For many teenage girls, learning how to become a babysitter is the initial step to getting their own pocket money and more responsibility outside of the home.
Babysitting is a great first job to have for teenagers, and they usually start out at 11 to 15 years old.
Learn how to become a babysitter through this comprehensive guide: know if babysitting is for you, what to expect, what you need to learn to be a good babysitter, how to find babysitting jobs, and how to stand out as a babysitter.
Things to Consider Before Becoming a Babysitter
Before you become a babysitter, you’ll need to decide whether it’s the right job for you. Here are some things you need to think about.
Do you like kids?
Yes, babysitting pays well, but if you don’t even like kids, there’s no point.
It doesn’t just involve sitting on the couch and watching TV all evening.
The children that you’re tasked to care for aren’t inanimate objects. You’d have to actually interact and engage with them.
If just the thought of playing and talking to children for hours doesn’t interest you or even scares you, maybe babysitting isn’t for you.
Do you have time in your day to babysit?
Consider your after-school activities, your homework, family activities, social life, and hobbies. Will there be enough time in a weekday for you to babysit?
What about your weekends?
You see, parents prefer to hire babysitters who are available on short notice or can stay later than usual. The more flexible your schedule, the more you’ll get hired and the more extra pay you can get.
What you can do is find out through other babysitters or by trial and error which days are in demand and schedule your other activities around it so that you’re free to take babysitting jobs during high-demand days.
Are you mature enough?
Babysitting seems like a gig where you get paid to hang out with kids, but there’s more to it than that.
Parents are putting you in charge of their children, which means you’ll be responsible for their safety and well-being, as well as making sure that their house rules are still being followed.
Moreover, you’ll be in charge of their house, and parents need to be able to trust that you aren’t going to snoop around their stuff or gossip about personal stuff to other people.
Plus, you need to be reliable; you need to be a babysitter who shows up, and shows up right on time.
If you don’t think you’re ready, that’s okay. But maybe you’re not ready to become a babysitter; at least not yet.
Tools of the Trade: Learn How to Babysit
If you think you’re ready to be a babysitter, the next step is learning what parents expected to do when you’re with their children.
Babysitters have three main duties:
1. Keep Kids Safe
Accidents and injuries can happen at any time.
Sometimes, the difference between an accident and a tragedy is having someone present who knows how to handle emergencies.
It’s not enough to know to call 911. Learning how to give first aid and CPR, as well as what to do if there’s a fire or even a home invasion, are going to help you in a big way.
Save the parents’ emergency numbers in your cellphone so you can easily call them. Write them down and keep those numbers near the house phone or landline.
2. Keep Kids Taken Care Of
You should already know how to keep kids clean and fed, taking note of their food allergies, preferences, and instructions on what they’re not supposed to have, such as potato chips or soda.
But aside from basic care, you should also know how to handle behavioral issues.
For example, if parents of a small toddler leave during your shift, what will you do if the toddler cries non-stop and looks for the parents?
How will you handle younger kids not listening to you?
When you babysit for a family, it’s most likely that you end up as the oldest kid in the house.
Always talk and act as a good example because younger kids could copy what you’re doing.
3. Keep Kids Entertained
If you’re babysitting multiple kids, the easiest way to handle them is to keep them busy.
The best babysitters bring a “sitter bag” that contains games, art supplies, puzzles, and other surprises that younger kids would love.
Stimulate their young minds with age-specific knowledge presented through play.
If you don’t have any idea how to do this, check out Blippi on YouTube. That guy knows how to present concepts in an interesting and engaging way for kids.
How to Get Started Babysitting
I don’t want to scare you from babysitting, but there are things you can do to be better prepared to become a babysitter.
Take a Babysitting Class
Organizations such as the American Red Cross offers babysitting training and classes so you can be prepared to babysit if it’s your first time.
You can also go to Safe Sitter to find a class near you or take a virtual class.
It’s not strictly necessary, but parents are likely to hire babysitters who have taken at least a basic babysitting class.
Take Safety Courses
When it comes to child safety, knowing how to do first aid and CPR on children are certainly important. If you’re babysitting for a family that has a pool, water safety is another thing to learn.
The American Red Cross offers classes on first aid and CPR, as well as water safety.
Work on Your Communication Skills
Parents usually choose a babysitter who can communicate properly. If you are open to talk about anything from their kid’s behavioral problems to incidents that happen during your shift, this openness would help build your relationship with families you work for.
Kids also value communication skills. They’re highly sensitive and can tell whether you genuinely care about them.
You need to be able to talk to children about their ideas, answer their questions, and take their fears seriously without scaring them further.
Develop a Good Work Ethic
This will probably be your first job, so you have a lot of time to develop your work ethic. But working on it early on wouldn’t hurt.
Be on time for all your shifts. Listen and follow rules from your employers. And generally do things in such a way that would make you feel proud.
Get Some Experience
Do your parents trust you to stay home alone, and have they ever left you alone for any amount of time or even overnight?
If not, that’s the first step! After all, you need to be able to take care of yourself before you take care of other children.
If you have younger siblings, you can ask your parents to trust you to take care of them, if you aren’t already doing it.
Not only do you get experience, but you can also show them that you’re serious about becoming a babysitter.
Or, if you don’t have younger siblings, maybe you can ask aunts, uncles, or other relatives who have children in the house to babysit them for a few hours to get more experience.
You may even want to offer to babysit for a few hours for free as a trial run. You get more experience while convincing them that you’re worth hiring.
Build Your Confidence
Babysitting isn’t always fun; sometimes you’ll need to have children pick up their toys, eat their vegetables, and brush their teeth before bedtime.
Becoming a babysitter means having to enforce the rules, so you’ll need to be confident enough to be firm yet gentle with them.
Part of being confident is being humble. You’ll probably never get things perfectly the first time, so you need to be open to constructive feedback from both the parents and the children you’re babysitting.
While you’re at it, you also need to know the difference between helpful criticism and verbal abuse. If you’re not sure, ask your parents.
And remember, you’re not anyone’s slave; you don’t need to go back to a house where you are uncomfortable.
Decide How You’ll Offer Your Babysitting Services
Knowing what you know at this point, you should have an idea which families you should target, how many hours you can spare to babysit, and how far away from your home you can offer your services.
Before you take on a babysitting job, make sure their children are just the right age for you to handle.
Parents are more likely to leave babies and younger toddlers to older, more experienced babysitters.
If you’re younger, you’re likely to find yourself watching older kids who are more independent and less likely to get into trouble.
Also, as I’ve mentioned above, you need to be able to offer your services reliably, and you should be able to set aside a few hours a week.
Think about how long you can spare to babysit, as well as how late your parents are going to allow you to stay out.
You would also need to map out how far from your home you’re willing to babysit, and a huge factor is what transportation you have available.
Will your parents be able to bring you to the house where you babysit every time you have work?
If you don’t have transportation available, will you be open to walking? How about being driven to/from by your employers? Will your real parents be fine with this setup?
If your parents are working and your new job cannot provide you with transportation, maybe you should consider online jobs for teens instead.
How to Find Babysitting Jobs
If you’re a big sister to younger siblings and you love being so, you might consider babysitting as one of the easy ways to make money.
Now that you know the tools of the trade and what to expect on the job, here’s the most challenging part of all: finding babysitting jobs for you. So where do we start the job hunt?
Recommendations – Ask your friends and family about possible babysitting jobs they know. If you’re up for it, make flyers and ask your parents to spread the word. Look around your area: your neighbors may be in need of help.
Check in your school – Go around the school and ask your classmates if their parents are in need of a babysitter. How about your teachers? If your school has a job board, check if there are babysitting listings available.
Community center – Does your town have a community center? Look for “babysitter needed” posters and see if anyone is on the lookout for a babysitter.
When you’re marketing your babysitting services, create a Facebook page or website.
You’d be surprised how many people on Facebook are trying to look for babysitters in your area.
Online Babysitting Jobs
Two popular sites for sitters to sign up with are SitterCity and Care.com.
Sittercity is available in all 50 US states and features over 6 million babysitters. At Sittercity, you can not only hire a babysitter but also a nanny, au pair, or regular childcare.
To get started with Sittercity, complete your profile and include pertinent information about your past experience, preferences (e.g., non-smoking or smoking house), average hourly rate, and availability. You will also be given the option of having Sittercity perform a background check on you (for a small fee).
It is highly recommended that you agree to the background check because that will increase the number of work requests you receive.
You can also peruse job postings placed by parents and solicit your services via the Sittercity site.
Care.com is a global care site that spans 18 countries and has been around since 2007.
This site has millions of members and offers a range of care services, from childcare to assisted living services.
You can fill out a form with Care.com, which includes creating a detailed profile containing your photo, preferences, experience, skills, hobbies, etc.
Just like with Sittercity, you can use Care.com to look for sitter jobs and have families contact you directly about your services.
Parents and relatives can also leave detailed reviews about your services, rates, skills, etc. If you rack up enough good reviews, your odds of securing steady work will increase.
If you’re at least 16 years old and live in a major city, Babysits is a good option to find babysitting jobs.
It’s completely free to sign up and you get to apply for babysitting jobs near you. Plus, it has plenty of resources if you’re looking for babysitting tips, kid-friendly activities, crafts, and even kid recipes.
Monster.com, Craigslist, etc. can also be taken advantage of for listing your babysitting services.
These sites are free to use and are widely viewed.
How to Stand Out as a Babysitter
When there are hundreds or even thousands of sitters to compete against in your neck of the woods, how do get more babysitting jobs?
The answer lies in add-on services and extra/special skills.
Parents are most likely to hire you if you do or know the following:
You can drive.
If you have a car and can use it to drive kids to their soccer matches and piano recitals, you’ll become a valuable asset to parents everywhere.
With SitterCity, you can have your driver’s license verified for an extra fee to ensure that you are legally certified to drive.
You have early childhood education.
Kids are rarely logical, polite, and obedient.
However, you can induce them to become that way, at least for an evening, if you know a little bit about childhood psychology.
Community and online colleges offer different classes in childhood development and psychology, and completing them will definitely make you stand out amongst anxious parents.
You are punctual.
Believe it or not, the single biggest complaint that parents have about babysitters is that they are late.
So, as an up-and-coming babysitter, do your part to arrive on time at your destinations.
You are creative.
Do you know how to fill an evening with card tricks, painting projects, or an expedition to the local park? Can you pick up and play the latest PC games or discuss cartoon characters?
The more you ‘get’ your clients’ kids, the more likely those clients will be to call you for repeat babysitting.
And it never hurts to be known as their “favorite babysitter” either.
How much money do babysitters make?
Nowadays, the going rate for babysitting services is $15 per hour. The days when you would see someone paying $20 for an entire night of babysitting are long gone.
For urban centers and megacities like New York or San Francisco, it’s common to earn around $20 per hour.
Even novice babysitters that have extra skills and training can command rates in the high teens.
The Babysitting Bottom Line
Interacting with children as a side hustle may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you like it, the money is certainly waiting for you.
And if you land a babysitting position, do a good job. Take care of your reputation.
And consider your services as a full-blown business.
Even if you’ve outgrown your teen years, you can still continue the babysitting business if you want to.
Interested in becoming a babysitter? Tell us in the comments when you land your first babysitting job!
I’ve heard of some pretty interesting ways to make money for the last few years, but getting paid to wear clothes is probably one of the more unique ones.
But strange as it sounds, I assure you it is a real thing.
The fashion industry is gigantic, with new outfits and trends released every season. Competition is fierce.
Clothing companies know that word-of-mouth advertising is the best type of brand awareness money can buy. Naturally, they would find a way to make the most of that, which means great things for anyone who’s looking to make a few bucks on the side.
I looked into the various ways you can start generating income by wearing clothes and found a few options, which are listed below.
But keep in mind that the fashion industry does rely on a touch of vanity so most of these options require someone with an outspoken personality who isn’t afraid of putting themselves out there.
Do People Really Get Paid to Wear Clothes?
Yes!
In fact, it’s nothing new.
Celebrities have been receiving huge checks for years by simply going out and being photographed wearing certain clothing brands.
With the rise of the internet and social media, this sweet gig isn’t limited to traditional celebrities anymore.
Anyone who puts in the effort (in a smart way, of course) can end up getting paid to wear clothes.
You just have to know where to look for the right opportunities.
However, it’s still important to keep realistic expectations.
The examples I provide below will help you get started on a gig that can get you paid to promote clothing but remember that there’s no guarantee.
The fashion and marketing industries might be big but as I’ve mentioned, that also means there’s plenty of competition.
I also won’t try to fool you by saying that you’ll make it if you just work hard enough.
There’s still an element of luck, and it helps to be in the right place at the right time.
That’s not something you can learn by reading a blog.
You Might Not Actually Wear the Clothes
Some people do get paid to wear clothing with advertisements or brand logos on them and I do provide examples of those below.
But by far the largest pool of opportunities I found involved promoting the product or brand. This almost always involves some sort of social media following.
The easiest way to find this type of side gig is via affiliate partnerships.
This means you’ll have to work quite a bit at building a following before you’ll reap any rewards.
Plus, in many cases, people don’t get paid with cash but do receive the clothing for free in exchange for promoting the clothes or brand.
It might not get you rich, but hey, it’s free clothes!
3 Companies That Do Pay Cash
Brands do not advertise this, but they’re always looking for feedback about their products. Yes, even when the products are clothes.
Getting product testers help companies improve their future designs.
If you’re interested in testing out other products, the following 3 sites will pay you, in cash, to give feedback on brands.
10 Ways You Can Get Paid to Wear Clothes
If you’re keen on getting paid for the clothes on your back then check out these examples of the different ways you can get paid to promote clothes in 2024.
1. Get Paid to Wear a T-Shirt
There aren’t many gigs around where people will pay you just to wear a t-shirt, but it can happen.
Companies and organizations have t-shirts produced with their company and logos exactly for free advertisement, so why would they pay you for wearing them?
It’s a matter of wearing a t-shirt and being seen wearing that t-shirt by the right audience.
So instead of them going to you, you’ll need to go to them.
Contact your favorite brands and ask if they’ll be willing to sponsor you to wear their branded t-shirts and upload them to your social media platforms, like Instagram or TikTok.
You can also offer to wear them to busy places and events to promote their brand.
If you know how to design and create t-shirts, you might even want to offer to design and create a t-shirt for them. If you’re lucky, you could even get paid for it, aside from wearing and advertising their shirt.
However, this gig is more of a rare occurrence than a steady thing.
As such, it is highly unlikely that you’d be able to bargain on making any sort of steady income out of this.
At best, you could get the occasional few bucks and a free t-shirt.
If you’re going to increase your social media following and contact companies anyway, you may want to aim bigger and become a brand ambassador.
The occasional free t-shirt aside, you’ll have a much bigger shot at getting paid to promote clothes via a social media account with a steady following.
It doesn’t matter which social media platform you choose, though Instagram and Pinterest seem to be the most lucrative choices here.
The world of fashion and marketing is steadily migrating away from big splashy advertising gambits and towards more natural connections with their audience through brand ambassadors on social media.
It’s a great time to get into this industry because there are plenty of success stories but it’s still new enough that you have a shot at carving out some space for yourself.
You can reach out to your favorite brands yourself, as I’ve mentioned above, or you can join platforms like Skeepers (formerly Octoly) or Ilolas who can connect you to these brands and companies.
You don’t have to have a huge social media following to get some of the same perks that celebs do.
The Demand for Micro Influencers in 2024
More often than not, companies are on the lookout for micro-influencers who can help promote their products.
A micro-influencer is someone who has between 3,000-15,000 followers within a specific niche like fashion, games, sports, outdoor activities, etc.
If you have an active community, even better.
Marketers are looking for people who have a strong back and forth with their followers.
You could also look at joining an influencer marketing platform that can help you get noticed by companies who want to market their clothing or brand.
Another way to get paid for wearing clothes is to become an affiliate marketer.
