earns up to $21 per hour, according to job search site Indeed. But gift wrappers charge anywhere from a couple of bucks to over $50 an hour on freelance platforms like Fiverr, Upwork or Thumbtack, depending on the number of presents or if they're designing the paper themselves.
2. Waiting in line or running errands
During the holiday season, people pay Collins Baffoe to wait in line for them. Most of his customers hire him on the gig platform Taskrabbit to queue up at restaurants around New York, where the 36-year-old lives and works.
Baffoe's wages fluctuate: Taskrabbit workers can set their own prices, but are encouraged to follow a recommended rate determined by the website's algorithm for certain locations and time periods, he says.
"It could be $35 today. The next day, it could be $30," says Baffoe.
Requests on Taskrabbit for waiting in line, running holiday errands, hanging of lights and holiday cleaning all grew during the last two months of 2024, compared to the same period last year, according to the platform.
The platform's average hourly rate for waiting-in-line services is $27, according to data shared by Taskrabbit, while running holiday errands brings in an average of $32 per hour and conducting holiday cleaning averages $48 per hour.
Baffoe, a former corporate health care worker, says he makes between $5,000 and $6,000 per month as a full-time gig worker on Taskrabbit — and waiting-in-line jobs can represent as much as 35% of that income around the winter holidays.
3. Hanging Christmas lights
Spencer Claeys' business, Northwest Pro Wash, usually cleans roofs and gutters in the greater Seattle area. Last winter, he wanted to prioritize jobs that paid well and didn't require a lot of time or physical labor, he says. His friends suggested he think about advertising his business's light hanging services.
He looked back at old invoices, and realized his company had earned just over $10,000 hanging up Christmas lights in November and December 2022. So, he invested more money into Facebook ads, and brought in over $30,000, primarily from light hanging jobs, last November.
The average house requires about 120 feet of Christmas lights, says Claeys. Hanging them brings in an average of $54 per hour, according to Taskrabbit. But if people want high-quality strands, Claeys says he can charge $700 for two hours of work. Plus, once a member of Claeys' team is on location, homeowners are sometimes willing to tack on their yearly gutter cleanings, he says.
Cleaning gutters "is kind of like changing your oil. No one gets excited about it," says Claeys, 28. Hanging lights, on the other hand, "is more like a luxury," he adds. "It's a little bit more exciting, so people are willing to pay for it."
High-paying clients sometimes spend up to $6,500 to install lights that they can operate with their phone year round, says Claeys. He's only had two requests for permanent lights this year, and hanging them takes a day and half of work, he says.
This is a side hustle most people can pick up, and do either on their own or with one other person, Claeys says. It helps if you have a truck, he adds, as well as a leaf blower, a drill and a trustworthy ladder.
"Anything with ladders, you're going to make more money," says Claeys. "If you're over the age of 40, your ladder days are kind of done."
4. Making gift guides
If you have more than 1,000 followers on any social media app, you can potentially make money by posting gift guides with affiliate partnerships, which allow you to earn a commission per sale, says Kelsey Chickering, principal analyst at market research company Forrester.
Among adults 34 and under in the U.S., 25% said social media posts from influencers would most likely impact their winter holiday shopping decisions, according to a survey conducted by Forrester in October. That outranks TV commercials, online video ads, magazines and podcasts, the survey found.
"Influencers are really becoming the gift guides of this holiday season," Chickering says, adding that "nano- [and] micro-influencers with smaller followings are actually better at driving commerce than the big macro-influencers and celebrity influencers."
Because most affiliate partnerships are commission-based, the amount you stand to make varies greatly, Chickering says. Amazon's affiliate program — which generally requires applicants to have a minimum of 500 followers and 10 original posts — pays anywhere from 0% to 20% commission per sale, for example.
5. Dressing up as Santa Claus
Eddy Rich, 68, has been dressing up as Santa Claus for nearly three decades. In 2018, his son Chris Rich — now a 32-year-old property manager — convinced him to take fewer in-person gigs and instead join the personalized video website Cameo.
Last year, the duo made $14,700 from Cameo during the week of Christmas, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It, all from Eddy Rich's living room.
During the holiday season, Eddy Rich films up to 20 videos per hour, up to 10 hours per day, he says. Chris Rich works an additional five hours per day sorting through requests, writing scripts and trimming the videos.
At $26.25 per video — the amount the Riches take home after Cameo's 25% cut of each transaction — they could make up to $525 per hour. In comparison, the average Santa earns around $60 per hour, according to job search platform ZipRecruiter.
Eddy Rich is the most-booked Santa on Cameo, according to the platform. He's often asked to encourage kids to potty train, ditch their pacifiers and tackle other "big kid" tasks worthy of the nice list, he says.
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