Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2022. Prices and earnings, such as thumbnail makers earning €5,000 a month, survey payments of 50 cents to €15, mystery shopper fees of €10–40 a visit and Fiverr jobs from $5, are 2022 figures.
Today we round up ways you can make extra money from home without needing to invest. We have updated the ideas for 2023. As you know, we only ever cover ways of making money that others have already used and that have worked for them. It’s a matter of using your creativity.
And if none of these ideas appeal to you, remember that in a previous article we covered most of the ways you can make extra money online.
But first, I’d like to warn you about some of the suggestions other websites make when they explain how someone can earn a bit of extra money. They often include trading or investing in cryptocurrencies. That is clearly irresponsible of whoever suggests these ways of generating income because, in the case of trading, you are almost certain to end up losing money in the long run.
Investing in crypto is still an investment. And any investment requires you to be prepared and know the basics, especially since the crypto sector has an added disadvantage: as purely speculative assets with no intrinsic value, they cannot be analysed from an investor’s point of view because they have no fundamentals. And if you go by technical analysis, we have already explained that investing on the basis of technical analysis owes more to chance than to skill. With that said, let’s begin.
How to make extra money in 2023
1. Make money creating thumbnails for YouTube creators and other social media
For some people this is more than a way to earn extra money: it has become a full-time job bringing in thousands of euros a month in profit. A YouTube video’s success starts with users clicking on it, and an attractive thumbnail helps with that. In fact, some content creators spend longer making the thumbnail than recording the video.
This is where professional thumbnail makers come in. Some manage to earn more than €5,000 a month creating YouTube thumbnails, charging over 200 euros per thumbnail. “Making” a good thumbnail isn’t just about knowing design; it’s also about understanding how viewers think and analysing competitors’ thumbnails to get a higher click-through rate than theirs. Some have become real professionals who work for big YouTube channels doing nothing else. What starts as a way to earn extra income ends up becoming a highly profitable business.
To start making money this way, though, you’ll need to contact smaller YouTubers and offer a competitive price to begin with.
2. Resell used products on Amazon
There are many ways to make money with Amazon, and many ways to sell on it. One is to sell second-hand products, for which you only need to create an individual seller account. In this case you don’t need to be a professional seller or a company, nor do you have to pay self-employed contributions (autónomos, in Spain) or anything like that.
As your sales volume grows, you would then need a different type of Amazon seller account.
How do people make extra money this way?
Some look for used product listings on other online stores, such as eBay, buy them and put them up for sale on Amazon at a slightly higher price (remember that Amazon charges a small commission on each sale). Others buy products wholesale directly from factories and sell them on Amazon at retail, marking up the price.
Not to mention dropshipping, which basically means creating your own website to sell a third party’s products and having the manufacturer ship them directly. I don’t recommend it because it offers the customer no value, and it is also not as profitable as the people selling courses on it claim. In the same way, the latest get-rich method being sold today, buying €5 junk on Aliexpress and selling it on Amazon for five times the price, isn’t very advisable either.
Selling second-hand products, or buying wholesale to sell at retail, I do see as an ethical way to make extra money and grow cleanly in the world of business. To open an individual seller account on Amazon, you just need to sign up at the following link.
3. Buying and selling old or rare books
Books are still an excellent way to make extra money, sometimes more than we think. There are first editions sitting on the shelves of people who don’t know they own valuable books that some collectors would pay hundreds of euros for. But we don’t need to go that far.
Large stores have sprung up that buy old books for €0.20 and sell them for up to €5 or even more. That’s something you can do as an individual to generate extra income. Today you can buy books in bulk lots and sell them on apps like Wallapop or even on Amazon itself, especially if you’re lucky enough to have books in your catalogue that are out of print, or those first editions people would pay more for.
More ways to make extra money with books
Today anyone can publish a book, either as an ebook or in print. Of course, Amazon is increasingly filling up with junk from new writers who are only looking for an easy way to make money without offering readers any real value.
If you have an interesting subject to write about, or you know a particular field well and sincerely believe you can offer readers something of value, don’t think twice. Write your book. If, on the other hand, you’re only doing it to make money and you’re going to do what some new writers do (copy and paste content from the internet into your book), stay put, because readers will soon consign your book to oblivion. In any case, writing your own book is a way to earn passive income, although I can tell you from experience that the competition is tough.
In my own case, even though I had a fairly large readership, after writing my book the sales didn’t just come by themselves. You have to get out there and promote the book. And in the end it’s the readers who decide whether the book deserves to climb higher.
