Stack that paper like Dunder-Mifflin, I’m not mad at you, you’d like to get to that paper TODAY.
In this actionable list, we’ve taken my Internet money-making experience and paired it with a researcher to figure out the best ways to make money today.
The result?
The best (and most actionable) list on how to make money today on the internet.
Let’s kick it off:
38. Donate plasma
This one’s for you really desperate folk who don’t want to take a couple hours out of your day to start something yourself.
Donating plasma is the exact opposite of scalable and digital, so I don’t really recommend it. Plus sitting around at a plasma center waiting room sounds like the DMV on crack. The only big upside is that you can watch Netflix or something while the needle’s in your arm.
Not the greatest money-making method, but if you need to make roughly $70, get over your fear of needles and head over to your local plasma center.
37. Recycle cans/bottles
Recycling cans is obviously not very scalable, nor does it pay a lot, but you can’t deny that it’s a quick and easy way to make some cash. If you throw away all your cans, start collecting them in a bag instead.
Pester your family and friends as well if you need to. Heck, if you’re really desperate, pick up after sporting events. You’ll find a lot of cans there.
If you live in a state with “bottle bill” laws, you can return your cans and bottles for that deposit. Otherwise, you’ll have to take your aluminum cans to a scrapyard.
36. Mow lawns
A tried and true business model for adolescents, yet adults can earn a quick buck mowing lawns too. Just ask family and friends if they got grass that needs cutting.
You can scale your lawnmowing hustle by hiring more people and offering more services, whether that’s fertilizing the lawn or shoveling snow in the winter. Eventually, you can sit back and manage it while your employees mow the lawns.
35. Rent your clothes
Welcome to the sharing economy — a sector that’s estimated to grow from $14 billion in 2014 to $335 billion in 2025. You can rent out just about anything nowadays, including nice clothes. (1)
List them on websites like StyleLend and Rent Not Buy to bring in some quick cash. (2) (3)
34. Start a daycare
Most American households spend 10% of their income on childcare, and 20% of households spend over 25% of their income on it. The average weekly cost for a nanny is $556. (4)
There’s a lot of money to be made here if you know how to scale. Start small by offering childcare services on websites like SitterCity and Care.com. Once you’ve got some references down, scale that to an in-home daycare so you can care for multiple children at once. Finally, start recruiting other experienced sitters and nannies to work for you. (5) (6)
33. Open a new bank account
The high level of competition in consumer banking means most banks offer hundreds of dollars in cash for opening a new account with them and moving all your money there.
Watch out for fine print stuff, though. Most require you to deposit a specific amount of money (usually large) and maintain that amount. Many also ask you to have a certain amount of money direct deposited every month or leave your account open for a certain period of time before you qualify for the signup bonus.
32. Odd jobs
All around your city are people who will pay you to do things for them. Getting groceries, raking leaves, moving heavy objects, you name it. Check out Craiglist and Facebook Marketplace to find some jobs for you, but as always, be safe and bail if you’re suspicious.
Or, you can sign up for TaskRabbit if they’re in your city if you want a central app with which to look for odd jobs here and there.
31. Sign up to be a movie extra
Depending on where you live, being a movie extra for a day or two is a fun way to make around $100/day and get the chance to see yourself on the big screen. You don’t have to live in LA or NYC either…according to Forbes, Louisiana actually beats California’s film industry now, and Georgia and Canada aren’t far behind. [7]
30. Offer luggage storage
If you live near a major airport and have a spare closet, or even some extra living room space, start offering to store people’s luggage while they wait for their flight. A buddy of mine lives down the street from JFK in NYC and made a killing doing this. He listed his closet on Airbnb and specified that he was selling luggage storage space rather than a place to stay – charges $10/hour per bag and makes 3 figures a day just answering his doorbell. [8]
29. Rent your driveway
Live near a football stadium? How about a popular beach? Offer paid parking in your own driveway or even on your lawn. The closer you are to the place people want to go, the more you can charge.
