Have you been looking for creative ways to make some extra money every month? You’re totally in the right place! I’ve searched high and low for different ways to earn money on the side, because who wouldn’t want some additional money every month?
Making some extra cash can be life changing. Having even a small extra amount of money every month can allow you to:
- Start or bulk up your emergency fund;
- Save up for the vacation you’ve been dreaming of;
- Put more money away for your retirement;
- Pay down your debt faster;
- and much more!
While making money on the side is usually going to take some of your time, it doesn’t have to consume your life! There’s plenty of different ways that you could be making some extra money right now.
Some of these will require more effort than others. There’s a huge potential to make a LOT of extra money (and maybe even quit your day job) while doing #7. Others, like #6 will reward you with some quick cash for only 5 minutes of your time!
- 1. Ibotta
- 2. Make Money with Swagbucks
- 3. Test Websites
- 4. Sign Up for Credit Card Cash Back Bonuses
- 5. Get Paid to Walk
- 6. Get Paid for Using Alexa or Google Assistant
- 7. Make Money by Starting a Blog
- 8. Flip Free or Cheap Items
- 9. Make Money Babysitting
- 10. Get Paid to Walk Dogs
- 11. Get Paid to Listen to Music
- 12. Tutor People Online
- 13. Write Greeting Cards
- 14. Make Money Proofreading
- 15. Monetize Your Hobbies
- 16. Get Paid to Test Drive a Car
- 17. Rent a Spare Room
- 18. Put Your Money to Work
- 19. Deliver Food
- 20. Drive People Around
- 21. Make Money Flipping Websites
- What other ways do you make money?
- Pin this for later!
Ready to find out how you can make money today? Let’s get started!
1. Ibotta
Ibotta is an app that lets you earn cash back on the things you’re already buying, online or in store. For example, if you’re going to Target you can open up Ibotta and see if there’s any offers for things you’re going to buy. When you make a purchase, upload your receipt (or link your loyalty account) and get some cash back!
Ibotta has a TON of different offers and brand partners. I’ve found offers at pretty much every store I usually shop at, including cash back for “any brand” purchases. Perfect for when you’re shopping for the best deals!
To boot, Ibotta offers bonuses for redeeming a certain amount of offers, and for working together with a “team” to complete offer challenges!
Join Ibotta today to get up to a $20 bonus!
2. Make Money with Swagbucks
You can make money for doing pretty much what you’d already do everyday with Swagbucks!
For example, if you’re shopping for a new coat for winter, you can check out the Swagbucks offers to see if there’s cash back for the store you’re looking at. Once you go through the Swagbucks portal, you can qualify to earn Swagbucks and/or cash back bonuses for buying whatever you were planning to buy anyway!
You can also make money participating in surveys through Swagbucks, downloading the swaybacks browser extension and much more!
Get started by signing up with Swagbucks here and get a $3 bonus when you earn your first 300 Swagbucks!
3. Test Websites
Did you know that you can make money testing websites? There’s a market for that! Business want to make sure their websites are user-friendly so they’re not losing traffic, and so rely on people to test their sites and provide feedback.
You can make $30-$45 an hour testing websites, which is not bad! You usually have to apply and take a sample test (so make sure you follow the directions!) but once you’re approved to test, each one takes about 20 minutes.
Sign up with the following sites:
4. Sign Up for Credit Card Cash Back Bonuses
I’m a huge fan of using credit cards for points to travel hack my vacations. If you prefer the ease of cash rewards, there’s credit cards that will give you cash back AND a cash bonus for simply signing up.
Better yet, unlike travel reward cards, a lot of the cash back credit cards don’t have an annual fee!
Discover has perfect starter credit cards for college students or people looking to build some credit. They currently have an offer to get a $50 bonus when you sign up for the Discover It card, which comes with no annual fee, 5% cash back bonus on different categories (like grocery stores, restaurants and gas stations), and 1% cash back on everything else!
If you’re looking a different bank, Chase has some of the best credit card rewards out there and the Chase Freedom is no exception. The current sign up bonus is an offer for $150 after meeting a minimum spending requirement of $500. I love that the spending threshold is low enough that you can meet it simply by buying groceries!
Note: Credit cards are not for everyone. If you do use a credit card for your spending, make sure you are able to pay them off IN FULL every month. NO sign up bonus is worth it if you go into debt for it.
5. Get Paid to Walk
How would you like to get paid for something that you already do everyday, like walking? Now you can with Sweatcoin!
Sweatcoin is an app that will pay you in digital currency (sweat coins) for every 1,000 steps you take.
