How to make money online + offline

• Learn how to make your first $1,000 fast
• Money making ideas and online jobs including side hustles you can fit into your work or study schedule
• Passive income ideas and active work from home jobs seldom discussed elsewhere.
• Every money making idea is graded by risk, reward and difficulty.

You’ve got your main day job — the one that people tell you to not give up — but want to discover other ways to make money from home or think of a new ways of making money online and offline. This new guide to making money is for you!

Since the global Coronavirus health crisis there’s been a massive surge in people looking for new ways to make money online and offline to add to their existing income. Plus as lockdowns hit, people have been pushed to find new work from home jobs like never before.

Finance

Get a (smaller) tax refund

Type: Active • Difficulty: Medium • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-high

That’s right. When tax season rolls around, you’ll want to make sure you’re not overpaying. The average tax refund in 2020 was $2,827, according to the National Tax Advocate. That’s a lot of money to be sitting in Government coffers and not in your bank account. Although the average time to receive tax return checks is about three weeks, it can sometimes take longer. You could be putting that money to better use. A key way to make sure you’re not giving Uncle Sam more than you should is to claim all the withholding allowances you are entitled to. File a new W-4 with your employer containing all your withholding allowances.

This IRS Tax WIthholding Estimator can help you work out withholding allowances, including deductions and tax credits you are entitled to. Ideally you will be having less tax taken out of your paycheck each week and therefore your money is yours to use straight away, rather than having to wait on a big tax refund in spring.

Sell your unused gift cards

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

There’s a good chance you’ve got some gift cards either lying around your house or in your wallet. You think you’re going to get around to using them, but you never do. Or, the amount left on the card is so small it doesn’t warrant using. The next thing you know, your gift cards have expired. Best estimates says there is more than $15bn worth of unredeemed gift cards in the US. That is a great result for the stores who issued the gift cards, because it means they bank the profit. The good news is you can redeem your unused gift cards for cash. Sites like Clip Kard, Gift Cash or Raise will buy your gift cards for cash. Redeeming your card for cash is a fairly simple process - you go to the site, enter the card details, including its value, and you will be told how much the site will buy the card from you for. You won't get full value and you may have to physically send them the card.

Open a new checking account

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

It can pay to switch to a new bank for your checking account or savings account. Not only can you earn up to 1.00% APY on the money that you leave sitting in your account, selected banks will tempt you to open a new checking account and will give you as much as $50-$100. Look out for offers from the likes of Marcus by Goldman Sachs, Axos, Chime or Aspiration Bank.

Credit card sign up bonus

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: medium

The credit card market is very competitive. Banks, credit card companies, fintechs and big tech companies such as Apple are fighting for your wallet with their signing on sweeteners including cash bonuses, airline points which are sometimes really worthwhile – all with conditions attached. The cash bonus will often be in the form of a statement credit (the amount will reduce your outstanding balance). Expect credit card bonus offers up to $1,000 when you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months of opening the card.

Spend on a cash back credit card

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Medium

This can be a really handy way to save money on things you were planning to buy anyway. Most cash back credit cards will give you 1%-5% cash back on purchases and some will give you a cash back bonus up front, for example, $200 if you spend $750 using the card within a certain time frame.

There are a range of cash back cards available and application is fairly quick and straightforward, so if you are someone who uses a credit card to make purchases and can comfortably meet the monthly repayments, it makes sense to consider getting one. Once you have your new card, all you need to do is make purchases and your card issuer will take care of the cash back.

The most common way is through a statement credit i.e. the amount you have to pay back on your card is reduced by whatever the cashback amount is. Other ways of receiving cash back include via a deposit to your bank account or through a check, travel credits and gift cards.

Use the right financial comparison site

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

New comparison sites such as Finty give cash bonuses to people who sign up and get approved for selected products such as credit cards. Finty has been known to give away as much as $50 to Finty Members who get a new approved credit card through us. Easy to do and worth signing up for.

Redeem your rewards points for cash

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

This one might hurt serious frequent flyers reading this ... but you can redeem your credit card reward points for cash or gift cards. Yes, the return on your points is often way lower than redeeming points for business class travel, but if the Covid situation means you can’t use your points for air travel, you might as well redeem them for cash. If you have 10,000 MR points on an American Express card for example, you can redeem them for a $100 gift card with Darden Restaurants, or put them towards $100 worth of New York taxi fares.

Peer to peer lending

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low-Medium • $$$: Medium

Lend your money online to other people and in return earn money at much higher rates than if you stuck your cash in a bank account. Industry research firm IbisWorld said the peer to peer lending industry in the US was worth $870m in 2021.

Peer to peer platforms such as Lending Club, Prosper or Payoff let you choose your size of risk and return. Prosper, for example, ranks its loan products according to risk. An “AA” rated loan means the borrowers are regarded as a good credit risk and you may expect to earn around a 5.3% return on your money. An “E” rated loan means the borrowers are rated a poor credit risk and they will be charged a high rate of interest. This means that, provided the loan is repaid, you could earn 23.8% on your money.

It’s worth remembering peer-to-peer loans are unsecured and uninsured, so you could lose your money. For this reason it is recommended you spread your money over a number of loan products to reduce your risk of not getting repaid.

Rent out your credit score

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Medium • $$$: Low

Credit scores are hugely important to Americans who take out auto loans, mortgages and credit cards. For anyone with a low credit score who wants to improve it there’s a way to pay to make it happen. If you have a very good or excellent credit score you can make money from your credit score by allowing someone else to become an authorised user of your credit card. Also known as a “personal tradeline” or “credit score piggybacking”. The practice is not illegal and can earn $500-$2,000 to allow someone to rent your credit history. This is a risky practice that could damage your score and open you up to ID fraud.

Investing

Auto-invest your spare change

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low-Medium • $$$: Low-Medium

It’s called micro investing and it's an innovative way to make truly passive income. As you’re investing in the stock market or crypto, your returns are not guaranteed but it’s certainly easy, completely passive and over time your investment builds up. Apps such as Acorns and Stash work by rounding up your purchases via a linked bank account or card and invest your loose change in a managed portfolio of stocks, bonds and ETFs. Use Dust App or RoundlyX to do the same passive automatic investing in Bitcoin. You might buy a cup of coffee for $3.70. The app will round up your purchase to $4 and add the 30c to your account. Acorns and Stash invest your money in your customized portfolio in $5 increments. You won’t even be aware of it happening. Make sure you get your total invested balance above $1-2k to escape the negative offsetting effect of any fees these apps change.

