Money·Oct 2, 2026

Lawyer Built 10 Income Streams Since 2012, Starting With A Fashion Blog

Her failed ventures include leather hats and recycled-plastic tote bags; the wins include a wedding-planner business and a real estate sign company.

Photo: Business Insider

Lucy Zheng has built 10 income streams with her husband since 2012, when she started a fashion blog to help pay down student loans after law school, according to Business Insider. The blog required little more than a "semi-decent camera" to start, she said, and taught her website-building and graphic-design skills.

Those skills led the couple to launch a physical wedding-planner business, and the experience importing those planners and working with overseas factories later helped them start a real estate sign business. Not every venture worked: the couple also tried selling tote bags made from recycled plastic, buying about 50 of them, along with leather hats, both of which flopped.

Zheng said user-generated content is now the easiest way to start earning side money in 2026.

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