Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2017. It reflects a later update of a 2013 piece, so much of the list reflects 2013 conditions, and the pay figures are 2013-2017 claims. Conduit’s platform has been discontinued, and Google+ Hangouts shut down in 2019.
There are many ways to earn extra income: some more elaborate, others simpler, some faster and others that take more patience. Here’s a roundup of ideas for generating extra income when you need work and finding a job is hard. These ways of making money have been used by different people at certain stages of their lives.
First of all, anyone today can make money online from the comfort of their own home. That said, we shouldn’t start out with the wrong expectations, thinking it will be a lot of money and that it will come quickly; the most profitable ways of doing it are, without a doubt, a process that takes a great deal of persistence.
However, if you have a well-defined talent, it’s quite likely you can offer what you know how to do and start earning money right away. Over time, some of these ways of making money could even become your main income or a large share of your recurring income. Let’s get started.
What are some ways to earn extra money?
1. Sell your own handicrafts
It may seem like a complicated way to make money, but the truth is that if you’re good at making some kind of handicraft that appeals to customers, this idea can be very profitable. Once again, take the example of the young woman who started making personalized figures for babies at home, advertised them on Facebook and has since turned it into her main business: BUBU Decoración Infantil.
2. Paid surveys
You certainly won’t get rich this way, far from it, 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 quick and easy 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 decent money tend to take a lot of time.
Then there’s the fact that not every company offering paid surveys can be trusted. That’s why we put together an article with 3 companies we know do formally pay users for taking surveys.
3. Freelance on TrabajoFreelance
By signing up on this site, you can earn money creating designs and logos, doing SEO, repairing computers and so on. One of the micro-job and freelance job sites in Spain is TrabajoFreelance.es. Look for this kind of site in your country, and if there isn’t one, there’s an excellent business idea for you: create it.
4. Private tutoring
Whether in person or online, if you have specific knowledge and there’s someone on the other side (a student, say) who needs it, you have an excellent opportunity to make money. And thanks to technology, you can even give group lessons: with Google+ Hangouts you can have more than 10 students connected at once. You set the price.
5. Buy and sell second-hand items
Some people visit second-hand shops looking for undervalued products they can resell at a higher price on eBay. Others simply buy things for next to nothing to sell online. It’s even better if you have technical skills, like Juan from Granada. When a scanner or printer breaks down, it often costs more to repair it than to buy a new one, so he makes money by buying those old broken scanners and printers for 1 or 2 euros, fixing them and putting them up for sale.
See also: 6 business ideas for young entrepreneurs with no investment
6. Write a book
Today you can self-publish your book, and there are several ways to go about it:
- You can write one or more short books and publish them on Kindle.
- You can self-publish your book and sell it on your own website.
- You can partner with platforms and sell to their audience.
- You can list the digital edition in affiliate programs, so that bloggers interested in offering your book to their readers can do so and earn a commission.
- You can also make an audiobook and sell it on Audible.
- Of course, you can also go to a major publisher, although that route will take a bit more work.
7. Paint house fronts
Many people probably don’t want to spend money painting the front of their house, but what if you knock on their door, tell them you’re saving for college and offer to give their façade a fresh coat of paint for €10? This idea came from Dani, an 18-year-old from Jaén, who says you can make €40 a day if you work hard, since he painted an average of four house fronts a day at €10 each. He clearly didn’t sell himself as a professional painter, but the façades looked better than before, and his customers were grateful.
8. Donate blood plasma
Many people in the United States are turning to this way of generating extra income: by donating blood plasma twice a week (or as often as allowed), some earn 250 to 300 dollars a month. Check whether this is an option in your country.
9. Make small furniture and objects from recycled materials
If you’re handy and creative too, you can build all kinds of objects out of all kinds of pieces you come across. People are paying between 150 and 500 dollars for pieces like those made by Lisa Frick, who earns about 250 dollars a week selling her products made from recycled materials.