Buy stocks and ETFs

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy-Hard • Risk: Medium-High • $$$: Low-High

One of the most exciting and lucrative ways to make money from home is to trade on Wall Street. It’s not totally passive by any means because you’ll need to carefully choose what stocks to buy and then actually place your order. You can buy stocks and ETFs (exchange traded funds) and be as active or passive as you like. Before you invest, you need to work out how much you can afford to invest (or lose) and do your research on the companies you want to buy stocks in i.e. growth stocks, value stocks, small caps or penny stocks. New stock broker platforms such as Robinhood, Webull, Moomoo, and Stash are a welcome addition to the much more established brokerages TD Ameritrade and Fidelity.

Buy and hold dividend stocks

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low-Medium • $$$: Low-Medium

Dividend stocks are mature publicly listed companies usually in the energy, utility and consumer staples sectors that have a track record of distributing earnings back to shareholders each quarterly. Think of Coca Cola, Proctor & Gamble, General Electric, Exxon-Mobil, or Kimberly-Clark. You’re betting that the stock price (capital appreciation) will hold or grow, albeit slowly, and that the company can pay their dividend. Dividends fluctuate depending on how well the company is performing. Expect to make dividend yields of 2.00% p.a. to 10.00% p.a. All good stock trading platforms allow you to buy and hold dividend stocks. If you want to reduce risk you can also buy stock in dividend funds such as BlackRock Enhanced Equity Dividend Trust (NYSE: BDJ) or Eaton Vance Enhanced Equity Income Fund (EOI) rather than single companies. The buy and hold dividend stocks approach is a classic hands-off, long-term way to generate passive income. You’ll still need to keep a periodic eye on company performance. If the company gets into trouble it may need to reduce or suspend dividend payments.

Get free stocks

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-medium

As with banks, stock brokers are chasing your business, and a number of broking platforms will offer you free stock or cash bonuses if you open an account with them. For example, at the time of writing, popular online trading platform Robinhood is offering one share of free stock (valued between $3 and $225) when you open an account with them. Stocks they are giving away include Apple and Ford Motor. Another site, Webull, is offering two free stocks - one worth between $3 and $300 when you open an account and another worth between $8 and $2000 when you deposit $5 or more into your account. Look out on Finty for these incentives as well as those from online traders including eToro, SoFi and Moomoo. Some online brokers offer cash bonuses, but they are perhaps less enticing. For example E*TRADE will give you cash credits on a sliding scale when you open and fund a new account with them. Deposit between $10,000 and $19,999 within 60 days of opening your account and you’ll get $50 after 60 days. At the other end of the scale, if you deposit more than $1.5m in your new account, you’ll get cash credits worth $3000 after seven days.

Refer friends for free stocks or crypto

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Once you’re inside, most of the stock broking platforms and crypto exchanges will give you free stocks or crypto worth $100’s when you successfully refer a friend to the platform. Sign up first via Finty then share your referral code.

Buy bonds or GICs

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Another lazy, perhaps even boring, way to make passive income is to invest your money in bonds or GICs (Guaranteed Investment Certificates). There are generally three types of bonds, corporate, government and municipal. These entities issue bonds to raise money or to pay off debt. You can buy bonds through a broker, an ETF, or in the case of government bonds, directly from the government through the Treasury Direct website.

Government bonds have a AAA credit rating and are considered extremely safe. Corporate bonds may be more volatile and it’s worth doing your research on the company to make sure they will be able to make good on their bond offering. Typically you need to buy bonds in increments of $100 and hold them for a minimum 45 days.

Bonds pay interest every 6 months until they mature at which time you’ll be paid the face value of the bond. In the case of Federal Government bonds, maturity is 30 years, but you can sell them before then. A GIC in the US is similar to a bond but is issued by an insurance company and is considered even safer than a bond. So, bonds and GICs are considered low risk but with lower risk comes lower reward. You can expect to earn about 2.24% p.a on a government bond, around 3.5% p.a on a good quality corporate bond and between 1-3% p.a on a GIC.

Trade IPOs

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: High • $$$: Low-High

If you have an appetite for risk beyond merely buying stocks already gone public then you might want to trade an IPO (Initial Public Offering) especially if you know the industry or know the company. Although it has the potential to bring you handsome returns, not all IPOs are as successful as Facebook or Alibaba, which shoot up on day 1 of listing. Once you have read up on the IPO you want to trade, you will need to find a broker that will facilitate it. The more sophisticated online stock brokers such as E*Trade, Webull, and IG offer IPO trading. Some will also allow you to speculate on what the share price will be when the company goes public.

Trade pre-IPO stocks on the secondary market

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: High • $$$: Low-High

When a stock “goes public” it’s usually just the founders, early investors, management, company employees and venture capital guys that make the big returns when the bell rings on Wall Street (think of Axe Capital from Billions). They can sell their private stock at the IPO price and cash in. That’s when their “big exit” can occur. However, what if you could buy pre-IPO stock from the employees of companies preparing to list on the stock exchange? Actually, there are a few sites that let you do this, EquityZen and ForgeGlobal, provided you are an Accredited Investor, which basically means you need to be cashed up.

Rent your stock to short sellers

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: High • $$$: Low-High

You own stock in a company but you can rent it to other investors in order to “short sell” their position. A “short” is a way of making money on a stock that you think is going to go down. On many of the popular stock trading platforms you can’t go short on a stock. In fact, the charting is basic and you usually can’t even see if there’s a major short position taken against stocks you hold. You’ll need to go to more sophisticated brokers such as Interactive Brokers to rent your stock out to short sellers.

Trade forex

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: High • $$$: Low-High

Speculate on price movements in the global currency market. What’s the attraction? Every day in excess of $6.6 trillion dollars is traded on the global foreign exchange market. Unlike buying stocks or ETFs on Wall Street the market operates 24 hours per day with lots of volatility. Add in the option to leverage your trades, buy options you can ultimately make large amounts of money, very quickly. Or lose lots very quickly too. As a money making strategy this is not passive and carries a strong risk for people who don’t know what they are doing. Most people who trade Forex lose money which is why any Forex trader is required to notify users of the inherent risk that you could lose more than your initial investment.