Our next way of earning extra income from home also gives you further ways to make money from books.
4. Use affiliate programmes
If you have an Instagram account with a large following, a blog with lots of visitors or a Facebook page with plenty of fans, you can start choosing products from companies that let you earn money from the sales made by users who buy through your link.
There are many companies with affiliate schemes, including Amazon, eBay, Aliexpress, ClickBank and others.
The good thing about this way of generating extra income is that as long as you keep getting traffic, your affiliate links keep working and earning money. And as we said earlier, you can recommend all kinds of products to your followers here, including books you like.
While some people have become full-time professionals with affiliate programmes, it’s more usual for this to become a supplement to our income: some months €50, other months €600. It also depends on the time you put in and the knowledge you build up. In many cases, the people who live off affiliate programmes don’t owe it to luck but to studying their niche and to the money they invest in advertising to drive traffic to the pages where they have their affiliate links.
5. Buying and selling old toys
I admit I didn’t know this sector existed until I met a man of about 50 who works in it almost full time. He looks for old toys of all kinds and resells them, some for large sums of money. Collecting extends to retro toys too. He combines this with selling vinyl records and rare books.
As he puts it, when it comes to collecting, there’s a market for practically any kind of product. It’s a matter of getting started and being patient.
6. Make your own podcast
Podcasts have taken off. You can start your own and make money from it, either by selling episodes or by offering them free and earning from the advertising your listeners generate. It’s an excellent way to make extra money, since everything suggests podcasts will end up becoming the new radio. We explain the different ways to make money from a podcast here:
7. Sell your own handicrafts
This way of making extra money may seem complicated at first, but if you’re good at making some kind of craft that appeals to customers, the idea can be very profitable.
In fact, it’s so profitable that Catalina started out looking to earn some extra money and it ended up becoming her lifestyle and main business.
Once again we’ll use the example of the young woman who started making personalised figures for babies at home, began advertising them on Facebook, and has now turned it into her main business: BUBU Decoración Infantil.
Other people manage to make extra money with other kinds of crafts, or by selling all sorts of handmade or homemade products, such as woollen hats or gloves.
It’s certainly a way to create a small business and earn money from home. If demand grows over time, you’ll be on your way to having a decent company.
8. Video editing for YouTubers, Instagrammers and TikTokers
As with making thumbnails, here we would be saving YouTubers time so they can focus on what they do best: creating content. If you’re good with editing software, you can make extra money today by offering this service. What you can earn editing videos for YouTubers will depend on your skill, your reputation and the YouTuber in question.
9. Paid surveys: a classic way to make money from home
It’s not the idea I’d recommend most, but it’s an option.
You certainly won’t get rich with this way of making extra money, but it can be very useful for people who aren’t sure at first what they want to do or can do. It’s a simple, quick way to make money, but it won’t be much.
Some surveys pay 50 cents, others 5 euros and some as much as 15 euros, but as we said, it won’t be easy, because the surveys that pay a decent amount usually take a lot of time.
Then there’s the fact that not all companies offering money for surveys can be trusted. That’s why in one article we listed 3 companies that we know do formally pay users for completing surveys. It’s not the best way to earn a high income from home, but it’s certainly a good idea for earning some extra money online.
10. Painting house fronts
Many people probably don’t want to spend money on painting the front of their house, but what if you knock on their door and tell them you’re trying to save for university and that for €20 you’ll give their facade a fresh coat of paint?
I know of young people who offer this kind of service and manage to earn some extra money.
I know some will say this isn’t a good business, and so on and so forth. But when someone’s financial situation is extremely delicate and they can’t find a job however hard they look, if you can earn 30 or 50 euros for a day’s work, that’s better than nothing.
11. Make extra money writing
Some time ago we talked about how a woman earned up to $950 writing from home. While you can make extra money writing for blogs on a particular subject, this woman specialised in advertising copy thanks to her great creativity.
Although it may seem otherwise given the amount of information circulating online, there aren’t many good creative writers today. So if you’re good at writing, can bring creativity or have something to offer that sets you apart from what’s already out there, it will certainly be a good opportunity to make some good extra money. You may not earn €950 an hour, but even if we knock 900 euros off that, I think 50 euros an hour isn’t bad at all.
12. Sell your photos to stock image libraries
There are many stock image libraries that pay you every time someone downloads or uses your photo. This way of making money isn’t quick, since it may take a while to sell your photos, but it’s one more option.
