- William Butterton started experimenting with side hustles after having his first kid.
- He was looking for relatively passive hustles that would leave him enough time to spend with family.
- ATM placement has proven to be the most passive, while selling sports cards can be lucrative but very hands-on.
William Butterton likes to tinker.
"I had invention journals when I was a little kid," he told Business Insider. "I always wanted to be an inventor."
Through his 20s and early 30s, those ideas mostly stayed on paper. He was comfortable in his day job and didn't feel much urgency to build something on the side — until he had his first daughter.
"That's when I started really thinking about how I could bring some extra money in, but without sacrificing that safety net that I had built at my job," he said. "As your family grows, the benefits and incentives that you have at a full-time job, especially a government one, become really important."
Butterton works as an electrical engineer for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Keyport, Washington. His schedule gives him some room to experiment with side projects: He works 36 hours one week and 44 the next.
His most passive income stream: ATM placement
When Butterton discovered ATM placement on Instagram and TikTok, the side hustle seemed relatively low stakes.
"The more I looked into it, the more I was like, 'OK, there's really no risk in trying this, outside that original financial obligation of $2,500 to buy the ATM.'"
Butterton is wary of the term "passive income," but of all the businesses he's tried, he said that an "ATM is the closest thing that I have personally found," he said. "You're only there for 10 minutes to load it up, and then you're on your way."
He and his business partner started Viking Vendors in 2022. As of March 2026, they had five ATMs and three vending machines. They split about $1,500 in monthly profit, according to terminal activity summaries viewed by BI.
He said beginners are better off starting with ATMs than vending machines, which require more time and heavy lifting.
Right now, he and his partner each spend about an hour a week servicing their eight machines, but the more machines you own, the less passive the business becomes. He knows another operator with more than 100 ATMs who spends his days loading machines and struggles to take time off because the business demands constant attention.
Butterton estimates he could probably double his current fleet while keeping the business relatively passive. At the end of the day, though, "I love owning a business, but I'm not passionate about ATMs," he said. He sees the side hustle as a relatively low-stakes way to learn the ropes of running a business.
His most time-intensive side hustle: sports cards
Butterton started another side hustle after his second daughter was born. This time, the idea came from a hobby. He and a longtime friend were spending money opening sports cards and started wondering whether they could turn that interest into a business.
They noticed that some traditional local card shops were struggling, while online sellers using live-streaming platforms and social media were thriving. In 2024, they hosted their first stream on Whatnot, a platform where users buy and sell items in online video auctions. Setting up the stream is relatively cheap and easy — Butternton set up a camera in his garage — but actually making money required a lot of trial and error.
The early returns were rough: "That first stream, we got burned. You're just trying to figure out how to even use the website, and you end up losing money."
Still, they stuck with it, streaming once a week for hours on weekend nights. They called their business The Pack Daddies.
"For a couple of months there, we were sitting up there for about $5 an hour," he said. "We'd always joke that there's not a job in America that pays worse than this."
Their consistency eventually paid off. From July through December 2024, he said they sold about $20,000 worth of inventory. In the next 10 months, they expanded into other trading cards, including Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon, and sales topped $100,000. Their follower count on Whatnot also grew to about 7,500.
The card business has much more upside than the ATM business, he said, but it's also far less passive. Streams can last for hours, and they've also started setting up at local card shows to sell in person.
It's also riskier. While ATM purchases are occasional — they bought machines for $2,500 to $3,000 each — the card business can involve moving tens of thousands of dollars of inventory each month.
"If you're not keeping up with your sales, that is a recipe for disaster," he said.
Still, he finds the business more personally rewarding. He enjoys interacting with customers at trade shows, changing live-streaming formats in real time, and using skills from his engineering background, such as laser engraving customized bottle openers to incentivize first-time buyers.
His big flop: cutting boards
Not all of Butterton's ideas have worked. At one point, he tried making and selling cutting boards, but quickly realized he was in an oversaturated market and competing against woodworkers who were faster and more skilled.
"I'm not super great at woodworking, and there are a lot of people that are really good," he said. "It takes me longer, I can't sell my products for as much, and the return on investment was just not there."
That experience helped sharpen his business philosophy: Instead of competing in a crowded market, he'd rather sell tools to the people already in it.
"During a gold rush, you want to be the guy selling the shovel, not the guy digging for gold," he said. So rather than keep making cutting boards, he pivoted to a complementary product: a food-safe wood finish made with ingredients like hemp oil, white beeswax, carnauba wax, candelilla wax, and orange peel oil.
The economics were much better. He said he could make 50 cans in an hour for about $5 each and sell them for $15. He built a website for the company, One-Eyed Willy's, and started selling the product at trade shows and online, though the business never took off as much as his ATM or collectible card ventures did.
After trying several side hustles, Butterton is now thinking about consolidation: "If I remove one and put that much more time into the other, could I make even more?"
For now, he's still balancing his government job, family life, and a portfolio of side hustles — and learning which ventures are worth the effort.