Crypto

Buy crypto

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Mid-High • $$$: Low-High

Crypto is in vogue and besides Bitcoin, there are a number of other cryptocurrencies you can buy: Ethereum, Cardano, Litecoin. Getting your hands on bitcoin in its infancy meant either mining it yourself using your computer or going through an exchange such as Tradehill or the ill-fated Mt Gox.

Now, with the explosion of cryptocurrency, (there are now more than 4,000 coins) there are a range of exchanges through which you can buy crypto. Binance, Coinbase, FTX, Kraken, Crypto.com and eToro are just a few of the top exchanges.

Setting up an account with one of these crypto exchanges is straightforward - you provide your details and link a bank account or credit card and off you go.

Do your research on which coins might soar in value. Some people believe Bitcoin will always remain No.1, while others say blockchain rival Ethereum and its currency Ether could overtake it. Cryptocurrencies have earned a reputation for being highly volatile, with wild price swings according to their popularity. As with all investing, it’s worth considering diversifying your crypto investments to cater for this volatility.

Mine crypto coins

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Medium • Risk: Low • $$$: High

Crypto mining by at-home miners is challenging since you need machines and power to get started. Large scale operations dominate the crypto mining industry. Even so, using the GPU (graphic processing) power of your laptops and desktop computers means you can mine for crypto. Millions of Bitcoin are yet to be mined. You’re going to need a few low cost PC rigs at-home (Raspberry Pi) and a cheap source of electricity. Ideally, you‘ll have solar panels on the roof of your home or business for a way to offset your energy costs. Your crypto mining rigs will be used to solve complex math problems which verify transactions in order to be rewarded with new BTC or Ether. However, by choosing the most profitable coins and running the latest (and most efficient) mining hardware, it is still possible to generate crypto mining profits in 2021.

Earn HNT by creating a wireless network

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Mid

Another new way to make passive income is to mine crypto with Helium. The company is creating a user-deployed IoT 5G mid-band network utilizing unlicensed spectrum. You deploy a simple device in your home or office, which provides your city with up to 10 miles of low-power network coverage on the company’s “LongFi” protocol. Working on the basis of “proof of coverage” you earn a new crypto coin, HNT, a new great source of passive income. The IoT routers for mining HNT are available from a variety of manufacturers for around US$400. HNT miners such as the Bobcat miner or Rak Hotspot are silent, produce very little heat and virtually draw no power. They can be hard to buy due to high demand and low supply. Your earning potential is based on your proximity to other hotspots. If you’re in an area with no other hotspots you’ll probably only earn 1-2 HNT per month. Compare that to areas where there are many other hotspots you can earn 60-80 HNT per month worth around $2,000+.

Ecommerce

Start an ecommerce store

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-High

The classic way of how to make money online in 2021 is to open your own ecommerce store selling whatever you want. Making money in ecommerce can be very involved if you’re going to do it right. The steep learning curve has been made much gentler by platforms such as Shopify or Bigcommerce. Finding the right products to sell is paramount.

Sell your clothes & shoes

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Medium

Bought some shoes that don’t quite fit? Decided that dress is so last year? You can cash in on them through platforms such as Poshmark and TheRealReal to people who recognize the true value of your clothing. Simply take a photo of your clothing item, decide on a price and list it on the site. Pro Tip: Poshmark says clothes sell better if you model them rather than picture them on a hanger. Once you have a sale, you print out the pre-paid postage label from Poshmark and send your item. The buyer pays postage. Poshmark charges a commission of $2.95 for all sales under $15 and it charges 20% on all sales over $15.

TheRealReal is a better venue for selling luxury clothes and its rules are different. Firstly, you have to get your item to them and they will set the price and sell it. Their commissions can be eye watering - from a minimum 40% for items with an original resale list price of $145 or less to 80% for men’s sneakers with an original resale list price of $195 or more and 85% for watches with an original resale list price of $2,495 or more.

Sell your sneakers on StockX

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Medium

There is a colossal market for high end sneakers on StockX that we had to talk about it as its own money making idea. If you own a pair of X or Y then you could sell them on StockX for a surprisingly high amount.

Rent out your high end clothes

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Medium

This money making idea is for the ladies, especially in major US cities. By lending out your designer bags, shoes, dresses, you can put extra money in your pocket over and over again. It’s another money spinner that follows the trend of creating value from underutilization. A couple of platforms exist in the US to handle the money and logistics: Rent the runway.

Sell your own stuff at garage sale

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-High

Garage sales and yard sales are quite a convenient way to sell a lot of stuff in one go that can turn into a major money making enterprise. Sell directly to customers in your neighbourhood. Expect people to show up and low ball you. For anything that you don’t sell at your yard sale or for any one-off items that you want to sell, list it up for sale on Facebook Marketplace, Ebay or Craigslist. If you take good pictures, write a good description and price it correctly, it’ll be gone quickly. Watch out for sticky fingered thieves and scammers who want to take delivery promising to pay later.

Flip an abandoned garage or storage locker

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-High

Similar to flipping items from garage sales you can bid to buy an abandoned garage or storage locker. Everything inside is yours. It’s flipping at the next level. Requires a lot of skill and effort to do this well.

Buy and sell cars or motorbikes

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-High

Rather than sell small items, or rare collectibles discovered at garage sales, buying and selling second hand cars is more capital intensive and requires in-depth knowledge of vehicles, the capability of doing many repairs yourself and a poker face to buy low and sell high.

Deliver packages

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Medium

What’s better than driving passengers around? Driving packages! They don’t behave badly and you don’t need to make idil chit chat with them. Ecommerce has boomed during Covid and everyone wants something now. In the industry it’s known as the “last mile fulfilment” and it’s the really critical last step in the journey to deliver packages from a local depot/warehouse to the customer’s home nearby. Sign up to Amazon Flex to become a driver and work when you want.