Affiliate marketers are bloggers and content creators who post specially marked links on their blogs or social media.
These links lead to pages where customers can buy products or avail of services.
When a reader clicks on these links and results in a purchase or subscription, you’ll get a commission.
If you’re only beginning to blog or building your social media following, establishing affiliate partnerships is easier than becoming a brand ambassador.
In fact, being a successful affiliate and increasing your followers can help you be on your favorite brands’ radar. Before you know it, they may be contacting you to make a brand ambassador deal.
If you’ve become a popular affiliate marketer or a popular content creator for a while, but have yet to be contacted by brands to become an ambassador, this is for you.
Pitching sponsored posts to your favorite brands may be another way to gain their attention and get paid to wear their clothes.
The good thing is that whether you run a blog or are more active on social media, you can still get sponsored by your favorite brands.
First off, you need to make your content attractive to brands.
Your content should always provide value to your audience, whether it’s informative, instructive, or purely entertaining.
If you haven’t yet, create some posts featuring honest reviews of clothes from brands you actually buy from and like. Make sure to include gorgeous photos of yourself wearing those clothes.
Then, create a Sponsor page on your blog, letting prospective brands and advertisers know that you’re open to sponsored posts.
For social media, it can be as simple adding a line in your profile or About Me section that says something like:
“For sponsorships or partnerships, email me at [your email address]”
Remember, even if you’ve set up your sponsor page and contact information, this doesn’t mean you just have to wait for companies to notice you.
Yup, you can start pitching your ideas for sponsored postsby contacting and emailing your favorite brands and expressing your ideas.
After perseverance and hard work, if you’re lucky, you can get paid a few times to wear clothes and create content about them.
You may even get free clothes out of this!
Don’t limit yourself to the usual editorial, text + photo post.
You may want to create posts teaching ways to wear a certain clothing item, how to accessorize, or even a music video featuring yourself wearing the featured clothes.
5. Show off Your Athletic Side
If you’re already an athlete, then you have a pretty good chance of getting a sponsorship from an athletic brand.
You don’t have to be a professional athlete to sign up with OpenSponsorship but you do need to be in the public eye when you do your thing.
Plenty of businesses in your area or state are looking to get their company in front of as many eyes of their target audience as possible.
OpenSponsorship is essentially a database of athletes, teams, and events, in which brands can look at athletes and read all about them to know whether they’d be a good fit for their product and their target audience.
Brands can then contact the athletes’ agents directly and negotiate with the goal of coming to a sponsorship deal.
This process works the same for businesses of all sizes.
Thus, OpenSponsorship makes it simple for businesses of all sizes to connect with athletes to sponsor with their clothes and other athletic gear.
6. Become A Blogger
Starting a blog, specifically a lifestyle blog, can become a great way to get paid to wear clothes.
Having a blog actually makes the first 5 things on this list easier to do. With your blog, you can:
wear and promote t-shirts,
become a brand ambassador,
promote affiliate links,
publish sponsored posts, and
get sponsorships from top athletic brands
Sponsors actually prefer brand ambassadors and influencers who have a blog aside from their social media account. A big reason for that is a blog is your own space.
Social media platforms rise and fall in popularity all the time and influencers can’t control these platforms’ policies on posts.
Think about the popularity – and downfall – of platforms like Friendster or MySpace.
Blogs, on the other hand, are under the control of the owner of the blog: that’s you.
And for as long as your blog is active, the sponsored posts you create are out there, searchable, and can be found and shared by potential customers.
Aside from getting paid for wearing clothes, blogging opens up a world of possibilities that you can earn passive income for years to come.
7. Approach Local Businesses
If you have the guts to take matters from your online presence to your physical space, then you can certainly approach your local businesses.
For this to work, you must sell the idea of you walking around wearing their brand and essentially promoting their clothes locally.
Most local business owners are always looking for the cheapest and most efficient way to get noticed. They might find your approach novel enough to go for it.
There’s a good chance other business owners in the area will see you and be interested in doing the same marketing technique.
8. Work As A Runway Model
Okay, this one is definitely out of reach for most people, but I still need to include it here.
Runway models most definitely get paid to wear clothes as they showcase both their beauty and whatever new trends that fashion designers can conjure.
Female runway models make considerably more than their male counterparts, but both are needed in the fashion industry.
You can get started on the small stage and make a few hundred bucks per show.
The bigger the event, the more you can get paid.
If you think you have the looks, love of fashion, and moxie to make it, here’s our guide on how to work as a runway model.
9. Feature Clothes on TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Stories, and YouTube Shorts
With the popularity of short-form videos (videos on TikTok, Instagram, FB stories), you can showcase those free clothes and get paid for your effort.
Sure, the clothing brands aren’t the ones paying for you to do this.
You earn by monetizing your content from in-house ad programs of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube.
Earning this way doesn’t come overnight. You have several months to over a year to even see income, but there are high chances of earning if you keep at it.
10. Sell Clothes Online
There are many platforms you can use to sell online. From the traditional eBay and Etsy to larger ecommerce sites like Amazon, there’s no shortage of places to sell clothes.
However, the best way to sell out your items quickly is to plan and model the clothes first. So technically, you’ll be able to earn money by wearing clothes.
Can You Still Get Paid to Wear Clothes in 2024?
There are plenty of unusual side hustles out there, especially if you know where to look (like I’ve Tried That).
Getting paid to promote clothing may sound like a strange gig, but who cares when you’re laughing all the way to the bank, right?
As proven by the techniques I mentioned above, it is still possible to get paid to wear clothes more so in 2024.
If you’re really into the fashion world, check out my guides about:
We live in a world where people can make money beekeeping from home.
Hundreds of people do it on the side and earn cash from their passion.
Others have turned their home-based beekeeping business into a full-time venture and their main source of income.
Are you curious about what you need to start a beekeeping business?
Look no further.
Learn the ways you can make money beekeeping from home, what requirements you need to gather, and how to turn your beekeeping business into a profitable one.
How to Make Money Beekeeping From Home
From the conventional to the not-so-conventional, here are some of the ways you can earn money from beekeeping.
1. Selling Honey
Probably the first thing you think about when you hear “beekeeping” is honey.
Fake or adulterated honey is a real problem, and it’s widespread enough that many consumers don’t trust the honey in grocery stores or supermarkets.
There is also a high demand for raw honey for its nutritional value; commercial honey is often pasteurized, which destroys pathogens but also destroys nutrients.
You would need a little trial and error to know the right time to harvest and how much to take so that the bees don’t starve.
Keep in mind that the flavor of your honey will differ depending on where your bees get their nectar. For instance, if your bees like clover, the honey they produce will taste different from honey made by bees that like orange blossom.
2. Selling Beeswax
When you harvest honey, you remove the wax caps to access the honey. These wax caps can be strained and processed into beeswax that you can either sell in its raw form or use to make your own products.
Beeswax is highly sought after in the cosmetics industry as well as the candle industry, so you’ll likely have buyers of even the raw form.
You can also make beeswax-containing products yourself. Handmade goods like lip balm, hand cream, or healing salves are popular.
The markup is pretty decent, especially if you’re making the products yourself and selling them online or at the farmer’s market with minimal overhead or rent.
3. Selling Pollen
Bee pollen is a source of protein for the brood, the babies of the hive. It’s collected outside of the hive through pollen traps at the entrance.
As with honey, you need to be careful you don’t deplete the hive.
The problem is if you’re beekeeping in an urban or farming area, there’s a risk that the pollen is contaminated with pesticides.
But if you’re in an isolated area, you can collect, clean, frozen, and sell bee pollen.
4. Selling Propolis
Bees produce propolis, a resin-like sticky substance, from the buds of cone-bearing trees to seal cracks in their combs and disinfect it.
Harvesting and selling propolis is yet another way to make money beekeeping.
Propolis’ antibacterial, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory properties make it in demand for those who are into alternative and complementary therapy.
5. Offering Bee Venom Therapy
Bees excrete venom through their stingers when they sting a threat.
Why would anyone be interested in bee venom, though?
Scientific studies have actually found that bee venom contains anti-inflammatory compounds, peptides, phospholipase A2, and melittin, which have therapeutic effects.
Currently, the delivery of bee venom for therapeutic purposes involves stinging oneself in the affected areas.
Bee venom is also used in skincare products, particularly serums and creams, to reduce wrinkle depth and wrinkle count. However, extracting bee venom for cosmetics requires expensive, specialized equipment.
Extracting bee venom or using it for therapy involves having the bee sting, which is fatal for the bee. If you dislike the idea, you may not want to go this route.
6. Offering Commercial Pollination Services
The bee population is dwindling. Everybody knows this.
But industries that rely on bees for cross-pollination, such as the almond industry, feel the effects more significantly. They’re the ones who have to import bees from other states during the blooming season in order to obtain enough production for the year.
Unfortunately, the demand for pollinator services is high, since bees continue to decrease in population each year. The good news for beekeepers is that this demand can be an opportunity for extra money.
7. Selling Pollinator Seeds
Selling pollinator seeds and seedlings do not require transferring bees to another location; only the “food” that attracts bees to a particular garden.
Individuals and businesses look for this service so that they can get pollination services without having to maintain beehives.
8. Selling Beekeeping Equipment
Beekeeping equipment is widely available in the market, but as you’re going to discover, you may require some specialized equipment.
For example, beehives may work better with custom-made feeders, screens, escapes, and so on.
Having the knowledge to create custom workarounds on ready-made equipment is a skill in itself and many beekeepers are cashing in from this demand.
There are also other money-making opportunities in the beekeeping industry, such as consultation services.
Maintaining beehives is hard enough, but doing it for profit makes it 10x harder. Other people would gladly pay you to guide them every step of the way of starting a beekeeping business from scratch.
Home-Based Beekeeping Business Requirements
Like any business, you’ll need to comply with a few requirements before you can make money beekeeping. These include:
Basic Equipment
Here are some of the basic equipment you’ll need to start your beekeeping business.
Beehive
Hive Tool
Bee Brush
Bee Smoker
Protective gear
Frame grips
You can also invest in specialized equipment, such as Flow Hive, which allows you to harvest honey from your beehive straight into jars.
Paperwork
Aside from getting a business permit from your city or state, there are other specific beekeeping-related documents and paperwork you’d have to complete.
Your house where you will be beekeeping must be licensed and inspected annually.
Note that this is important because not everyone is allowed to take care of bees. Check if your home is zoned for beekeeping and if your homeowner’s association allows beekeeping or not.
If permits are gathered, you may also have to register bees (some states do not need this though).
Beekeeping inspection, licenses, and laws may vary among states, so it is best to check your state’s department of agriculture.
Startup Costs
If you’re starting the business from scratch, you’ll need money to buy equipment and starter bees, attend workshops, get insurance and settle government paperwork that requires fees.
Those who began beekeeping as a hobby may also need funding for expansion unless of course, the beehives you currently have are enough to sustain the number of honey jars, amount of beeswax for cosmetics, or generally the size of the company you want.
As a beekeeper, you’ll be considered a farmer and you’d likely receive special tax considerations. Check the IRS Farmer’s Tax Guide to get an idea.
In the U.S., setting up a single hive is about $600, depending on the type of boxes, tools, equipment, and beekeeping wear you buy.
If you’re interested in beekeeping mainly because you can technically run this business from home, it isn’t as simple as that.
The space available within your land should have enough food for bees without being a nuisance to your neighbors, livestock, or pets.
Insurance
Beekeepers aim to produce safe products, whether they focus on honey or its byproducts.
But being 100% careful and following rules doesn’t guarantee that your products will be safe 100% of the time. Having insurance in place prevents you (the person) from being liable if products from your beekeeping business become entangled in safety concerns or lawsuits.
Aside from these requirements, you’d also need to be constantly aware of new laws, the use of treatments, techniques in swarm collection, raising queen bees, or preventing diseases. You’d have to attend workshops regularly and be up-to-date with beekeeping news.
In addition, packaging (bottles, labels, and other materials), as well as labeling and marketing will also add to your expenses.
Should You Start Beekeeping From Home?
Making money beekeeping is not a walk in the park. Here are some pros and cons to consider before taking the plunge.
Benefits
Beekeeping isn’t too expensive to start.
A starter kit with a beehive and basic beekeeping equipment will set you back around $450 to $600.
It may sound like a lot, but compared to other home-based businesses, it’s pretty low.
Plus, if you decide that beekeeping is not for you, you can always sell the equipment, even at a loss.
Bees are low-maintenance.
Once a colony is established, you don’t need to spend hours a day monitoring them.
Depending on the climate, a few minutes to an hour a day is enough to check on your colony; probably longer during colder weather and during the winter.
Beekeeping is a rewarding hobby.
Tending bees can be a calming and peaceful experience, whether you do it for profit or not.
Experienced beekeepers report that watching their colonies build their homes, forage for food and water, make honey, and do their different dances to communicate is an amazing experience.
Risks
You risk getting stung.
If you’re one of the unfortunate people allergic to honey bee stings, a single misstep can cause serious medical problems or even death.
Your colony may just suddenly fly off or even die off.
Bee populations have been declining for the past several years, and your bees aren’t immune.
They may get diseases, parasites, or contaminated with pesticides.
You need a dedicated space for your hive.
You can’t just set up a beehive anywhere. The hive needs a sheltered area and a nearby source of nectar and water.
Also, bees take the quickest path from their food source to their hive; they’re not very considerate of people and pets that can cross their path.
Maximize Your Beekeeping Profits
Beekeeping can make you some excellent cash, but here are just some more tips so you can get the most out of your beekeeping business.
Learn all about your bees.
Being a successful beekeeper hinges on your knowledge of the bees themselves.
Learn all about honey bees, what makes them thrive, how they behave, and how external variables can affect them.
Research all about what kills a colony: parasites, pathogens, colony collapse disorder, poor nutrition, and pesticides.
Be realistic about the money you can make beekeeping.
If you’re expecting an immediate payout, you’ll be very disappointed. It takes around a year or two of hard work and intense learning to be able to recoup your startup costs.
Labor, equipment maintenance, taxes, disease, and other factors can increase your startup costs.
Also, you might find that bee products are not going to be your top money-makers, although very much in demand; you’ll earn more from renting out your beehives (at $100 to $200 a hive).
Get into as many income streams as you can.
Successful beekeepers take advantage of all possible ways to make money from their bees.
They harvest and sell bee products, create their own bee-based goods, then offer commercial pollination to businesses.
Some may even become beekeeping consultants, coaches, or instructors to pass on their wisdom.
Join beekeeping communities.
You can use the wisdom and encouragement of other beekeepers, especially in the beginning.
Joining beekeeping communities also provides you with awesome networking opportunities.
There may be a local Beekeepers Association near you, or you can try to find online communities on social media and beekeeping-focused forums and websites.
In time, you’ll be the one dispensing out advice and inspiration.
The Bee-ttom Line
The future of beekeeping is alive and well, as it should be, since the bee crisis isn’t even close to being solved.
Bees are also being wiped out by colony collapse disorder all around the world, so not only will you be able to help replenish our earth-saving bees, but you can also earn passive income with beekeeping.
If full commercial beekeeping is not your call (or if it turns out you’re allergic to bee stings), but you’d love a business centered on animals, check out my guide on how to start a dog daycare business from home.
Fiverr is one of the best sites to get quick online jobs you can do in your spare time, but if you’re planning to expand your virtual career, this platform could also serve as a cool way to know which top-selling Fiverr gigs can be added to your services offered. Use it for research and reevaluating your freelance options.
15 Top Selling Fiverr Gigs for 2023
Check out these top-selling Fiverr gigs you can incorporate into your services in 2022:
1. Logo, Business Card Design
Since the start of Fiverr in 2010, logo design has been one of the top-selling Fiverr gigs. This continues until today because every business needs a logo (whether the business is a brick-and-mortar one or a web-based business). And the demand remains strong even through a pandemic.
Got the eye for style and want to try logo making as a side hustle? Check here for a more in-depth guide on how to make a logo.
