In the new year, young people who want to make money are flocking to these niche side jobs

In the new year, many young people are no longer satisfied with a single source of income and begin to look for sideline opportunities that can bring in extra income. This article lists some emerging niche sidelines in 2025, most of which revolve around pets and emotional consumption, reflecting young people's demand for personalization and emotional sustenance.

What does a side job mean?

Spring Festival is a rare opportunity to relax in a year, but the holiday is fleeting and workers are about to return to their normal lives. Will the current job be stable after the New Year? Will there be new interview opportunities? Can I change jobs and get a promotion and a raise? These are things that many people are thinking about.

According to statistics, nearly half of young people in China are in a state of anxiety. Groups of young people share their experience of finding employment and lying down on social media, using crazy literature and abstract hot topics to make fun of themselves, following the life motto of Generation Z to refuse to be involuted and not be a beast of burden, waiting for a miracle doctor's prescription that can truly save them from stress and emotions.

As a result, the fields of B-sports, pets, and star-chasing, which can express personal emotions, are booming. Raising a pet as a child, petting it, relaxing with it, and chatting with electronic lovers, seems to have become a common lifestyle for young people today. Niche side jobs that provide services for young people's derivative needs have also emerged: finding partners for pets, selling exquisite life photos in Moments, cosplay commissions, custom pinching... Although they seem to be diverse, they are essentially similar - young people are more and more willing to spend money on emotional consumption, and whoever can materialize their ideal life can make money.

In 2025, the emotions and pets sectors will continue to develop rapidly. Based on social media feedback, we have counted 6 niche side jobs related to them. Let’s see if there is a sector where you can make money.

01 Find a partner for your pet

"I'm a stay-at-home dog. I don't like sports but I'm a very reliable uncle dog. I'm looking for a beautiful and smart female Corgi."

"My 8-month-old West Highland Terrier is in heat and looking for a girlfriend. This dog is versatile, intelligent, and can understand human language."

"I'm a soft and cute big milk dog, I love life and like to go to the park. I'm looking for an ENFP girl in the city. I hope she's lively, cute, healthy and positive."

In a corner of a park in Chengdu, a long string of A4 papers of different colors fluttered in the wind. When you walk closer, you can see that the conditions of the "male and female" guests participating in the blind date are rigorously listed on the A4 papers, as if you have traveled back to the famous 5A-level blind date scenic spot, People's Park.

Image source: @狗der

Young people nowadays either envy other people's families for having children, or they envy other people for having both cats and dogs. Finding partners for their furry children of the right age is enough to make these young parents scratch their heads and search hard, but they never get tired of it.

According to Xianyu statistics, 3 million people go to the platform every year to arrange blind dates for their pets. Some parents even look for soul mates for their sterilized pets online: "Is there anyone who can match their pets?"

Where there is demand, there is a market, so If You Are the One transformed into “If You Are the Pet, Please Don’t Raise Yourself”, and “matchmakers” who help pets find happy marriages came into being.

Offline, Pupurazzi, a well-known pet shop in Chengdu, set up a pet matchmaking corner and a puppy civil affairs bureau. The puppies' names, ages, genders, and characteristics were written on pink matchmaker cards by their parents, waiting for the arrival of the destined dog.

Image source: @条条条_

Such pet dating corners, whose main purpose is pet social interaction, have appeared in shopping malls and squares in Changsha, Guangzhou, Dalian, Shanghai and other places. Not only are there separate areas for men and women, but there are also small games that pets can play together.

Some parents prefer to find a "match made in heaven". Yaming, who lives in Shanghai and has two cats, has been turned down. Some people think that Yaming's neighborhood is too far from their home and it is inconvenient to bring a cat home, so they declined. Some people prefer purebred cats, but Yaming's cat is a mixed breed, so they declined again. Many parents who want to find a partner for their furry children have been rejected many times like Yaming, and people who provide professional advice to parents who want to breed have emerged.

For example, a cattery owner in Guangzhou mainly breeds gradient series. Not only does he have extensive cat "connections", but he can also rely on his rich pet experience to introduce parents who want to breed to each other. Therefore, he also launched a customized blind date program for cats on Xianyu, priced at 800 yuan.

02 Moments pictures for sale

"Daily real-life photos, high-quality celebrity photos, with or without faces, all kinds of life photos are available, and can be bought out. Welcome to buy."

Under the reflection of the luxury brand's lighting with a brightness of about 3300K, a long-haired girl is carrying a Dior Princess Diana bag and wearing a slim long skirt. The evening breeze blows her long hair, as if she is just taking a walk in front of the door of Jimmy Choo near her home after dinner. A photo of her back reveals a full sense of relaxation and a celebrity style.

Ryan also took many photos of the socialites' daily lives, such as unboxing photos after purchasing LV and Chanel, vacationing in luxury hotels, and visiting art exhibitions... In order to reflect the "luxury" characteristics of the socialites, she also specially noted the hotel's one-night room rate on the hotel vacation photos.

