How to Make Money on Xianyu: Why Ordinary People Should Choose Xianyu Over AI Projects in 2025

While everyone is chasing the AI wave, some people are quietly making money on Xianyu. A Bilibili creator recently shared how they earned over 100,000 RMB through Xianyu as a side hustle — and put forward a provocative take: The best side hustle opportunity for ordinary people in 2026 isn't "shrimp farming" (AI projects), but "fish farming" (selling on Xianyu).

This idea is worth unpacking carefully.

A Sober Look at AI Side Hustles: Effort vs. Return Are Badly Misaligned

The creator shared a real story from their office: a colleague named Ajie jumped on the trending AI project OpenClaw^Ad (an AI Agent application), spent 2,500 RMB buying a Mac mini on Xianyu, and spent every day studying how to deploy it — a truly dedicated effort. The result? Zero income to date, not counting the electricity bill.

The technical barrier for AI Agents is far higher than it appears on the surface. AI Agents (intelligent autonomous systems) are one of the hottest directions in AI applications right now — they can independently plan, call tools, and complete complex tasks. Unlike simple Q&A AI, Agents can execute multi-step tasks in sequence, such as automatically searching for information, writing code, or sending emails. OpenClaw, as an AI Agent application, represents the current wave of "locally deployed AI" entrepreneurship — users buy hardware like Mac mini to run large language models locally and try to offer paid services. However, the monetization chain for these projects is extremely long: you need to master model deployment (tools like Ollama, LM Studio, etc.), API development, product packaging, and customer acquisition. If any single link breaks, you walk away with nothing. This is the core risk for ordinary people jumping on the AI entrepreneurship bandwagon.

This isn't an isolated case. AI content creators constantly talk about "one-person companies" and "AI monetization," but for most ordinary people, the technical barrier, trial-and-error costs, and time-to-revenue for AI projects are far higher than imagined. It's like the real estate frenzy of a few years ago — when everyone thinks a certain direction can make money, it may no longer be an opportunity that belongs to ordinary people.

The creator introduced a key mental model: think in terms of "project selection" — don't just chase what's trending. Instead, ask yourself which direction you can actually execute on and generate returns from quickly.

The "Secondary Market" Logic of the New Xianyu: Everything Has a Market Value

Xianyu recently rolled out a major update, introducing new features like "Xianyu Space" and "Xianyu Camera." The new Xianyu ads featuring celebrity endorser Zhao Lusi are everywhere — and that itself is a signal. The platform is investing heavily, and Xianyu's traffic dividend period has arrived.

Xianyu's platform background is worth understanding in depth. Xianyu was launched by Alibaba in 2014, leveraging the Taobao account ecosystem and Alipay's credit system to gradually become China's largest C2C secondhand trading platform. According to public data, Xianyu has over 500 million registered users, with DAU surpassing 60 million in 2023 and continuing to grow toward the 100-million DAU milestone. Notably, Xianyu has long operated with a "light commercialization" strategy — no commissions charged to sellers, no mandatory promotion fees — a stark contrast to the heavy-operation models of Taobao, JD.com, and similar platforms. This strategy helped the platform accumulate massive organic traffic, but also means its commercial monetization potential has yet to be fully unlocked. The Zhao Lusi endorsement and large-scale brand advertising are classic signals that the platform is entering an accelerated commercialization phase.

The new Xianyu Camera feature is genuinely useful: just snap a photo of anything around you — electronics, household items, random clutter — and Xianyu will instantly tell you what it's worth. This feature directly lowers the biggest cognitive barrier: pricing.

The creator shared several eye-opening examples of making money on Xianyu:

• A Zhongshan suit from the "Pure Era" era listed on Xianyu Space, starting at four figures
• An empty Pringles can from Jay Chou's old endorsement deal — the empty can sells for ten times the original price of the chips
• A top student who just passed the graduate entrance exam photographed their study materials and sold them for over 3,000 RMB — truly "there is gold in books"

The creator's reaction: "Is this still a secondhand market? This is a secondary market!" The comparison has real economic depth. A secondary market (like stock or bond markets) is defined by prices driven by supply and demand rather than production costs — scarcity and emotional premium are the core pricing factors. The reason a Jay Chou-endorsed Pringles can or a vintage Zhongshan suit can fetch high prices comes down to "cultural memory scarcity premium" — these items carry the collective emotions of a specific era, and their numbers only decrease over time. This is exactly the same pricing logic behind NFTs, athlete trading cards, and limited-edition sneakers. Xianyu Camera's AI pricing feature essentially democratizes the kind of "market knowledge" that used to belong only to seasoned collectors, dramatically lowering the information barrier for ordinary people to participate in the secondary market. Everything around you has a market value — the key is whether you can spot it.

Why Xianyu Is the Best "Leverage" for Ordinary People's Side Hustles

Zero Barrier, Zero Cost — The Lowest-Cost Entry Point for Starting a Side Business

Unlike AI projects that require technical knowledge and hardware investment, Xianyu side hustles shine because of their extremely low startup costs:

• No franchise fees
• No multi-level distribution schemes
• No deposits or entry fees
• What you see is what you get — take a photo and list it

The creator's own daily routine is telling: they open Xianyu whenever they have a free moment to "watch the market," sometimes flipping items quickly for a fast profit, sometimes just browsing and soaking in the everyday human drama — and occasionally "going long" on something they like. They've turned Xianyu into something that feels like trading stocks, but with far less risk than the actual stock market.

A Strategic Read on Xianyu's Platform Window of Opportunity

The creator made a particularly important observation: Xianyu's DAU is surging and is about to enter the elite club of 100-million-DAU platforms, yet its commercialization has barely begun.

The "window period dividend" of internet platforms is a well-documented business pattern, rooted in the platform economics concepts of "network effects" and "first-mover advantage.