2. Content Writing
Content writing is a VERY BIG industry and encompasses everything from company website text to product descriptions, gossip news to even adult writing.
If you’re new to the industry but have a passion for writing, you can always begin fresh today and still get a piece of the pie, alongside seasoned content writers. You just need to learn how to present your services and pick the specialty that you like (and could earn significant money for).
Even if you have no idea what search engine optimization (SEO) is, I’m sure you are aware of how to use Google to find a product, read reviews, research how to do something, and so much more. Whatever words you use for searching is called a keyword/keywords or keyphrase, and is recorded by Google, Facebook, and other platforms to identify what people are searching for.
As an expert in SEO keyword research, your goal is to use the proper tools in figuring out the right keywords businesses should use. This helps in creating SEO-friendly content, which can be used for making targeted ads, ranking web pages, and turning videos viral, among others.
This Fiverr gig isn’t a job everyone can do, but if you have these SEO skills, you just might be able to pull it off.
4. Whiteboard Animation
One Fiverr job people with digital drawing skills could jump into is whiteboard animation. It is in-demand by companies, very easy to do with the right tools like VideoScribe, and is a perfect beginner gig for anyone who can create engaging animations.
A simple, 30-second whiteboard animation job range from $5 to $15, plus you can include options such as voiceover, HD quality, watermarking, and so on with extra fees for every add-on.
I know a Jack-of-all-Social-Media guy. He is an expert in creating, maintaining, and marketing social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and others) for other people or businesses.
The job entails brainstorming content, building a content calendar, and then creating the actual “content,” which could mean a simple Facebook update or tweet, an infographic to post on Pinterest, a quick video, and so on.
You can offer specific social media tasks, such as writing 30 Facebook updates for 30 days, or set-up Instagram ads for a company. You can also contract your expertise for a month or through the duration of a social media campaign.
6. Photoshop Editing
Like I told you before, you can make up to $80k by just editing photos. Fiverr can help you achieve this if you don’t know how to start. Here are some ideas:
Edit any photo quickly (within 2 hours, 12 hours, etc.)
Photoshop editing for Amazon product photo
Add/remove a person, item, or background of a picture
Perform beauty fashion retouching
and so on…
With Fiverr, the more specific the tasks you’re offering to do, the better.
7. Spokesperson
If you are excellent at public-speaking with a good voice, diction, pronunciation, attitude, and look, you can become a spokesperson for another person or company’s website.
These videos are used to welcome messages on websites, pop-ups, YouTube videos, ads, and so on.
You can do this as a per-video gig, or as-needed basis, or get hired part-time and full-time. It’s really up to you.
The best thing about top selling Fiverr gigs like these is that sellers always make use of the add-on section, wherein they place extra services with corresponding prices.
8. Landing Page and Website Design
In the past, web design professionals have trained traditionally with IT- and arts-related courses like graphic design. Today, with WordPress, Wix, Shopify, landing page builders, and other heavily-developed platforms readily available for quicker page-building, this gig has become more doable and lucrative.
This is especially true if you have web design experience, a certain level of creativity, an eye for good design, and up-to-date knowledge of good web practices.
9. Traffic, Backlinks, and On/Off-Page SEO
In #2, we brushed on a bit about SEO, but if you know this industry, you also know that SEO keywords are just the tip of the iceberg. Another in-demand specialization in the SEO space involves traffic (and how to bring traffic to a particular website, Facebook account, YouTube channel, and other online properties).
For example, this Fiverr seller Linda89 offers non-bot, keyword-targeted traffic to her customers. Her most-basic offer for $5 gives 140 real-people traffic to a customer’s website within 29 days. Other variations and add-on services are available for extra fees, of course.
10. Translation & Transcription
Speak a language other than English? There is a HUGE market in translating one language to the next. From simple one-liners to product descriptions, the possible gigs you can list are endless. And once you’ve made a name at Fiverr, you can even try other translation jobs here.
Transcription is different because this is a skill that not all people can do. It also takes a lot of time if you have no experience using transcription tools. However, if you’ve transcribed before and have a good ear, this Fiverr job can be very lucrative for you.
11. Tax and Finance Advice
You probably know the saying, “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.” And if you agree in the inevitability that people do have to pay taxes every year (and that all of us end up dying), then you know that helping other people deal with their taxes will always be in-demand. It’s a grim reality, but true nonetheless.
In Fiverr, CPAs and other finance professionals offer services such as:
Tax consultancy services
UK or USA individual and business tax returns
Specific bookkeeping, auditing, and accounting tasks
CPA assistance with any tax or finance questions
Tax research for small businesses
Configure Woocommerce taxes and terms
…and so on.
Of course, financial advice is more comprehensive. It could include stock investment advice, debt management consulting, business advice, feasibility study of investment products, and so on.
Some people find writing a resume or cover letter challenging, so they ask other people to help them. This could mean:
Writing resumes on a document from scratch
Editing an existing resume to be used for a specific job application
Writing a cover letter
Fixing a LinkedIn profile on another person’s behalf
As with most top selling Fiverr gigs, the quickest someone submits the job, the more in-demand the providers become, especially if the end-product was satisfactory.
13. Illustrator, Animator, Canva Designer
In this day and age where content providers are everywhere, if you’re an illustrator or animator with talent, you can offer any kind of service on Fiverr. Canva, the graphic design platform with a drag-and-drop feature that makes creating graphics 10x easier, is an in-demand Fiverr job as well.
Fiverr’s graphics and design category is one of the most popular categories on the site since the turnaround times by most providers are exceptionally fast.
14. Mobile app and Game developer
Ever since smartphones became the norm, the development of mobile apps has continued to be an ever-evolving industry. Even in 2021, I’m sure the demand for mobile apps continues. This also goes for game development. There will always be a need for a new app/game, and there will always be people eating them up.
15. Podcast-related services
People who want to build a podcast business can seek the help of various talents to create stuff like podcast cover art, podcast intro/outro, DJ drops, podcast logo, podcast marketing, podcast consulting, and so on.
Did You Find these Top Selling Fiverr Gigs Interesting?
You don’t need to take up all these top-selling Fiverr gigs to get ahead of the pack. Decide on the best skill you have, match it with one or two of the gigs above, craft an awesome-looking Fiverr listing (or hire someone to do it for you if writing isn’t your thing), and get working for a lucrative year this 2021.
Many of us have toyed with the notion of writing a book. Now, thanks to the internet and technological advances, even amateurs can learn how to self-publish a book.
Who knows? You might just be the next breakout bestselling author!
Contrary to popular belief, self-publishing a book isn’t exclusive to mediocre
Don’t believe me? Here are some successful works that were self-published:
“Fifty Shades of Grey” by E.L. James
”Switched” by Amanda Hocking
”Diary of a Mad Fat Girl” by Stephanie McAfee
”No Thanks” by E.E. Cummings
”Still Alice” by Lisa Genova
”Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman
”The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield
”The Martian” by Andy Weir
”Eragon” by Christopher Paolini
”A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf
”The Wake” by Paul Kingsnorth
”Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain
”Double Persephone” by Margaret Atwood
”Spartacus” by Howard Fast
”A Naked Singularity” by Sergio De La Pava
”Ulysses” by James Joyce
Convinced?
In today’s article, you’ll find a step-by-step guide on how to self-publish a book, the 12 best self-publishing companies for authors, and tips to be a successful self-published author.
2 Major Reasons to Go the Self-Publishing Route
Want to learn more about self-publishing and why it is the better choice than partnering with publishers?
Here are the two best reasons:
1. You can earn more money with self-published books
In traditional publishing, new authors often have no choice but to sign away rights to their book for a certain number of years.
In exchange, the author earns a book advance of about $5K and around 5% to 8% royalties on all book sales.
Bigger publishing companies do this and continue supporting the author with marketing, book tours, promotions, and follow-up possibilities.
Unfortunately, this is rare. Authors usually have to deal with their book’s own marketing and shoulder PR campaigns themselves, which can cost anywhere from $5k to $10k per campaign.
In contrast, a self-publishing author pays for the printing costs upfront. With options like print-on-demand (POD), this isn’t such a burden even for first-time authors.
You may pay as little as a few bucks for each printed book (and far less for an ebook), which in turn allows you to price your book fairly and to keep more money for yourself.
2. You keep 100% of the publishing rights with you
Traditional publishers shoulder the initial costs of your book production but get most of the control over the rights of the book for up to 5 years.
For some unlucky authors who didn’t know better, they may have unknowingly signed away all their rights to their book(s) forever.
The one with a bigger percentage of publishing rights can control many details of the book, including retail price, ebook promotions, potential follow-ups of the book, and so on.
As such, giving away your publishing rights will tie your hands regarding the success/failure of your book.
You simply can’t decide on anything major about the book’s production, promotion, or sales.
Meanwhile, self-publishing your book removes the middleman, leaving you total control of everything: from printing to marketing to the expansion of the book into a series, or adaptation into an ebook or audiobook, maybe even into a film or television series. You never know!
How to Self Publish a Book
The steps to self-publishing a book may be slightly different between personal situations, locations, budgets, and whatnots, but most authors follow either of these two paths:
Authors become their own publisher – With this route, you’ll be the author and publishing house in one.
Authors join Self-Publishing Companies – With this route, the author will decide everything from editors, book art, book format, pricing, and then upload the complete book on his/her chosen self-publishing website. As the author, potential buyers buy your book from the website, which then prints the book and ships it straight to the buyer. You then receive royalties of your book at a scheduled payout, or if earnings are allowed to be withdrawn at any time.
For those wishing to be their own publisher, here are the steps you need to take:
How to Self-Publish a Book in 7 Steps
1. Write your book
Of course, we shouldn’t even be discussing self-publishing if you don’t have a book to publish.
Think long and hard about what you want to write about, think about your target audience, create your manuscript, and proofread it.
If you can, find a few trusted friends who are able to provide honest feedback about your book and have them read your draft. Revise your draft according to your reader feedback.
The next step is to copy edit your book yourself, but you may be too close to your work to be able to effectively and objectively copy edit it. It’s a good idea to hire a freelance copy editor to do this part for you.
2. Design and format your book
When you’re done writing your book, spend considerable time thinking of a book title that will catch your intended audience’s eye and sound good in marketing materials.
Aside from the book title, your book cover is one of the first things that potential readers will look at when shopping around, especially if you’re selling print copies of your book.
If you’re a designer or an artist, you might want to design your book cover yourself, or you can hire a professional.
You’ll also have to format the interior of your book; the fonts, spacing, indentations, illustrations (if any) have to be formatted correctly.
3. Pick a publisher name and incorporate
Once you have a book, you’re ready for the next step, which is to officially be a publisher.
When thinking of your publisher name, take inspiration from big publishing houses like HarperCollins or Random House. Choose a catchy name you’ll be proud of, but don’t use your real name.
Make sure you incorporate your publishing business into an LLC.
The International Standard Barcode Number (ISBN) is a 13-digit number that identifies a book as well as different formats of that book (e.g., edition, audiobook, ebook).
Most booksellers and distributors require an ISBN before they will list a book. Libraries also use ISBNs to locate book titles.
It doesn’t make sense to buy a single ISBN, especially if you mean to publish your book in multiple formats and plan to write sequels or follow up versions.
5. Copyright your book
If you want to protect your book from being re-published as someone else’s “original” material, you’ll need to copyright it.
You also can’t sue anybody for copyright infringement of your book unless you first register that book with the US Copyright Office (assuming you live in the U.S.).
6. Print your book
There are many book printers out there and, as a new publisher, you are going to be best served by a printer that is linked to Ingram Content Group, a large, U.S.-based distributor of books, music, and other media.
Currently, Ingram distributes to over 38,000 retailers, libraries, schools in 195 countries.
If you’d rather stick with just one distribution channel such as Amazon, you could print your book through CreateSpace, which is a subsidiary of Amazon.
The main benefit to setting Amazon as an exclusive distributor is that you get a higher profit margin on your book. And because Amazon has no rights to the book, you can switch your distributor at any time.
7. Market your book
Create a website for your publishing company as well as your book(s).
Work the social network circuit and post your business as well as its product(s) on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Talk with other small publishers and find out how they are promoting their products and through which channels.
If you’re self-publishing an ebook, you can work with book promotion websites that place your book in front of new readers. There are both free and paid book promotion websites, such as Goodreads and BookBub.
14 Best Self-Publishing Companies
If you choose to self-publish, you will likely work with a self-publisher that will provide you with a set of services including formatting, cover design, copyright registration, distributor listing, etc. in exchange for a set fee.
The cost of printing is fairly even across the board with most self-publishers—or at least it should be—because most self-publishing companies use either an in-house or third-party print-on-demand service provider of their choice.
For those looking to work with the best self-publishing companies, here are your top choices:
The most popular of all self-publishing companies simply because it is directly from retail giant Amazon, so your book will be included in the Kindle store.
KDP has its own platform to layout your book if you haven’t done so.
Uploaded books will be reviewed in under 10 minutes, so if your book passes, it can go live on the Amazon marketplace hours after being accepted.
There’s no fee to self-publish with Kindle Direct Publishing, plus you earn 70% of book royalties.
Kobo (yeah the ebook reader brand) followed the footsteps of Kindle Direct Publishing with its own Kobo Writing Life service.
There does seem to be a huge difference.
Kobo lets authors keep their downloaded ePub file after the conversion, which means you’d be able to share a digital copy of your book with your friends and family instead of asking them to pay.
Authors keep 70% of royalties as long as your ebook is priced more than $2.99, but you are in control of prices and promotions.
You also own the rights to your books completely and you’re allowed to publish elsewhere too.
Although this UK-based company became famous for printing photography books, Blurb also has a platform for authors to lay out their work, promote and distribute the books through its own Blurb store, Amazon, Ingram, and other self-publishing sites.
Probably one of the lowest rates in the self-publishing industry, Outskirts Press has been a favorite among authors for years now.
This Colorado-based company makes it homey for authors, giving out prizes to “Best Book of the Year” with a $1,500 price annually, promoting books day in day out, and millions of dollars in royalties since it launched in 2002.
This site offers pretty much the same self-publishing options as the rest of this list, but they’ve been known to have superb editorial and marketing add-on services.
Known for professional customer support and an easy-to-use interface, Xlibris gives its authors royalties ranging from 10% to 50%, depending on factors such as when you joined Xlibris, type of book (printed vs. digital), and so on.
Xlibris is popular for its author events, which definitely provide a much-needed push, especially for new authors.
This company provides a complete self-publishing experience (if you need to) and mix-and-match self-publishing services if you just need help with printing, or distribution, or ebook conversion, and so on.
Barnes & Noble has a pretty strong ebook sales record, even if it doesn’t go outside the United States.
This company is a solid publishing house with a massive collection of books, so it is definitely worthy of a spot while you’re considering which of the best self-publishing companies to go for.
Like the other services on its list, Draft2Digital offers complete self-publishing services, from formatting, publishing, marketing, and tracking sales of your book.
With its user-friendly interface and excellent customer service, Draft2Digital is one of the most trusted self-publishing platforms for up and coming authors.
PublishDrive is one of the newest companies on this list, but it works with both local and international publishers, opening up your ebook to millions of potential readers.
Also, once you’re an established author and making plenty of money, you have the option of paying $100 a month in exchange for keeping 100% of your royalties.
Of course, if you’re taking on Apple, make sure you cover the Android crowd as well.
How much money can you earn from a self-published book?
For every book sold, the self-publisher and you will split the profit- also known as the royalty- in some way.
Hopefully, the split is at least 50/50. There is also the book printing cost to consider, as well as any discount rates offered by a retailer like Amazon.
In the end, your profit margin might look like this:
Retail price of your book ($14.95) – printing cost ($5.00) – discount rate ($2) = profit ($7.95)
profit x (0.50 publisher royalty) = $3.98 royalty for you, $3.98 royalty for self-publisher
A hypothetical $3.98 from a book that costs $14.95 is not very much profit for you; however, this is at least a healthy 26.5% royalty. By comparison, consider how traditional publishers often give authors only a 5-8% royalty, meaning a profit of just $0.74 – $1.20 per book sold.
