A serial side hustler with 10 income streams shares her most lucrative venture

Lucy Zheng has a full-time job as a senior corporate counsel at a tech company, but it's only one piece of her family's income.

Zheng began looking for ways to earn outside her day job shortly after law school, when a low-paying role at a small firm left her struggling to cover student-loan payments and bills.

"I tried to start with side hustles that were very low barrier to entry," Zheng said.

Once she gained followers, she began reaching out to brands and agencies for partnerships and ran ads on the site. She still remembers her first major deal: TJ Maxx paid her $500 to shop at one of its stores and write a post about seasonal fashion trends.

The blog led Zheng to YouTube, where she learned another lesson about building income online: a video could continue generating advertising revenue long after she published it. She said she still earns money from videos she made years ago.

Since 2012, Zheng and her husband have tried a range of businesses, from a bounce-house company to a real-estate-sign business. Not all worked out: among their flops were a men's leather-hat business and one selling totes made from recycled plastic.

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One of Zheng's more successful ventures was a planner business that sold digital inserts and physical accessories. It generated six figures, she said, but she shut it down in 2025 after it became too operationally demanding.

In mid-2025, Zheng shifted her focus to content creation. An earlier attempt to build a real-estate-focused account had stalled while she was also running the planner shop, working full time, and raising three children. This time, she chose a broader focus: money.

"Money and financial freedom had basically consumed my entire life for three years," Zheng said. "Money is what I want to talk about. It's what I could talk about every single day, and I would never run out of stuff."

Brand deals and user-generated content. Brands pay Zheng either to publish content to her own audience or to create videos they can use on their own channels and in advertising.

Digital products. Zheng sells products including an out-of-state real-estate guide and a budget tracker.