12 interesting ways you can make money (without quitting your job)

I just came across an article on Vital Dollar’s website that got me totally intrigued. You’ll find out more about the article later, but anyway, kudos to them for giving me the title of today’s article! Thanks, guys!

Why we need more than one source of income

Right, there’s no nice way to say this: if you want to get out of debt (this is a reverse royal “we” here, because I’m including myself in that “you”, if you know what I mean), it’s very likely that you’re going to need one or two side income streams.

In fact, while I’m on that topic, if you want to get wealthy, you need more than one income stream, especially if that income stream is a job.

However, the internet is full of fake promises that you can make $1000 a month or $500 a day or “I earned $80k last year just from doing this one thing”

If you’re doing a search, the quick way of telling whether it’s a legitimate thing or not is whether it costs anything to set up. If you need to pay a fee upfront, generally, walk away.

But here’s a list of 12 ways of earning a second (or third or fourth) income while you’re still working your main job or looking after the kids or whatever.

Now, let me say that I’m not including any information on the money back or coupon sites that they have in North America. I’m in Australia, I know nothing about them and it’s difficult for me to really find out about them, so they’re off the list.

1. Start a blog or online business
Online business is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to start creating money for yourself. You can create your own blog for free using Weebly, which is what I did. If, in the future, you want to sell products, you can simply upgrade your Weebly subscription and start selling right away.

Set up a Weebly blog or website
Buy your domain name and host your site through Siteground – hands down the BEST hosting company. They have the best, instant and FREE support that I’ve ever come across, and when you’re a complete technical no-nerd like me, that’s absolutely essential. Click here to go to Siteground now.

Create a blog and leverage it into affiliate sales or product endorsement deals. Consider topics like:

Travel
Cooking
Health
Technology
Personal finance
Style
Shopping
Holidays

Check out this free e-course on how to set up a blog.

2. Test websites for $30 an hour
Ever visit a website and you thought about how bad or how great it was? Did you know that you can actually can get paid to share your thoughts?

There are companies whose job it is to test websites and they pay members of the public to do the research for them. You don’t need to be a tech wiz or anything, they want an everyday, ordinary opinion on how their client’s websites look and work.

All you have to do is visit the websites they send you to (and there won’t be any dodgy ones, don’t worry!), have a look around, make a note of what isn’t working (if anything) and get paid. That’s it.

This is how it works. User Testing, for example:

Go to the specified website or app
Switch on the recording app to record your screen and voice while you’re on the website
Complete a set of specified tasks and comment about them as you’re doing them.

Payment: almost US$30 an hour (just under $10 for each 20-minute video you record).

Their clients include Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and other Fortune 500 companies.

This is earning money for expressing your humble opinion, lol.

Here are some home testing websites:

3. Become a virtual assistant
If you’re not sure what a VA does, basically they can do anything and everything from checking emails and making travel plans to handling internet research and posting on social media.

Experienced VAs command US$50-$100 an hour and work for clients across the globe.

Some reputable sites are:

But there are hundreds of great VA companies, check out ones locally to you.

4. Tutoring
Give private tuition classes at your home, either in person or online via skype

There is a growing number of sites for this kind of thing, with levels from early primary through to University.

You’re likely to want to work for a local company, so again, do a bit of internet research to find reputable companies.

5. Change your search engine
This is an interesting one but currently only available to (most) US residents. Do you use Google or Yahoo to search for something on the net?

Did you know that Bing will pay you to switch away from Google & Yahoo?

This is most definitely Microsoft bribing people away from the traditional search engines, but if you’re not that bothered by privacy issues (I use DuckDuckGo because it doesn’t track you and I hate the thought of someone watching my every move. Weird, I know), and you want to earn a bit of extra money in the form of gift cards, this could be for you.

All you have to do is sign up for the program, conduct your regular searches on Bing, make it your default search engine, and earn credits that can be redeemed for gift cards. You can earn as much as $5 to $10 per month.

