Living In America
Living in America can feel like a vacuum is attached to your bank account. These days we pay for more things than ever. Our money constantly going towards things like:
- Internet provider/ Wifi
- Insurance – car, home, life, dental, etc
- Car payment
- Phone bill
- Netflix, TV provider
- Taxes in general
- Mortgage/rent payments
- Gym fee if you go to the gym
- Savings for retirement
- A decent pair of running shoes because mine suck.
These are just some of the basics not including any extra curricular activities that you may be involved in. With our money more often leaving us than staying with us, you might be wondering how you can make a little extra cash on the side!
I am glad you asked, because I have a list of 23 ways you can make money now! Most of these options do not even require a skill, just some free time and persistence. With that being said, let’s dive into my list of 23 ways to make money now.
23 Ways to Make money today
Nanny/babysitting
You may already know this, but becoming a nanny or offering a babysitting service on the weekend can be quite profitable. Typical nanny’s make around $14 – $20 an hour and that can go up depending on the family you are working for. It is fairly easily to start a babysitting gig on the side for Saturdays or Sundays and rake in a few extra hundred bucks a month.
Uber and Lyft
Most people, if not everyone, has used Uber or Lyft by now. It is the most convenient way to transverse the city and go out with friends on a Friday night! Did you know that almost anyone can become an Uber driver in their free time? The requirements are pretty simple:
- Have a car newer than 10 years old
- Car must have four doors
- Must have Insurance, Drivers licence, active social security number
- Good accident history and no speeding violations in the past 3 years
- Pass an exception and back ground check
Most Uber drivers will start driving within a week of complications the applications. As an Uber driver you can expect to easily make $16 an hour and that increases if you are in a city. That’s a couple extra hundred dollars in your pocket every month if you do it 4-5 times a month.
Music Lessons
Music is an art that is meant to be shared! If you know how to play the piano, guitar, or a popular instrument, you can easily start giving lessons. Music instructors typically make anywhere from $25 – $50 an hour. Additionally, you are usually teaching kids which can be fun and rewarding when you see them start to improve!
Drop Shipping
This is a popular option that was promoted heavily by Amazon Fulfillment (FBA) program. There are hundreds of courses online about it, but how much do they actually make? After expenses and the time investment, most sellers make 5% profit on average. For instance if you sold $100,000 worth of product, you could easily make $5,000 – $10,000. This can be quite easy if you are selling high end items, but the frequency of cheaper items is also alluring. The main issue with drop shipping is some initial capital is necessary.
Thifting
Mackelmore would be proud of you. Seriously though, thrifting can generate some serious money if you are diligent with it. Personally, I tried it two times in the Atlanta area. One the second run, I found a Brooks Brothers Black Camel hair pea coat in perfect condition. Do not mind me as I pay $5 for a $1,800 pea coat. Thrifters generally can make a few extra hundred bucks a month if you are persistent with it.
Reselling
Similar to thrifting and drop shipping, reselling involves marketing your product and getting your hands dirty. Coined by Gary Vee the marketing guru, it is extremely popular to hit up garage sells every weekend to find steals that you quickly flip on ebay or amazon.
Another vlogger that I saw, found out that walmart was selling a limited edition Monopoly board. He spent the next 24 hours driving to every walmart withing the closest 3 states to buy every single game board he could. He bought each board for $20 and resold them for $50 each online. His net profit exceeded $2,500 after shipping and packaging. Reselling can make some serious dough if you stay ahead of the market.
Carpooling
Carpooling has been growing in popularity in the recent years. With gas prices starting to go back up, we could expect carpooling to do the same. Typical car riders will pay anywhere from $20 to $35 a week. This adds up quickly if you have 2 – 3 people in your car everyday. Can you say, free gas money?
Event Planning
There is a wide market for event planning. There are people that do it as a hobby and other people that do it professionally for corporations. Event planning is all about building up your network and leveraging that network to secure event spaces, catering, photography, and promotions. If this sounds like your network, then maybe you are ready to become and event planner! Event planners can expect to make anywhere between $500 to several thousand per event depending on the group you are working for.
Blogging
Blogging is one of those things that you can make a decent amount of money on the side without much effort. Building your blog and follow will take some time, but once you have it and the email list you can utilize it for running ads, marketing products, or simply selling your own course! On average determined bloggers can make a few hundred to several thousand a month on their blogs!
Affiliate Marketing
Have you ever seen those articles that say, if you click this link and sign up you will recieve $5 off! Most likely, those links are affiliate links. The bad thing about affiliate links is, you really need a substantial audience to make this work. If you can capture that audience, then affiliate links can rake in some massive returns. Some links for hosting companies like Bluehost pay $60 to several hundred a month if the link is clicked a few times and leads to people signing up.