10. Manage Twitter and Facebook accounts
This means making money by helping small businesses and self-employed people who are short on time to gain visibility online or build a sizeable following. It’s 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’d leave it in your hands.
11. Take part in medical studies
Many laboratories and universities often need people for studies, for which they pay around €50. Some laboratories also want to test a drug’s side effects and usually pay a bit more for the days the study lasts. As long as it doesn’t pose a risk to your health, it’s a good way to earn some extra money while helping science.
12. Create an app
If you have the skills, you can create an app for iPhone and Android. If your app is a huge success, maybe someone will buy it for 1 billion dollars. And even if in the end you only make an extra 150 or 300 euros a month, that wouldn’t be bad either while you come up with that other million-euro app.
13. Sell your photos to stock photo agencies
There are many stock photo sites that pay you every time someone downloads or uses your photo. This isn’t a fast way to make money, since it could take a while to sell your photos, but it’s one more option. One of the biggest stock photo agencies is Getty Images. Of course, you should be fully aware of the pros and cons of doing this. On this blog, the author gives a great summary, based on his own experience, of how to sell your photos through Getty Images.
14. Sell online courses
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 investing in the stock market, building a chair or programming. You can sell these courses on platforms like Udemy. If your course is good and covers a topic that’s popular at the time, just remember the young man who made more than 120,000 dollars in a few months selling his course on Udemy.
15. Photographer for individuals, businesses and personal ads
Is photography your thing? Businesses want a professional portfolio of their company, and individuals at certain moments want a photo album made. Likewise, as we’ve mentioned before, working as a photographer for personal ads can be very profitable: some women and men who advertise on personal-ad sites need professional photos, with the appropriate retouching.
16. Movie-style wedding videos
Since people want to feel like the stars on their wedding day, why not make them a real movie? A title, soundtrack, credits and dialogue in film form could mark a turning point in the wedding video business. All it takes is advanced video editing skills.
17. Dropshipping
This means selling products without having to stock them. You’re simply the middleman. The customer buys a product from a company through you, and once the purchase is made, the company itself ships the product to the customer’s home. You take a commission, without investing in buying or shipping products. More than once I’ve been asked about reliable dropshipping sites for selling products from China. ForoBeta put together a list of 70 Chinese sites you can work with on a dropshipping basis. I can’t vouch for the reliability of every one of them. We’ve covered this business before, including people who have literally made millions with it, and in this article we explained step by step how to set up this business using AliExpress.
18. Sell homemade (organic) food for children
Many mothers don’t have time to cook a proper meal for their children because of work, so your kitchen could become the supplier of quality homemade food for your building or neighborhood. That’s how Big Dipper started, and today it’s a large company.
19. Affiliate marketing
If you have an Instagram account with a large number of followers, 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 programs, including Amazon, eBay, AliExpress and ClickBank.
More small-business ideas for part-time or weekend income
20. Personal trainer
At your home or at the client’s, you can make money giving personalized training to someone who needs to lose weight or get in shape. Some say personal trainers in Spain aren’t well paid, but that’s not 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.
21. Yoga classes
Yoga is fashionable and increasingly in demand, so if you have space in your living room and the necessary knowledge, you can make money with it in a few hours a week. The same goes for other disciplines and practices, even reiki, which is very much in vogue these days.
22. Coaching
Both personal and professional coaches can find a large market today, as long as they’re good at what they do and know how to get noticed. The profession has boomed to the point that if you kick a stone, 100 coaches pop out, but the truth is there are some really good ones and some really mediocre ones. If you’re one of the good ones, you’ll undoubtedly do better. I know, I’ve just stated the obvious.
23. Blogs and websites
We’re not talking about building an online store (which takes a lot of work), but building a company’s corporate blog or website can take very little time and pays well. And if they also want services like SEO or social media management and you’re able to offer them, go for it.