However, even if a self-publisher states that it takes only 50% of the profit, there are ways that it can pad its bottom line.
That padding is typically done by pumping up printing costs.
As a result, it’s imperative that you know the expected price of printing a book.
7 Must-Follow Tips on Self-Publishing a Book
Want to know how to self publish a book successfully?
The answer all boils down to marketing.
Here are 7 book marketing tips you can do, even without experience or tons of funds:
1. Learn about your target audience
When you’re writing a book, the aim shouldn’t be to sell to everyone.
Find your niche; that is, the topics that you know you can confidently write about and certain people will value.
Get to know who your target audience is: a group of people who will find your book valuable and useful.
Think about problems you can help solve, or who will be interested in your expertise.
2. Brainstorm heavily for your title and cover
I know I’ve mentioned it, but I can’t stress it enough: First impressions last.
Your book title and book cover should be interesting, professional, and invoke something in the reader that grabs their attention.
Another important thing to remember is that your book cover should be able to convey what your book is about, or at least its tone.
For instance, serious nonfiction books should have more somber color tones and images, such as a gray or dark blue palette. Holiday-themed books may have red and green, while young adult books may have bright colors.
3. Pick the right author bio and picture
This is particularly important for new authors since your author bio introduces you to the world.
Remember that your bio is there so that readers can get a bit more of a feel for who you are because they are not just buying a story or a self-help book; they’re investing in a person: you.
In the same vein, you have to pick your author photo carefully as well.
4. Prepare your synopsis
Your synopsis will affect sales quite dramatically.
If the synopsis makes the story sound dull or the contents sound uninspiring then the potential purchaser will move onto the next one.
Consider the synopsis to be your initial sales pitch: it has to grab the user, based on the genre and suck them in.
5. Join or build a community
Self-published authors are generally lone writers, and marketing your book is hard work.
It might then be worthwhile to join a “tribe” (I recommend Self-Publishing School) of your fellow authors to help spread the load a bit.
This can be as little as just chatting with people online to share tips and advice, or you could go a similar route as Discover Sci-Fi. This group is a bunch of Sci-Fi authors who have self-published on Amazon and have banded together to help promote each other’s books and sales.
This method allows for a greater reach, especially if each author promotes the group to their own audience.
If done correctly, it becomes a win-win situation: authors gain a wider reach and readers gain access to unknown authors and read something new.
6. Maintain a website and build a mailing list
There are zero excuses for an author to not have a website.
A website is a focal point for the author to sell or presell books, as well as a way for your readers to gain better insight into your mind.
A website can be as basic as a single page with a blurb and link to buy your book on booksellers like Amazon. Or it can be more fleshed out, with a blog, About page, Contact page, Media page, and other useful information.
From a marketing point of view, a site with a blog is an absolute minimum.
A blog allows you to gain SEO advantages and also to give a glimpse into your life, connect with your readership, promote sales events, announce new book releases, and update your audience with what’s going on with you.
While you’re at it, consider building a mailing list. This is where you’d be sending freebies, news about your books, and other ways of promoting your book.
Make it count.
7. Make your online presence felt
There are so many social networks out there that using social media as a method of marketing can be daunting.
My advice here is to pick one or two (say Twitter and Facebook) and focus exclusively on them.
Social media should be considered as a way to promote you as an author rather than a specific book. That’s not to say that you can’t let your followers know about your books and any offers etc. but it should not be the main focus.
Use these networks instead to connect with people, discuss topics in your preferred genre, and to give shoutouts for other authors and books that you respect or enjoy.
How To Self-Publish A Book Successfully
I hope this comprehensive guide helps you self publish a book successfully.
Know that book publishing is both a personal and professional decision that is not undertaken lightly.
There is a ton of work involved in just completing the manuscript, then having it ripped up (I mean, edited), and finally in promoting the book.
But for some professionals, publishing a book helps promote their careers and give them legitimacy. For others, being a self-published author becomes their career.
Maybe a book is a chance to leave some kind of legacy. And for still others, a book can be the key to eventual fame and fortune.
Planning to self-publish a book soon? What’s it about? Share it with us in the comments!
Homebrewing has become a popular hobby over the past few years, and knowing how to brew your own beer isn’t such a mystery anymore. In fact, homebrewers are now looking for ways to make money from homebrewing beer, if only to recoup the costs of raw materials and equipment.
You might already have thought to sell and distribute your homebrewed beer, but once you start doing this, you’re already considered a commercial brewer.
This means you’ll have to get various permits and licenses, not only a liquor license to sell alcoholic beverages, but also permits to even produce the beer at volume.
All these permits and licenses, as well as the various inspections required to obtain these permits, cost even more money.
In today’s post, learn some tips on how to make some money from homebrewing beer; probably not enough for you to do this full-time but at least provide some side cash to allow you to continue your hobby without straining your budget.
How To Make Money From Homebrewing Beer
Before I go any further, note that this article assumes that you’ve been homebrewing your own beer for a while and have extensive knowledge and experience in it.
The different ways to earn side cash from homebrewing are divided below into 6 different categories.
1. Writing
Probably the simplest thing you can do to make money from homebrewing beer is to write about it.
If you’re going into writing to earn some side cash, the first thing you need to do is to create your own website and start a blog. You’ll need your own space to post your portfolio and where potential clients can contact you to commission an article.
Next, hone your keyword research and SEO skills so that your articles can be indexed by search engine bots and increase the probability that those who search for your article can find it.
Then, find blogs, magazines, and journals focused on homebrewing beer (such as Brew Your Own magazine) and reach out to them for an opportunity to write articles and posts for them and get paid.
You can also earn money through sponsored blog posts where you write about whatever product or service they want you to feature.
Drive up the popularity of your blog such that you have a few thousand views monthly, and then reach out to companies who sell homebrewing-related merchandise: equipment, raw materials, containers, storage, etc.
Another way you can get paid for your writing is to write an eBook and sell it on your website as well as on Amazon. You can either write an extensive homebrewing tutorial eBook or compile your recipes into a cookbook.
2. Affiliate marketing
If you already have a modestly popular website and a blog, you can also go into affiliate marketing.
In case you’re not familiar with it, affiliate marketing is the process of promoting other retailers’ products or services through your channels in exchange for a commission.
Since you already have your niche (homebrewing) and tend to write articles all about that on your blog, being an affiliate for homebrewing-related products is just one more step you have to take to start making money through homebrewing.
Perhaps the simplest program to join is Amazon’s affiliate program, called Amazon.com Associates. This program is good for raw materials, such as malt and hops, as well as small equipment, such as fermenters and filters.
There are also specific affiliate programs in the homebrewing and beer niches, which are a Google search away.
Affiliate marketing allows you to practice and hone your marketing and sales skills without having to maintain an inventory.
However, your income is limited to your commissions, which are determined by the affiliate programs.
3. Selling homebrewing materials and equipment
A more direct way to earn money from homebrewing beer is to sell essential supplies to other homebrewers.
You might not be able to earn consistently from selling equipment, because they tend to last long before they need to be replaced.
By contrast, selling raw materials may be a more viable way to earn, as raw materials are consistently used up and those that aren’t, quickly expire, so homebrewers tend to buy these more frequently.
You might also want to sell homebrewing kits, wherein everything homebrewers need to produce a batch are all included.
You can sell through your own website, which allows you to control the quantity and quality of your inventory, how you market your products, and how much profit you take home per item.
However, it does require you to be very hands-on: from contacting suppliers and ordering from them, to setting up your online store and generating traffic to it, taking payments, shipping out orders, and customer service.
Selling on third-party e-commerce sites such as Amazon or eBay, on the other hand, gives you the chance to place your products on a high-traffic website and get them in front of more potential buyers, increasing the chances that they will buy your products.
The downside is that you have less control over which products are marketed, how they’re being marketed, and at what price.
4. Teaching
If you’re naturally inclined to teach or create learning materials, you can use these skills to earn some side cash from homebrewing.
Creating online courses on homebrewing on your own website or on MOOCs can be a source of recurring side cash. You only have to create the course material once and update it periodically, while aspiring homebrewers continually ordered your courses.
If you want a more practical teaching gig, you can set up your own small classes in a venue where you can demonstrate homebrewing in-person to your participants. Include a handout and their very own homebrewing kit so they can brew their batch at the same time.
You can also check nearby local community colleges if they have openings for short-term instructors to teach homebrewing to students.
5. Vlogging
If you’re already writing in your blog on your website, think of vlogging as another avenue to create and present content and earn more side cash.
Some ideas for videos include step-by-step homebrewing tutorials of how to brew different types of beer, troubleshooting homebrew processes, answering FAQs, and features of other popular homebrewers.
You can apply to show YouTube ads on your videos, but some content creators who have tried this have reported that YouTube doesn’t pay much for content that’s not considered “family-friendly” content.
Homebrewing may be considered a banal hobby to many, but since it involves alcoholic beverages, it may also be considered an “adult” hobby.
You might have a better chance of making money by going into affiliate marketing and then using your YouTube videos to promote these affiliate links.
Read up on Google/YouTube Terms of Service as well. In practice, though, YouTube is pretty tolerant, especially if they are few and relevant, (i.e., directly related to the subject of the video), they are unshortened and properly labeled as affiliate links, the links are not overemphasized, and if the content is valuable and high-quality.
These will allow you to fly under the radar. Remember, though, that YouTube will target your video and your channel if they decide that the only purpose of your channel is to push your affiliate links to your viewers and drive traffic there.
The same strategy, that is, promoting through your YouTube channel, can also be done if you’re selling from your own website. YouTube can be a bit more forgiving if you link to your own website as opposed to affiliate websites.
If you happen to concoct an awesome recipe or recipes, you can actually benefit more from it aside from making yourself these delicious brews.
You can license out your recipes to third-party distributors, such as Noble Brewer, who will take care of contracting professional craft brewers to produce beer from your recipe.
The distributor then sends out shipments containing bottles of beer produced from different homebrew recipes to craft beer enthusiasts who crave something different per month.
7. Consulting
When you’ve been homebrewing beer for a while, you probably know enough to be a consultant.
Answer questions from other homebrewers, help bars and restaurants with their beer selections, and even work up to lending your expertise and knowledge to medium- to large-scale breweries.
If you’ve already started with your own website, blog, and/or vlog, you’re already a step ahead as you’ve probably demonstrated your knowledge and addressed some common concerns of homebrewers.
The next step is to actually broadcast that you offer a consultancy service and to contact you for details. If you haven’t already, set up a contact form on your website so those who have inquiries can easily contact you directly.
If you start receiving inquiries from bars and pubs, then so much the better, but you can also do the outreach yourself. Start local and expand the area covered by your outreach so you don’t get overwhelmed early on.
The more successful consultants sincerely aim to improve beer culture in their area through supporting other homebrewers and promoting all the best brews that the community has to offer.
Start Making Money From Homebrewing Beer Today!
One of the biggest perks of brewing your own beer is that you never have to buy beer again, but hopefully, you’ve learned that you can also earn some side cash from homebrewing.
Turn Your Homebrewing Hobby Into A Business!
If you’re a homebrewer who has a real passion for the art and craft of brewing beer, you might dream of owning your own brewery or taproom and turn it into a business.
When you’ve figured out that you have enough time and money to pursue brewing as a full-time business, here is our guide on how to start a brewery.
Which method of earning side cash are you interested in doing? Are there any other monetization methods that I haven’t mentioned? Tell us in the comments!
If you own a house, extra room, condo unit, or any other type of similar property that’s unoccupied entirely, most of the year, or even just for a few days a year, you probably want to know how to rent your house out to make some side cash.
Well, today’s your lucky day!
You can rent out this space and make some extra side cash. You can even turn this into a full-time earning machine if you go with a rental agent.
And because the Airbnb era is here, even ordinary homeowners can accommodate renters and guests short-term.
Read on for a comprehensive guide to renting out your house.
3 Options for Renting Out Your House
If you’re planning to rent your house out, you need to be armed with information about taxes, maintenance costs, as well as pros and cons for all the options available to you.
These details will help you decide if you’re ready to rent out your house to someone else either temporarily (via services like Airbnb) or long-term (advertised on your own or managed by a third-party rental agent).
1. Long-term Rentals
There are various instances wherein long-term rentals may be best suited for you. These include:
Getting a newly inherited property
Having a second property, such as a summer house, that you only visit a couple of times a year
You’re the only one living in a big house
You invested in a condo unit, but have no immediate reason for leaving your current home
Those who would benefit from long-term rentals are people with extra space or property aside from the one they currently reside in.
The main benefit of renting out your house long-term is that the extra income is definitely significant and consistent.
There are, of course, downsides to long-term rentals, including:
Property destruction — The longer tenants stay in your property, the higher the chances your property will get destroyed, whether it was intentional or not. Some landlords specify that no young kids and pets are allowed, since they’ve been known to mess up paint jobs, carpet, and other house features more quickly than older kids and households without pets.
Insurance — No matter how long you rent out your home, that space becomes an investment property. As a result, you’ll have to obtain insurance specified by the state where your property is in. Airbnb has some insurance offered to hosts renting out their properties, but it’s still better to check with your insurance provider because factors like the length of the lease can affect the premiums.
Local regulations — Aside from insurance, check with city hall about local condo regulations, professional lease or landlord agreements, and so on. You have to be updated with these things since breaking laws can cost you a lot in terms of fines and loss of potential income.
Collecting rent can be difficult — If you’re not hiring a property manager (more on this later), it means you’ll have to collect rent by yourself, which can be a challenging task.
Traditional real estate websites, such as Rent.com, Realtor.com, Homes.com, Zillow, Zumper (and so on) will let you list your homes as long-term rentals. Some of these sites come with a fee for two or more properties, while others rely on advertising for revenue so landlords can list for free.
2. Short-term Rentals
Short-term rentals would be better for homeowners who have an extra room, extra floor, a garage, or other spaces they could rent out temporarily.
The main benefit of going this route is that you can even be residing in the property for rent and only make it available during certain periods. For example, if you go on a yearly trip overseas, you can list your property on Airbnb only during those days, weeks, or months.
The downside to renting out your house on a short-term basis include:
Tax Responsibilities — In the eyes of the IRS, “short-term rentals” shouldn’t go beyond 14 days in a year. If it does, you’ll need to file it properly. FYI, Airbnb automatically sends tax forms documenting all income to the IRS, so if you skip your tax responsibilities, don’t be surprised if you’ll still get a letter from the federal agency.
Less income — Unfortunately, making your place available to guests for only a limited time also means you’d receive less income. If you’re only looking for some side cash, then this could be the solution for you, but if you need this rental space to help with expenses monthly, short-term rentals may not help that much.
More clean-ups — Because the turnaround for vacation rental properties like this is high, you’d have to keep the place clean for the next guest. This is especially true if you’re planning to rent out your place every weekend. The good news to this though is that platforms such as Airbnb allow you to charge a cleaning fee, and there are services like Guesty to handle cleaning for you.
A Word about Renting Your Home Furnished vs. Unfurnished
Whether you plan to rent your house short-term or long-term, you’d have to clean up your place and do a bit of sprucing up. This also means you have to remove your valuables, such as heirloom flower vases, jewelry, collector’s items, and so on.
Note that if you’re renting your house for only a few days, weeks or months, expect that tenants would prefer furnished homes. Depending on your circumstance and property, this could add costs for interior design.
People looking for homes to rent for a year or more usually look for unfurnished homes since it would make sense they’d bring in their furniture and other stuff for long-term residency.
3. Renting out Your Garage, Yard, and Other Outdoor Spaces
For those who don’t have space inside their homes or an extra property for rent, but live in a tourist destination city, you may earn some cash renting out your garage, yard, or other outdoor spaces.
