With more moms trying to stretch their budgets, we’re sharing some legit ways to make extra money each month, without working a second job, laying out cash to get into multi-level marketing, or taking work that makes you unhappy.
Some of these ideas for making extra money take a little more effort than others, some require a little more time commitment, and some are so simple you can do them in minutes — even while you’re on your phone, waiting on the carpool line or half-watching Netflix.
A few of them will even pay you immediately, so you don’t have to wait for the extra cash to start coming in.
Take a look at our list of totally legitimate ways to make extra money each week, see what appeals to you, and get ready to count the earnings.
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24 Legit Ways to Make Extra Money Each Month
If you’ve got a guest house, vacation home, or even a finished basement with its own entrance, check out VRBO or airbnb, compare with similar properties in your area, and get a sense of how much extra money you can make. It could be a lot! Depending on the property you have to rent, you may even be able to take a family trip to an affordable VRBO property within driving distance — or check Expedia for great flight and car rental deals — and rent your own place for more! That means you’re basically getting a free trip, and making extra money on top of it.
If you have older kids or are empty nesting, you can put all that childcare experience toward making extra money with babysitting gigs through CARE.com. It’s an incredibly trusted platform that connects families with quality, trusted local caregivers — and that includes senior care and pet sitting if those are in your areas of expertise and interest.
At the new Cool Mom Rewards site, you can earn gift cards to the kinds of stores you love just by playing games online! From casino games to word games, playing Monopoly Go! or even doing the USA Today crossword puzzle will earn you points you redeem for gift cards of your choice to Amazon, Walmart, Target, Starbucks, Apple, Google Play, Sephora, Nike, and more. Just 1,000 points gets you a $10 gift card; the higher the levels you reach in each game, the more you earn — sometimes 32,000 points or more per game.
If you knit, paint, make dolls, make soaps, sew Christmas ornaments, make friendship bracelets, print funny t-shirts, or know calligraphy, you can easily set up an Etsy shop. Check out the Etsy welcome page for sellers to apply easily. You can also sell items you already own and don’t need, like vintage handbags, vases, old vinyl/CDs or artwork sitting in the basement. And consider using the Foxtail AI app, which can automate the busywork of searching keywords and writing the listings.
Why regift when you can resell? (Or, do both!) Etsy is a great resource, but there also sites like Poshmark, Depop (no fee for sellers!), Facebook Marketplace, and of course, eBay, where sellers will happily buy that beautiful glassware you never use, your old vinyl collection, vintage jewelry, books, furniture…you name it. You may want to invest in an affordable mini lightbox kit so you can photograph everything beautifully. It will absolutely pay for itself. Pro Tip: The Foxtail AI app can help you manage multiple shops across platforms and uses AI to automate listings and keywords, so you increase your chance of sales. That means less time managing your shop, and more time making extra money.
If you want to skip the photography and send your used clothing and accessories away… then forget about them until a check comes in, ThredUp is for you. Your clothing should be in clean, good condition, without alterations, you can send them most items besides PJs, formalwear, men’s clothes, or lingerie. They’ll accept 60-80% of your items, photograph them, list them, ship them, and send you the revenue. It may not be as much as you’d make selling your own stuff, but if you want to make extra money and you’re short on time, it’s a smart solution.
For much less work than participating in a focus group, you can select surveys online in the new Cool Mom Rewards program with different point values. Fill them out, and those points add up to free gift cards to top retailers. Some surveys take as little as one minute, while others may require 6 or 7 minutes. You can also accept other offers like subscribing to a new site, or entering a sweepstakes — which means you’re not only earning those points, you have a chance to earn the grand prize!
Combine these survey offers with the ones from Survey Junkie and you stand to earn a good amount!
Browse Skillshare for all kinds of inspiration for the kinds of skills people will pay for through online video courses. It’s likely you have a few yourself — crafting, design, creating spreadsheets, gardening, accounting, you name it. You can sign up to be a Skillshare teacher, where the top-earning teachers make over $100,000 a year! Tip: Skillshare is offering a 7-day free trial, should you want to brush up on your own skills before offering them to others on Skillshare, or just on your own through your network.
If you have the ability to teach English, or help students of any level learn math, history, reading, piano, guitar, and more, it can be really lucrative. Advertise your services on local Facebook Groups on on LinkedIn, put up notices in neighborhood coffee shops, or apply to CARE.com, which now offers tutoring as one of its services. You can find tutoring work in-person or online through CARE.
You can also visit websites like Tutor.com, SuperProf, and Wyzant, which all pair tutors with learners. You set your own rates and they take a small percentage. Or if you’re already a licensed teacher, have certification in your area of expertise, or hold a degree in that field, look at Skooli to earn very competitive rates.
Pick Up Some Freelance Work
Fiverr is a popular site providing professional freelance services in over 200 categories, from writing to graphic design, video production, social media content creation, fitness lessons, meal planning. Advertise your skills, and pick up some work on the side (or full time) to earn some extra money doing what you’re great at.
Become an Instacart shopper and you can earn extra money running errands and shopping for people in your community. You’ll make an average of $18 an hour, but five-star shoppers who put extra effort and care into their deliveries can score big with tips and repeat customers. Alternately, we hear good things about making deliveries for Walmart through the Spark Driver app.
Sign up at Upwork and you can offer your services as an hourly VA or virtual assistant, doing everything from helping manage emails, to data entry, project management, administrative support, appointment scheduling, or working on platforms like Canva or Photoshop. The highest-rated VAs with experience charge upwards of $20/hour for their services. One VA with property management is charging $60/hour. (While you can lower prices to be competitive, we believe you shouldn’t be paid less than minimum wage.)
