Adobe Stock Firefly AI Training, Medium Partner Program, YouTube 100 Days No Upload

'Side Hustle' without the Hustle? #2 News + Earnings September 2025

By bluekasumi | bluekasumi | 6 Oct 2025

Welcome to part two of this series on giving a realistic view on earning passive income with side hustles. If you are like me, the time to dedicate to a side hustle while also having a day job and managing other tasks and chores each day is often very limited to non-existent. In the following report I will break-down my favorite side hustles and how much time and energy I invested to get to those results. Let’s get started!

Honeygain — the perfect Side Hustle for people working from home

Honeygain has earned a reliable spot on my Side Hustle List since I first started using it during the pandemic in 2021. The app is always working in the background on my computer and I also use it on my smartphone day and night. Sometimes it even works when connected to public wi-fi’s.

How does it earn money?
Honeygain makes use of your unused internet bandwidth. It works on computers, tablets and smartphones. Leave your phone on and the Honeygain App running at night and you can basically earn 24/7.

Play the long game
Expect a few cents a day, but for long-term users the consistency will definitely pay-off. I’m a user since 2020 and hat several pay-outs throughout the years.

Learn more about Honeygain in my article Medium: https://www.publish0x.com/bluekasumi/two-best-ways-to-earn-passive-income-with-your-computer-in-2-xwvpkzz

This months earnings: $5.25

YouTube — 100 days since my last upload

YouTube rewards consistency, but never let’s you down completely. I always have it in the back of my mind, but my energy and time are too limited at the moment. YouTube will charmingly remind you after a while via e-mail to stay active, or else…This means I absolutely must upload a video in the next 80 days. Will I manage it? Stay tuned!

Why? Read my YouTube story here: https://medium.com/@aoikasumi/what-happens-if-you-stop-uploading-videos-to-youtube-for-6-months-6eb5efa13c6b

This months earnings: $0,13

Adobe Stock — Your work was used for AI Training

This month I didn’t sell a single original photo as a Contributor on Adobe Stock. But: Some of my images — which ones exactly wasn’t disclosed — unbeknown to me were used to train Adobe’s AI image generation tool Adobe Firefly. Apparently this was the ‘third Firefly Contributor bonus payment’.

The 2025 bonus is based on photos, videos, vectors, illustrations, and Generative AI content considered for training between June 3, 2024, and June 2, 2025, and the number of licenses that those assets generated in the same 12-month period.

I don’t remember receiving information on contributing my photos to AI training nor do I know how to opt-out of it. I feel there is a lack of transparency on Adobe’s part and I frankly felt blindsided by the news.
The responsibility to stay up-to-date with such changes is placed entirely on the creators.

This months earnings: $1,43

Medium

Medium has introduced a new metric to the dashboard called ‘Presentations’. The meaning of the number shown is described as follows:

Times this story was presented across Medium, or via push/email notifications (excluding the Daily Digest). Not available for stories published before 2025.

A second novelty Medium introduced from this October 1st is to reward stories that bring in external traffic via shares on social media:

This first change rewards stories that are shared on social media, attract search traffic, and/or are shared directly with people outside of Medium. The change shifts 5% of the payouts toward stories that get this external traffic and especially to external traffic that converts to members.

Medium outlines that more changes to the Partner Program are bound to come over the course of the next six months. Another such change will happen in November by rewarding search traffic.

Are you excited about the news? To you plan invest more time writing on Medium and promoting your work across platforms in the future?

This months earnings: $0.03

These four are basically the only side hustles that have generated any money in September 2025. Adding everything up that is $6.84. As in the previous month Honeygain added the biggest value with the least amount of effort.

Are you surprised by the numbers? Did you have more success with the same or others side hustles? I appreciate any interactions and please leave some support if you enjoyed this article. Thank you for reading!
– AoiKasumi