Times are tough. There are a lot of us that work, but could use some extra money to make life easier. If you are suddenly solo and on a fixed income, you could surely use an extra bit of money each month. Or maybe you want to save money for something — a vacation, early retirement, paying off your house.
But it’s basically impossible to find a job that is offers minimal hours — even at minimum wage. Never mind finding employment with flexible hours. It’s hard to find a side job that you can fit in around your regular job and your other commitments.
Fortunately, there are ways you can earn a little extra money. Lots of them. You just have to make a choice to do it.
Hopefully, you’ll find something here that can help.
With Your Smartphone
Many people have a smartphone these days — even people with a minimal income. It’s not because they are spending their money foolishly, either. If you live by yourself, it can make more sense to use a smartphone, instead of a house phone. I’m certainly not going to tell anyone that they should ditch the cell phone.
Here are some brilliant suggestions for making money with your smartphone.
With Your Time
People will spend money to save themselves time, and if you have time to spare, you can take advantage of that. You don’t even need to be particularly skilled at anything. You just need to pay attention and get stuff done.
Here’s some stuff that people (and sometimes businesses) will pay others to do to save themselves some time:
- Run errands
- Drive their kids to events, school, friends’ houses, etc.
- Walk their dog
- Clean their house
- Do laundry
- Write out Christmas cards
- Make phone calls
- Answer emails
- Type stuff
- Write resumes or cover letters
- Cook/bake (especially during the holiday season)
- Babysit
- Put up the Christmas lights
- Shovel snow
- Mow lawns
- Weed the garden
- Tutor their kids
- Get information
- Do their grocery shopping
- Buy presents
- Wrap presents
These are just a few of the things that you might do. Ask around. I’m sure that your friends would gladly tell you what they would pay someone to do.
With Your Computer
If you have a computer, there’s no reason you can’t earn a little extra money. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world make a living off doing stuff on the computer, so there’s no reason that you can’t learn to make an extra $10, $20, or even $100 a month by doing things online.
Yes, you might have to learn a few things, but no matter how old you are, you are capable of learning. Ivy Bean was 104 years old, and she used Twitter daily. She had 56,000 followers when she passed away, and she became a trending Twitter topic. If she had thought to, she likely could have gotten someone to sponsor her tweets and made some money at it.
Baddie Winkle is an 87 year old Twitter and Instagram (1.7 million followers on Instagram!) user who has done exactly that. She’s created a brand and a huge following, and she often has people that sponsor her to post. She also goes to events and speaks and has created a fun and interesting life for herself while building up a little of income.
Anyway, you get the point — you can learn no matter how old you are.
So what can you do on the computer?
Here’s some ideas:
- Write on sites like this one; you can write about your favorite topic, write personal posts, teach people what you know, and more. I’d also recommend Vocal as a great site to write, share your knowledge and experience, and earn money.
- Write for clients; if you have excellent writing skills, there are many businesses and websites that will pay for your contributions.
- Write for magazines; many magazines that are published in paper format accept electronic submissions.
- Sell something on Fiverr.com — you can sell both electronic and physical goods on Fiverr.
- Share on social media; if you have a social media presence, you can get paid for promoting other people’s stuff.
- Be a social media manager; help a business or person manage their social media accounts by answering questions and posting links, memes, and other relevant content to engage their audience.
- Be a community manager; forums and other places of discussion need people to start discussions and answer questions.
- Write ebooks — if you have specific knowledge about a topic, like writing stories/fiction, or even poetry, you can publish on platforms like Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes and get paid when someone buys your books.
- Create graphics; if you’re good with PhotoShop you can create all sorts of images and people will pay good money for them! Create logos, ebook covers, and more and you can get paid!
- Create a blog; spend a little time blogging about something you are passionate about each day and you may find yourself with a following of loyal readers who are interested in what you have to say. You can make money with your blog with paid sponsors, advertising, selling stuff you create, and many other ways.
- Sell stuff; if you love to go to garage sales, estate sales, etc. and can’t resist buying stuff, even if you know you won’t use them, at some point you’re going to have to get rid of some stuff. You can sell items you buy for more than you pay in buy/sell groups, ebay, craigslist, kijiji and other places. If you want to get serious about it, learn about what sells and what people are looking for and what they will pay. If you live in the US, you can even sell on Amazon and make good money.
- Do surveys; many people think that there is not any money to be made with surveys these days but the research is still being done by companies and they need survey participants. LEO/LegerOpinion (previously LegerWeb) is a good company to do surveys with (I used to work for the main company). There are other reputable survey companies that will pay you, too. Just do a bit a research.
- Get paid to search; yes, as in do web searches. Sites like Swagbucks.com or InboxDollars.com will pay you to download their web browser and you can earn money.
- Arts/crafts; yep, if you’re a crafter or an artist you can sell your stuff online. The most popular place to do this is Etsy.com but there are lots of other places, too.
- Make phone calls; many customer service call centers are going virtual and they hire people who work at home to take calls or make calls. It’s not all sales either. There’s customer support and market research companies that hire people to work from their homes.
- Transcribe audio; if you have good typing skills you can transcribe the audio of a file into written text.
- Test products; companies will send you products to test, give your opinion on them, and maybe review.
I’d love to hear how YOU make extra money, whether online or offline.
