The Journey

Summertime, and the hustlin's easy

AI voice testing and a UserTesting debut: a real look at navigating the summer slowdown, pivoting platforms, and pulling in $2,344.

The first day of my summer side hustling gig, I woke up. Then, I rolled out of bed and went to my laptop to look for some jobs. (Raise your hand if you sat next to a boom box all morning with your finger on the record button trying to catch all of Sister Mary Elephant.)

Wait...

Wrong approach. The side hustle stuff. Got lost in the Cheech and Chong of my youth!! 😎

Continuing on my side hustle journey...

Feeling like I had the wind at my back now, Summer was my first full season running three platforms at once (Prolific as my number one, Connect running close behind, and then old trusty Clickworker). What nobody tells you is that this kind of side hustle is seasonal – and it turns out that summer is out of season on some platforms.

Liner Notes: Summer 2026

The Setup: My three-platform side hustle, July through September
Where It Came From: Clickworker ($1,299), Prolific ($555), Connect ($475), plus a brand-new $15 UserTesting debut
Summer Grand Total: About $2,344
The High Water Mark: July ($1,055) — my first four-digit month ever
The Slump: August ($548)
The Lesson: Don’t marry your favorite platform.

What I quickly came to understand really should have been intuitive. Prolific and Connect get a significant amount of their surveys from academia – it would only make sense that they would slow down in the summer.

July: Voice Work and a Nice Surprise

In my head, Clickworker was now just the steady backup – always there when needed if I felt like grinding. But, in July, Clickworker dropped a bunch of voice analysis tasks – lots of them.

Throughout the month, I spent my spare moments listening on my phone and laptop to hours of AI voices and deciding which was better (for a variety of different reasons like answering the question better, more natural sounding, etc.).

When the dust settled, I hit $1,055 across all platforms – my first four digit month and I did more on Clickworker alone than Prolific and Connect combined.

August Happened and September Rebounded

And then August arrived to bring me right back down to earth. But, some of it was on me because I did some vacationing of my own. I wound up at $548.

If being a Gen Xer taught us anything, it’s how to handle a lull – handling boredom was basically mandatory. We survived dial-up connections, melted cassette tapes in hot cars (including the ones we spent hours making on our own), and waiting three weeks for disposable camera photos to develop.

By September, the tide turned right back around with a solid $740. No brass bands, no fireworks – just steady, honest income.

The NKOTB

September also brought about something a little special...

On September 20th, I got this:

That's the first payment I've gotten from a fourth platform – User Testing. I’d been curious about them for a while so I finally got my feet wet. Added $15 into the ledger for the month but it was plainly the start of something.

What Summer Taught Me

Don't marry your favorite. The platform I paid the least attention to ended up carrying the summer, while the one I relied on most went on a mid-year sabbatical. Diversity is survival.
Seasons aren't personal. A quiet week isn't a performance evaluation. It’s just the natural cadence of the side hustle.
Embrace the weird niches. Turns out, sitting in a quiet room and listening to forty slight variations of a prompt is surprisingly in my wheelhouse.
Brick by brick. Every single dollar from these odd jobs still goes straight into my investment accounts. So my July voice bender money is now quietly working away as a beautifully compounding piece of retirement money.

The Honest Bottom Line

If you’re looking for a rigid, clock-in-clock-out paycheck, multi-platform micro-tasking can drive you up the wall. But if you want a flexible, low-stress stream of side income that can absorb a slow month because you’ve got multiple lines in the water, it works.

Moving into the Fall, the goal isn't just relying on the big three; it's about steadily expanding the platform lineup, testing new waters, and building a more resilient overall operation.

For full breakdown of the numbers, check out the full results here.

And if you're new around here and want to see how these individual platforms work, start with the Clickworker breakdown, then check out the Prolific guide. Info on Connect and User Testing will be available in the next few weeks.

💡

And if you've made it this far down, thanks for reading and hopefully this AI-generated ad about this post is good for a laugh!!