Flip goods sourced from garage sales

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Med

Famous entrepreneur Gary Vee approves of this money making idea. And American Pickers made 22 seasons of reality TV shows out of this money making enterprise. Oftentimes, people drastically undervalue what their set of playing cards, signed baseball, antique sign or other difficult to find collectible is worth to the right buyer and simply want to get a few bucks to get rid of it at their garage sale. Source your items from garage sales, yard sales and private sellers on Facebook Marketplace. It’ll take time and effort to buy and sell profitably. Ideally you’ll buy high value or high margin goods, list it up for sale on Facebook Marketplace, Ebay or Craigslist. If you take good pictures, write a good description and price it correctly, it’ll be gone quickly. Watch out for scammers who want delivery before paying.

Buy return pallets

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: High • $$$: Low-Med

Buy a pallet of returned goods from Amazon, auction sites, Target, liquidation.com. Inside there could be a goldmine of products that can be flipped easily on eBay, Facebook or Craigslist.

Sell your photos as stock photos

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Med

Earn royalties for every time your photo is bought. If your photography is good then sell your work to stock photography sites. Online creators are always looking for recent pics. Not stilted. Top photographers recommend that your photos and the camera gear will need to be the best otherwise you won’t do well. The competition is harsh. So do you research for what stock images you could take. There may well be millions of photos on the likes of Unsplash, iStockPhoto, Shutterstock, 123RF, Adobe Stock or 500px but are there images from your State or your unique angle? If you’re an action sports kind of guy or girl then enrol into the GoPro Awards, they pay for footage shot on your GoPro and up to $1,000,000 is up for grabs in their Million Dollar Challenge.

Sell old domain names

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Med

Think of domains like real estate. You might be sitting on an old domain name registered years ago that you’ve kept around but never used. Someone out might want it. Don’t worry if it’s not a dot com domain. There are millions of old domains registered but not deployed for a website.

Marketing

Enter giveaways, competitions & sweepstakes

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Medium

Brands regularly giveaway prizes. Various methods of entry, some are games of chance, others are games of skill. Enter to win, play to win, 25 words or less, sweepstakes. Finty, once gave away 1 million frequent flyer points to a handful of winners in Australia. Literally you need to enter and you can win. Legitimate companies give away prizes to attract new customers and kickstart their referral marketing efforts.

Market research surveys & focus groups

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

An old one but the need still exists – maybe more than ever. Marketers still need to harvest first hand market data from real people. Be prepared to get hammered with emails if you sign up to do surveys. If you have another email address set up for the purpose you might want to use it instead of your real one.

Start a blog or website

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy-Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-High

Make money from advertising and affiliate marketing. This is a lot less intimidating compared to getting in front of a camera for a YouTube channel. Potentially very lucrative and lots of hard work requiring multiple technical and non-technical skills. Realistically, this money making idea is a slow burner because it takes time to build up organic rankings, traffic and email signups from the content you produce. Your success will depend on the niche you go into and how well you can market your blog or site.

Get paid to publish sponsored posts

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-High

Brands are willing to pay people with a social media following to tweet or post a sponsored message on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and Pinterest. Even if you have a small (micro) follower count of a few thousand people that can be worth money to get in front of your audience.

Start a YouTube channel

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy-Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-High

If there’s something you’re knowledgeable and passionate about, you could make money through YouTube videos. You never know what people will be interested in watching. It’s not always obvious or complicated. The world’s highest earning YouTuber in 2020 was 9-years-old and his videos were mainly about toys. Ryan Kaji, who reviews toys and makes funny videos on his channel Ryan’s World, made an estimated $29.5m from his YouTube efforts last year, which were viewed by 12.2 billion people. His channel has 30.3 million subscribers.

Other YouTube channels that have incredible followings and view counts that you simply need to check out to believe:

• Jeremy Financial Education
• Blippi
• The Secret Life of My Hamster
• Self Sufficient Me
• Lawn Tips
• Odell Complete Concrete

Similar to building a website or blog, the key to building up a following, as well as being knowledgeable and passionate about your subject and having some personality, is to know your audience and to be consistent. Pushing out regular videos is the best way to boost your subscriber and viewer numbers and that’s when the money can start coming in, through advertising and also product endorsements or even through being an influencer. You could even make enough to make it your full-time job.

Sales rep for a company

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-High

Some brands prefer to market their brand and sell their product via appointed sales reps in the community, rather than direct to consumer via the Internet. Classic examples are Avon Products, HerbaLife Nutrition, Forever Living Aloe Vera and expensive German home appliance Thermomix. Typically these sales-only jobs are ideal for stay at home moms and friendly people who have a ready made social network of family & friends to tap into.

Sell advertising space on your car

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Medium

If you’re happy to think of your car’s exterior as something of a blank canvas, this is a simple way to earn a bit of extra cash. Companies such as Carvertise partner with advertising agencies who want to place advertising decals on cars and attract eyeballs of fellow motorists and pedestrians.

The main market for Carvertise is rideshare and food delivery vehicles such as DoorDash, Uber and Lyft because they spend a lot of time on the road, but private vehicle drivers can also benefit.

The company will want to know where you live, your vehicle type, how often you drive and your driving habits. If you are deemed suitable your car will be ‘wrapped’ in the advertisement for the duration of the advertising campaign, which might range from a few weeks to a few months or even longer.

Carvertise says you can earn $350 to $1500 each month with money paid by direct deposit. You will also get discounts through its ‘perks’ program at a range of businesses including Jiffy Lube and Take 5 oil change. At the end of the campaign, your car will be ‘unwrapped’.

Travel

Rent out your RV or camper trailer

Type: Passive • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: High

It’s holiday time, you’ve got an RV or camper trailer, but you’re not hitting the road this time. Why not rent it out to someone else and boost your bank balance?

Sites such as RVsey facilitate this type of rental. RVsey says you can make an average of $1400 a week renting your RV or camper trailer, depending on its size, age and condition. The site is purely a platform to link owners and potential renters. You must be over 25 to use it and you will need your own insurance.

RVsey charges a 20% service fee to list your vehicle, with the fee including commercial rental insurance. Your motorhome must be less than 20 years old and trailer less than 25 years old.

Be a travel influencer

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-High

If you love to travel, earning money from detailing your travel experiences so you can travel some more might just be the dream scenario. Plenty of people have become travel influencers and are earning decent money from it.