Photography
Photography is one passion that tons of people share! It is really easy to pick of up camera and get to work in this field. In order to get stared, you are going to want to purchase a decent camera. You can get a pretty good one for around $300 to $500 if you shop well.
After that, purchase some editing software and some presets and start marketing yourself! Photographers can make anywhere from $50 per shoot to several hundred. Wedding are where the real money is. We are paying our wedding photographer over $2,000 to do our wedding!
Wedding Planning
While we are on the theme of weddings, let’s discuss wedding planning. Pretty much you are the go to person for the bride on all of the planning. Your job is to make vender suggestions on everything in the wedding, help pick and choose price points in the budget, organize the actual day, and pretty much monitor the sanity of the bride! Wedding planners can easily make over $1,000 a wedding and manage multiple weddings at once! Just make sure the weddings you are managing are not on the same day.
Sponsorship Agreements
A cool side gig is to partner with events happening around the city and acquire sponsorship for them. Typically, you get a percentage of the total sponsorships you bring in, so you can end up making a lot of money if you have the right network.
Fiverr
If you can write, edit, design, draw, market or do just about anything arts wise, you can probably list yourself on fiverr. Each skill set is priced differently. You can easily make a couple hundred bucks a month if you have a good skill set or hobby you can monetize.
Create a Course
Just about any job or skill set you use in your daily life, can be turned into an online course. This takes a little bit of time and marketing to get it going, but nothing makes passive income like a downloadable good. The best thing about creating a course is you can just put it on Udemy if you do not want to create a site around it.
Beauty Products
Another great way to get some serious cash fast is the well know beauty product representative. Your friends and family are buying to from the store anyways, so why not just purchase it from you? If this is something you are interested in, there is a great article I suggest you take a look to find the perfect company for you to partner with.
Essential Oils
Similar to the beauty products, essential oils can be quite lucrative. You do have to put in a good amount of time learning the different oils, use-cases, and benefits. Afterwards, selling if pretty easy because this product is hot right now. The most well known company selling these is doTERRA. My bosses wife did this for a while and ended up making a could thousand per month after building up her clientele. Go sign up now on their website and start earning money on your first sale!
Protein and Supplements
A popular form of advertisement is for body builders to sell protein on behalf of the company through their social pages. You do not have to be a body builder to do this, although it certainly helps your credibility. One of my friends has been doing this for years and he loves it! Go check him out on Instagram @Campusprojkg. He is a rep for a killer brand, Campus Protein, that you can become apart of too!
Day Trading
Day Trading is no easy task, but with the right research, market and time investing it can be a gold mine. I suggest starting off with very small amounts and finding the market you love the most. I trade sometime on Binance for fun because fees are cheap and the market is open 24/7 for digital assets.
Skin Care
This one is similar to the essential oils and beauty products, but there is a popular company that is great for partnering with. Ronald and Fields have great affiliate programs for all levels of activity. Everyone loves skin care, and this does not require you to learn much other than the product you choose to sell. You may even wanting to buy some yourself after you learn about the importance of skin care.
Email Marketing
Something that most smaller businesses are really bad at is email marketing. If you are really good at this and know how to manage Mail Chimp or another software of choice, you may be able to offer your services to smaller companies around you. Typically, you will get paid per email and this can stack up over time to be a good side hustle income.
Facebook Ads
You might be thinking, I cannot do that. Trust me, you can. Facebook ads are not hard. They can become time consuming once you really learn the ins and outs, but this is one thing tons of companies need help with. If you can run a campaign on Facebook and show results, then you’ve got it made. Most people make between $300 – $1,000 per client by running Facebook ads for them.
Surveys
Amazingly, surveys are still around the internet and you can easily get paid to complete them. The problem is, they are time consuming and usually pay around $10 an hour. Now this is not a lot, but you are practically putting forth zero effort. Do surveys a couple of hours a week and easily rake in an extra $200 a month.
Blood and Plasma Donations
Now, I would never condone selling a part of your body for cash, but in a sense you are providing a service that could save a life one day. Blood is extremely important and depending on your blood type, you could get paid fairly well. On average people make $25-$50 per donation. If you view it in the aspect of providing a life saving service for and extra $100 a month, then why not.
Ways to make Money in Atlanta
Take this list as what its worth. There are some easy ways to make money in Atlanta and some ways that take a bit more skill on this list. My advice is to choose one you are passionate about and try it out for 6 to 9 months. After 9 months if you are getting burned out maybe try another one or adjust your strategy! At the end of the day, do what you love and love what you do!