And yes, there is a tech startup specifically for listing your driveway for rent. It’s called Pavemint. [9]
28. Sell your used stuff
There are tons of places to go if you want to sell used clothes. Most cities have a Plato’s Closet or Buffalo Exchange, and consignment stores will take anything from clothes to books to furniture.
For old electronics, check out Gazelle.com. Stuff in good condition could net you some decent cash on there. [10]
If you’d rather not leave your house, Letgo is an app that lets you list used stuff and sell it from your cell phone. [11]
27. Offer moving services
Do you even lift bro? If you’ve got a truck or a van and some heavy lifting skills, offer to help people move their furniture for a quick buck. Advertise on Craigslist, but if you really want to get sneaky, paint an ad on your truck’s windows and park it near a U-Haul center. Traffic: redirected.
Turn your income passive by growing your client base and eventually franchising throughout the country.
26. Start a pet sitting business
You can actually make pretty good money watching people’s pets while they’re out of town or offering dog walking services. Websites like Rover.com let you set up a profile and connect with pet owners. This business idea is somewhat scalable, too. Offer to board them in your own home, and you can host multiple dogs from multiple owners. Pet sit in their house, and Airbnb put yours on Airbnb while you’re gone.
Get 10+ clients who need their dogs walked around lunchtime and walk them all at once…you could score a couple hundo in under an hour. [12]
For real scalability, build up a network of reliable dog sitters (students are great for this) and pay them, but take a commission. This will let you grow your client base to infinity.
25. Start a house sitting business
Even those without a pet need their homes watched when they’re gone for a long time.
Ask family and friends, then check out your local paper, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace. Use a central site like Mindahome.com to set up a profile and expand your client base. [13]
If you could find some way to combine house sitting and pet sitting services into one business, you could offer on or the other as an add-on service for an additional fee.
24. Grocery shop for others
Grocery shopping is a healthy part of the gig economy now. Just look at all the green Shipt shirts in your local grocery store.
Shipt shoppers can earn between $15 and $22 per hour (including tips) depending on their speed and skill in completing orders. [14] Many reports on Glassdoor indicate that Instacart pays even better, plus it’s easier to sign up for. They might have less availability in your city, though.
Track your mileage for tax purposes, because you’ll be driving a lot for either of these services.
23. Help students with their homework online
If you’re one of those secret nerds who always wins at pub trivia and got all As in high school, you could make some easy money offering homework help online. Websites like eNotes, Tutors, Chegg, and WyzAnt will pay you to offer to tutor or write out answers to study guide questions. If you’re good, you can bring in $15/$20 per hour. You can work from anywhere and many tutoring websites let you set your own hours. [15] [16] [17] [18]
22. Micro-gigs
Micro-gigs are tiny, hyper-focused tasks that pay a few cents to a few bucks at most. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) hosts all kinds of micro-gigs like data entry, surveys, categorization tasks, rating YouTube videos, etc. [19]
Amazon Mechanical Turk won’t get you rich, but completing a few micro-gigs a day will earn you cash quickly.
21. Flip stuff on eBay
Flipping stuff involves buying things (or finding free stuff) and reselling them for more than what you paid. The trick to this business is having an eye for finding hidden gems and stuff that sellers don’t know the value of. Pair that with copywriting skills that optimize eBay listings, and you can actually make a living off this one.
Look for stuff to sell in the free section of Craigslist, at garage sales, thrift shops, flea markets, etc.
20. Test websites
User-friendly websites are critical to business success, so businesses are willing to fork cash over to you in exchange for testing their website and telling them the good and the bad.
UserTesting, a leader among website testing companies, pays you $10 per 20-minute test. Making the internet a more user-friendly place at $30 an hour is a pretty nice gig. [20]
You can scale website testing by creating your own website testing business if you know what makes a good website. Acquire clients who need their sites tested, hire people to do the testing, pay your testers a decent rate, and keep the rest for yourself.