You can then redeem those sweat coins in the marketplace for things you may want, like a subscription to Tidal, Audible, and even cash for inviting your friends to join!
6. Get Paid for Using Alexa or Google Assistant
Did you know that you can get paid to use Alexa or Google Assistant? It’s true! Conversational.ly will pay you $5 per month for connecting your Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant device!
In order to qualify, you must live in the US and have access to Google Chrome on a compute (no mobile yet!), and connect a device with Alexa or Google Assistant. So long as you use your smart device at least 5 days in a month, you can qualify for the $5/month payout.
Conversational.ly also runs monthly $500 sweepstakes. You earn one entry for every day you interact with your smart device.
It doesn’t matter if you use Alexa or Google Assistant (or both!) on your phone, vacuum, Amazon Echo, or Google Home. It all counts!
7. Make Money by Starting a Blog
One of the most common ways to make money online on the side is to start a blog!
Is there something you’re super passionate about and could talk about for HOURS? Why not blog about it?
There’s plenty of bloggers who make hundreds of thousands of dollars blogging! While it takes a lot of time, effort, and a bit of luck to get to that stage, anyone can make some money on the side with a blog.
If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, head on over to Bluehost to get started for only $3.95/month!
8. Flip Free or Cheap Items
Do you enjoy browsing thrift stores or buying items off of craigslist or Facebook marketplace? Why not re-sell some of the items you find in those searches/trips for a higher price than you paid?
You can totally make money flipping items you get for free or cheap! For example, let’s say you’re able to find a free dresser on craigslist. You can spruce it up, give it a new coat of paint, and list it for sale on craiglist again! With a little bit of elbow grease, you can make some money reselling free things!
If you want to make it a more long term side hustle, you could also open up an eBay store and sell some of your finds there!
Some of the best things to flip are:
- Designer clothing
- Furniture
9. Make Money Babysitting
If you love kids, you can make money on the side babysitting! Of course you can babysit for families you already know, or you could put up flyers in your neighborhood offering your services.
You can also look for babysitting gigs through Care.com. It’s super easy to sign-up and make a profile, set your rates, and start connecting with families that are looking for babysitting help!
I used to babysit in college and loved it! It was a quick way to make cash on nights when I didn’t have much going on. Additionally, because I babysat young kids, I could watch tv or work on my homework when they went to bed!
10. Get Paid to Walk Dogs
What if I told you that you could get paid to hang out with cute dogs? You totally can!
There’s plenty of pet owners out there who need someone to walk their dogs or petsit when they’re out of town. While you can advertise your services by putting up flyers in your neighborhood, why not take advantage of technology to make it easy?
For example, Rover connects you with pet owners, allows you to set your rates and your hours, and even comes with insurance!
11. Get Paid to Listen to Music
Slice the Pie is a review site that pays you for your feedback on new songs before they’re released, how cool is that??
In order to make money, you have to listen to a track on the website and write a review.
You are assigned a star rating based on your reviews and your earnings potential increases as your star rating increases. The more you review, the higher the amount Slice the Pie will pay for your reviews. Also, the more detailed and helpful the review, the better chance your star rating will grow, leading to bigger potential payouts, so take it seriously!
Do keep in mind that the initial reviews aren’t worth very much, but it’s fun to hear new songs and you can make more money if you stick with it. You can cash out with PayPal once you reach $10.
Bonus: Slice the Pie has options for you to review other things, like fashion items and commercials!
Sign up for Slice the Pie here.
12. Tutor People Online
If you have a passion for teaching you can make money online tutoring people! While tutoring rates can vary depending on subject, there’s money to be made tutoring in every niche. Better yet, you can tutor from the comfort of your home!
Have you taken and aced a standardized test? There’s a tutoring market for that! Are you really good at writing and proofreading? There’s a tutoring market for that as well!
Some sites allow you to set your own rates, while other have set rates in place and will pay you for the time you spend tutoring. Skooli, for example, pays their tutors $25/hour.
You can get started with online tutoring with some of the following companies:
13. Write Greeting Cards
Are you a creative who can come up with short sentiments for greeting cards? You can get paid for that! There are several greeting card companies out there that accept submissions from everyday people.
Some of these are:
Each one of these has different niches that they cater to so make sure you read the guidelines for each program if you plan to submit any content. The process can be competitive so don’t get discouraged if you don’t hear back!
If your creative talents lie more with photos, some of these also accept photo submissions, so give that a try! For example, Palm Press access photo submissions only.
