Must-Read: Avoid Side Hustle Pitfalls With This Bilibili Guide

Have you ever had this experience? You flop onto the couch after work, scrolling through your phone, and stumble on a Moments post from a peer bragging about making 10k a month from their side hustle. You swipe past in a flash, envy and anxiety washing over you, then immediately search for “side hustles for office workers”—only to find every result is a bait ad promising “500 a day with zero barriers to entry”. Our generation seems trapped in the anxiety of the “side hustle necessity” narrative, constantly feeling like we’re falling behind if we don’t have a side gig. But most people haven’t even mastered the core skills of their full-time job before getting lured in by all sorts of “get-rich-quick” myths. In the end, you make no money, and instead lose piles of time and hard-earned cash.

My former colleague Xiao Zhou was laid off last year and rushed to find a side hustle. He saw a job posting for a “typist earning 300 a day with daily pay”, paid a 499 yuan “confidentiality deposit”, and typed for three days straight. Then the employer claimed his “efficiency didn’t meet standards” and refused to refund the deposit—he had nowhere to complain and had to swallow the loss. Another friend was scammed out of 299 yuan in “material fees” for a “novel promotion” gig. The so-called “viral copy templates” he got were all content easily found for free online, and he never landed a single promotion order, so the money went down the drain. A reader also told me that last year, he took a “game boosting” part-time job, paid a 200 yuan “account deposit”, and grinded levels for half a month. The client then said “the account you leveled up doesn’t meet our requirements”, refused to refund the deposit, and never paid his boosting wages. In the end, he just let it go.

Dare you say you’ve never fallen for a side hustle scam? Behind those seemingly easy “quick money” opportunities lie scythes waiting to fleece you. Every deposit or tuition fee you pay is just a performance metric for the scammers, but only you know that it’s hard-earned cash from late nights of overtime work.

Now if you scroll through Xiaohongshu or Douyin looking for side hustles, 9 out of 10 posts are just bait for traffic, and the remaining one is probably a scam too. Those screenshots of “earning 100k a month” are photoshopped, the “student testimonials” are written by shills, and any “mentor” you add via the comment section will eventually ask you to pay thousands in tuition under the guise of “guiding you into the industry”—when in reality, they’re just making money off your enrollment fees. I once came across an ad for “short video e-commerce” with comments like “Made 10k a month following the teacher” everywhere. I added the WeChat listed, and they immediately sent over a course price list—the cheapest course was 2999 yuan, claiming I’d get e-commerce selling permissions after finishing. But when I searched for similar content on Bilibili, I found out that you can apply for those “selling permissions” for free yourself. Paying the fee just gets you a pile of video editing tutorials that are freely available online.

Bilibili is different. Most UP hosts who produce viral side hustle content have real experience falling for scams and practical operational know-how. They make long videos 10 minutes or even half an hour long—if the content was all lies, they’d have been reported and taken down by viewers ages ago. Last year, I wanted to do Xiaohongshu account management as a side gig, so I watched a dozen videos tagged “Xiaohongshu side hustle”. From the UP hosts’ scam experiences, I summed up three core red lines: never touch gigs that ask for upfront payment, never touch pyramid scheme-like gigs that require recruiting others, and never touch gigs that promise “high returns with zero barriers”. Using these criteria, I filtered out 90% of potential scams. If you search keywords like “side hustle scam roundup” or “side hustle red and black list”, the top-viewed videos are almost all summaries from UP hosts who’ve actually fallen for scams themselves: things like “e-commerce brushing is illegal”, “99% of typist jobs are scams”, “any AI painting gig that asks for upfront tuition is a trap”. These contents have no flashy packaging—they’re all solid, practical scam-avoidance guides, 10,000 times more reliable than the “internal channels” you see in random part-time job groups.

Lots of newbies looking for side hustles always say “Bilibili content is too messy, I don’t know who to trust”. In reality, you just need to check the UP host’s follower count, video length, and authentic feedback in the comment section. Vertical side hustle UP hosts with over 10k followers won’t risk their reputation. If a host makes a 10+ minute long video with specific, detailed explanations, they’re almost certainly not a scammer. After all, Bilibili viewers have sharp eyes—if you try to trick them, you’ll be called out in the comment section the very next second.

I’ve seen far too many people watch a Bilibili video titled “Made 50k a Month Live-Streaming Products”, excitedly buy live-streaming equipment, broadcast for three days with no viewers, and then give up. Others watch a video about “landing illustration gigs for 10k a month”, spend thousands on illustration classes, study for half a year, and can’t even land a single commercial order. Are you really suited for these side hustles? Don’t believe the lie that “anyone can do it”—a side hustle is an extension of your full-time job, not a pie that falls from the sky. If you only have 2 hours of free time a day, don’t pick an e-commerce customer service gig that requires you to be online all day. If you’re socially anxious and afraid to speak in front of a camera, don’t force yourself into the live-streaming e-commerce trend.

There’s a particularly useful category of guides on Bilibili: “How to land gigs with XX skills as a side hustle”. For example, if you know how to make PowerPoint slides, search for “PPT side hustle gig channels”—UP hosts will list all common gig platforms, pricing standards, and scam-avoidance tips. If you work in operations, search for “operations side hustle” and you’ll find people landing gigs like WeChat official account formatting, Xiaohongshu account management, and community operations, with hourly rates higher than their full-time jobs. A friend of mine who works in administration watched a Bilibili video on “Excel side hustles”, learned basics like pivot tables and VBA operations, and now takes on corporate data sorting gigs, earning an extra 4000+ yuan a month—more than her full-time salary. Another reader is a nurse with lots of off-hours time. She watched a Bilibili video on “patient escort side hustles”, got certified, and now takes two escort gigs a week, earning an extra 3000+ yuan a month—way more reliable than blindly looking for random part-time jobs.

The best side hustle is the one that fits you—otherwise, no matter how hard you work, you’re just spinning your wheels. You don’t need to envy others making big money from live-streaming, or feel anxious that you’ve missed the latest trend. Master the skills you already have first—that’s more important than anything else. If you’ve been an accountant for three years, don’t jump on the AI painting bandwagon. If you’ve been writing copy for five years, don’t bother with game boosting gigs. Your core competitiveness will always be the skills you’ve already accumulated.