Whether you’ve promised your kids a trip to Disney, have a personal travel checklist to tick with a month-long stay in Japan, or you’re halfway through your Europe trip fund, it’s no secret that saving for vacation can be super stressful not only financially, but also mentally and emotionally.
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But with plenty of side hustle, part-time jobs, and passive income-generating opportunities available these days both online and offline, why stress out?
With proper planning and time management, you can save money for vacation even while you sleep…
Here are 20 tried-and-tested ways you can make and save money.
5 Ways to Earn passive Income
Passive income is defined as earnings you get on a regular basis resulting from a task that require no or little effort to maintain. This means you work hard initially, then reap the benefits of your labor for years to come.
Having a rental property fits the bill quite perfectly, since you won’t have to spend a lot of money anymore after investing in the purchase or construction of your rented property.
When it comes to earning passive income online, these 5 are the most common routes to take:
1. Blog
It may sound so simple, like a girl’s diary of her day-to-day life, but blogging has so much potential no matter the niche you decide to take.
When you share a family’s secret recipe, for example, you can add a photo, video and text instructions in one post. You can incorporate AdSense ads all over your post, and use YouTube for your recipe tutorials.
Within this same post, you can recommend which pans and pots to use and direct your readers where to buy the supplies and equipment you just used. If they buy anything from that store, you get a commission. In short, use affiliate marketing wisely.
Earnings from your blogging will depend largely on how much posting you do, how relatable your topic is, and how much marketing you’re willing to invest in the blog, since let’s face it, you have to spread the word about your blog to attract new people in.
2. Publish an e-book
If you have flair for words and a topic you’re passionate about (magic, physics, making money online, or anything under the sun), publishing an e-book is easier than you think.
And if done right, this business is a set-and-forget kind, so once you’ve written a book, published it as an e-book, and performed some marketing, the potential for passive income is higher. Want to learn how? Check out stories of people who did the ebook business right here.
What’s cool about ebook publishing is that you can even extend you success in online publishing by turning your ebook into audiobook and adding another income stream overnight.
As an example of the money you can pull in with an ebook and audiobook combo, ” if you’re bringing in $1,500 a month in ebook sales, you could expect to make an extra $150 to $300 in audiobook sales.” How awesome is this income possibility for just a couple of days or weeks of work?
3. Create something and get paid for it over and over
Aside from an ebook and audiobook that you technically “create” and get paid over and over for it, you can also do this for other things like:
- Mobile apps – the demand for these see no decline, but creating mobile apps require high technical skills. Learn how to become a mobile app developer here.
- Photographs – Take any kind of photographs (even with just your phone), then sell royalties for them. If you’re not a pro, you can check out these 4 apps that pay for your photos.
- Sewing or craft patterns – Are you a master seamstress? tailor? or just a self-taught patternmaker? You can create one for pet clothes, home decor, clothing, and other items, then sell it on Etsy, on your blog, or even on social media.
- Graphic design products – Go wild with creativity creating calendars, maps, journal templates, stamps, brushes, background paper and other graphic design products.
- Greeting cards and comics – Whether you’re good with words, or crazy-good with cartoons, you can get a never-ending paycheck for creating greeting cards.
This is just the beginning.
I’m sure there are plenty of other examples that fall under this category.
4. Master automation
When it comes to earning passive income online, one can truly feel that you’re “earning while you sleep” if you have finally mastered automation.
Here are 4 simple examples of utilizing automation on websites:
- Set-and-forget a Dropshipping Store – With a dropshipping ecommerce store, you don’t maintain an inventory of products. Instead, you seek suppliers who are willing to ship out orders to your customers once an order comes in from your store. You either pay the supplier a cut for the sale, or earn a referral commission instead. Either way, setting up such a shop can grow quickly if done right.
- Build a niche website – An educational website packed with information about a specific niche can survive for a long time after the initial set-up. While the first 10 or so pages require hard work, if you provide helpful content, that would be enough to earn followers, ad revenues, memberships, and other income streams of your choice. You still need to update the site eventually though (to keep up with the all mighty Google updates), but it wouldn’t be a daily thing.
- Comparison site – Another set-and-forget website that could work automated is a comparison site. This can focus on a wide range of things from hosting or domain packages to cameras, mobile phones, any kind of gadgets, home equipment, construction tools, and other things that would benefit from a comparison chart.
- Directory site – It is one of the oldest types of websites around, but it continues to be a good money earner if you know how to automate the searches, advertising and overall site operations.
5. Become a Print-on-Demand Artist
Print-on-Demand (PoD) allows any person to create designs and showcase them on PoD sites. Once a customer decides to buy your design and have it printed on a t-shirt, canvas, notebook, poster, or any other material, you just sit back and let the PoD site handle everything for you (from printing to after-sales customer support, shipping, and even marketing).
The downside though is that sites like Design by Humans, Threadless and other PoD sites will get a big cut of the sale.
6 Money-Saving Habits You Should Get Used to
You don’t have to actively look for side hustle to save money for your vacation.You just have to do things differently than you’re used to.
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You won’t strike rich doing the following things, but you’d be surprised that it could save you money you never even think you were losing before.
1. Walk and earn
Some of these gigs offer monetary rewards, while others give you credits to pay for necessities like medical prescriptions.
2. Get paid to watch TV or movies
Nielsen, the company that rates TV shows and movies, seek the help of regular folk like you and me to give them access to what we’re watching.
This data will earn you $50 a year plus a chance to win prizes as well.