If you’re able to build up a big enough social media profile (read Instagram) and become a trusted source of information and inspiration then airlines, travel agencies and tour operators might want to partner with you and pay you for the privilege. You don’t have to be doing the glamorous sites either. The key is being authentic, knowing your subject and knowing your audience. Being able to take a cracking picture is certainly helpful, as is having plenty of personality. Being able to tell a story in an interesting way with quirky captions goes a long way.

Get compensation for delayed or cancelled flights

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-High

Travel doesn’t always go to plan. There’s a whole host of things that can go wrong; flights being delayed or cancelled altogether, missing connections due to delays and cancellations, being denied boarding due to overbooking, lost luggage or airline strikes. When travel problems happen air passengers have rights to claim up to USD $700 compensation. Services such as Air Help can help you claim those costs back.

Take tourists on paid tour guides

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Offer to take tourists on tours of your town, city or local attraction. People increasingly value being able to connect with a local host. Walking tours, discovery sessions, cooking local dishes are just a few examples. You can find a steady stream of tourists and visitors willing to pay you on AirBnb Experiences.

Write reviews of flights + hotel stays

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Instead of being a passenger, be a paid passenger! That’s right, you can literally get paid to fly. Chronicle your flight experience with high quality pretty pictures, video clips and an intelligent well written copy and Finty.com will pay you in cash or airline points. Same goes for stays in highly desirable hotels. Tip: The sweet spot is to write a flight review for a high traffic route in a premium class ticket.

At home

Get a housemate

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Medium

A time-honored approach to making money. If you’ve got a spare room in the place you either rent or own, and are prepared to live with someone else, why not rent it out? You will now have some regular passive income. Find a flatmate by mining your contacts with friends & families, your church or other organisations you might belong to. Post a note on a local noticeboard or use ‘flatmate finder’ - type websites such as Roomster and Diggz, with both offering free and paid options, where you can post your room for rent and specify what you are looking for in a flatmate, as well as browse for potential flatmates. Craigslist is one of the online originals and features tons of listings. It’s also free to list your room. Another free option is through housemate pages on Facebook. You could make roughly $400-1200 a month by getting a housemate in.

Rent your house long term

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Medium • Risk: Low-Mid • $$$: Low-Mid

Buying and holding real estate is a core passive money making strategy. If you buy in the right location, not only will the value of your asset appreciate over the long term, but you can collect rent along the way which can pay off the mortgage. For long term home rentals of 3-12 months you’ll be able to yield solid rent money paid each month for minimal work on your part. Provided you don’t rent it out to terrible tenants who damage the property or who constantly find faults, and your realtor rental manager does a good job, then it’s a highly passive way to earn money over $1,000 monthly.

Rent out your house on AirBnb

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy-Medium • Risk: Low-Mid • $$$: Mid-High

If you’re in the position to rent out your entire house or apartment, granny flat, or tiny house, you could make quite a lot, depending on the real estate perennials of property type, location and demand. You might be going away for a weekend or a few weeks. Rather than having your place sit empty, renting it out could make a lot of sense.

The most popular site for short-term rentals is AirBnb of course, which has about 660,000 properties listed in the US. A one-bedroom Manhattan apartment could earn you roughly $900-$1500 per week. A one bedder in Austin, Texas might rent out for $670-$1100 per week.

AirBnB charge a 3% per-night service fee for using the platform, (calculated on the price of the nightly rental, any cleaning fee you charge guests and any additional guest fees).

AirBnb tends to be for short-term rentals (a few nights or weeks at a time) although you could rent your place for a few months at a time through the platform if you had someone interested in doing so. (Check your local government’s by-laws on long-term rentals however).

Renting your place out involves a lot more than listing on Airbnb and watching the dollars roll in. You will have to be aware of a range of things, including how much you can realistically offer your place for, the time commitment involved in preparing your space and managing bookings, cleaning up after stays, learning how to promote your place to get bookings and attract the type of visitors your want, and even just being okay with the fact that strangers will be staying in your home.

To maximise your earning potential you may want to push to become a Superhost, which AirBnb defines as someone who ‘offers a shining example to other hosts and extraordinary experiences for their guests.’ The Superhost badge on your listing might make it more attractive to potential guests.

House sitting

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: High

This one is more of a big money saver than a money maker. Homeowners who own homes - sometimes fabulous homes - give access to housesitters to stay in their homes short term while they are away on vacation or business. For the homeowner it gives them peace of mind knowing that a trusted vetted housesitter is at home to be a security deterrent to would-be thieves, water the plants and walk the dog while they are gone. House sitting generally suits singles and young couples. The key reason people seek house sitters is to look after their pets, so you will have to like animals.

Two young couples I know of, did house sitting for a year at various houses to help them save up a big house deposit while they worked their main jobs. The biggest drawback is always moving every few months.

There are a range of house sitting websites, including TrustedHousesitters and housecarers.com that will link you with people who need their houses sat. Trusted Housesitters has a three-tier membership structure and charges between $129-$259 per year. Housecarers.com charges $40 a year. Once you create a profile you can look for places you might like to sit and forward your details to owners through the platform.

Rent unused land to a tiny house company

Type: Passive • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Medium - High

For property owners with unused land it needn’t go to waste. Let me tell you how to turn it into another passive income stream.

There are a number of tiny house building companies dotted across the US that will build a tiny house, retain ownership but place it in your backyard or on your spare piece of land for free and split the rental income with you. The tiny house or ADU won't disturb your land very much, if at all.

One such company is OBY Cooperative. For certain areas of California you can lease your backyard to the company and they will build the tiny house and find tenants for free. You also get a share of the rental income and their site suggests you can expect to make about $6,000 a year from hosting a tiny property on your land. The result of making use of your extra land is you get extra income and new close neighbors!

Rent out your house for movie filming or photoshoots

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: High

Think your place would look good in a movie or TV show? Perhaps you think it would be perfect for a Hollywood photoshoot. There are actually websites where you can list your property and hope producers will decide it’s ‘the one’ they need for their latest project.

You could try Reel Locations and Locations Hub. Reel Locations charges between up to $8.95 per month while Locations Hub charges around $4.95 per month to list one property.

