An extra income of $1,000 a month can help you cover many gaps in your budget or make investing toward your retirement easier. However, not all ways to make that extra money are flexible, and some are questionable and risky.
The best way to ensure that extra income will require some extra effort, as long as you meet the two requirements that ensure you get paid: To find a need and get paid for it.
How to Make an Extra $1,000 a Month
Whether you decide to go online to provide the services people need or work from home, here are 7 relatively easy ways to make an extra $1,000:
1. Retail Arbitrage
Retail arbitrage or drop shipping consists of buying discounted products and reselling them for a profit. Most people do this through Amazon and eBay.
Sourcing for discounted products can take up quite a bit of your time because you need to ensure these are popular items that are easy to resell. Make sure that you have storage space for your inventory unless you sell the products through Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), in which case they go directly there for storage and shipping to people purchasing.
Starting Fulfillment by Amazon
- Set up an FBA account
- Source your products and send them to Amazon
- These are added to Amazon’s inventory and stored in their warehouse
- Amazon ships them to customers when purchased
- Amazon has the responsibility to provide customer support
- You get paid by Amazon for money received from sales
2. Start Blogging
With blogging, you cannot expect to start earning money immediately because it can take up to a year to monetize from ads and affiliates.
However, the good thing about blogging is that you create content about your interests in your spare time. As your blog grows, it can provide you with an excellent passive income from ads, affiliate income, or even selling courses or products. Therefore, after a while, it’s possible to earn $1,000 (and even more) a month.
3. Freelancing
When you use your existing skills to provide services for others in your free time, then it’s known as freelancing. You charge hourly rates for your skillset. Freelancing includes skills like accounting, graphic design, content writing, editing, social media management, web development, etc.
Your skill set and type of service will determine the hourly rate, but you can expect to get anything from $20 per hour and upward. At an average rate of $50, you would only need to work about 20 hours monthly to achieve that $1,000 extra.
4. Virtual Assistant
Like freelancing, virtual assisting consists of a broad category of skills you can provide in your spare time. Specialized skillsets business owners request includes email services, answering phones, customer service, and project management. However, this category has endless possibilities and can consist of skills like those offered by freelancers, like graphic design, editing, proofreading, transcribing, etc.
5. Babysitting
Babysitting continues to make it on the list of relatively easy ways to make money. Okay, one condition is that you like babies and children, and it does take a bit more involvement than most jobs, but you can make at least $15 to $20 an hour. So by working for about 15 hours a week, you can quickly achieve your goal of earning $1,000 monthly.
6. Caring for Pets
Pet sitting and dog walking pays well, making them a good side hustle. Depending on your space, you could choose to pet sit at your home or the pet owners’ home. Whichever of the two you choose, expect to earn about $15 an hour as a dog walker and $375 a week as a pet sitter.
7. Tutoring and Teaching a Foreign Language
Kids often need extra help with reading, science, or math, and many parents don’t have the time or patience to help them. Therefore, if you have some knowledge of any of the lessons children generally struggle with at school, and have the patience to explain things adequately, then you are a good candidate for tutoring.
Then again, perhaps you are fluent or a native speaker of a foreign language. Then, if you have certification, you could teach others who want to learn the language or teach foreigners English. Generally, teaching a foreign language will earn you about $20/hour.
Parting Thoughts
There are hundreds of ways to make some extra money monthly. Your skill set and hobbies are often one of the best ways to determine the best. Whichever one you decide suits you best doesn’t matter; what matters is to ensure you find a need that clients will pay well for you to fulfill.
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