Note: Make sure you’re signed-in whenever you do a search.

6. Data Entry
Use your accurate and quick typing skills to enter information from home.

There are heaps of reputable companies such as Seek or CareerOne where you can register and search for work. Just specify “online” when looking.

7. Work for Amazon
Amazon Mechanical Turk lists the online jobs that Amazon is on the lookout for. They’re all work from home positions with flexible hours for one of the world’s largest retailers.

Some tasks that people are asked to do include:

Select the correct spelling for these search terms
Is this website suitable for a general audience?
Find the item number for the product in this image
Rate the search results for these keywords
Are these two products the same?
Choose the appropriate category for products
Categorize the tone of this article
Translate a paragraph from English to French

There are also more technical tasks available. Check it out here.

8. Affiliate marketing
If you already have a blog on something that interests you, leverage on your hard work and earn some money from it.

I recently completed an Affiliate Marketing program by the lovely Michelle Schroeder-Gardner. She makes over $50,000 a month from affiliate marketing alone (she has other income streams, too) and this course tells you exactly how she did it and how you can, too.
The course has 6 modules, over 30 lessons, several worksheets, bonuses, an extremely helpful and exclusive Facebook group, and more. You go through everything that you need to know about affiliate marketing, such as:

What affiliate marketing is and how it works
Why affiliate marketing is so good
The exact steps Michelle took to earn over $300,000 from a single blog post
It gives the links to more than 80 companies for you to market, whether you’re an established blogger or a complete newbie.

Click here to check out the program.

You can also check out the affiliate programs at Amazon Affiliate or Google AdSense. You simply apply for the program, choose products to promote, and advertise them on your content site. Whenever someone reads your blog or article, clicks on the links, and buys an item, you get paid.

9. Sell Your Unwanted Stuff For Cash
If you are in need of extra cash, your unwanted possessions can be a great source of income.

Just recently, we raised several thousand dollars selling things we no longer wanted or needed on Gumtree and eBay. You can also use Facebook and Amazon.

Alternatively, hold a garage sale or go to your local Car Boot sale.

10. Rent out your spare room on AirBnB
Did you know that you could rent out your spare room on AirBnB and make some good money?

If you live in a city or town centre, university town or holiday destination, you can earn good money by renting out your spare room.

You can even rent out your entire house when you are on holiday or away yourself. It can be a lucrative way to earn money without a job.

11. Be An Amazon Seller
There are many people who make a very nice income just by selling on Amazon.The easiest way to work with Amazon is to sign up for their Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA) program. You can click here to find out more. You simply list your items for sale, send your inventory to an FBA warehouse and Amazon takes care of the rest: payment, picking, packing & sending.

They take the payment for your items, they pack and send your products to the customer, and they take care of customer service for you. For that, Amazon charges you a standard set of fees for handling all this (click here to find out the costs), but it’s still worth it, particularly because your items are then listed as Prime, which means more sales.

Many people earn a living selling exclusively on Amazon. For example, The Selling Family, are a husband and wife duo making six figures a year selling on Amazon. They also have a fabulous set of courses and programs that teach others how to do the same thing.

You can sign up for their free 7-day email course on how to make money on Amazon here.

12. Become a Rent-A-Friend
Yep. Seriously.

A blog post titled “Rent A Friend: How to Make Money by Being a Friend” came up in my feed this morning and I just had to check it out!

And I found out that this is actually a legitimate thing! People will pay you to be their friend! I’m not sure whether I’m sad, horrified, perplexed, upset or all of those things at once. I have to say that making money by being someone’s friend is the number one weirdest extra money idea that I’ve ever come across.

Check out the website here. They now have people both available as friends and looking for friends across the world. This isn’t a dating agency, it’s simply about finding someone to accompany you to say a wedding or a movie or whatever.

Basically, you can earn yourself $10+ an hour, the amount is entirely negotiable.

There you have it: twelve incredibly good and interesting ways to earn money without quitting your job.

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