10 Ways to Make Extra Money

Over the last few years I have gotten pretty creative when it comes to making money to pay for my families’ bills. I have spent the last few weeks compiling my personal top ten list of ways to make an extra few dollars (or in some cases, an extra few hundred dollars!). So, here we go!

#1) Part time job

Whether or not you already have a full or part time job, an easy way to earn some extra cash is to pick up a side gig. Whether it’s on someone else’s payroll, or just a cash job you found in the newspaper, money is money. I work for a construction material distributor (fancy way of saying I have packed sheetrock for the last 12 years), and I always ask our customers if they have any cash work, or if they know of anyone who may need help on nights or weekends. It’s not glamorous by any means. I’ve done demolition (cool, by the way), furniture moving, painting, lawn care, drywall, framing, and the list goes on. If someone will pay me, I’m going to try to do whatever it is. Over a two year period I picked up about $2000 cash doing side jobs. That’s about $80 a month average (most of the side work I would find would be in the summer months).
My wife, on the other hand, had three part time jobs at once (couldn’t find a full time one) until one of them gave her enough hours to quit the other two. You just need to do what you can, and not worry about what is out of your control.
If you have a “regular” day job, you could wait tables or work in a call center on nights and weekends. If your full time job is already working nights and/or weekends, you could sign up with a temp agency or Labor Ready , which I have done both, and they really helped me out when I didn’t have a full time job (or any job, for that matter)
Other ways to find part time jobs is to search the classifieds in your local paper, check Monster , Yahoo! Hotjobs , or Craigslist . If you look enough places, and ask enough people, you just might get lucky and find a money making opportunity.

#2) News Paper Route

You might think that paper routes are just for kids, but I know a lot of adults who supplement their income with a paper route, myself included. If you don’t mind waking up early (and I mean early), then you could make a few hundred, to a thousand extra dollars every month. The two main downsides I see (besides the early rising) are that you have to deliver 7 days a week and have to find reliable subs if you take time off (and pay them). The way that I got around this is that I only deliver the paper once a month, and make about a hundred bucks! How, you ask? My local paper has a monthly special delivery the first Thursday of every month (called “Super Thursday”), which means that I deliver to non-subscribers on this day. We (my wife and I) deliver about 620 papers at $0.16 a piece. Pretty sweet deal; if I were you, I would check to see if my local newspaper had something like this going on. If they don’t have a “special” delivery, a regular route could be just what you need to get out of the red.

#3) Donate Plasma

I have done this in the past, present, and probably will in the future. During college, 5 to 6 of us would load up in a car and drive 100 miles to the closest plasma donation center, just so we each could get $30 (gas was only a dollar a gallon). In recent years, my wife and I have done this periodically, depending on how much we needed extra cash. You can make $20-$40 for each donation, and you can donate up to twice a week. Biolife Plasma Services has offices in many major areas, and they offer a debit card (with your name on it) that they load with money every time you donate.

#4) Cash Crate

Last month I stumbled across Cash Crate. On this free site, you can complete surveys, do free trials (and paid ones too), play games, and shop, all while earning cash. The way they do this is that Cash Crate earns a commission for every offer or survey you complete, or purchase you make (through their site). They share the commission with you. They also have a generous referral program, and pay once a month, as long as your previous month’s earnings were over $20. Check it out by clicking my referral link below. Sign up is free.

#5) Ebates

I also found this site a few months ago. You don’t really “make” money (unless you refer others), you get rebates on shopping you already do. If you start your shopping through your online account with Ebates, they track it and you earn cash back at over a thousand retailers.
My wife and I have our cell phones through Verizon Wireless, and we upgraded our phones and extended our contract through Ebates. We paid nothing and received two free phones, $25 in our Ebates account, no upgrade fee, and a $30 Verizon account credit. Oh, and we also got a $5 bonus for joining. Click the Ebates link here to earn $5 for signing up (I’ll get $5 too).
They pay quarterly via check, which they appropriately call “Big Fat Check”.