Garage
Tourists traveling by car into your city (that has strict rules about parking just anywhere) will pay per day/night to avoid sky-high penalties, jail time, or getting towed. This is your chance to offer your garage for a fee. You can even choose a niche and cater to a specific vehicle type. For instance, if you have a large garage, you can advertise it as a parking space for SUVs, RVs, or even for boats.
If your garage has access to a functional bathroom, you can even deck out your garage into an extra room. It won’t be as fancy as villas and beachside properties, but if you offer fair pricing, there’s a good chance guests will bite.
Yeah, some people also need extra space for storing stuff. List your garage on websites like Stow It! and decide on your monthly rental fee.
Yard and other Outdoor Spaces
Weddings and other events — Depending on how spacious your garden is and how many people or tents you can accommodate, you can earn quite a substantial amount if you rent out your backyard even once a month. The downside is that even small events can have a ton of logistical issues. From problems with catering, bathroom, equipment, parking, even the weather can ruin events. Make sure you partner with an events coordinator before you list your yard for rent.
Campsite — With Instagram folks showing off their “glamping” (glamorous camping) adventures left and right, there’s a sudden spike for dressed up campsites. If your outdoor space has a good view of nature, try to build luxurious tents or campsites for this crowd and wait for the guests to come.
How Much Should You Charge for Rent and Security Deposit?
If you decide to rent out your house, you need to be aware that you can’t arbitrarily decide on how much rent to charge.
You’ll need to know the fair market rent for your house by doing research. Generally, your house should go for the same amount as other rental properties in the same area and are about the same size and condition.
You can start your research by looking at similar properties online.
The security deposit is a separate sum of money paid by a tenant to ensure that they fulfill the terms of their lease.
Because this is a deposit, this needs to be held in a separate bank account and returned to the tenant when they move out, minus any damages or losses that need to be repaired or replaced.
Should You Hire a Property Manager?
In contrast to rental agents, who focus on handling matters before the lease is signed, property managers take care of the property and tenants after the lease is signed.
Essentially, property managers are focused on customer service, property maintenance, rent collection, and other matters that involve the relationship between the landlord (that’s you), and the tenant.
A property manager will cost you additional in salaries, but if you don’t live on the property and/or don’t want to be bothered by these tedious yet necessary tasks, paying a property manager to do it should be worth it.
5 Ways to Rent Your House Out
Now that you know your options, if you decide that short-term leases are the best fit for you, the following is a list of sites and apps where you can list your house for rent.
Join one or all of the websites below, check out their rules, and list your property away.
Launched in 2008, this San Francisco-based company grew in record time thanks to how properties are shared on social media and the rise of travel bloggers seeking inexpensive yet Instagram-worthy vacation rentals.
Airbnb isn’t the oldest site like it, but with over 80 million monthly visitors, it surely leads the pack.
As the host, Airbnb lets you set the price per day and “required minimum stay,” which means you won’t have to worry about unappealing travel days (such as Sundays, or the day after a holiday).
Vrbo, short for “Vacation Rentals By Owner,” was launched in 1995 by David Clouse to rent out his condo. Since then, it has grown to list two million properties around the world and one of the best options to rent out your house.
Vrbo claims that members who list their properties receive an average of 120 inquiries per property every year, with its top members earning up to $60k annually from their Vrbo listing.
Hosts can choose from paid and free-to-list options. Paid members can further choose a subscription model ($499 per year) or pay-per-booking (pay around 5% for every property booked).
TripAdvisor is one of the most popular websites people go to when searching for reviews on hotels, beach resorts, and other rental properties from real travelers who have gone there. So when the company bought FlipKey, a platform that lets property owners list their space, it made perfect sense.
Similar to Airbnb, hosts pay FlipKey 3% on a pay-per-booking model. Unfortunately, guests suffer from the host’s low fee since they shoulder up to 18 percent more on top of the property’s fees.
This is kind of a bummer if you’re a guest. But as a host, just imagine the 448 million people visiting TripAdvisor each year that will remain untapped if you skip FlipKey and list your vacation rentals elsewhere.
If you have luxury accommodation to offer, join Tripping.com’s Luxury Retreats and give guests an unforgettable experience.
Properties here come from all over the world and range from beachfront homes to vineyards, mini-mansions, and the like.
Note that since vacation rentals here are above the ordinary, the clients would expect personal concierge service, guest support, and other special services.
Plus, not everyone interested in renting out their house can list a property here (Luxury Retreats claim only 5% of applications are approved).
Homeowners don’t need to pay a sign-up or membership fee, but if your property is accepted you get to follow a pay-for-performance model.
For homeowners with properties “on par with hotel chains,” VaycayHero may be the website to go to.
It’s a bit different from others on this list, as the San Francisco company vets all vacation properties ahead of time. It’s a win-win for guests and hosts!
Runners-up:
Booking.com (free forever for your first 5 listings)
HomeToGo.com (world’s largest search engine for vacation rentals)
If you decided to rent out your property temporarily, you can list your property online on sites like Airbnb and its alternatives. The secret of a successful listing (aside from having an irresistible property) is effective marketing offline and online.
If you don’t have time to monitor listings across different websites, juggling upcoming guests, answering inquiries, clearing possible tenants, and handling paperwork, you can hire a rental agent who will handle almost everything for you, often for a fee or percentage of the booking. Aside from these, your rental agent will make sure that all local and state laws are followed during the process.
After the lease has been signed, it would be more convenient for you to hire a property manager so that you don’t have to be hands-on when it comes to collecting rent, scheduling repairs, and handling tenants’ concerns.
How much time per day do you spend looking at your phone? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could learn how to make money from your phone and get paid for the time you spend using it?
I’ve done a little bit of digging to find some cool apps that make you money.
With a little bit of work, you could stop watching Instagram stories of exotic locations and start posting some of your own.
How to Make Money on Your Phone: 17 Different Ideas to Try Out
The ideas below will help you make money from your phone by watching videos, surfing the web, taking pictures, etc.
Sign up for everything that looks appealing! The more apps you download, the more money you can make!
1. Get paid to surf the web and watch videos
Swagbucks is an absolute MUST join and you get $5.00 simply for signing up!
This site offers a smartphone app that enables you to earn Swagbucks (SB) for watching videos, answering surveys, and completing merchant offers.
You can also surf the Web using the Swagbucks toolbar and win additional SB. Once you have at least 300 SB, you can trade them in for Paypal payouts (or gift cards if you prefer).
They currently are offering a $5 bonus on top of the $50 you get paid, making the total you can earn here $55!
You’ve likely heard of Nielsen in the past. You know when you hear of a TV show being canceled or renewed for a new season due to ratings?
Well, Nielsen is the company that assigns the ratings to TV shows.
They do this by tracking what their users watch. The more people watching a show, the better the chances are at renewal. If no one is watching, it will probably get canned.
They are expanding into new areas and want to know how people are using their phones.
Ibotta was one of the first rebate apps on the market and offers cashback on grocery, apparel, electronics, restaurant, pet, etc. purchases.
The rebate amounts are fairly high (as much as $1.50) and work across a number of stores.
Many qualifying rebates are brand-independent (e.g., $0.50 off any orange juice), while others require that you purchase a given brand at a certain store.
4. Answer questions and make money from your phone
VIP Voice pays you CASH to answer questions about famous brands.
The more questions you answer, the more money you can make!
5. Invest your spare change
Acorns is an app that offers a cool opportunity that will allow you to start investing your money without even realizing it.
Let’s say you head to Starbucks and buy a latte. The price comes out to $5.25.
Acorns will round up your purchase to $6.00 and take that extra 75 cents and invest it for you.
It’s an incredibly easy way to start saving money and building towards your future. They also recently started offering cash-back on purchases at most major retailers. Now you get your spare change invested, and a little extra.
Field Agent has you earning money by completing tasks such as checking store displays, taking photos of grocery shelves, finding specific store products, and going through checkout.
You can complete jobs and make money on your phone at almost any major retailer. The assigned job must be completed in a given amount of hours.
Payouts are made via PayPal.
8. Run errands while on your phone
GigWalk is a mobile app that offers you paid tasks while you’re on the go.
These tasks are geo-focused on your specific location and might include checking a street sign, verifying a transportation option, or examining a landmark.
After you apply for an assignment and complete it, your payment is sent to your PayPal account.
Once you prove your worth as a Gigwalker, you’ll be sent higher-paying (i.e., hundred-dollar) assignments.
9. Sell your photos and videos
You likely have a few thousand photos on your device. Here’s how you can make money from your phone and its giant photo gallery.
Upload photos on Foap app and they will pay you $5 a pop every time someone wants to use one of them.
Foap connects publishers with creators and you can make some decent money just by sharing access to your photos.
Keep in mind that simple candids of your cat likely aren’t going to fetch anything, but more creative shots showcasing interesting sights can definitely pull in extra money for you.
10. Test out new products
Survey Junkie is one of the oldest and most reputable survey companies online making this one of the easiest ways to make money from your phone.
You can get to try out new products before they ever hit the shelves.
Answer a few short questions about them and help the company shape the future of their product lines.
You can get paid directly to your PayPal account or cash in your rewards for gift cards.
11. Answer (more) questions
1Q pays you $0.25 or $0.50 for every question you receive and answer in a set amount of time.
You’ll receive a notification that a new set of questions is available to be answered.
For example, you might be asked how many times in the last week you used a foot moisturizing cream.
The number of questions you receive depends on your demographics and geographic location.
Payments are sent to your PayPal account.
12. Make money from your phone by testing websites and apps
Companies will pay you to test their apps before they launch through the UserTesting app.
You do need to successfully complete a sample test with this company, but once that’s done, you’ll be earning $10 for each app you download, test, and review (via voice recording) for UserTesting.
13. Do almost anything and get paid
Earnably pays you for seemingly random things: listening to the radio, completing surveys, viewing videos, and completing online offers.
What’s especially beneficial with Earnably is that the site pays you bonuses and increases your payout options as you advance on the site.
It takes just $2 in collected earnings before you can request a payout through PayPal or a gift card.
14. Listen to new music
SliceThePie allows you to check out new music and get paid for giving your opinions on it.
If you have time to kill and like listening to new bands, this app is absolutely perfect.
Losing weight is usually a solitary endeavor, but what if you can bet on your success and compete with hundreds of other app users?
DietBet is an app that gives you the financial motivation to lose weight.
It hosts games where participants wager a bet on who can lose 4% of their body weight by the end of the competition period. DietBet keeps a percentage of the pot, but all participants who lose the required percentage split the rest.
Rover connects pet owners with pet lovers who can take care of their pets while they’re away.
With Rover, you can walk dogs, take care of them during the day in your house, stay with the dogs in their house, or even board the dogs overnight for pet owners.
Providing a safe place for someone else’s pet can be rewarding and lucrative.
Final Thoughts About Making Money from Your Phone
Let’s be real.
You aren’t going to get rich by making money from your phone.
At best, you have the opportunity to bring in some extra cash while you sit on the couch and ignore The Office as it runs in the background.
If you’re looking for more serious ways of making money, I would suggest you look into a work from home job, or browse this list of passive income ideas for ways you can make money even while you sleep.
Do you know of other money-making mobile apps? Share it with us in the comments below.
I love using free gift card apps and finding new ones because I hate paying full price when I don’t have to, especially on items I don’t really need.
(Is there an Amazon Prime Anonymous?)
I’ve always been a bit of a frugal person and love trying out new ways to save (this blog stands as a testament to that) but I wouldn’t call myself a master at saving.
I don’t normally put in the effort and go to thrifty extremes to save as much money as possible.
Instead, I just turn to easy ways to spend less or get more out of my money—like getting free gift cards on mobile apps.
Here’s what makes them so great:
They offer one of the best ways to shop for what I want without all the guilt of spending more than I should. Plus it appeals to my greener side too—no paper!
It’s surprising how many apps out there give out free gift cards. And it’s just as surprising to learn how few people actually know about it. Which lead me to create this list of the best free gift card reward apps.
If you’re looking for an app that will suit your pocket and your lifestyle, then scroll on.
I’ve divided the apps into several categories so you can find what you’re looking for to start earning gift cards straight away.
Don’t have time to try out all the apps I’ve listed below? Then simply have a look at my top 4 picks for the best gift card apps and try those few out instead.
4 Best Apps for Free Gift Cards
Quickly find the app that best fits your needs and lifestyle:
For the best money > time spent ratio: Ebates
For the simplest gift card system: Ibotta
For the best assortment of gift cards: instaGC
For the easiest way to earn gift cards: Swagbucks
My absolute favorite app for free gift cards is Swagbucks. It’s super simple to use, offers a good points rewards system, and is still one of the most legitimate ways to earn free gift cards.
How do you earn free gift cards?
It’s never been easier to get free gift cards than now thanks to the many apps and websites out there that offer them.
Do keep in mind that while the gift cards are technically “free” you do have to exchange something for them.
Most of the time it is access to your personal information, whether it is shopping habits, location history, browsing history, or other similar information. Research companies use this data to better refine their algorithms to get consumers to buy more. They are willing to pay in exchange for this information.
Apps and websites will normally have you perform a task or complete surveys.
By far the easiest way to earn free gift cards is to join a program that pays you a percentage back on your purchases. You don’t have to do anything differently and you get paid. It’s a win-win-win.
15 Free Gift Card Apps to Install Today
I’ve broken down my recommended apps into three different categories.
Swagbucks is one of the most well-known get paid to (GPT) apps on the web.
Probably because it’s so incredibly easy to use and offers gift cards for Amazon. I also have a great list of ways to earn Amazon gift cards if you’re looking specifically for those.
With this app, you get paid to do a variety of simple tasks that won’t take longer than a couple of minutes a day.
They’ll have you do things like watching videos, answering polls, taking surveys, and playing games.
When you complete a task, you earn SB points and one SB point comes down to about $0.01. So 300 points will equate to $3.
InboxDollars is another popular app that lets you earn by completing different tasks.
You can earn cash back and gift cards for activities like searching the web, watching videos, shopping online, and answering surveys.
I really like this free gift card app because you can earn cashback by doing things that you might want to do anyway, such as downloading an app or shopping online.
If you’re really keen on that idea, then check out my article on super easy ways to earn money with your phone.
Swagbucks and MyPoints are owned by different companies, but they differ in tasks as well as the values you can redeem for gift cards.
You can shop on MyPoints.com and find various promos, coupon codes, and deals at thousands of stores. Earn points while you shop and exchange these points for gift cards or PayPal credits.
MyPoints.com also gives you rewards for answering surveys, watching videos, and other small tasks.
It makes sense to join both Swagbucks and MyPoints to maximize your rewards.
instaGC works pretty much just like the other apps listed above. You have to complete different tasks like watching videos, completing surveys, and surfing the web.
They have a huge selection of gift cards too, with over 350 options to choose from.
When you sign up for CheckPoints, you’re shown a variety of tasks, such as watching videos, taking quizzes, signing up for mailing lists, shopping, and many more.
Completing each task earns you a certain number of points that you can exchange for gift cards from Amazon, Target, Walmart, and other major stores and retailers.
They also host a Sweepstakes where you can win gas money, shopping sprees, and many more.
Earn gift cards by voicing your opinion with Toluna.
All you have to do is answer a few simple surveys about various subjects and earn points for your answers (there’s no right or wrong answer of course).
You can then use these points for gift cards at popular places like Banana Republic and Groupon.
AppNana allows you to get rewards (i.e., earn Nanas) when you download free apps and games from Nana Offers.
In case you get any funny ideas, note that you need to actually open the free apps after installing them, or else you won’t get the rewards.
Other ways you can earn Nanas include watching videos, playing games, and inviting friends to sign up. You even earn 400 points just for opening AppNana.
Your Nanas can be exchanged for free gift cards, such as Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Xbox, and many more.
Alternatively, you can exchange your Nanas for paid apps and games.
As its name implies, Rewarded Play is a free gift card app that lets you play free games in exchange for gift cards to over 20 retailers, including Amazon, Target, Best Buy, and Walmart.