A vacation night at a luxury hotel that originally cost 3,000 yuan a night is now being sold on Xiaohongshu for 9 yuan; and the number of comments on Ryan's post selling his Moments photos is twice the number of likes.

Some photos have no price tag, and buyers ask for prices in the comment section. Ryan always asks for private messaging so that both parties can learn more about the details of the photos, such as when they were taken, whether they have been sold before, whether the face is shown, etc. Many buyers almost always ask for "buyout, never sell to others, and not resell after sale" to reduce the risk of "same life" being exposed.

Some people sneer at the retouched fake photos, while others yearn for these pictures with advanced color matching, rich elements, and the pictures that inadvertently show the high quality of their lives. For less than 10 yuan, you can buy an exquisite life that will be envied by people in your circle of friends. For those who yearn for a high-quality life, it is a very cost-effective deal.

Some people also like the lifestyle that Ryan shows, and ask her to provide pictures on a long-term basis, and "every picture must be live."

On the one hand, the live picture can display the lens information when shooting, and can also reflect the authenticity of "the person" recording casually through positioning. On the other hand, now that the circle of friends can post live pictures, "people who like fashion will also catch up with this wave of fashion."

03 Online game face customization

Meng Xuan is a heavy player of ancient style MMORPG games. This type of game usually has a large open world. Players can use the game's face-shaping system to adjust the initial model's face shape, facial features, height and even the fullness of the body, and then give their character a name, become a knight, and travel back and forth between various maps while following the game's plot.

Meng Xuan has always had an image of a heroic female knight in her mind, who has a pair of wild green eyes like Princess Fengling, is as quirky as Huang Rong, and is as unrestrained as Zhou Zhiruo.

On the day the game was launched, she excitedly kept track of the time with her good friends and entered the character creation interface on time. She spent a whole day trying to create her ideal female hero character, but the result was always unsatisfactory.

While browsing the gaming topic on Weibo, the face of a female hero in her dreams appeared on the screen. In the screenshots taken by the seller, the female hero performing various actions directly hit Meng Xuan's aesthetic taste.

She immediately sent a private message to the seller: "Madam, please give me your face code!"

The seller quickly responded: "10 yuan, go to Taobao Xianyu."

Following the guide, Meng Xuan jumped to the seller's Taobao store, where there were many face-shaped figures of the same type of MMO games, including loli and shota, adult men and women, and even cosplay figures of other game characters, all for sale, with prices ranging from 10 to 30 yuan.

Screenshot of Mengxuan's game character. Mengxuan's friend also found a face-pinching artist, and she paid nearly 400 yuan to customize an exclusive face. Mengxuan felt incredible, but her friend thought it was worth it, because this face-pinching artist could not only modify specific facial details according to the requirements and "restore" the friend's face-pinching requirements one to one, but also because of the buyout, the face-pinching artist could no longer sell this character to others, eliminating the possibility of "colliding faces" in the game world.

After buying the face-shaping game, Mengxuan and her friend used it for a long time, almost treating the characters as their "daughters". They dressed up their "daughters" with all the new fashions and mounts.

Meng Xuan once encountered a character in the game who looked similar to her. The two players did not feel embarrassed about wearing the same clothes, but instead started a conversation because of their similar aesthetics.

"Everyone will create their favorite image and use it as their own to go out into the world, so even if we look alike, we will feel that we like the same things and have found similar interests."

04 cos commission

The second dimension husband enters reality, and it is a group of girls who are fulfilling each other's dreams. The commissioned teachers who play the male protagonists are usually girls, and they only accept commissioned orders from girls.

Usually, a commission lasts about 6-8 hours, and the price ranges from 200-800 yuan. The male protagonist played by the commissioning teachers will spend a day with the player, and the extra meals, transportation, and entertainment expenses incurred during the day will be paid by the player. Before the commission begins, some players will receive a questionnaire from the commissioning teacher to facilitate in-depth understanding of the other party's habits and likes and dislikes.

A questionnaire will ask players about their desired dating status, favorite nicknames, favorite food, etc. What the commissioned teachers need to do is to interpret the perfect male protagonist in the game.

The male protagonist, who usually can only appear and interact on the screen, comes to reality from the cyber world, and goes on dates with players hand in hand at subway entrances, downstairs of homes, in movie theaters, and in parks. He even replicates the romantic scenes and confession lines in the game in reality one-to-one.

No one should be able to refuse such a scene commission

After it’s over, many people will have withdrawal reactions, but at the same time, they know very clearly that the person in front of them is not the real male protagonist.

This is a complex emotion that is interspersed between virtuality and reality. Happiness, love and touching are real, and feeling "valued" during the date is real.

In a post about quitting cosplay commissions, one player said: "cosplay commissions are like a girl's wishing well";

Some players also shared: "It's not just the commissioning teacher who cosplays on the commissioning day. Am I not also cosplaying a happy self?"