If you want cash and not credit, check out Gazelle, which will give you an online offer for your used electronics within 2 minutes and pays quickly. Fantastic way to properly dispose of those old cameras, outdated phones, and unused gaming consules.
Similar sites include Swappa, Decluttr, Backmarket, and itsworthmore.com, though some involve direct sales sites where you’re listing your items as you would in a shop.
Apple Trade-In remains the best way to trade in and upgrade your tech if you’re an Apple fan. They list their trade-in values clearly and transparently on the site; right now you can get up to $650 on an iPhone 15 Pro Max, for example, and even $250 on an older iPhone 13. You can apply the credit directly to a new purchase, or accept an Apple Store gift card for later use.
Target’s Electronics Trade-In Program is available at all Target stores. Gather up those old mobile phones, tablets, headphones, MP3 players, video games, video game consoles, and smart speakers, and they’ll give you gift cards that are as good as cash at any Target.
Amazon Trade-In will take back your Amazon devices in exchange for an Amazon gift card for the trade-in price, plus 20% off a new qualifying Amazon Device like an Echo Dot, Echo Show, Fire Tablet or Fire Kids Tablet, Kindle, and more. They also offer gift cards in exchange for trade-ins on mobile phones and gaming devices and accessories.
Best Buy offers a rotating roster of offers for trade-ins, including discounts on new floor care items, gaming devices, printers from HP and Epsom, and more.
Substack makes it easy to monetize newsletters, and there’s no startup fee at all unlike other email programs. Share tips, recommendations, or information that readers find valuable and you can charge a subscriber $3-10/month for your expertise depending on the niche. Substack uses social networking style features to make it easy for new subscribers to find you based on related content, and you get paid quickly too — weekly through Stripe without additional fees.
Some of the services you may already use will give you substantial credit just for signing up friends and family. In fact, Lyft will pay up to $2000 per week, just for referring friends!
- Instacart pays you $10 and your friend $10 on their first purchase
- Lyft changes offers, from cash per sign-up, to 50% off your next 3 rides for each new referral
- Uber Reserve will give you 70% off 2 reserve trips for both you and your friend, up to $85/ride
There are soooo many more though! Keep an eye out for them when you’re shopping online or using a new retailer app.
While it’s hard to let go of those old baby clothes you loved, it feels good to know someone else will be appreciating them, and that you’re making money for them too. Poshmark and Facebook Marketplace are favorites with parents if you have a little time, and you can try local consignment shops as well. Alternately, check out the BundleUp app which makes it so easy to sell lots of clothes by the bundle.
You can get paid just for telling marketers your opinions, either online, remotely or over video. You fill out an application with your demographics, interests, expertise, and interests, and companies like Focusgroup.com, Mindswarms (above) or 2020 Panel. When selected, you can make $50, $150, or more per session.
You can make a lot of extra money on Taskrabbit as a “tasker,” offering skills like IKEA furniture assembly, mounting artwork and shelves, performing yard work, doing light cleaning, or helping wrap and box items before a big move. Most projects start around $50 depending on the difficulty and time spent and go way way up from there. Read these tips from one tasker who makes up to $9,000 each month, with even more advice in the comments.
While you should always sign up for every retailer’s rewards program, you may be able to save significantly more cash at the places you shop anyway by applying for select credit cards. For example:
- The Target Circle Credit or Debit Cards give you $50 back on your next qualifying purchase, plus 5% off all purchases. and access to other exclusive cardmember deals.
- The Wayfair Credit Card gives you 5% back in rewards on every purchase, plus $40 back on your first qualifying order and access to cardholder deals.
- The Kohl’s Credit Card gives you immediate savings on your first purchase, currently 35% off, and you can stack with 5% back on every purchase with Kohl’s cash rewards. You also get frequent access to Kohl’s Card deals like 30% off. all purchases
- The Nordstrom Credit Card gives you a $40 bonus note (essentially cash) to use on a same-day purchase, earns you 2x points or more for every dollar spent, and rotating benefits like early access to anniversary sale items, and currently, 10 points per purchase in all of October 2024.
- The JCrew Credit Card saves you 20% off the first purchase, plus you earn 2x-3x points on all purchases as well as a $25 birthday offer once a year. That’s in addition to all the JCrew Passport benefits.
Just remember to shop within your budget and pay off your cards promptly so that the savings can add up.
If you have some time to spare and your own car, or a scooter or bike if you live in a city, sign up to become a DoorDash “dasher.” You work on your own schedule, choose only the orders you want, and earn a base pay of $2-10 for each delivery (depending on time an distance) plus 100% of all tips. There are also opportunities to earn more, by accepting Peak Pay deliveries, completing challenges, or completing delivery streaks. Pros suggest that if you take 2-3 hour shifts 3 times a week, you can earn a few hundred dollars a week.
If you are qualified to teach yoga, cycling, dance, or other fitness classes, or you are a hair/makeup artist or a beloved local manicurist, the ClassPass app can be a terrific way to scale your business, find new clients, and make extra money. You list your times and availabilities, and ClassPass can connect you with interested people in your neighborhood. They’ll even cover no-shows for you
If you live in a big city or know one really well, check out the Trip Plans category and Travel category on Fiverr. Earning extra money can be as simple as helping make reservations, giving sightseeing recommendations, having a live video consultation, or even planning and booking full itineraries.
Host a Yard Sale, Maybe With Your Whole Neighborhood
If you have enough stuff you’d like to clear out for cash, a yard sale can take a little time but really be worth it in terms of the extra cash you earn. And it is actual cash! If you don’t have that much stuff, or you want to broaden the appeal beyond the things you have to sell, pick a weekend to have a yard sale with other homes in your neighborhood. It’s not just a good way to make extra money, it’s social and really fun.
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