#6) Amazon Mechanical Turk

I found Amazon Mechanical Turk while searching for ways to make money online. You basically pick “HITs” (Human Intelligence Tasks) that ask you to do certain things, whether it is clicking on a link to see if it works, data entry, completing a survey, or an array of other tasks. Most of the payouts are $0.05 to $0.75, but I have found that the easiest and quickest to complete are usually in the $0.10 to $0.20 range. If I find a quick task to complete that is in this range, I will keep doing them until the requester (the person paying me) has me stop. Doing this, I frequently make a few dollars in a half hour or so, sometimes shorter or longer, it just depends how long it takes me to find a good repeatable task. As you complete HITs you will be paid after they are reviewed by the person requesting the task, and the money will be put into your Amazon payments account. Now, after you have a balance of $10 or more, you can have a transfer of $10 or more into your bank account. Another option is to transfer the money to your Amazon.com purchasing account (needs to be $1 or more) and use it to buy anything on Amazon . I have made about $50 so far (in a few months) on Amazon Mechanical Turk without really trying, so, you could make more with some effort.

#7) eBay

I have a long loving history with eBay. I think I have been selling things on eBay off and on for about 10 years. If I ever need cash, I can always find something to sell; whether it’s something I already own but don’t want, or something I find for cheap to resell, I always love to sell on eBay.
One thing you need to watch for is to not lose all of your money on shipping, but also, not to try to make all of your money on shipping. People aren’t stupid; it doesn’t cost $15 to ship a book from Seattle to Denver. If your shipping is fair, you will get bids on your auction. Another thing to look out for is to not get too greedy on your starting price for an auction listing. I start just about all of my auctions at $0.99, because I see the most success with that starting price (or $0.01). If you do research on the item you are trying to sell (click “completed listings” under the preferences tab on the left side of the item results page), you will find that the items that typically sell for the highest price (and get the most bids) started at a low (usually $0.99) price. The idea is to get people excited with the chance of picking something up for next to nothing, and then they get locked in and just want to win the stupid thing. If you don’t already have an account with eBay, I suggest you sign up and check it out. You won’t regret it (I don’t think).

#8) Craigslist

I mentioned Craigslist earlier to help you find side work or a part time job, but you can also use Craigslist to sell stuff. I actually bought my 1970 FJ55 Landcruiser on Craigslist. The nice thing is you usually don’t need to worry about shipping, as there are local sites for just about every semi-major to major city in the USA and quite a few cities throughout the rest of the world. You list for free, and you can communicate through email or leave your phone number on the listing, whatever your comfort level is. Potential buyers will want to meet you to check out the merchandise, and typically have cash in hand, and an offer if they like what you have. This can be quick cash.

#9) Garage Sale

If you can’t (or don’t want to) sell everything on Craigslist or eBay, you could have a Garage or Yard Sale. I recommend just doing one day, Saturday, and start at about 7 or 8 am, and stop about 1 pm. The reason I say this is because the majority of your sales will be the first morning, and the rest of the weekend you will just be sitting there. So, doing it my way you sell for about 5 hours, make about the same amount of money, but have the rest of the weekend to either enjoy, or pursue other money making ventures.

#10) Recycle for Cash

I have been recycling aluminum cans for money since I was in elementary school. Not only do you make a little money (or get back some that you spent), but you help the environment as well. I now have a bin at work that everyone throws their aluminum cans in and I get the cash.
As I’ve gotten older, I have found that you can recycle more than just aluminum cans for cash. You can get money for copper wire and tubing, brass, newspaper, corrugated cardboard, aluminum wire and venting, cars, appliances, and other things that I’m sure I’ve left out. For a list of recyclable materials see Pacific Steel and Recycling, that’s were I take my recyclable materials. If you don’t have a Pacific Steel near you, check Google for a recycler near you.

I hope my list of money making ideas has helped you think about how you can make some extra money. If any of you have any other great ideas for making extra cash, post them here please. Thanks for reading.