Although money may not be your primary focus in life, you need to have a certain amount of income to care for yourself and a family. Housing, food, clothing, entertainment, schooling, and other expenses all add up quickly. In many cases, the income you earn from your full-time job won’t be enough to meet all of your family’s needs.
In other cases, this income can meet your most basic needs, but it doesn’t provide you with the extra money you need to save for retirement or pay for a vacation. For many families, this leads to ongoing stress. When money feels tight, you may start considering other ways to make more money.
Whether you’re just starting out in your career or you’re quickly approaching your retirement years, these money-making ideas could help you bring in extra income and improve your quality of life.
Pick up freelance work online to get money
Make money online through websites such as Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer.com. These sites offer opportunities to do a variety of freelance jobs, such as writing, programming, design, marketing, data entry and being a virtual assistant. Fluent in a second language? Check sites such as Gengo or Blend Express, or drum up business through a site of your own. No matter what freelancing you do, keep track of the going rate for the kind of work you provide so you know what to charge. Learn how to get started on Upwork.
A recent report from Freelancer.com found that creative writing jobs had the fastest growth in listings on its site in the second quarter of 2023, up 58%. And although generative artificial intelligence (AI) is being used more for content creation, it can’t fully do the work of human writers.
Companies are looking for writers who know how to edit AI content and who have at least a basic understanding of search engine optimization — learning or beefing up SEO skills could be a lucrative side hustle. Some freelancers are charging $100 an hour or more for their freelance writing services.
Make deliveries
If you want to earn money driving but aren’t interested in making awkward car conversations, you can make deliveries instead. Apps such as DoorDash, UberEats, Grubhub, and Instacart focus on delivering fast food, groceries, and other items, with a similar sign-up and payment process as ridesharing.
Shipt is another app that pays you to do shopping and/or pick up and drop off packages to customers’ homes. Workers earn an average of $25 to $35 per hour and are guaranteed at least $16 per hour. You can get paid weekly or daily.
Sell clothes and accessories online
Want to make money fast and clear out some closet space? Multiple online consignment stores allow you to sell clothes, shoes, handbags, and more.
Poshmark, for instance, lets you set up an online closet where you showcase items for sale. Brand names and well-designed posts featuring high-quality pictures, detailed descriptions, and competitive prices will likely sell faster. Once a sold item reaches its destination, funds are released to your account within three days.
Similar services include Mercari, ThredUp, Depop, and The RealReal. But you don’t have to stick with consignment stores; services such as Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist also allow you to sell your belongings without a middleman, though it may take more time to vet buyers, and you may receive more lowball offers.
Tutor online
If you think being a tutor means you made straight A’s through high school and college, think again. It’s all about what you know and how well you know it. Online tutoring companies like Tutor.com, TutorMe and Studypool hire tutors to share their knowledge with students on a wide group of topics.
Just make sure you’re careful when figuring out which tutoring gig to take. Some of the users on these on-demand tutoring sites are really just looking for someone to write their essay or do their homework for them. Be smart when sifting through the postings.
Become a user experience tester
Every business hopes their website gives great information, hits their goals, and—oh yeah—makes money. But if something isn’t working, the business needs to know why, and a lot of them call on user experience testers to give feedback.
Are you good at knowing if a website is user-friendly just by spending a few minutes scanning the webpage? Companies like UserTesting or TryMyUI will pay you for your feedback. Most of them boast that you’ll get $10 for each 20-minute test you complete!
Online market trading
Investing in the stock market isn’t necessarily an easy way to make money but it can be lucrative if you learn to do it properly. By the same token, all trading involves risk so only ever invest what you can afford to lose.
Today there is no need to fund the yachts of Wolf of Wall Street style stock brokers. You can do it all yourself with the help of online market trading platforms. Having spent many hours researching this new opportunity, I’ve been using the popular platform eToro.com.m
eToro is fully regulated and has over 25 million users worldwide. They featured in the BBC Two documentary “Traders: Millions by the Minute” and sponsor several Premier League football clubs. One of the unique things on eToro is the CopyTrader feature. This lets you see, follow and copy the investments of other top-performing traders. Start with a virtual portfolio where you get $100k to practice trading without any risk.