24. A YouTube channel
This way of making money may be more demanding than the previous ones, since it requires building a loyal audience, and luck may play a part too. You can create a channel on a subject you’re good at (cooking, finance…) or even a comedy channel, where you can be very successful if you’re creative. That said, from my own experience and that of others, I’ll warn you up front that making money with a YouTube channel can be a very long and tedious process, so much so that many people get frustrated before receiving their first payment. Even so, if there’s a subject in which you can stand out, go for it.
25. Podcasting
If you’re passionate about a topic and believe you have something to say that could interest thousands or millions of people, you can start making podcasts and earn money from them, either by selling them or by offering them for free and earning from the advertising your audience generates.
26. Make money with Conduit
Conduit is a platform where you can create custom apps and toolbars. Every time someone downloads an app or installs a toolbar you’ve created, Conduit pays you.
27. Dumpster diving
Let’s not call it “going through the trash”, because that sounds bad. Rosa and Pedro from Córdoba say that five years ago, when they were university students living in a student neighborhood, they took advantage of the end of the academic year, when students moved out of their apartments, to search the dumpsters for what many left behind: shelves, clothes, books and all kinds of school supplies, and sometimes even TVs and computers that didn’t work and just needed fixing. They sold everything both in second-hand shops and on eBay, and they say they made as much as €2,500 selling things students left behind when moving out.
28. Low-cost jobs
If there’s something you can do in 10 minutes that would take someone else an hour or two, there’s a business in it. For example, someone who knows nothing about websites and blogs and needs to install a plugin or a simple share button. For €5, I for one wouldn’t think twice. Some bloggers are already starting to offer these services from 25 euros per job.
29. Virtual assistant
From your own home you can help, collaborate or work with various companies. In some cases they’ll turn to you for one-off tasks when the company is overloaded. In others, they might hand you their customer service, which is probably what companies most often want when hiring a virtual assistant. Of course, you’ll need to know how to sell yourself for this kind of work, but once you do, it can be very rewarding.
30. Sell handmade woolen goods
Not to fall into sexism, but this way of making money is chosen above all by women who know how to make gloves, wool hats, handmade sweaters and the like. It’s undoubtedly a popular choice among unemployed women, homemakers and retired women looking to generate some extra income.
31. 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. If you love sewing, all you need to do is advertise properly on a local classifieds site or on Facebook. If people know what you do, they’ll very likely get in touch.
32. Childcare, elder care or pet care
Especially when it comes to caring for the elderly and children, the secret is trust. If you build excellent references, advertise properly and even work with agencies that are constantly looking for babysitters or caregivers, it’s an excellent way to earn occasional or regular money. Pet care is also growing as more people have pets, from walking the dog to looking after it for a few days during business trips or holidays.
33. Premium errand service
There will always be elderly people and people short on time. Picking up suits from the dry cleaner, taking a parcel to the post office, bringing an elderly woman’s groceries home from the supermarket so she doesn’t have to carry heavy bags… Some entrepreneurs have even managed to build a company around errands. If I remember correctly, I think there’s even an app for it.
34. Freelance writer
Although it’s one of the typical ideas you always hear, the truth is that if you like to write, know a subject well and have your own distinctive style, you shouldn’t have trouble finding sites looking for writers for their publications. What’s more, this small job can catapult you toward other excellent ways of making money.
35. Part-time or full-time data entry
The millions of websites on the internet aren’t made of HTML alone. They often need a lot of content, so a data-entry worker’s job, among other things, is usually to enter data into forms and databases. You can also offer your services to produce monographs and lay them out in any format. Employers usually look for people who can touch-type and type a very considerable number of words per minute. Pay is either by the hour or by the page.
36. Design logos
If you’re a creative person, the logo design market moves a lot of money these days. 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 start offering your services as a logo designer right away? On 99designs.es, companies can request a logo, and designers can sign up via the tab at the bottom of the page.
37. 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’s growing demand for Spanish speakers. Jobs start at 5 dollars, and from there, depending on the job, you can find interesting figures.
38. 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 earn money selling your music, along with other things you can sell there.
Featured image: Nenad Stojković, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