05 Celebrity Photo Card Identification

Small cards are peripheral products made with celebrity photos, about the same size as ID cards. There are many types of small cards: self-printed cards made by fans themselves, small cards included with albums, exclusive small cards obtained by fans through consumption on different platforms... At the same time, due to the instability of idols' popularity, small cards can be considered a "financial product" in a sense.

For example, a photo card purchased for 200 yuan may soar to several thousand yuan due to the popularity of the idol. Conversely, the price of photo cards purchased at a high price may also plummet. Therefore, fans are very cautious about the photo cards they buy, fearing that they may buy fakes, which will not only make them feel uncomfortable but also difficult to resell later.

On Xianyu, various "experts" in identifying small cards have emerged. Most of them are young people with rich experience in chasing stars, who have purchased countless peripherals and can tell the authenticity of small cards at a glance. Because they buy a lot, they have developed the ability to identify the genuine ones over time.

Mr. Pants has started a business on Xianyu that identifies the photo cards of boy bands. He is even better at identifying the photo cards of artists under South Korea's SM Entertainment Co., Ltd. When you click on the homepage, you will find that Mr. Pants is a fan of a boy band under SM.

The small card identification price is 1 yuan. 1,717 people have expressed their desire for it, and more than 2,000 people have placed orders. Pants is the same as other small card identification companies. When identifying the authenticity, they look at the clear pictures of the front and back of the small card sent by the buyer, the photos under the light, and the actual pixel points.

There are differences in the shapes of pixels on real and fake cards, but because the "card circle is complicated", no one dares to guarantee that their eyes are the ruler and can accurately determine the authenticity.

Compared to consumers who bring their expensive antiques to the live broadcast room to ask the anchor to appraise them and hope to make a fortune, star chasers who spend one or two dollars to appraise small cards are buying more of the affirmation and peace of mind from fellow enthusiasts.

06 Handmade by Pinching

The pinching toy is a decompression toy made of silicone material. The silicone pinching toy is put in a transparent PVC bag. It will be deformed when pinched, and will slowly rebound to its original shape after releasing the hand.

Many enthusiasts will carry it with them, and they can take it out and play with it anytime and anywhere while attending class, eating, walking, drinking coffee...

Middle-aged people polish walnuts, while young people polish and pinch them. Nowadays, the same shape of pinched walnuts can be made by sellers to have three different feel - water feel that rebounds quickly, cement feel that sticks to bags more than water, and mud feel similar to plasticine. For each feel, there are also various more detailed feel, such as cream mud feel, rotten mud feel, super bursting water feel... There are endless varieties and everything you can think of.

Haruko spent 45 yuan to buy a custom pinch pin with her idol's name on it. The production period was about 7 days. The seller made it entirely by hand using food-grade silicone.

Similar to the celebrity initials customization

In the pinching world, everything can be customized. Haruko also saw that some people have made Hogwarts, Christmas trees, and popular IPs such as Chiikawa into pinches that can be rubbed and squeezed in the palm of your hand, with prices ranging from 20 yuan to thousands of yuan.

There are also many like-minded people who made wishes for their favorite styles in the comment section of Xiaohongshu. Some asked about the weight, some wanted a darker color, and some missed a period of spot sales and are waiting for the next batch of pre-sales to start.

She has a favorite blogger who can not only reproduce the Hogwarts Castle on his phone in a one-to-one scale, but also use his imagination to create all kinds of colorful hand-painted pinwheels. The fan group with a maximum of 500 people has been opened to the 12th one, and usually a note will receive hundreds or even thousands of likes.

Hogwarts style pinch (Photo source: Creation Cocoon)

It’s a process of finding a new owner, without so many marketing tricks.

People who make pinches make money with their skills, and people who buy pinches pay for their favorite images, attractive IPs, and the invincible stress-relieving feel.

Many times, when 996 workers drag their tired bodies past boutiques in shopping malls, they are attracted by the various lifelike sushi, toast, and bread "pendants" in transparent PVC bags hanging on the shelves, and can't help but touch them. They are soft and elastic.

All the resentment towards the boss and colleagues disappeared at that moment, and Nie Nie had already occupied the young man's stressed soul.

07 Conclusion

A few years ago, side jobs were limited to "must-haves for students and mothers", but now they have become the second career growth curve that "working people must master after get off work" in order to extend their annual income at the age of 35.

The pet and emotional tracks already have a certain market scale, and have developed a number of replicable success cases in 2024. They will continue to flourish in 2025 and will give rise to more and more segmented derivative opportunities.

More and more young people take "pleasing themselves" and "showing their individuality" as their main consumption motivations. On Xiaohongshu alone, there are as many as 8.59 million "healing" related notes.

If you can buy excellent emotional value and a happy mood by spending money, then I hope that both the buyer and the seller will be happy in the new year.

Author | Ma Yixin Editor | Che Maomao