The free games are a mix of classic ones, such as Solitaire, Yahtzee, and Mahjongg, as well as more modern ones, such as Words with Friends and various slot machine games.
Unfortunately for iPhone users, this app is only available for Android users.
Well, with this free gift card app, you don’t necessarily have to buy anything to earn. You’ll have to apply for “missions” where you evaluate the shops and restaurants close to you.
According to the app, each trip will only take a couple of minutes and you’ll have to answer 10 questions or less to complete the mission.
You’ll earn points with every mission which you can then spend on gift cards for popular places like Dunkin’ Donuts and Walmart.
Just like the other shopping apps in this category, Receipt Hog makes it simple to earn reward coins and redeem these coins for gift cards.
All you have to do is take a photo of your receipt from any store, gas station, restaurant, or coffee shop and upload the image.
You can also earn bonus coins when you get free spins on the Hog Slots. You also get entered in monthly sweepstakes with a chance to win huge coin prizes.
Once you’ve reached enough coins, you can exchange the coins for Amazon gift cards or PayPal cash redemption.
Final Thoughts on Free Gift Card Apps
The great thing about gift card reward apps is that they’re pretty much instant in terms of gratification.
They’re conveniently right there on your phone and you can usually redeem them whenever you want.
That said, there are a few other options out there to get free items for those who are a little bit more patient, like getting free samples by mail.
It’s not exactly gift cards and it’s not as instantaneous, but come on, getting free stuff you want is just as fantastic!
Have you tried any of these apps? Did you indeed get free gift cards when you used these apps? Did I miss any apps that actually pay? Let us know in the comments!
If you came here to find out the best YouTube monetization alternatives, I assume you have already tried the giant platform for years and decided there’s life after YouTube.
Don’t get me wrong. YouTube is still a powerful platform with its 2 billion active users. It remains the best introduction for beginner video content creators to dip their toes into this online business.
But there are valid reasons why people are looking to get out of YouTube. These include:
Policy changes in Partner Program – YouTube has always kept their policies updated, but sometimes, the video content creators get the bad news the most.
Competitive environment – In the past, it was easy to find success on YouTube. These days, aside from the millions of people you compete against for views, the environment can also be a bit competitive because the YouTube algorithm is designed to promote the popular channels than the up-and-coming ones.
Revenue-sharing can mean a big chunk of revenue loss – When you enable ads on your YouTube videos, you agree to Google’s ad revenue share for YouTube. The 45/55 split where Google keeps 45% and you get the bigger 55% cut of all YouTube advertising on your videos is acceptable as a beginner because you can’t find any other better deal. However, for advanced content creators with enough clout, this big chunk may not be the best program for you.
Big brand-names pull outtheir ads – Some advertisers began to pull out of YouTube starting in 2017 and 2018 due to lack of moderation. For example, Verizon’s ads were placed on videos from the Egyptian cleric Wagdi Ghoneim, who was banned from the U.S. over extremism. To protect their respective brands, AT&T, Hasbro, Johnson & Johnson, Pepsi, Walmart, or pharma company GSK all pulled their ads to avoid getting involved with offensive content.
Unfair treatment of content creators – Because content creators earn differently, YouTube sometimes tends to favor bigger-earners than small-time or beginner ones who were no longer allowed to earn until they reach a minimum amount of views and subscriptions. This change happened in 2018.
Of course, the most common reason for people checking out YouTube’s competition is that they were forced out of the platform. Video content creators who were suspended were unable to get back to their accounts. Sometimes, it is due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down system, other times for no reason at all.
Beyond YouTube Ads: Other Ways to Make Money with Videos
Before we discuss all the possible YouTube monetization alternatives you can switch to, let’s first take a closer look at the other ways to make money aside from YouTube’s ad revenue-sharing program.
Affiliate marketing – Many video content creators have already been doing this even with YouTube. YouTubers list a link on the video description to a product or service and if other people purchase from this link, the YouTuber will earn a commission from the sale.
Selling products – Through videos, you can sell physical products (either your own product or other people’s products), or information products (like ebooks, courses, etc). This may not always work, especially if you don’t have followers yet, but there is always affiliate marketing for beginners.
Sponsorships – When brands see that a particular video content creator influences a niche that aligns with the company’s market, sponsorships happen so the video creators could reach the target customer on the brand’s behalf.
Video on demand (VOD) – You sell access to your own videos. If you have a very specific skill and people want to learn from you, video-in-demand can be very lucrative. Some are even super-successful with this method that they offer subscription plans.
These are just the more popular money-making methods for video creators. I bet there are more I haven’t mentioned here, so feel free to sound off below if you know more.
9 Sites to Check Out as YouTube Monetization Alternatives
Now let’s dig into the other YouTube monetization alternatives that you can check out:
Acquired by Amazon in 2014 for $970 million, this public streaming website already a whopping 550,000 online viewers, and 2 million content creators. Today, Twitch has 55 million active users.
Twitch is home to many live-stream gamers, but it isn’t exclusive to them. There are also musicians, singers, teachers, and so on. There are no prerecorded videos here, so if you’re not OK with live streaming, check out other options.
Patreon accompanies YouTube, Twitch, and other content-creating sites because it provides any user a way to monetize his/her content. Consider Patreon as a subscription-based donation, where people commit to becoming patrons of their favorite creators like game streamers, comic book artists, singers, and so on.
The subscription model of Patreon is pro-creator with a commission of 5% for the Lite plan, 8% for Pro, and 12% for Premium. It also supports credit card and PayPal payments. The only downside to using this as monetization is you won’t find anything like it if Patreon decides to close shop.
It is one of YouTube’s direct competitions. Vimeo is a video streaming site, but with higher quality content than YouTube. The upside is that there is basically no learning curve when switching to Vimeo since the user interface is similar to YouTube. The quality of the videos is also unmatched.
The downside is that free users can only upload 500 MB worth of videos a week. After this, you’d have to go premium for more space. Also, Vimeo has a higher pricing model than YouTube.
Dailymotion is also similar to Vimeo and YouTube. It has been around for years as well and could serve as a stable platform for creating and sharing your video content. Plus, the quality of videos uploaded is also pro-level and much better than what YouTube puts out.
Like YouTube, you can enable monetization and get a cut from those in-stream advertisements (ads that appear before, during, or after) your videos. Payment is automatically sent to your Paypal once it reaches $100.
IGTV is Instagram’s streaming service. Unlike the short video snippets Instagram is known for, IGTV allows users to submit longer and vertical videos up to 15 minutes long via phone (and up to 60 minutes via desktop). Money-wise, you can make 55% off the ads placed on your videos.
Ideal for business video hosting, Wistia allows brands to control CTA, social sharing, and monetization of their high-quality videos. It has one of the most comprehensive video analytics in the market and the videos they host are protected by high-end encryption. However, this does come at a price, which is why it may not be ideal for smaller video creators.
This all-in-one video-on-demand monetization platform allows several ways to earn, from live streaming to selling subscriptions. One major upside to Uscreen is that content creators get to keep the contact info of their audience. Uscreen also has built-in marketing and community tools with about 1000+ integration of online tools to make your online space as inclusive as possible.
Facebook has expanded its foothold in the online-gaming-streaming market gradually in recent years and it continues to grow to this day.
Like other YouTube monetization alternatives on this list, Facebook gives video creators a platform to broadcast their gaming (or other content) live. The biggest thing about Facebook is that it will let you target the market you want to target as accurately as possible.
TikTok is a force to be reckoned with, especially with its 800 million active users. It allows video creators to make short and catchy videos from their phones. People Are Getting Rich From TikTok. Here’s How.
More noteworthy YouTube Monetization Alternatives include:
Thinkific– online video course creation and management platform.
Brid.TV – cross-device online video player platform with cool video analytics for optimization and monetization. Bird partners need at least 5,000 daily video views to start earning with publishers earning 70% and Brid.TV getting the lower 30% cut of ad-revenue sharing.
Veoh – Very niche-specific video-sharing platform. As video creators, you can add followers, DM strangers, create groups, and share content all at the same time.
Alugha – If you want to offer your video content to users in different languages, this unique platform allows you to do so by embedding subtitles in 2 or more languages.
Metacafe – short-form videos. This site is older than YouTube and offers unlimited upload.
Brightcove – Features a full-featured content management system, marketing automation, and several monetization options.
Maker Studios – Acquired by Disney, this digital platform for short-form videos gives about 60% revenue to low-traffic channels and up to 90% cut for popular channels.
Which is the Best YouTube Monetization Alternatives?
There is no single best YouTube monetization alternative for everyone because different video creators cater to different followers.
My take is to use as much of these platforms as you possibly can (without breaking any of their policies of course) because it is always better to diversify your income. Putting your eggs in just one basket is never a good idea – I’ve seen people get destroyed when their YouTube accounts they worked on for years suddenly get banned.
Also, work on quality video content. No matter your niche or industry, make sure you put out quality content. This is how you attract and keep your audience, who you’ll need regardless of what monetization route you take.
Do you know your city inside and out, its hidden gems, and its deepest, darkest secrets? Do you love meeting new people, showing them around your city, and having them see it through your eyes? If so, then becoming a local tour guide may be a great way for you to turn your passion into profit!
Local tour guides show guests around and have them experience the local places, spots, shops, food, and adventures just like someone who has lived there all their lives would experience them.
Today, we look at what a local tour guide does, what it takes to be one, steps to offer your services as a local tour guide, and companies to join as a local tour agent.
What Does A Local Tour Guide Do?
Simply put, a local tour guide is someone who is intimately familiar with a particular city or region and is able to show visitors around.
The main requirement is that your heart is in the right place, and you’re 100% in love with traveling and spreading the love of travel.
A local tour guide may or may not also be a licensed tour guide. You normally need to be one if you’re planning to guide tourists in a museum or if you’re employed by the government, non-profit environmental organizations, and private companies with any nature-based industry.
These are the qualities you need to have to become a local tour guide:
Knowledgeable about your city – Even if it is your hometown, remember that your customers are paying you for more in-depth knowledge and they expect you to know everything about each and every destination on your tour.
Extraordinary storyteller – That said, you’ll need to present your knowledge in a memorable way. Catch the attention of your group while discussing a destination’s history, facts, myths, and so on.
Enthusiastic – The information you share might be interesting, but if your delivery is flat, your customers will sense it and they wouldn’t care about what you’re saying. Make them feel how much you love your city.
Responsible – You are leading tourists who are unfamiliar with your city; you need to be mindful of their safety and comfort.
Well-informed about different cultures – It doesn’t matter if you’re only touring locally. People from different cultures and backgrounds may be part of your tour, so it’s ideal to know the basics, or at least enough that you don’t inadvertently offend them.
Superb communicator – Ultimately, leading local tours means you’re going to be talking to people every day. Not only that, but you’ll also need to listen to them to know what they want and need. You should be able to do both.
Adaptable – You should be able to adapt to any situation quickly, especially emergency situations. This also means you should be able to get along with your tour group, as they have different personalities and different things they want to get out of your tour.
Physically fit – Long walks, running, and standing for hours are par for the course for local tour guides, so you need to make sure that you’re up to these physical demands.
Join a tour company or be your own boss?
If you’re hoping to become a local tour guide, you can either do it as a part of a tour company or as your own boss.
You can land a local tour guide position, tour manager, itinerary maker, tour guide supervisor, and so on with traditional travel agencies. These jobs are also available at theme parks, museums, cultural centers, and other tourist destinations.
Do note that except for managerial positions, most tour guides are usually only hired during certain seasons.
The main benefit of being employed in a company is that you won’t have to worry about organizing your schedules, finding clients, and marketing your services. This leaves you free to be the best local tour guide you can be.
On the other hand, if you start your own company, you will be in total control of everything, from the packages and itineraries, themes and gimmicks, etc. As such, all of the income will be yours as well.
However, you’re going to be wearing more hats as an owner and local tour guide, since you’d have to continuously network and market your business to fill in your calendar. It can be quite exhausting, to say the least.
I recommend you begin as a contractor or employee for another company to dip your toes into the industry, then launch your own service when you’re experienced enough to tackle all facets.
How To Become a Local Tour Guide On Your Own
With the advent of the internet and social media, it’s never been easier to offer your services as a local tour guide and start your own business. Here are the important steps to take if you want to become a tour guide.
1. Education and qualifications.
As mentioned, this job doesn’t have specific educational requirements, but if you can do some training or research more on the most interesting places and facts about your city, that will certainly help you become a better tour guide.
If you’re a history, geology, anthropology, archaeology, or something similar, you may want to apply to be a licensed tour guide, especially if your area has plenty of museums and other historic tourist destinations.
2. Decide what kind of local tour you’re going to offer.
If you live in a city with plenty of sights to see and adventures to undertake, it may be overwhelming when creating an itinerary that covers as many significant places as possible. Here are some ideas of different types of itineraries you can plan as a local tour guide:
Tours centered around teaching a new skill. Consider activities or experiences that visitors new to your town or city would be happy to learn that they don’t get to do every day.
Think samba dancing in Rio, or cheesesteak-making in Philly.
For example, if you live by a body of water, you could create a tour that teaches visitors how, where, and what to fish. If you live by a state park or preserve, you might offer tours that teach people how to spot and pick edible wild mushrooms.
Tours centered around historical events, people, or places. Old cities and towns are perfect for this kind of tour, as chances are that the history of that place is interesting.
Washington, DC is a good example of a historic place.
Tours centered around activities. If you live in a scenic place, try to create a walking or hiking tour that provides plenty of sights. Maybe even have an overnight camping tour.
If the thrills in your area are more of the urban type, maybe a tour of your local amusement park and shopping centers is more appropriate. Or maybe a ghost tour or abandoned buildings tour at night can thrill your audience.
Customized tours. You might also provide different itinerary options, with portions that swap out for others in case the client wishes to create his own customized experience.
3. Promote your services.
Use social media or go as far as creating your own website to advertise your tours. Harnessing both is better, of course.
It may also be a good idea to team up with some local businesses, where you might grab a discount or incentive in exchange for bringing in tourists. These businesses can also advertise your tours to their own clients, thus expanding your reach.
4. Set your price.
To be able to set your price, consider your time and effort in creating the tours, your add-ons such as meals, drinks, souvenirs, etc., and the local competition. Check online prices of similar tours to have an idea of how much to charge.
How Much Can Local Tour Guides Make?
If you offer a tour that is a good value for the tourist and take them places where traditional tours don’t go, you can easily charge $200 for 2 hours. Add in a few incentives like a guide book or complimentary appetizers and drinks, and you can charge even more.
When it comes to tours, you’re better off creating a quality tour that costs more money than a “value-priced” one that just about anyone can complete on his own.
You can easily earn more money if you are fluent in languages other than English (Spanish, Japanese, French, Mandarin, Korean and Italian are the top in-demand languages).
Tourists have disposable income and are looking more for an incredible experience that they can brag about back home than for a way to save money. So don’t be afraid to create some amazing experiences and charge premium prices for them.
If you already have a touring business setup and you’re looking to make more money from it, Matthew Newton’s Sell More Tours is a must-read.
8 Companies Hiring Local Tour Guides
As I’ve mentioned, starting with tour companies and studying how they operate can help you get the knowledge you need to go on your own.
The following companies can help you kickstart your local tour guide gig, whether you plan to do this on the side or set-up a full-scale tour guide business.
This website describes itself as “a community of people who love to travel and be in touch with different cultures.” You’ll need to send an application to join, but once you’re in, you’re automatically known as a “local friend.” Fill in your profile completely.
For $100/year membership fee, this company provides you with a personal web page and marketing help in exchange for signing up.
As a local friend, you can accept or reject a request from a client. If you do accept the gig, the clients pay Rent a Local Friend 30% of your fee, then receive the rest after successfully completing the scheduled tour.
To join ToursByLocals, you’ll need to pass two phone interviews, pass a background check and provide local legal requirements.
