Exclusive: When Sydney teenager Haven Sun finishes school for the day, he often can't go home to relax or watch TV like many other students his age.
Instead, he spends hours driving around with his parents, re-stocking and maintaining the five vending machines he owns around the city.
The 15-year-old is making thousands of dollars in extra pocket money each month after buying a fleet of snack vending machines and installing them around Parramatta and Blacktown in Sydney's west.
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Sun discovered he had a knack for business after stumbling across other vending machine entrepreneurs online.
"I watched a few videos on YouTube about vending machines that I thought were interesting," Sun explained.
"I asked my family and they said you can go ahead… so I got a few small vending machines and reinvested them into bigger ones.
"Everything I've done here, it's all self-taught and learned online and from people I know."
With some family help, Sun bought a few machines and started renting them to small businesses and warehouses around the area.
Sun's year 10 commerce classes taught him an old-school sales technique.
"We cold-called about 200 businesses over the span of a month," Sun said.
"There's also formal emails I send out to hotels, motels, warehouses and distribution centres."
Once business began booming, Sun applied for a bank loan of around $5600 to refurbish his fleet and soon launched his business Xgreen Vending.
On a good week, one of Sun's busiest machines can bring in around $570 in gross sales.
Do you have a story? Contact reporter April Glover at previously told nine.com.au that profit margins can often be razor-thin.
But if you get it right, it can sometimes feel like easy money.
"It's a lot of work to maintain these things," Sun said, adding that he spends around 10 hours per week travelling to his machines.
Vending machine side hustles have become a popular way for everyday Australians to make money on the side – there's even a Facebook group with over 30,000 people asking for advice, offloading machines or trying to buy second-hand units.
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