If a location manager likes your property and wants to use it for their shoot, you will negotiate a fee with them. You can expect to earn several hundreds dollars a day to several thousand dollars a day, depending on the size, type and location of your property.

Rent out your driveway

Type: Passive • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Medium

If you live in a built up area of your city, or near a busy commuter station, a college, airport or stadium then you could rent your driveway to someone who would pay to park there.

Your driveway might be way cheaper or a lot more convenient than a paid parking spot elsewhere. List your driveway for free on Spacer and CurbFlip that specializes in renting out parking space, including garages, driveways and carports. These companies make their money from the fee they charge renters. How much you could make depends on your location, your price and the demand. But say you were to rent out your driveway for $20 /day and had people using it five days a week, that’s a potential extra $400 a month in your bank account.

Rent out storage space

Type: Passive • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Medium

You might be surprised how many people need extra storage space to store their belongings in. There are all kinds of reasons why people need extra storage, including the death of a loved one, divorce, downsizing or dislocation by needing to suddenly move.

You could earn yourself some extra cash by offering your garage, shed, basement, attic or other storage space for rent while at the same time saving them money on commercial storage rates.

One site that facilitates home storage is neigbor.com. It lists storage sites of all shapes and sizes across the US. You can list your site for free on the website. Renters will pay you through Neighbor's platform, but the website will charge you a processing fee of 4.9% plus 30c of your monthly rental charge.

A look at the website shows this is a competitive market, so it’s probably a good idea to check what others are charging for a comparative space in your area before you make your listing. If you’re on a larger property then you could allow someone to drop a shipping container on your land for a regular monthly fee.

Rent your car

Type: Passive • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: High

When you’re not using it, why not rent it out? Especially if you’re working from home or travelling away from home for a while it’s sitting there underutilised. If you have a car that you don’t mind sharing with others then this is a simple passive income idea which is easy to put into practice and is a win-win for both you and the person renting your car.

The advantage for those driving your car is they’ll usually be paying less for the privilege than if they had to hire one. Compete with Hertz and Avis on platforms such as Turo. You could earn between $700 to $1000 a month by doing it. For Tesla owners willing to rent their car there’s an even higher revenue.

Turo even lets you expand on the basic idea by showing you how to develop a viable small business through renting out a portfolio of vehicles. For example, it says if you rent out a stable of 5 cars, you could stand to make just under $95,000 a year. You are covered by a $750,000 third-party insurance but you must also choose a protection plan for your car. Depending on your protection plan, Turo will charge you a commission of between 15 and 40% to host your vehicle. The company also has a host of conditions you must meet or risk paying extra fees, while you must also commit to using Turo exclusively if you go through them.

Rent out your boat

Type: Passive • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Med-High

There’s something approaching ​​17 million recreational boats in the United States. If you’re one of the 1 in 10 households that owns a boat, jet ski, yacht or sailboat etc then chances are you could rent it out to fellow sailors for a tidy sum of money – especially at peak times during the summer when you aren’t using it. You can expect to make $100’s to $1000’s per day depending on the type of your boat and location. Peer to peer boat rental platforms such as Boatsetter make it easy and viable to make money from your under used boat all over the States with insurance covering your boat.

Make money from solar panels

Type: Passive • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Medium

Install a 3 Kwh solar panel system (12 solar panels) on your roof costing approximately $10,000 and you could save $800-$1000 annually off your energy costs. So the initial investment will payback in roughly 10 years. Now, the money shows up on your home electric bill, offsetting what you draw from the power grid. For people with lots of roof space or land then consider a solar farm or wind turbines. In some states, landowners and farmers are able to get paid larger government grants to put a wind turbine on their land.

House cleaning

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Medium

House cleaning is something that doesn’t spring to mind but it’s one of those things that no one enjoys (other than maybe Marie Kondo) and if you can afford it then employ a cleaner to clean your house. Cleaning people’s houses can be a good source of income that requires next to no training and low capital. There's more lucrative work in doing end of lease rental bond cleaning which few people like doing because it’s hard work. Look for work on your own, let rental managers know about your service or look on Wonolo.

Sell garden grown produce

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Your garden can be incredibly fruitful once you know what to do and can make money too. Grow your own flowers, seasonal fruit and vegetables, herbs, honey or eggs. Organic produce can sell for great markup at the front of your property (honesty box style depending where you live) or at a local farmer’s market.

Sell homemade goods

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Okay this one is a real labour of love and ideal for including kids. Make your own homemade lemonade, homemade jams, bread, cakes, and sweets. You could also make beer or candles. Sell to the street or take it to a fair to capture more people at one time. Check your State laws if you’re unsure about selling food or drinks.

Recycle cans and glass bottles

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Low • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Collect aluminum cans and bottles for recycling. Yes, you’ll only pocket 5 cents per bottle but this really can add up – especially if you collect other people’s used cans and bottles. This money making activity is a great one for getting middle school students involved with. They’ll learn about cleaning up after themselves, recycling, and making a few bucks all in one go.

Agist bees in your backyard

Type: Passive • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Fun fact for you: around 80% of the food we enjoy every day relies on pollination from honeybees! So next time you enjoy a bite to eat, thank a beekeeper. Even better, earn passive income from agisting/hosting other people’s bees in your backyard. Obviously, you’ll need space in your garden and not disturb them.

You might want to reach out to beekeepers in your area to see if they would like to put their hives in your yard. Hopefully they’ll be willing to pay cash for the privilege but some may want to pay you in honey. The American Beekeeping Federation has links to different beekeeping organisations in the US. Make sure you have a good relationship with your neighbors so they don’t get upset by your new winged friends.

Real Estate

Rent out dark kitchen space

Type: Passive • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: High

Covid has sparked a wave of ordering food for home delivery like never before. If your business has unutilized kitchen space or warehouse space in the right location of busy cities, it could be rented out as a dark kitchen to help restaurants who have run out of room. Also known as ‘cloud kitchens’ or ‘virtual kitchens’ they have become a necessity for high demand restaurants serving customers on food delivery apps like UberEats, Grubhub, Postmates, Caviar or Delivery.com.

