So I’ve deleted and blocked a lot of my social media lately in an attempt to detox from it a bit. The only one that is easily accessible to me is my Instagram on my phone. I left that alone because I only really follow a few close friends and never really felt like it was having a negative effect on my mindset or it was an excessive time suck.

Of course, this hasn’t gone quite as planned. I now spend far too much time watching Instagram reels.

And a particular kind of reel that often catches my eye are the ones that are like “Make $100 a day!” “Make $60 in 20 minutes!”

Do it in your sleep!

Do it from the moon!

Do it while you eat all the cheese you want!

…essentially the money will just fall into your lap. If you just watch this video.

I’m always interested in a good side hustle but I saw those previews with those captions and I already had a good guess of what I was about to see.

I actually had a really good guess because shortly before that scrolling session I had *~*~magically*~*~ made $180 in 20 minutes!! And you can too!!

J/K. You probably can’t.

You probably also can’t achieve exactly what those reels are hawking either.

Because, sure enough, one of them raved about making $100 in affiliate sales in minutes.

That is absolutely how affiliate sales work. Someone buys something you recommended and you get a kickback. There’s nothing wrong with this when you’re sharing stuff you’ve loved through a video or a blog post.

What this reel totally ignores is that you have develop the content, build up enough of an audience to be appealing to sponsors, and then convince people to buy the product.

The actual sale – seconds.

The framework to make that sale – can literally take years.

That $180 in 20 minutes was the addition of three links to my blog. From a company I’ve worked with for years and trust, for products I immediately recognized and wasn’t fussed about adding, to older, existing blog posts.

ALSO, and here’s another key thing about those reels – there’s no guarantee of those orders. Some months my blog makes $20, some months it makes $2,000. I don’t ever know which it will be and I am entirely at the whims of offers from advertisers.

So yeah, I totally made $180 with little effort in the moment, but it was built on years of blogging with $0 income to build up the blog, unpaid hours of learning about this type of advertising opportunities and how to court them, and then the icing on that cake is that it’s dumb luck when I wake up to an offer.

Similarly, I find the reels hawking $100 for an hour of filling out surveys or something pretty funny too. I’ve worked with UserTesting as a little side hustle for almost 10 years. After several years of $10/survey, if I even qualify, I’ve started to notice I can apply for larger opportunities.

These aren’t a given either! Once in a blue moon, I qualify to do a $60 project. There are also weeks where I don’t even qualify to do any of the $10 surveys.

I feel like the amount of time you actually have to put into these projects is totally disregarded in those reels.

And I love a good side hustle.

I mean – I do the surveys. I run this blog.

I just feel like those reels are super misleading. Surveys and blogging can both bring in some side money, for sure, but it’s never as effortless as those reels make it seem.

Or am I doing them totally wrong? Anyone else feel the opposite and think those reels are on point? What has your side hustling experience been?