3. Earn money by listening to music
If you love exploring new music and artists, check out ways how you can earn credits from your regular music-listening.
4. Use Ibotta and ShopTracker for Shopping
Available in Google Play and iTunes, this cashback rewards app not only gives you $10 just for creating an account, but also saves you plenty of cash by giving you access to discounts and coupons before checking out from a store.
ShopTracker, meanwhile, pays you to give them access to your Amazon purchase history.
5. Use Bing with Your Online Search
Skip Google and use Bing for your online searching instead. Use this on your mobile as well, and invite friends to switch to earn credits. You can exchange these credits for airline miles, hotel discounts, and gift cards on Amazon, Sephora, Shutterfly and more, along with several fast-food favorites like IHOP, Applebee’s and Starbucks.
If I were you and you’re still plotting how to save money for a trip, join Swagbucks.com to check what day-to-day tasks you can incorporate into your “money saving/ money making” plan.
6. Invest Your Change with Acorns
Install Acorns on your phone today and get a quick $5 just for signing up.
That’s not even the coolest part yet!
Acorns saves your “change” from all the purchases you make for the day and invests it on your behalf. For a $3.5 coffee, the app rounds up the amount to the nearest dollar and sets the 50 cents aside for you.
What’s cool about money-saving opportunities like these is that they don’t have to be exclusively for your “how to save for a vacation” plan. It can be for other long-term savings, such as purchase for a car, your dream espresso machine, and so on.
6 Quick Ways of Making Extra Cash
Saving for vacation funds are hard, but if you’re almost about to reach your target, but need some extra push before your due date, here are 6 ways you can make money online fast:
1. Perform Micro gigs
Easy tasks like creating a logo, writing a Facebook ad, and so on are paid as low as $5, but are everywhere on micro job websites like Fiverr, Roundshelf, Zeerk, Fiverup, SEOClerks, GigBucks and Amazon Mechanical Turk, and more.
Don’t expect fair wages with these websites, but if you’re in need of quick gigs without being put through interviews and exams, micro gigs are the way to go.
2. Install apps
Just install these apps and forget they’re on your phone.
Apps from ShopTracker, ebates, and Nielsen Mobile Panel (among others) will pay you $10 to join install their apps.
3. Sign up to websites and get a “joining bonus”
Here’s another way how to save money for vacation without stressing it out.
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Collect a list of websites that will pay you from $5 to $20 just for joining. Samples of these websites include Inbox Dollars, eBates, Swagbucks, ibotta, TopCashback, MyPoints, and etc.
4. Test websites
You don’t have to be a programmer to participate in website-testing. You just have to know what constitutes a good-looking, speedy, and well-functional website…and you can be in.
It’s a quick job too! Each testing only lasts about 20 to 30 minutes and gets you $10 a pop.
Websites like Userfeel and other 15 companies on this list are looking for website testers, so better check them out.
5. Answer Surveys
You’d probably been warned enough about the numerous survey firm scams that have plagued the world wide web for decades. What you probably don’t know is that answering surveys is still one of the quickest ways to make money in a day.
Google Opinion Rewards is a good example of a legitimate survey you can try. There’s also the survey offers from Swagbucks, Inbox Dollars, and reputable survey sites like InstaGC, Earnhoney, and Prizehoney.
6. Write reviews
If you love reading books and leaving reviews online, you can turn this hobby into a money-making side hustle.
Pay for book reviews vary completely on the length of book, literature, or other text available for review, but requirements are lax and the jobs are open for anyone.
These quick-cash tasks can’t be used alone for saving for vacation, especially since many of these gigs only pay you once (or take longer times for the next gigs to appear), but they definitely help if you’re left with only a couple of hundred dollars until your target date.
3 Old-school Methods of Raising Funds
As long as you’re not doing anything illegal, you can always include traditional fundraising methods in planning how to save money for vacation.
1. Sell online
You can sell clothes, old toys, books you no longer have space for, or anything else you wish to dispose but other people may still find useful. There are even apps made specifically for online selling.
Don’t know which marketplace to move your stuff? Here’s a quick online selling guide.
2. Help others
You’d be surprised that you can save money for vacation simply by finding ways to help other people. For example, check with your neighbors who are planning to go on a vacation themselves and volunteer to be a house sitter (this is a legit career for most people, so I’m sure your neighbors will be more than happy to pay you to keep their home safe).
Other ways of helping people while earning extra cash include:
- tutor students
- teach English to non-ESL kids and adults
- help people lose weight
- assist other people prepare tax returns
- create custom travel itineraries for others
- become a life coach
- remind people to take their meds as Pleio’s GoodStart Mentor
- …and many more.
3. Get an online job
If you just finalized a destination for your next vacation, targeted a date, or began planning for ways to save money and earn extra income, taking on an online job could be a huge game changer.
You don’t even have to get a full-time, online job to replace your office-based job. Even a part-time gig that you do after work, or during weekends, could add a dent to your travel fund.
This list of 75 legit online jobs could give you a head-start. You can choose which job/s best fit your skills, time availability, and amount of cash you need for your vacation.
The Bottom Line
It’s up to you which method to choose – pick one from each category, do it all, whichever you feel could help you reach your target.
Once you’ve experienced saving for vacation fund and successfully reaching your goal amount, I’m sure you’d use this fundraising plan continuously.
As always, I recommend choosing one passive income-generating opportunity with any side hustle. Having this kind of income stream goes beyond saving for vacation – it’s saving for your future as well.
