Could you use an extra $1000 a month?
Wouldn’t it be great to have an extra $1,000 a month?
If you break it down, an extra $1,000 per month is about $33 per day or $12,000 per year. That could go a long way toward: paying down debt, covering your rent or mortgage, investing for the future. What if there were ways to make an extra $1,000 every month with minimal effort? Read on to learn some surprising ways that might be more realistic than you think!
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47 Best Ideas for How to Make an Extra $1000 a Month
1. Become a Virtual Bookkeeper from Home
Are you looking for a side hustle, or something to turn into a full-time business? If you’re passionate about helping small business owners and entrepreneurs grow their team, look into becoming a Virtual Bookkeeper. It’s a great way to get started as an online freelancer.
In this course, you’ll discover how to set yourself up as a virtual bookkeeper from home. Work with clients in person or remotely and help them organize their financial records and get their books into order.
Becoming a virtual bookkeeper sounds like an awesome side hustle! I recently read an article about a woman who went from working as a social worker in the mental health field to being a virtual bookkeeper. She loved helping people and this allowed her to do that while making money at the same time.In addition, becoming a bookkeeper is especially relevant right now because there are so many people looking for ways to earn extra income (and sometimes even quit their day jobs for good).
Becoming a virtual bookkeeper can be a great side hustle for you because it does not require any fixed costs or inventory at all.
Imagine working for yourself, from home. You would be able to set your own hours and choose your own clients, if you like — maybe even make 6 figures a year! And by serving a niche market (like real estate investors, or online business owners, for example), you can charge $60-80 an hour or more for your time.
2. Combine a Few Small Side Hustles
Side hustles are all about finding ways to make an extra $50-$100 per hour. If you’re just getting started in the side hustle game, it can feel a little daunting to go from $0 to $1,000. In that case, I always recommend starting small to build momentum, and scale up from there. One of the easiest ways to earn an extra $1,000 per month is to combine several different side hustles that may not make that much on their own.
If you’re just getting started in the side hustle game, it can feel a little daunting to go from $0 to $1,000. In that case, I always recommend starting small to build momentum, and scale up from there
There are tons of easy ways to make an extra $20 fast, or even $100 or $200 a month. By tackling several of these smaller ideas, the income can add up throughout the month.
Paid surveys
Paid surveys are a great place to start making money because they’re so easy! Once you sign up for a few different survey sites and apps, they’ll pay you to give your opinions on product research, polling, or tracking consumer trends. The “secret” is to do them in the background while you’re watching Netflix or playing games.
The best of the best survey sites include:
- Survey Junkie (my favorite overall)
- Swagbucks ($5 sign up bonus)
- MyPoints ($10 sign up bonus)
- InboxDollars ($5 sign up bonus)
Credit card rewards
I’ve written before about how we make $2,000 a year from credit card rewards.
If you have the discipline to use your credit cards responsibly, it’s possible to make enough money to cover your expenses and even save a little extra each month. For example, if you apply for a new card each year, you can receive both a sign up bonus and ongoing cash back. Then, once you’ve earned enough rewards by using your card for normal purchases, redeem those points for gift cards or travel vouchers that can take the edge off budgets that may be tight anywhere else.
If you want to learn more, check out my review of my #1 favorite rewards card, the Chase Sapphire Preferred.
Another way to make quick money on your own schedule is by completing short on tasks online. These tasks usually take anywhere from 10 seconds to a few minutes to complete through various platforms such as Mechanical Turk.
For more details, see How Jeff Made $10,000 With Online Surveys and Microtasks.
3. Make $1,000 a Month Freelancing
Freelancing is a very broad term. But at it’s core, freelancing is just using skills you already have to help other people and get paid in the process.
Freelancing can be a great way to make a good hourly rate and start making money quickly by offering your services to people you already know.
If you’re not sure what skills you have, ask around to friends, family and co-workers. Maybe you’re a spreadsheet whiz, a great motivator, or gifted at graphic design.
There’s a lot of overlap between freelancing and many of the other ideas in this article.
Some of my favorite freelancing ideas include:
- web development
- graphic design
- writing and editing
- bookkeeping
- marketing and social media management
Depending on your skill set, you can make anywhere from $20 to $100+ per hour as a freelancer. And the work is generally flexible, so you can fit it into your own schedule.
I think a reasonable figure to aim for is $50 per hour. At $50/hr, you would only need to work 20 hours a month to make an extra 1000 dollars.
4. Blogging Your Way to $1,000 a Month Online
I started the blog you’re reading right now in 2022. I was looking to make some extra money, but I also wanted to share my journey toward financial independence and help others do the same.
One of my favorite things about blogging is you can start a blog on almost any topic that interests you – whether that’s personal finance, or house plants, or woodworking.
I love blogging, and I think it can be a great way to earn an extra $1,000 a month (or even make $10k a month or more). But it’s a long term game. You probably won’t make much (if any) money the first few years as you push out content and grow your audience.
But as you grow, a blog can become more passive and the income potential is virtually unlimited.
Most bloggers make money in 3 main ways:
- ad revenue
- affiliate income (where you earn a small commission if someone uses your link to sign up for a product)
- their own courses or products
If you’re interested in learning more about blogging, you can see my annual blog reports where I break down what tasks I focused on, my traffic stats, and income:
5. Virtual assistant
Another great place to start on your side hustle journey as a beginner is by making extra money as a virtual assistant. This is a very broad category with lots of areas you can specialize in depending on your skill set.
What does a virtual assistant do? Almost anything you can think of! Business owners need help with all kinds of tasks such as email, answering phone calls, marketing, etc. Generally, the more you can specialize in a specific skill, the more you can make.
Here are a few ideas of virtual assistant services you could offer:
- Social media management
- Graphic design
- Customer service
- Email and contact management
- Project management
- Editing/proofreading content
The possibilities are endless. Gina Horkey built her VA business to over six figures and now teaches others how to get started with their own VA business. This can be a very flexible side hustle where you can work from anywhere on your own terms.
She has a free list of over 150 services you can offer as a virtual assistant. I highly recommend checking it out to generate some ideas of how you get your own VA business off the ground.
6. Selling on eBay
Are you good at finding deals? Do you like scouring estate sales and thrift stores for hidden treasure?
If so, reselling on eBay (or another online platform) could be a great way to make some extra cash. This is another super flexible side hustle where you can work on your own terms.
To get started, you just need to have a source of items that are potentially profitable, such as from a garage sale, thrift store, or even Facebook Marketplace. You then flip these items and resell them for a profit.
While you can do this with almost any product, most successful eBay flippers I know tend to focus on a certain niche such as:
- video games
- clothing
- collectibles
- electronics
- kids’ toys
Once you learn a niche, you can pretty easily spot a deal. For example, my friend Nathan was able to pick up a free box of electronic parts at a garage sale and sell it for over $700!
You can read more of his interview here: How I Made $2,000 Flipping on eBay
While that’s not a typical deal, it’s not that uncommon either. It would probably take you a few months to build up your inventory to be able to get to $1,000 a month, but it’s certainly a viable way to make extra money and some people even do it full time.
To learn how to make your first $100 flipping products, check out this free video series.
7. Invest in real estate