Rent out office space

Type: Passive • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: High

Working from home is vastly more popular now, thanks to Covid, but there’s an opportunity for a business with a big office to sub-rent a desk or corner of the office to a smaller business or a freelancer. Office space that is clean, safe, secure, with access to wifi and amenities where they can get stuff done is valuable to the right people. It’s how many businesses get started when they can’t afford their own office but really don’t want to work from home.

Real estate deal sourcing

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: High

This one is for budding property investors. Go find people selling their property (ideally distressed or open to cash buyer) and connect them with all-cash buyers who want to buy property for a new price that you set. Connect the two and collect the money. This is what Grant Cardone did to make his fortune.

Matterport 3D scans

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Med

Properties which are given 3D scans need someone to go in to photograph. Sometimes realtors need to work harder to market a house for sale, especially when a real estate market is slow. Charge realtors to do a Matterport 3D scan.

Become a notary

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Mid • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Mid

Every month millions of documents across the States need to be notarized. As transactions happen in the marketplace, legal papers need to be signed for mortgages, real estate sales plus new passport applications and many other reasons. These documents all must be legally witnessed by a certified person. You can get paid to notarize these documents online or in-person in your spare time. You’ll need to be a fit and proper person to offer this service and you must be granted certification by the Notary Public Service in your state. It only costs around $100 and once you’re certified, you can charge customers a fee to notarize documents, or become a loan signing agent for mortgage signings etc.

Education

Sell teaching resources to teachers

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • ROI: Medium

This money making idea is a serious help for teachers to make passive income and give other teachers and educators a time saving shortcut to a smoother work life experience. Global marketplaces such as Teachers Pay Teachers make it easy for teachers to sell notes, teaching materials and plans to other teachers.

Teach a language

Type: Active • Where: Online+Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • ROI: Low-Medium

Similar to freelancing translation work you can teach a language. In such a vibrant culturally diverse nation as the United States we have non-English speakers immigrating, not to mention well educated people looking to learn a new language. Consider making money by teaching English as a foreign language. Or teach English speakers to learn how to speak in-demand languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Canton, Korean. Arrange one-on-one lessons in your local area or get onto a platform like VIP Kid or find clients from the business or corporate world who need to teach their employees language skills.

Sell your old textbooks

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Med

This one is a money making idea for students. College students need to set aside around $1,200 each year for books and course materials. Keep the valuable ones. Sell your textbooks onto the next class of students for a cheaper price.

Sell your old college notes

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

In a twist on the classic textbook selling idea, another money making idea for college students. Hopefully you were paying attention. Go to platforms such as Course Hero and Nexus Notes to find a buyer for your notes.

Career coaching

Type: Active • Where: Online • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Med

Offer one-to-one sessions for people looking to up their business career game or discover what career they should be doing. It’s your job to help people find clarity and direction through talking with them.

Beauty

Botox treatment

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Medium-High

This could be a real money making idea for nurses and other people with a medical background. You may be required to complete a short course, be registered to administer BOTOX treatments. Some healthcare providers such as nurses may be able to offer this treatment easily. Charge upwards of $100 per treatment for home visits.

Hairdressing at home

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Medium-High

If you’ve already got hairdressing skills, then happy days, this won’t be too hard. If not, you will have to develop them. You could either set up your salon at home and/or be a mobile hairdresser and travel to people’s homes to cut their hair. You will need to be licensed and you will also need general liability insurance.

Once you are set up you can spread the word about your business offline through word-of-mouth, flyers and maybe a newspaper ad or online through a website advertising your services and rates.

Sell your own hair

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Medium • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

There’s always the chance you’ll be walking down the street and see someone with your hair on their head, but it’s worth taking the risk for the extra cash you can get from selling your luscious locks. Human hair is in demand from hairdressers who do hair extensions, online hair extension sellers and wig makers. Depending on the length, colour and thickness of your hair you might expect to get around $150 to more than $500 for your hair. Your hair should be at least 10” long and ‘virgin’, that is; hair that hasn’t been chemically processed or colour-treated in any way.

Take good care of it and get it professionally cut. You can either approach hairdressers who do hair extensions or wig makers directly or your can advertise your hair on an online marketplace such as hairsellon.com or onlinehairaffair.com The sites feature calculators so you can estimate how much your hair is worth. HairSellon charges $20 for a lifetime listing and Online Hair Affair charges between $12 and $20 for listings. This is obviously a repeatable exercise, but you will need to wait a long time between snips - and paydays!

Health

Do clinical medical trials

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy-Hard • Risk: Low-High • $$$: Low-High

Proceed with caution with this money making idea. Each year thousands of Americans choose to take part in new clinical trials for treatments that can be very mundane conditions all the way up to much more serious illnesses. It could be as benign as trialing a new cough medicine or nasal decongestant all the way through to much more full on drug trials for serious illnesses – with potentially serious side effects.

Compared to other Western countries where testing laws are stricter and more conservative, the United States is like the Wild West! Research faculties of colleges and large medical testing companies run trial for treatments and they need human guinea pigs to volunteer.

Sell poop for medical research

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Seriously. Totally gross but not unethical. Medical researchers at universities run experiments and need pee (urine) and poo (stool) samples from real people and willing to pay small amounts for your “samples”. Beyond the university setting, medical companies such as Open Biome founded in 2012 in Massachusetts, routinely pay a ‘butt load’ of money for fecal matter. Literally.

Sell your plasma

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy-Hard • Risk: Low-High • $$$: Low

This is essentially the same process as giving blood, except you get paid for it. When you go to a plasma donation center, roughly a pint of blood is extracted via a needle in your arm, the plasma is separated and then blood products are returned to your body. You’ll get paid roughly between $20 and $50 per donation.

Before you can donate you’ll have to verify your identity and prior to each time you donate you’ll have to pass a medical screening. Each session can take up to 90 minutes and you can do it a maximum of twice a week. Plasma therapies are used to treat a range of rare illnesses, including hemophilia and Primary Immunodeficiency Disease (PI), so your plasma is definitely useful. DonatingPlasma.org will help you find plasma donation centers in your area.