Once you’ve been accepted, you can create your services page and begin marketing your business.
This company doesn’t require upfront fees to join, even if they provide free training, marketing, payment processing, and a $3 million in liability insurance.
However, you will need to share 20% of your fee with them every time you complete a successful gig.
Context provides private tours or small group tours with a maximum of 6 people in every major city across the globe.
Extensive knowledge of your city, local hot spots, and the biggest attractions are a must.
Most tours fetch between $100-$200 per hour, and that’s not including any tips you may receive from your group for doing an exemplary job.
Context’s dedication to sustainable tourism and making a minimal impact on local culture make them one of the most premier touring companies out there.
Withlocals works with individual freelancers who want to show their city and share their passions.
This Netherlands-based company follows the same process as ToursByLocals – you post an “experience” or customized tour, wait for clients, do the job, and then wait for your income.
Withlocals deduct their 10 to 20% fee from you every time you complete a job.
If your city or town is known for its cuisine and you’re an expert in the kitchen (whether you’re a professional cook or a next-level home cook), being a host for Traveling Spoon may be a great side gig for you.
You can go through the whole application process, even the interviews, online.
Once you’re approved, you can start hosting tourists. You get paid at least 8 hours before your guests arrive.
FREETOUR allows you to create your own tour and share it with the world through their platform.
As the name suggests, the tours here are mostly free, with your guests paying you in tips. You still have the option of setting your tour as a paid one, with guests paying 20% upon booking and the rest when the tour is over. However, you’ll get way fewer bookings this way.
Think of free tours as a promotional offer for you to advertise your services as a tour guide so you’ll have existing contacts when you do start your own venture.
This website connects tourists with locals who know their city better than anyone else.
When you sign up as a local to Showaround, you get to determine your hourly rate, your tour itinerary, and who you want to show around your hometown.
The more tours you go on, the more reviews you’ll collect, and the more you establish your reputation on the site and the higher you get ranked on their search algorithm.
The Bottom Line
Becoming a local tour guide is simple as long as you have the heart and right skills to do the job. However, like many freelancing gigs, the challenging part is marketing your service to your target audience.
With these 8 companies hiring local tour guides, you’ll receive free training on how to network, market, and expand your business.
And when you’re ready to scale up, I’d recommend you build your own website, so you’ll have your own, safe online space if any of these companies decide to close shop in the future.
Do you think you have what it takes to become a local tour guide? Does this seem like a business you can do? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!
In the past, when you looked for side hustles, you’d have to take in odd jobs like babysitting, car washing, newspaper delivery, lifeguarding, tutoring, shoveling snow, and a whole lot more.
Today, the internet has opened up a ton of side cash generating jobs – from those you can complete in under an hour (like answering surveys), to something a bit more complicated that requires advanced skills (like website development).
If you have some free time, you can make sure you have fast cash for an emergency expense that’s beyond your budget, or stow away for a rainy day.
Here are 100 easy ways to earn side cash without the need for a second full-time job.
Quick Online Tasks
If you’re constantly on the internet and you have a few minutes to spare every so often, there are quick and easy ways to make money with side hustles that won’t take too much of your time.
1. Answer short surveys
Third-party companies pay these survey companies to find out what consumers think about their products or services. Most get-paid-to-take-survey gigs let you earn points for every survey completed.
You can then choose to redeem these points for e-certificates, vouchers, gift cards, or real cash into your PayPal or bank account.
Tons of survey sites exist, but only a few legit survey sites are known to consistently pay its users.
2. Listen to music online
Listening to music seems too mundane to ever earn money from.
But there are a few ways to make money from this.
You can check out new music and earn points by rating and giving feedback on the artists’ work, or listen to Internet radio and get paid to subscribe or listen to ads, or let market research companies know what type of music you like listening to.
You’ll mostly earn cents per listened song, but this can add up quickly if you’re on the website for an entire day.
You have the potential to earn $5 to $20 per hour on easy tasks, but the competition is fierce and task availability may be few and far between.
4. Perform data mining or research for Microworkers
The quick jobs that Microworkers offer are more complex than surveys and filling out CAPTCHA forms. You’ll need a bit of internet marketing knowledge to perform assignments.
Get a chance to earn points from tasks like data mining or tagging, content evaluation, research, and more.
5. Play Online Games and more with Swagbucks
Swagbucks gives you $5 just for signing up. From there, you can earn SwagBucks (its virtual currency) from a wide range of activities such as playing games, online shopping, taking surveys, etc. The SwagBucks you collect are redeemable for coupons, gift cards, and other goodies.
Common tasks in Amazon’s micro job site include image verification and tagging, as well as data gathering, verification, and processing.
You’ll be overloaded with a ton of tasks, so you have to install a few tools to keep mTurk assignments organized and free from scams.
The best thing about this platform is that there is plenty of work to be done, priced at cents to dollars a pop.
7. Sell photos taken from your phone
It’s an interesting concept—take a photo using your smartphone, upload it into the Foap app, and share 50/50 profit with Foap whenever your photo gets sold for $10 in their marketplace.
Is your meme game strong? Do you love spotting, sharing, or creating photos, videos, GIFs, or other content that most likely get reactions from people?
Running an Instagram meme page or a YouTube meme compilation channel are easy ways to make money from memes. Being a freelance meme maker can also put some cash in your pocket.
You don’t have to be a master programmer to assess if Google’s search results provide value to you (the searcher) or not.
You only have to check if ads posted on websites or search engines are relevant, or if the search results are actually relevant to the keywords you search for.
This job is rare but pays by the hour when available. Here are some search engine evaluator jobs you can apply for.
10. Join crowdsourced contests
If you’re a creative who’s up for a challenge and looking to constantly hone your skills, joining online contests gives you this opportunity plus the chance to earn rewards, gift cards, or cash for your trouble.
Crowdsourced contests are available for writers, graphic designers, video creators, data scientists, or even those who are awesome at idea generation or branding.
11. Download apps that offer rewards or cash
There are tons of apps geared at gathering information from users in exchange for discounts, rewards, or cash.
For instance, ibotta is an app that finds coupons and discounts for you, such that you pay less for items you were going to buy anyway. In exchange, they get to know a bit about your purchasing habits, such as where you shop and what you shop for.
Here are more apps that you can download and use when appropriate.
12. Perform data entry tasks
Data entry jobs are still sometimes used by scammers to get hold of people’s cash.
Since many are desperate to work from home in the past, they were duped into paying for a list of companies that offer data entry jobs. Now, the scams have evolved to ask people to pay to get a job.
If you ever encounter one of these websites, run away. You should never have to pay a legitimate company to work for them.
That said, here are legit companies that actually pay on an hourly or per output basis.
13. Install the Nielsen App to earn $50 yearly
The Nielsen Computer & Mobile panel is a platform to get connected with Nielsen Digital. By registering on this site and installing the app, you’ll be paid $50 every year. What’s great is that you’ll also have the chance of winning prizes, since Nielsen gives away $10k in prizes each month.
Writing Gigs
If you’re a writer or an aspiring one, these gigs may be the right ones for you. Here are some side hustles through writing.
14. Jingle writer
Do you think you’ve got the chops for making these jingles commercial? Got cleverly made-up jingles stuck in your head for weeks? Know what makes an earworm?
You can make some money from writing jingles for various companies and brands. In fact, if you turn this into a full-time job, it’s possible to make $10,000 per jingle.
It’s not easy for laymen to craft legal documents, so if you have a law background or a special passion curating legal content, use this knowledge to earn some side cash.
Online advertising is one of the most effective techniques of targeting online customers, and is therefore big business.
If you know how to persuade and entice people to purchase, subscribe, or do other actions through your writing, copywriting gigs could quickly make you some money.
Sites such as Copify ($30 per 500 words) and Contently ($15 per hour) can help you earn some side cash. Here are more copywriter jobs you can apply for.
18. Editor/Proofreader
Correcting and improving other writers’ work may be more up your alley, and there is plenty of work to go around, as internet writers put out content at a high rate.
Those who have a passion for proofreading or editing, with or without experience, can get proofreading jobs.
19. Poet
It’s time to dispel the trope of the penniless poet.
If poetry is flowing through your veins, let it run wild and earn from them on the side. You’d be amazed at how many sites and magazines are willing to pay people for their poems. You can earn from $25 to over $1,000, depending on the policies of the site you decide to join.
20. Short Story Writer
Fiction writers need not feel out of place. There are legit literary sites that will willingly buy your short stories and other fictional works for $100 or more.
21. Online Dating Ghostwriter
Online dating can be tough, which is why many people hire others to “write” or “fix” their online dating profiles. If you’re an awesome writer who can turn any person’s voice and goals into words that are able to attract other people, then this gig may be for you.
22. Blogger
Of the rest of the writing gigs here, blogging is the one that can open up opportunities for you beyond writing.
You can talk about anything under the sun on a blog. From diary-like life experiences to business informative posts, everyone has something they’re interested in.
What’s amazing about blogging is that aside from allowing you to practice and hone your writing skills, you can monetize most of your interests, with some exceptions (nudity, guns, cigarettes, and so on).
Teaching Gigs
Educating people on certain subjects or demonstrating how to do certain tasks can bring in some cash. Here are some teaching and tutoring gigs that you can do.
23. ESL teacher
Some websites require you to be a native English speaker or have some kind of teaching experience, but most ESL tutor sites just look for people with a passion for teaching English.
This job is paid hourly (from $10 to $50+ per hour depending on experience), so the amount you could potentially earn depends on how much free time you’re willing to spend teaching.
The average fee per hour is around $20, but this rate could go lower or higher depending on your educational credentials (those with a teaching or master’s degree earn higher), the site you decide to join, as well as the subject/s you teach.
For instance, tutoring grade school students on their math homework would pay lower than tutoring high school or college students on calculus.
25. Personal trainer
Here’s another soul-fulfilling, money-making side gig for anyone with expert-level knowledge about diet, fitness, weight loss, and everything in between.
You can offer online one-on-one or group coaching lessons to people interested in losing weight. You can eventually turn this into a long-term business if you have the passion and the drive to maintain it.
If you’re able to guide a friend or a few through their rough patches in life, there’s a good chance you can earn from being a life coach. Unlike therapists that require credentials, consider a life coach as a best friend whose main goal is to ensure you deal with your specific problem through the end.
You can get started with Vida (for health-related coaching), AskMarsVenus (relationships niche), or Tony Robbins (business coaching).
Anyone with a unique idea, invention, or knowledge can earn money by sharing it with the world.
You can start a YouTube or Vimeo channel and upload short video lessons during your free time.
For more complicated topics, you can create a Udemy course bit by bit, either text-based or video, and then market your online course.
28. Technical writer
If you’re into technical subjects like software development, DevOps, production systems, and other related topics, you can earn from $50 to $100 on regular tutorials and even more for longer or more specialized pieces.
Plenty of companies are offering jobs to graphic designers and visual artists. Here are some graphic design gigs that may be an easy way for you to make some side cash.
29. Branding and marketing designer
Plenty of companies have a need for a branding and marketing designer to help translate their companies’ mission, vision, products, and services into images.
From creating logos, banners, and hero images for websites, which take a few hours to make, to creating an entire WordPress theme complete with iconography, fonts, and background images, which can take a few weeks to months to finish, the possibilities are endless.
You can find this type of gig in freelance job boards like Fiverr, and especially on job boards that cater specifically to graphic designers, such as Behance, Dribbble, or 99designs.
The earning potential in this line of work varies depending on your skills and how much time you can spend looking for projects, possibly bidding on them, and doing the actual work.
30. Caricaturist
Here’s another gig for the artsy.
If you’re gifted with caricature skills and can easily turn any face or picture into a cartoon, you can earn somewhere from $20 to $500 on various projects posted on job boards, such as Freelancer, Guru, Upwork, and more.
31. Webcomic artist
Webcomics have been increasing in popularity in recent years, thanks to crowdfunding sites and social media.
Webcomic artists can now also earn side cash by selling merchandise with their webcomics printed on them. Passive income can also come from building a blog or offering your webcomics via a subscription service.
You can custom-draw pets in Disney style for $15 to $45 per order, or paint a client’s portrait on canvas. You can also design personalized wall art, word art, or even jewelry.
This gives you the artistic freedom to conceptualize and create while earning some cash out of it.
33. Animator
Know how to do 2D, 3D, or stop-motion animation? You can easily make $50 to $500 per project, maybe even thousands of dollars, depending on the complexity and quality required from you and the overall size of the project.
Tattoos stay on one’s skin forever. When one decides to have a tattoo done, they’ll want to have their vision turned into reality by a tattoo designer who knows what they’re doing.
If you have a knack for designing eye-catching images for t-shirts, tote bags, hoodies, mugs, pens, pillows, phone covers, and the like, you can make that into a regular gig by joining print-on-demand (PoD) websites as a designer.
Written and visual content aren’t the only formats out there. In fact, audio and video content are equally, if not more, popular forms of content nowadays. There are plenty of audio- and video-related gigs that you can do to make some quick side cash.
36. Transcriber
Is your hand-ear coordination super-fast? Can you type spoken words quickly and accurately? Then maybe transcription gigs are a good fit for you.
Jobs are paid from $15 to over $100 per audio hour. Note that the industry standard for completing the transcript for an audio hour is four hours, but beginners might take longer.
Closed captioning is the process of displaying the dialogue, sound effects, musical cues, and other audio information in text format on television programs and movies that assist the deaf and hard of hearing in comprehending what’s happening onscreen.
If you’re adding doing offline captioning, that is, adding closed captions to pre-recorded videos, you’ll have to be precise in applying the time codes so that the text is displayed at just the right time. Beginners can earn from $10 to $15 per hour.
By contrast, if you’re doing real-time captioning of live shows or events, you’ll have to be a next-level transcriber. Usually, the only ones who qualify are court reporters, who are able to drum out words at a minimum of 180 wpm. These captioners can earn up to $150 an hour.
Anyone blessed with a perfectly modulated voice and excellent diction and enunciation can work as a voice-over artist and read audiobooks, narrate commercials or documentaries, introduce podcast hosts, outline IVE phone options, and many more.
You can earn somewhere between $100 to over $500 just for a 5-minute voice-over project.
The complexity, application process, and payment depend on which voice-over site you join.
39. Singer
Unless you’re one of the lucky ones, having an amazing singing voice doesn’t automatically translate to fame and fortune.
Singing can be a pretty lucrative side gig, though. From singing a love song while a guy proposes to his girlfriend, to singing for a demo track, or adding backup vocals to an existing song, you can offer your services on various job marketplaces.
Similar to singing, being a musician doesn’t necessarily translate to fame and fortune.
You can still earn some quick cash, though. You can work as a session musician, or as a music producer or composer. You can even transcribe music into sheet music, guitar tabs, or a midi file.
Podcasting has increased in popularity in recent years, and as the audiences grow, so does the number of podcasts.
Think of a topic that is interesting to many people, and if you are articulate, witty, and charming, you can start your own podcast.
Podcasting is a fulltime job for some, but if you’re only starting out or have a day job, you can do this as a part-time gig first.
42. Viral video creator
If you’ve ever been the life of a party, or the subject of a viral video, you might be pleased to know that this can turn into a lucrative side job.
Because you’re the one crafting ideas and recording the viral video for your clients, you need to know what’s popular, how to turn your ideas into reality, and how to bring the house down with your performance.
Love taking videos of yourself, your life, your experiences, your skills? Upload as many videos on YouTube as you can, then apply for the YouTube Partner Program. Once you’re approved, you’ll be able to earn cash from views on each of your uploaded videos.
The good thing is that you can just take videos and upload them whenever you have free time. A committed schedule would be preferable, but it’s not strictly mandatory.
Web & Mobile Development Gigs
Website development is another field that offers many lucrative side gigs. Here are a few to get you started.
44. Website tester
You can get paid to test a website’s usability, search feature, layout, ad placement, and more. You can even review a site’s logo, design, and content, or discover bugs in exchange of a fee. There are over a dozen companies that pay to test websites from $5 and up.