19. Start a tech support company
Tech support is one of those fields that will always exist. IT jobs are expected to grow by 22% through 2020, which is INSANE growth. [21]
If you’re one of those people who can keep up with technology, milk it. There will always be a knowledge gap here that lets you charge good money. If the Geek Squad at Best Buy can get away with charging money to click a few buttons for you (it costs $40 to have them set up your email or install iTunes), you can do it.
There are knowledge companies on dating. On learning code. On winning money in poker. And for the smart, non-addictive personality types: you can clean up on some poker wins (like this online casino).
18. Perform transcription tasks
This is a good one for people who need money fast and don’t have a specific skill to leverage. Companies like Transcribe Anywhere, Rev, and TranscribeMe will pay you to transcribe audio files to text. [22] [23] [24]
17. Sell crafts on Etsy
There are currently 1.8 million sellers on Etsy and 30.6 million active buyers. That’s a great supply to demand ratio…now to pick a product with a low cost and high return. [25]
If you can design cute greeting cards, bead a necklace, weave flower crowns, or knit a scarf, you can sell stuff on Etsy. If you can’t do any of those things, just put a bird on it. It doesn’t have to require immense talent to sell.
16. Sell services on a freelancer website
Based on data from popular freelancer website PeoplePerHour, self-employment is expected to grow 3.2% every year for the next five years. By 2020, half of the population will be self-employed. HALF. [26]
This is the future. If you’ve got an in-demand skill, you can make big money freelancing. But on websites like PeoplePerHour, Fiverr, and Upwork, you don’t necessarily have to be super skilled. You can sell just about anything you can do virtually, from online research to travel booking to dating advice. [27] [28] [29]
15. Sell stock photos
Got an SLR camera and know all about what F-stop, shutter speed, and ISO mean? You can sell your generic landscapes and portraits on stock image websites like iStockPhoto and Shutterstock. [30] [31]
14. Flip domains
If you want to flip stuff without leaving your home, or without the startup capital required for flipping houses, try flipping web addresses. Domains are basically internet real estate. Buy one up that you think will increase in value, sit on it, and sell it on a website like Flippa. [32]
13. Drive for Uber or Lyft
Lyft drivers make an average of $377/month taxi-ing people around larger cities, and Uber drivers make $364/month.
It’s okay money for a side gig and something you can start pretty quickly if you have a car. Plus, Uber lets you cash out your earnings to a debit card the same day you earn them (up to 5 times), while Lyft does the same for a $0.50 fee once you reach $50 in earnings.
But remember, these figures include people who only drive a couple of hours a week. The more you drive, especially during peak hours, the more you’ll make. [33]
12. Rent out your car
Peer-to-peer car renting is a rapidly-growing sector of the gig economy.
A lot of people cover most, if not all of their monthly car payment by renting it out on Turo or Getaround. In fact, according to Turo, the Jeep Wrangler takes an average of just 5 days per month to pay itself off (and earns double its monthly payment on average). [34] [35]
And yes, you can scale your car rental hustle simply by buying more cars and listing them all on Turo. Target a specific niche (offroading, small nimble sports cars, muscle cars, etc.) or just get a wide variety of cars if you live somewhere suitable for more types of vehicles.
11. Deliver food
Another growing gig economy sector is food delivery. Now you can deliver food for pay with companies like Doordash and Postmates without having to work at a pizza shop.
If you’re already an Uber driver, check out UberEats. Uber lets you accept both types of requests during the same shift, ensuring a full work schedule for you. [36]
10. Rent out your spare room
The average Airbnb host rakes in a whopping $924 a month by renting out their space. It’s by far the most lucrative venture when compared to all other gigs in the sharing economy. More than Uber, Lyft, and PostMates drivers make on average…combined. [37]
Plus, this is a business that’s scalable AND automated. Rent out your whole apartment/house for even more money and stay with a friend. When you make enough money, buy another apartment and rent it out full-time – ROI on full-time rentals is usually 150% or more. Some Airbnb hosts have built vacation rental empires this way and quit their jobs entirely. There are even services out there like Guesty that handle your bookings for you. Plus, this can be done 100% remotely. [38]
9. Credit card churning
All my 700+ club members (I’m talking credit scores) – this one’s for you. Credit card churning involves applying for lots of credit cards for the rewards, canceling them once you’ve gotten the rewards, and repeating. Advanced churners will go through 2-3 credit cards every 3 months, and some have used churning to go on free luxury vacations around the world, sitting in first class and staying in 5-star all-inclusive resorts.