Get paid to exercise

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

You’re doing the exercise anyway, why not get paid for it? The app Step Better helps you earn cash for your exertions by encouraging you to bet money on it. With money on the line, you are more likely to get your joggers on, and if you complete your program, you also win money. The Step Better app works like this: You sign up and link it to your activity tracker, such as a FitBit or Garmin watch. You put $40 into a pot with other ‘players’ and are then assigned weekly challenges, which you must meet to stay in the game. If you meet the challenges (‘games’ usually last six weeks) you get your $40 back plus ‘winnings’ (a split of entry money from other players who didn’t reach their assigned goals). Of course if you don’t meet your challenges your money will go to other players who do. In Australia, Qantas airline reward member’s steps with miles (QFF points) which have a cash value.

Off the land

Collect Firewood

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Get ready for the winter time homesteaders – gather up wood, split the wood, then load it on a truck for delivery or bag it up then sell sell sell. Hard work and lots of splinters.

Gold Prospecting

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-High

Arm yourself with just a pan and shovel or go more hi-tech and shell out on a metal detector in the hunt for that elusive nugget. Also ideal for taking kids on a money making adventure. Very much a hit-and-miss affair and more of a fun activity but you won’t know how you might go until you try it right? Be prepared to put in some long, and perhaps unfruitful hours, though. The Gold Prospectors Association of America’s website has useful information about how to get into the gold prospecting game. It also lists gold prospecting sites across the US and hosts forums where gold prospectors can chat about their activities.

Seasonal agricultural work

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Depending on what State you live in you’ll find an abundance of seasonal agricultural work that needs to be done – no matter what. Farms need people at key times of the year to harvest fruit and pack etc. Older kids or students could do this in their holidays for a few extra dollars.

Buy goats to eat grass

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Medium • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

This may seem a bit left-field, but it’s actually a thing! While goats enjoy bleating and following each other around, they also love eating brush, grass, weeds and leaves on overgrown land and lots of it. Goats consume about 2% of its body weight in hay, per day.

So while they are being fed they are also cutting the client’s overgrown field or neglected real estate lot, meaning the hours you might have spent on or behind the lawnmower or spraying chemicals can be put to much better use. Estimates vary on how many Wether goats you need, but range from 5 to 10 goats per acre. You might expect to pay around $20 or free for a Wether goat.

Fracking

Type: Passive • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Med • $$$: Med-High

Did you know you are allowed to own the minerals under your property? This includes natural gas, and if you happen to have enough of it sitting under your grass, a company may be interested in mining it.

Not a popular one to admit in certain circles but potentially a very lucrative way to add a large long-lasting passive income stream to your finances. It’s not as unconventional as you might think, with The National Association of Royalty Owners estimating 12 million Americans are earning royalties for minerals mined from their properties.

The way it works is the gas miner will sign a lease agreement with you, extract natural gas from under your property and give you royalties for it. You will usually negotiate the royalty percentage, which will be a percentage of the proceeds of the sale of gas. It can be a big money spinner, with some farmers reported to be earning $10,000 a month in gas royalties.

However, you will probably want to get someone versed in this type of activity to help draw up your contract and you will want to make sure the company is keeping their end of the deal.

Some farmers have sued gas extraction companies because they felt they were getting ripped off on their royalties or harm was being done to their property.

Extra ways to make money

Drive people around

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-Medium

Drive for Uber or Lyft. These world famous platforms have made the work of driving people around a well regarded job. Anyone with a fairly newish car can be a driver. The costs to be passenger have edged upwards so there’s a real income to be had here, especially if you work on busy times, weekends, late nights or busy mornings, airport routes. So long as you don’t pick up difficult passengers it could be an enjoyable consistent source of income.

Deliver food

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Medium • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Get onto a platform such as Uber Eats, DoorDash or GrubHub or work directly for a local restaurant. You’ll get fit and have time to listen to music whilst delivering food. So long as you don’t meet difficult customers it’s a money making gig that you can do as much or as little as you want.

Do handyman tasks

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy-Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

If you're good with your hands then there's an endless stream of work. Examples include hanging a new door, assemble furniture, mount a TV to the wall, jet wash a patio deck, put up some shelves or do some minor repairs to your house. Go out on your own to find work, get yourself on sites like TaskRabbit or Handy, or join a company.

Crowdfund for ongoing passive income

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low-High

What creatives, content producers, not-for-project projects, thinkers and researchers haven’t been so good at doing is getting their supporters, fans and followers to open their wallets to support their work on a recurring basis – until now. There’s never been a better time to do this type of work. Perhaps the most direct and simple way to “make money” online is to simply ask people to support the work you do by becoming a patron on Patreon. More than $2 billion has been paid out to 200,000+ creators on Patreon since its inception. Alternative platforms exist to raise money for various reasons; Indiegogo, GoFundMe, Kickstarter and Buy Me A Coffee.

Babysitting

Type: Passive • Where: Online • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Medium

Platforms exist for the right properly vetted, caring people to look after your precious children. Often an ideal first job for teenagers and students who live in the neighborhood to make extra money.

Dog walking or pet sitting

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Almost 60 per cent of US households have both parents working, which means that for those who own dogs, there are a lot of puppies sitting at home with no one to walk them. This explains the popularity of dog walking services such as Rover and Wag Walking. Not only will you get paid for Dog walking it’ll help keep you fit.

Get paid to move city

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Hard • Risk: High • $$$: Low

From time to time you’ll find city authorities across the US that will literally pay you to move there. With new people living in their city you are helping to improve the size of their city and help attract more fresh families to the community. And in return for you making the move they will give you a monetary incentive. If you’re thinking of moving states then be on the lookout for a city that might pay you to move there. It might sway your decision.

Street busking or perform gigs

Type: Active • Where: Offline • Difficulty: Easy-Hard • Risk: Low • $$$: Low

Go to a busy street or park, strum your guitar and belt out a tune while hoping passers-by will chuck some silver into your open guitar case. Easy, right? Probably not, but if you’ve got some talent and some chutzpah, busking is definitely worth giving a shot. Alternatively, see if you can get hired to play gigs at bars or private functions.

Of course you can use any musical instrument you want - saxophone, drums and even bagpipes all qualify. And your efforts on the street could lead to bigger things. Star singers Tracy Chapman, Ed Sheeran and Rod Stewart all started out busking.

Even if you don’t crack the big time, it’s quite possible to earn a modest amount of money busking. Nowadays, you needn’t be restricted to accepting cash. You can display a QR code for Venmo or Cash App so people can pay you digitally.