45. Video game tester
For many people, testing video games is the job of their dreams. The competition to land these jobs is fierce, but they’re real if you know where to look. If this is something you’d be interested in, check this guide on how to avoid scams and discover which companies to stalk for video game testing gigs.
46. Web developer
For those with experience coding websites from scratch, using Shopify to build a secure online store, or mixing and matching WordPress themes and plugins to craft a unique website, there are plenty of online opportunities for you to make side cash quickly. You can even offer to take over a web dev project or create custom plugins for a site.
Internet Marketing and Social Media Gigs
Digital marketing is big right now and will continue to be in the foreseeable future since everything lives on the internet nowadays. This field offers plenty of fulltime opportunities, but also plenty of side hustles.
47. Email marketer
Email campaigns can be pre-written for future marketing use, so those with a flair for writing can find work as an email marketer on the side. It’s a lucrative gig (where you can earn $30 to $50 per hour) and you have the option of accepting one-off projects or a full-time contract.
48. Internet marketer for local businesses
With everything going digital, some brick-and-mortar companies are dying, not because their products are bad, but because they’re unable to compete with technologically advanced companies.
You can earn cash by helping local businesses build their online presence, understand how search engines work, take advantage of social media, and compete even in the online world.
49. Branding strategist
It doesn’t matter if you’re not yet adapted to modern internet marketing. As long as you have a marketing background and you know what it takes to build successful branding, you can earn side cash creating company taglines, product logos, business names, brand stories, and more.
The branding packages you can offer can be as simple as brainstorming business names for $5, or as complex as identifying company mission/vision, product color templates, logos, taglines, product description and more.
50. Website traffic consultant
Getting traffic to websites is a science. You need to achieve the right balance of paid advertising, organic traffic, and multiple marketing and SEO techniques to achieve traffic goals. Factor in the ever-changing rules set by search engine giants like Google to the mix and this job becomes super challenging.
If you know the ins and outs of internet marketing or search engine optimization, you can offer to help companies with their increasing organic website traffic. The commitment level or duration of the project is completely up to you.
51. Affiliate marketer
Probably the most effective way of earning cash daily is through affiliate marketing.
However, this requires hard work in the beginning, before you can actually call it a full-time online business. To succeed in affiliate marketing, you’ll need a blog, a topic you love, and a bit of guidance from experienced affiliate marketers.
There’s quick cash to be made in this line of work, especially for brands that do not have an online presence yet, since you’d be creating social media accounts and gathering followers for each platform. The amount you earn, however, depends on the duration of the contract and the specific tasks assigned to you.
53. Social media strategist
A social media strategist is another social media job that involves assessing the current social media strategy of a company or business and sets relevant goals, draws up plans to meet those goals, and implements those plans with the help of their clients and social media managers.
This requires extensive knowledge of how social media works and how to analyze data.
Virtual Assistant Gigs
Virtual assistants are exactly what they sound like—they help companies or individuals from online instead of going to a physical office. Depending on the tasks assigned to you and the skills that you can offer, this can be a pretty quick way to earn some cash.
54. General virtual assistant
General VAs are personal assistants, secretaries, and office administrators all rolled into one, who work online.
The basic online skills that general VAs need to have include research, data entry and analysis, typing, email management, calendar management, bookkeeping, report making, and personal online errands. Thus, this kind of gig is great for people just beginning to work from home jobs.
If you want to dip your toes in the travel industry, being a travel agent can be a great gig.
Travel agents plan and book business trips and holidays for their clients. Being a freelance travel agent can be an easy way to make money since you get to decide which clients to take and how much time you want to work per day.
This is a gig that has a great opportunity to become a full-time business as well, so this is a good first stepping stone.
There are websites and applications that allow you to plan your own trip, but having an actual human who has gone to these places plan an itinerary is still preferable.
They have knowledge that no machine or app can ever match. Human itinerary planners can create highly personalized, specific itineraries, such as a 5-day family-friendly trip on a budget. Plus, you don’t have to book the trip; your clients can either take your itinerary to their travel agent or make the travel arrangements themselves.
Those with an accounting background with a valid Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN) can help other people prepare tax returns. It’s a great way to earn money during tax season without having to quit your day job.
58. Document translator
Companies or individuals who work with people in other countries will have a need for a document translator. If you know 2 or more languages, this can be a nice-paying gig for you.
If you’ve been in the customer service industry and have had experiences in taking calls, answering e-mails, manning live chats, and so on, you’d be thrilled to know you can jump in and join various companies, provide customer service and earn even while doing it as a sideline.
Payments range from $5 to $25 per hour, depending on the company or agent experience. Some jobs even offer commissions.
60. Online recruiter/headhunter
If you have a knack for being able to find job hunters with the right job openings in the right companies, being a freelance online recruiter may be for you. This is also one of those gigs that can turn into a full-time job or a business.
Work with a legitimate recruitment system and you’ll find yourself with a side gig that pays. Check out Recruiter.com, which offers recruiter training and certification.
61. Non-voice customer service agent
Customer service jobs that require you to talk to people over the phone demand a quiet workplace, a high-quality, noise-canceling headset and mic, and a personality that can handle it.
Unfortunately, not everyone has all of the above.
Fortunately, non-voice customer service jobs exist. You can work as a chat or email agent instead. Salaries range from $8 to $20 per hour depending on the company.
62. Post on Forums
Some companies pay people to post on forums and jump-start conversations within the threads. Believe it or not, many of the marketing forums you know started with paid posters. Today, you can still earn quick cash as a forum poster, especially if the aim is to build backlinks to a certain website.
Sell Stuff for Extra Cash
If you’re not interested in working for other people, one of the easiest ways of making extra cash is by selling stuff you already have or can source, items you created by hand, or digital products you think other people would need.
63. Sell things you don’t need anymore on eBay
eBay remains a popular buy/sell marketplace where you can discard your pre-loved items without leaving the house. If you’re not a fan of garage sales, then you can sell old clothes, vintage items, and other things you’re willing to let go of. For those interested in a long-term eBay business, learn how to start your own eBay consignment biz.
Those who have bouts of creative streaks and piled up projects in the garage shouldn’t just leave their homemade blankets, handmade lamp, and so on to gather dust. Instead, make quick cash by selling your art and crafts at Etsy.
There’s a ton of sub-niches in that lively artsy community, so it’s easy to build your own special space on Etsy.
This is also perfect for those who have no capital yet to fund a complete operation that handles shipping, customer service, marketing, logistics, and everything else.
66. Flip furniture
Flipping furniture can be an easy, lucrative gig if you have an eye for worn, damaged furniture and the skills to transform them into functional works of art.
Here’s how to start flipping furniture and making side cash without having to quit your fulltime job.
67. Sell meal plans
Whether you successfully lost weight by following a diet plan, have a medical background, or a fan of healthy eating, you can customize and sell meal plans to clients. You can even create and offer meal plans for specific conditions, such as diabetes, childhood obesity, or food allergies.
You can sell your meal plans on Etsy or your own website.
68. Sell Microsoft Excel spreadsheets
Microsoft Excel may not be the best spreadsheet software there is, but it’s certainly the most popular because of its flexibility. You can create templates for financial records, calendars, to-do lists, events planning, business planning, household organization, and so much more.
You can sell your spreadsheets on Etsy, SpreadsheetNut, or on your own website.
69. Sell lesson plans
Anyone with a teaching background can create lesson plans and sell them to other teachers who might not have the time to make one from scratch. Would you ever imagine that this kind of side gig can earn you a six-figure income? Read up on some success stories and discover how you can replicate these teachers’ success with selling lesson plans.
70. Sell mobile apps
Even if there are thousands of mobile apps already on Google Play and Apple Store, the app industry is still worth billions of dollars.
Aside from the ability to conceptualize applications that people are willing to pay for, app development requires advanced programming skills and business savvy to market the app after launch.
71. Sell WordPress plugins
Those who use and love WordPress can easily spot problems that need solving. If you find an issue that you think can be resolved with a plugin, create that plugin and sell it to the highest bidder. You can also seek custom WP plugin jobs via Fiverr.com for a guaranteed sale.
72. Sell artwork
Being a talented artist means being able to design various collectibles, such as vinyl stickers, canvas art, stencils, sewing patterns, jewelry, and other artwork. You can sell your own designs and then accept custom work when your popularity increases.
You can also design and sell seasonal items such as calendars, planners, posters, wall art, greeting cards, printables, and other season-specific items.
If drawing comics or cartoons is more your style, there’s always a market for pop art, portraits, anime, pencil sketch, or any other drawing styles.
Sell your art or commission services on artwork marketplaces such as DeviantArt, Imagekind, or Zazzle.
73. Sell hand-calligraphed items
Writing old school is in and lucrative, which is great because calligraphy is an expensive hobby: the inks, pens, nibs, markers, special papers, and other necessary tools all cost a pretty penny.
Hand-calligraphed items, such as posters with You can create posters with inspirational quotes, vinyl stickers with witty sayings, holiday cards, and many more.
Your craft is also very much in demand for weddings: invitations, place cards, bride-and-groom wineglasses, favor tags, thank-you cards, and sometimes even the menus.
Make use of your Photoshop and advanced programming skills by creating WordPress themes. If you’re lucky and your WP theme fills a void missing in the WordPress space, then you’ll be able to sell the theme quickly. Note that unless you sell your rights to the theme, you’re going to handle customer service and helpdesk for your theme’s clients.
It may be 2020, but there are hidden gems yet to be registered as domain names. If you’re creative, have a knack for words, and know a thing or two about getting traffic to a newly built website, then flipping domains can still be a lucrative side gig for you.
77. Sell old stuff
If your house is filled with various stuff you no longer use, don’t automatically throw them in the trash. You can sell them on various websites, such as Decluttr (for phones and other electronics), Poshmark (for clothes), and BOXSMART (for boxes).
Got an eye for photography? If your camera is your go-to gadget everywhere you go, there’s a good chance you’ve taken hundreds of photos that are worthy to be sold as stock photos.
Pokemon has had a resurgence lately, so if you have any old but mint-condition Pokemon cards lying around, you might want to make quick cash off them. Here’s a guide on how to sell your Pokemon cards.
80. Sell baseball cards
If you’re more of a baseball fan than a Pokemon fan, there’s also a market for your baseball cards! Do your best to keep your baseball cards in marketable condition so you can get as much cash for them as possible.
81. Sell vinyl records
Vinyl records are also making a comeback, so if you have some vintage vinyl records in your basement or in the attic, it’s worth checking them out and finding out if they’re worth anything. Learn how to sell vinyl records here.
Simple Offline Side Hustles
I did mention that errands are the classic side hustles, but they are still quick ways of making money. Even if they’re offline tasks, you’re still aided by technology. Here are some examples.
82. Be a secret shopper
In mystery shopping, you have to physically go to a store and rate the store’s layout, how the staff handled customer service, upselling/marketing skills, store cleanliness, product knowledge of the staff, and other criteria listed on the job description.
Aside from cash (about $5 to $20 per job), you may also be gifted the product you “had” to buy from the mystery shopping assignment.
Whether you’re on a quick run to your local grocery store or touring another country, you can download a couple of apps and take advantage of rewards they’re offering in exchange for luggage space (Airmule), or answering travel-related surveys and doing other travel-related tasks (Field Agent).
But if you’re not willing to do ridesharing, how about delivering other people’s packages while on your way to work, to the school, to the grocery, or elsewhere you’d normally pass anyway?
Roadie and Amazon Flex follow the same concept—it lets people make money by delivering packages to destinations that are within your commute.
Roadie and Amazon Flex match drivers with packages, and these gigs pay somewhere between $10 to $50 for local trips and over $500 for long-distance delivery.
85. Deliver cars from one point to another
If you know how to drive and how to follow directions or a map, you can deliver cars from point A to point B. You can make $300 to $400 per vehicle you move. If you need to make some quick cash, this can be a good gig.
Grocery shopping can be a pain in the butt for busy people. So help these people by becoming a personal grocery shopper and earn some cash doing it. You can join websites such as Instacart and Postmates.
Instacart and Postmates are available in the major cities in all 50 states. The average take-home pay of personal shopper is around $15/hour, plus tips and bonuses. This can go up or down depending on the distances of your deliveries, how many deliveries you make, and the places your clients order from.
87. Remind people to take their meds
Pleio is a site that reminds its clients to take their medication and help out with basic prescription-related questions. You can be a GoodStart Mentor and earn an hourly wage from home while helping other people follow a good routine with their medication.
Everyday Stuff
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to earn some cash from the mundane things one has to do? That’s probably the quickest way to make money. Here are some everyday tasks you do that can earn you some side cash.
88. Watch TV
It sounds like a scam, but there are actually ways to get paid to watch TV or online videos the whole day. Check out our list of simple ways to make money from watching TV.
89. Eat
You can now get paid for indulging your taste buds. What a time to be alive, yes?
Almost all the ways to get paid to walk are fitness-related, but some of them involve walking to do some nearby errands.
91. Text
If you can hold your own in a text conversation, this might be one of the simplest ways to make money. Here are a few gigs to get you started.
92. Hang out
Yup, you can get paid to hang out… in somebody else’s house.
House-sitting is an underrated way to earn money. You’ll normally be assigned some tasks to do in the house, but it should be nothing more than what you’d be doing in your own house. You can negotiate your pay for extra tasks, such as pet-sitting and forwarding their mail.
Unusual Ways to Earn Extra Money Online
There is a place for everyone on the internet, even for the strangest, most unique jobs. Check out these unusual, but definitely real, ways to earn money online.
93. Model
Whether you’ve offered to model a product, dress up in cosplay, or pose for a professional photo shoot, there’s a company or marketing firm that may just bite. Just take a look at the hundreds of models-for-hire on Fiverr to see that both men and women can turn this into a money-making side gig.
94. Fortune teller
If you’re a professional palmist or fortune teller, you can offer your fortune-telling services online for as low as $5 for a quick psychic reading to over $100 (predicting specifics such as marriage or future employment).
95. Lose weight
Yes, you can get paid for losing weight or getting healthy. For instance, the app Achievement, but this one gives you points for walking, eating healthy food, and so on. Once you get 10k points, you can convert them into $10.
96. Recommend business names
If you’re good at making up catchy names or products, you can earn quick cash by recommending business names. You have to compete with other people for the best names though, so only join if you’ve got time on your hands and your naming game is strong.
97. Decide on a case
Online mock juries are used by attornies and jury consultants to gauge jury reaction to defendants, witnesses, evidence, and other aspects of a case that can affect the outcome of a trial so that they can formulate a convincing legal strategy.
People move to other places in the country, and sometimes it’s daunting to explore a new city all by themselves. Or maybe people merely want some company during the weekends to do something together, like watch movies, visit an art gallery, picnic at a park, and other normally mundane activities.
If you feel you can be a good friend and companion, check out our guide on Rent-A-Friend and start getting paid to help others.
99. Cuddle
Lack of human contact and interaction has been shown to be harmful to our mental and physical health.
Some people resort to dating apps, while others pay professional cuddlers to simply embrace them and talk to them, with no other expectations and messy entanglements.
If you’re a hugger and don’t mind platonic touch and small talk, this can be an easy side hustle for you.
100. Sleep
Getting paid to sleep is not as easy as it sounds. You’ll have to have a physical exam, a psych exam, and other exams just to make sure you can participate in the sleep studies. You’ll also have to contend with having to wear equipment, possibly keeping a diary, and being isolated.
But at the end of the tunnel, you can get paid up to $6,000 for a 5-day study, and $10,000 or higher for a 30-day study.
Choose a gig and start making side cash!
Isn’t it awesome that the present work-from-home environment is so widely accepted by small to big companies that they make part-time, full-time, or freelance gigs available throughout the year?
I hope you can find something that fits your skillset from this huge list of online gigs and earn side cash whenever you need it.