If it’s cash you’re after, though, there are some ways to score that by focusing on cash back cards rather than travel rewards cards. The good credit cards often offer promotions where you get $200, $300, or even $500 cash back just for signing up. Then you can manufacture spending (you’ll have to read up on that one) on your credit card to milk it for even more cash back.
It involves some initial research (check the subreddit for credit card churning), but hey, it’s free money. [39]
8. Become an Instagram influencer
You know that girl on Instagram who’s always flaunting a new Chanel bag and flitting off to a different luxury island once a month? And you just wonder how the hell she makes a living?
Well, of those 200,000 followers. Yes, a lot of the content you see on Instagram is actually sponsored, and yes, you can make really, really good money.
The average sponsored post costs $300. That’s 3 hundos just to snap a photo and post it…and people with followers in the six-figure range, that number shoots up to the thousands. [40] Grab your iPhone 7, download the latest and greatest photo filter app, and get started.
7. Launch a crypto ICO
Remember how I mentioned investing in cryptocurrency can have huge returns?
Imagine starting your own.
Crypto ICOs are basically a way to hack funding your new cryptocurrency, and they’re blowing up. Initial Coin Offerings are basically fundraising/investment tools that allow you to raise money by selling “tokens” or cryptocoins rather than actual equity in your venture. Etherium, one of the biggest cryptocurrencies now, started out with an ICO that raised $18 million in 2014. [41]
Make sure your crypto has something valuable to offer, though; people are more suspicious of new crypto nowadays thanks to several pump-and-dump schemes since it became popular.
6. Be a virtual assistant
According to data gathered by Upwork, one of the biggest freelancer platforms, Virtual Assistants are one of the fastest-growing niches in online and freelance work.
The best part is that just about anyone with a computer and an internet connection can be a Virtual Assistant. There’s plenty of room for low-skill tasks like data entry, making phone calls, and scheduling appointments. At the same time, there are people who need Virtual Assistants who are masters at Photoshop, great at writing press releases, or excellent social media managers, and those VAs make a lot more.
5. Self-publish eBooks on Amazon
Thanks to self-publishing platforms like Kindle (Amazon), Kobo, and Nook, anyone who knows how to write can publish their own book. If you know how to write well, even better. If not, outsource.
You have to do your own marketing, but the royalties that these platforms take are insanely low. Take Amazon for example: on a higher priced book, you make 30% commission off every sale. Not bad. If your book is priced at $2.98 or lower, though, you get 65% commission off every sale.
So hire a ghostwriter and an editor to churn out low-level but intriguing books (think trashy romance novels or “how to” guides) quick and rake in the cash. [42] [43] [44]
4. Sell stuff on Amazon
Amazon makes up a whopping 43% of all internet sales. Just think about how vast the internet is and let that sink in for a minute. [45]
There’s a lot of money to be made if you know how to look for it. No, I don’t mean that used textbook from your freshman year of college.
I’m talking about Fulfillment by Amazon. Basically, you source the inventory, have it sent to Amazon, and they cover the rest: storage, shipment, everything. All you have to do is pick the products, make the listings, and take the orders. Plenty of people have completely replaced their income doing this.
3. Start a blog
Can’t leave this one off the list… blogging has worked out pretty well for me, lol.
From selling ad space to influencer marketing to affiliate marketing to product sales to guest posts, there are countless ways to monetize a blog if you’re creative and smart.