One of the biggest stock libraries is Getty Images. Of course, you need to know the pros and cons of doing this very well. On this blog, the author gives an excellent summary, based on his experience, of how to sell your photos on Getty Images.
13. How to make money with your selfies
It’s not exactly that, but people are making money with this idea. If you enjoy taking selfies and have the right style, you can upload them to Stylinity (or similar sites) and tag your clothes. If people like them and decide to buy, you earn money through reward points that can be exchanged for cash or products.
It really works like an affiliate programme, so if you have an Instagram account or a YouTube channel, you can do it yourself, either with clothing brands that have an affiliate scheme or with Amazon, tagging the clothes you’re wearing through the Amazon affiliate programme. “Influencers” use both options.
14. Product reviewer
While companies used to send products to professional reviewers, and even pay them, today it’s something you can set up on your own.
In other words, you can either receive a product from a particular brand and write a partial review, or buy the product yourself, review it on a blog or YouTube channel and add an affiliate link to the product (if the review is positive) or links to competing products (if the review is negative). Every time someone buys through your links, you earn money.
There are YouTube channels whose biggest income comes from reviewing products through affiliate programmes.
See also: Ways to make money without working and without doing anything
More ideas for making extra money without investing anything
15. Sell online courses (information products)
If you’re good at explaining a particular subject, you can make your own videos teaching others how to do what you know, whether it’s the stock market, building a chair, programming and so on. You can sell these courses on platforms such as Udemy. If your course is good and covers a subject that is fashionable at the time, I’ll just remind you of the young man who made more than $120,000 in a few months selling his course on Udemy.
16. Film-style wedding videos
Since people want to feel like the stars on their wedding day, why not make them a real film? A title, soundtrack, credits and dialogue in the style of a film could make a real difference in the wedding video business.
All it takes is a solid command of video editing. If you’re good at it, you’ll have a recurring extra income. Companies that specialise in this can charge large sums of money. I imagine that will get cheaper over time as more people offer it, but for now it’s one more business idea.
17. Selling woollen goods and handicrafts made at home
I don’t mean to sound sexist, but this way of making money is chosen mostly by women who know how to make gloves, woolly hats, hand-knitted jumpers and so on.
It’s certainly a popular choice among unemployed women, homemakers and retired women looking to generate some extra income. Even though there’s a huge variety of clothing online, handmade goods are still popular and still have a market.
People sometimes doubt the quality of “made in China”, but few doubt the quality of that woolly hat our grandmother used to make us, the one that kept your head boiling hot even at -7 degrees.
Today, thanks to the internet, it’s very easy to get your handmade products to customers. The simple fact that something is handmade means you can add a bigger profit margin for the time you’ve put in. And yes, many women entrepreneurs make extra money this way from the comfort of their own homes.
18. Part-time or full-time data entry
The millions of websites on the internet aren’t just made of HTML. They sometimes need a lot of content, so a data-entry worker’s job, among other things, is usually loading data into forms and databases.
You can also offer to produce reports and documents in any format. People who can touch-type and write a very considerable number of words per minute are usually in demand. You are paid either by the hour or by the page.
19. How to make extra money with low-cost jobs online
If there’s something you know how to do that would take someone else an hour or two while you do it in 10 minutes, there’s a business in it.
For example, someone who has no idea about websites and blogs and needs to install a plugin or some feature on their site.
There was a blogger who offered these mini-services for prices as ridiculous as €5, although of course it was something that hardly took him any time.
For €5, I certainly wouldn’t think twice. Some bloggers are now starting to offer these services from 25 euros per job, competing with bigger companies that are increasingly pulling their socks up and cutting prices. But as long as you can make money this way, all you need is your internet connection.
Unusual ways to make extra money with little effort
Below are some ways to generate extra income with hardly any effort.
20. Make money selling your hair
You can make a lot of money selling your hair, especially if it’s virgin hair, that is, if you’ve never dyed it. Many factors affect how much you’ll be paid for it: length, thickness, colour and so on.
Where can you sell your hair?
On the HairSellOn website there’s a calculator that gives you a rough idea of how much you could sell your hair for. Depending on your hair type, you could get anywhere from $100 to $500. As much as $4,000 has been paid for one type of hair. It’s certainly a quick way to get some extra money.
And if you already know something about the subject, you can build a business around it by becoming a hair buyer and seller. Bear in mind that there’s demand for natural hairpieces and extensions, so you can sell both your own hair and other people’s to hairdressing businesses, or sell it directly to individuals online.