14. Make Money Proofreading
It shouldn’t be surprising that there’s a market for proofreading out there! There’s so much content being produced every day (in print AND online) that it makes sense for businesses to be looking for professional proofreaders to make sure their content is spot-on!
This is where you come in. If you have an eye for details and pride yourself on following all the rules of grammar, you can make money proofreading!
Curious about how to get started? You can sign up for a free workshop from Caitlin Pyle, who’s a proofreading whiz!
15. Monetize Your Hobbies
There are so many different hobbies that you can make money with! These can be things like creating printables, selling your photos, making soap, crafting, designing websites and so much more!
Creative Market allows you to sell your photos, fonts, Google Slide templates, Resume templates, web themes, Lightroom presets and A LOT more!
If you’re into sewing, painting, soap making, jewelry making, and anything DIY, you can open up an Etsy shop and start selling your goods to people looking for them.
16. Get Paid to Test Drive a Car
Did you know that you can get paid for test driving cars? If you’re in the market for a new car, or are simply looking for some side cash and don’t mind a trip to the dealership, this might be for you!
Dealerships will often have promotional offers or coupon codes to attract shoppers to come in and test their vehicles! Sometimes they’ll offer gift cards or cash for someone to test drive a brand new car!
You can find the offers by going to a dealership’s website and clicking on “new cars” or “promotional offers.” You may have to click on a specific car to get a popup for the offer.
You usually have to be 18+ and have a valid driver’s license to qualify for the offer, so it’s not for everyone.
If you do take advantage of this, I would suggest you let the salesperson know you’re there for the offer or just looking and not serious about buying, that way they’re not wasting their time trying to sell you a car.
There’s been cases of people just getting the offer without even having to go into the dealership!
To get started, check out the following:
17. Rent a Spare Room
If you have any extra room in your house why not make some money renting it out?
While getting a housemate is not ideal for everyone, you could make some money on the side by listing out your room on a short-term basis through online platforms like AirBnB!
If you live in a city that hosts sporting events, festivals, or is home to a college, you could rent out your rooms during those event times!
Important: being a renter, you want to make sure you check your lease to see what’s allowed before listing your place for rent.
You also want to make sure you check out the laws in your City/State to see what special rules apply, including potentially having to get a permit and/or pay short-term rental taxes.
18. Put Your Money to Work
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my quest for financial independence is the power of letting your money work for you so you can make passive income.
What’s better than letting your money sit in an account somewhere and watching it grow, and then grow some more on top of the growth?! Think it’s not possible? Think again!
If you have money sitting in a bank (because you’ve been diligently building up that emergency fund) make sure that bank is paying YOU for the privilege of holding your money!
A lot of traditional savings account will only pay .01% on your savings, that’s only ONE CENT for every thousand dollars a year! Instead, find yourself a savings account that will pay you 1.5% or higher for simply letting you’re money sit with them. For example, Marcus by Goldman Sachs will pay you 2% annual interest – that’s TWENTY dollars for every thousand dollars a year. While this may not be a ton of cash, it’s wayyy better than 1 penny.
Here are some alternatives to consider to put your money to work:
19. Deliver Food
Have you noticed how easy it is to get takeout delivered straight to your door? And how expense it is when you include tip?
While delivering food to other people will take time and effort, you can make some decent side money doing deliveries on your spare time!
There are so many delivery companies, you have several options to test out and see what works best for you and what you prefer!
Get started with the following:
20. Drive People Around
If you have some hours to spare, you could make some money on the side by becoming a driver with a ride-share company like Uber or Lyft.
The amount you can make obviously depends on how often you’re able to work, how many rides you’re able to complete, and the times of the week that you drive.
Signing up to drive with Uber or Lyft could be a good way to make some extra cash when you need it, but keep in mind the time and wear and tear on your car when deciding if it’s worth it.
If you plan to make trips during busy times or seasons, and do trips near you, you could make some decent money!
21. Make Money Flipping Websites
Website flipping is when you buy and sell websites for a profit. The general principle is the same as flipping anything: you buy for a low price and sell for a higher price that you paid.
You could buy or start a website for $100, put some work into it, and then sell it for a profit a couple of months down the line when you’ve grown its traffic!
There are so many articles out there about website flipping, I love this one that covers how this entrepreneur made over six figures flipping websites! Check it out!
What other ways do you make money?
Let me know in the comments!
Pin this for later!
Lots of great ideas. Some I’d heard of before, some I hadn’t. Thanks for sharing the details.
Some really good ideas, some that we did not know about 🙂
Happy to see some new ideas on this post.