Actually, some of the biggest sites on the internet (and likely some of your favorite sites) started out as blogs: Huffington Post, Techcrunch, Perez Hilton, Life Hacker… to name a few. The top blogs bring in 6-figure incomes per MONTH (HuffPo does 7). Within the top earners, advertising banners and pay per click are the biggest revenue streams, with affiliate marketing not far behind. [46]
2. Make money using Facebook and Instagram Ads (3-4 hours)
Understanding how to profit using Facebook and Instagram ads (they share the same dashboard) is a superpower.
It’s literally cheating.
Gary V says on almost every keynote that we’ll look back at these years and wonder why didn’t we go harder with this “underpriced attention”.
It usually takes some testing before finding profit, but once you’re there, you squeeze that juice as much as you can.
Step 1: Sign up for Facebook Ads [47].
Step 2: Find a product or offer to sell (Alibaba, Amazon, and Ebay are great)
Step 3: Find an audience to sell (Split test different demographics until you find a winner)
Step 4: Find out how much Facebook ad money it costs to make a sale (cost per sale)
Step 5: Scale accordingly (Remember, if you’re spending $3 to make $5 over and over, go all-in)
Best training: Local Marketing Vault
1. Start a local marketing agency
There’s a reason why some of the biggest names in internet marketing – Tai Lopez, Alex Becker, and others — have launched courses around building your local marketing agency.
Going local is huge because it hones in on areas without much competition, and it can be replicated in millions of towns and thousands of industries across the United States.
It also brings in good money.
Consider: 3 clients paying you $3,000/mo.
That’s already a six-figure business.
But you gotta know how to bring it. If you’re already a marketer who understands how to bring customers to a business, you can get start getting contracts today.
Step 1:
The model is simple to learn, and our coaching program teaches you every step while connecting you with people who are already raking in 6-figures doing it.
Part 2: Money making trends
When you’re trying to make money fast, you’ve gotta be able to track where the money is now and where it’s headed. You used to be able to make a quick buck by starting a 2nd job flipping burgers or picking up a spare shift at the local bar, but that way of making money fast isn’t really as effective anymore.
A lot of things have been shaking up the way we make money and disrupting the economy in the past decade or two. The good news is, if you know how to spot new trends and adapt, it’s actually easier than ever for just about anyone to make a quick buck.
To break it down for you, we’re basically seeing 4 new economies taking over and ruling the way we make money.
1) Digital economy: from ordering food to personal training, everything that can be made virtual will…most of it has already.
Pro tip: whatever you do, do it online. You can make money faster, and the sky’s the limit.
2) Sharing economy: peer-to-peer networks, sharing access to goods and services, renting out everything from your apartment to your boat to your clothes. The sharing economy is taking over, and it’s expected to increase by over 2000% in 10 years. [48]
Pro tip: Airbnb is the world’s largest accommodation provider… and they own no real estate. Uber? The biggest taxi company, but they own no cars. When you build a business like this, you don’t have to invest in physical assets, because they’re all being traded by your users. Brilliant.
3) Gig economy: As I mentioned above, self-employment is the future. Data from freelancer websites shows that half the population will be self-employed by 2020.
Pro tip: Why have a boss when you can work for your OWN dream? Whatever your money-making scheme, do it for you, not someone else. No amount of money is worth giving up your freedom.
4) Global economy: globalization has already happened, and there’s no turning back…welcome to the 21st century. At the same time, we’ve all seen the “think global, act local” bumper stickers. Ironically, the global economy has spurred a HUGE trend in buying local, from farmer’s markets to local boutiques to all the hating on chain restaurants.
Pro tip: Go local…providing local services is the most predictable way to succeed in business.
However, thanks to globalization, local doesn’t necessarily mean *where you live*. Basically, do something in one locale, and if it works, you can replicate it endlessly across America… assuming your idea is digital.
If you’ve been paying attention, you might have noticed that local lead generation falls in line with all four of these.
I’ll Paypal you $500 if you show me a better money-maker than our method.