21. Become a research subject
Research studies are an easy way to make money. It isn’t a steady source of income, but it can give you some extra money when the time comes. The most effective approach is to check with the universities in your city or keep an eye on their notices in various media, where they sometimes look for focus groups.
Some medical studies pay money for something easy, while others pay more but take a lot of time and may even carry a health risk.
Then there are companies that pay to study the consumer mind, so you may find yourself being paid to watch TV for eight hours or play video games for weeks.
22. Make money by putting ads on your car
This is one of the business ideas we suggested for entrepreneurs. Taxis and buses are regular clients that offer their vehicles for advertising. But this market isn’t just for big companies: individuals can also cover their cars in all kinds of advertising and earn money from it. After all, all advertisers want is for their ads to be seen. Find a company that offers this service to individuals in your country, and if you don’t mind wrapping your car in advertising, this way of making money is for you.
23. Become a mystery shopper
This way of making extra money isn’t hard to get into. You just need to sign up with one of the companies that are constantly looking for mystery shoppers: people sent by companies to report afterwards on how they were served, any problems they had, how the staff performed and so on.
Sometimes they’ll want you to have a particular car model so you can visit a dealership or garage. Other times they’ll give you a couple of cinema tickets and cover your drinks and popcorn. There are many kinds, and it can be fun.
The problem many people who have worked as mystery shoppers complain about is that at first it’s tedious to follow the procedure they ask for and then fill in the form with your opinion and assessment. You can earn an average of 10 to 40 euros per visit.
24. Personal trainer
At home or at the client’s home, you can make money helping someone who needs to lose weight or get fit with personalised training. Some say personal trainers in Spain aren’t well paid, but that isn’t true: some earn nothing, some earn little and some earn a great deal of money.
The difference between them? The same as in any profession: personal image and the value each one adds for the client. It’s up to you whether this is just a way to earn some extra income or a very lucrative business.
25. Yoga classes
Yoga is fashionable and in growing demand, so if you have room in your living room and the necessary knowledge, you can make money from it in a few hours a week. The same goes for other disciplines and teachings, even reiki, which is very fashionable today. You can make money from home with this idea.
26. Express clothing alterations
Tomorrow, Sunday, I have a wedding, and today, Saturday, I don’t know who can take up the hems of my suit trousers. This service can be offered from a shop or from your own home.
Sewing enthusiasts just need to advertise properly on a local classifieds site or on Facebook. If people know what you do, they’re very likely to get in touch.
27. Childcare, elderly care or pet care
Especially when caring for the elderly and children, the secret is trust. Building excellent references, advertising properly and even working with companies that are always looking for nannies or carers is an excellent way to earn money, whether occasionally or regularly.
Pet care is also spreading as the number of pet owners grows, from walking the dog to looking after it for a few days while the owners are away on business or holiday.
28. Design logos
If you’re a creative person, the logo design market moves a lot of money today. There are many sites where a company explains what it wants to achieve with a logo and designers compete to win the sale. Where can you offer your services as a logo designer straight away to make extra money?
On 99designs.es, companies can order a logo and designers can sign up.
29. Offer your services on Fiverr
Fiverr is probably the biggest freelance marketplace in the world, where all kinds of services are requested. Although most of the offers are in English, there is growing demand for Spanish speakers. Jobs start at $5, and from there, depending on the job, you can find interesting figures.
30. Sell your music on Envato
Envato is just one of many sites where, if you’re good at making music and background tracks for videos, you can make money selling your music, as well as other things.
31. Make money from home as a freelancer on TrabajoFreelance
By signing up on this site, you can make money creating designs and logos, doing search engine optimisation, repairing computers and so on. One of the sites for micro-jobs and freelance work in Spain is TrabajoFreelance.es. Look for this kind of site in your country, and if there isn’t one, you’ve got an excellent business idea (creating it).
Both the previous idea and this one are good ways to make quick money online in a day.
32. Managing Twitter and Facebook accounts
This means making money by helping small businesses or self-employed people who don’t have much time to gain visibility online or build up a sizeable following.
It would be like a community manager’s job, but aimed at people who don’t know what that term means. We sometimes forget that many small business owners know absolutely nothing about technology, so they wouldn’t even know how to set up a Facebook page for their business. For a modest fee, I’m sure they would leave it in your hands. It’s a good business and certainly a good way to make money online without investing anything, just time and mental effort.
See also: 20 business ideas you can start from home
Featured image: Michael Coghlan, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
