- Advertise with Your Car
Carvertise: With Carvertise you could earn up to $1200 during an ad campaign and can usually expect around $100 a month, just to use your car as ad space. Check out their site to see if they’re currently advertising in your area.
Wrapify: Wrapify operates a lot like Carvertise, but differs in how you get paid. With Wrapify, you track your mileage and location. The more you drive, the more ads you qualify for, and the more money you make, which can add up to $200 a month.
Vugo: Vugo is an awesome way to earn passively alongside rideshare driving. All you do is mount a phone or tablet to your dash and play ads, games, and videos. The app is compatible with Google Maps and Waze. Drivers can earn up to $200 more a month playing the ads, and there’s a driver tipping feature built in.
2. Rent Your Car
It used to seem weird to rent out a spare room to a stranger, or to stay in a stranger’s home when you go on vacation. Thanks to the likes of Airbnb and others, these sharing economy services have shown us it’s not so scary!
So let me ask – how do you feel about renting out your car?
Think about it. Rental car agencies (Enterprise, Avis, Budget, etc.) are awful to deal with and too expensive.
A company called Turo has disrupted the industry, just like Airbnb disrupted the hotel industry. People across the country are earning money from lending their cars out to strangers.
If you aren’t using your car for a couple of days, or if you have a spare one, simply join Turo’s free platform, list the car, and charge whatever you want for the day.
3. Rent Your Home
If you’re interested in making money in real estate but want more of a hands-on approach, renting out your vacation home, house, apartment, or even a single room can be a stellar way to earn passively.
Airbnb
Airbnb allows people to travel all around the world and to stay in accommodations that are a lot less expensive than traditional hotels. Their site breaks rentals into three categories: private room, shared room, and entire home.
Airbnb charges you 3% on every booking for their services, but you can set the nightly rate at whatever you want. People around the world are making impressive passive incomes through Airbnb.
VRBO
With over 2 million rental properties, most of which are entire home rentals, VRBO has established itself as a legitimate service for renters and owners alike.
VRBO charges 5% per booking, plus another 3% if the guest pays with a credit card. But again, you can set your own rate and easily make these fees worth their while.
Vacasa
Vacasa is a vacation home rental management company. In other words, you can’t rent out a spare room in your house on Vacasa like you can on Airbnb, but have an extra home in a vacation destination?
Then Vacasa is a great option to make passive income, they do all the work for you.
Pro Tip: The key to your rental success is reviews. The more 4 and 5-stars you get, the more people will rent your space (and the more money you’ll make).
4. Deliver for Instacart
If you’re looking for a flexible way to make extra money, Instacart is a great choice. Instacart is an online grocery delivery service that works with local grocery stores to deliver groceries to your door. As an Instacart employee, you would shop for items at the grocery store and then deliver the groceries to the door of the customer. Currently, the demand for Instacart shoppers is higher than ever.
As a shopper, you will be paid weekly, have the flexibility to choose your own hours, potentially have the ability to earn tips and be eligible for special earnings promotions.
Instacart also recently rolled out a number of new features including contactless delivery and in-app incident reporting.
5. Deliver for Postmates
Postmates is a goods and food delivery service that allows customers to order almost anything they want such as personal items, groceries, and restaurant meals.
It is 100 percent free to sign up to deliver for Postmates and Postmates delivery drivers take home 100 percent of what they earn every time they complete a delivery.
Postmates delivery drives love the flexibility and independence to work whenever they want. Postmates offers weekly pay and a super simple onboarding process.
6. License Your Music
Are you passionate about making music, but not passionate about performing live? Or have you tried to perform live and not made enough income? One solution would be to license your music.
Licensing your music means that in exchange for the rights to use your music in a project, people and companies pay you. Here are six different ways that you can make money licensing music:
- YouTuber
- Wedding/Videographer
- Indie Film Soundtrack
- Indie Film Trailer
- Corporate video
- Advertisement
7. Sell Stock Photos
Are you a photographer or someone who enjoys snapping pictures? Put that talent to use! If you want to make some extra money for your photos, you could consider selling your images as stock photos. The easiest way to make your images available for sale as stock images is to use a third-party site, such as Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, Alamy, etc.
If you have the skills and resources to do so, you could also sell your stock images on your own website.
8. Become a Rideshare Driver
While it isn’t completely passive, rideshare driving makes the list due to its flexibility. You can make your own schedule with Uber and pick up extra income by driving others around when you are already out and about anyway!
I assume you’re familiar with Lyft, the ridesharing competitor to Uber. I actually find Lyft to be cheaper and have better experiences with the drivers.
Speaking of, how would you like to earn a guaranteed $1,000 to become a Lyft driver? Yup! That’s what the company is offering right now.
It’s part of a program called Earnings Guaranteed. According to the Lyft website, drivers will earn a guaranteed amount within a certain time frame. If the driver does not make the guaranteed amount within the time frame, Lyft will cover the difference!
And right now the guaranteed amount is $1,000! Easy money.
- Get Online Rebates
With Rakuten, you can get a rebate when you shop at a surprisingly wide variety of online retailers. Here’s how it works:
- Start a Rakuten account.
- Follow the directions to activate the Rakuten browser extension.
- Shop like you normally would online.
Cashback percentages range from 1 to 22 percent (occasionally higher)! Each month you’ll get a check, PayPal payment, or gift card to the store of your choice.
If you buy a big-ticket item like a refrigerator or a smartphone or do your grocery shopping online, you can earn some noticeable income.
10. Dropship With Amazon
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, dropshipping is defined as “to ship goods from a manufacturer or wholesaler directly to a customer instead of to the retailer who took the order.”
To make money dropshipping with Amazon, as a vendor you purchase the items at a discount by working directly with a wholesaler. Your profit then comes from the difference between the initial item cost and whatever price you sell the item at.
You can get your Amazon store set up and be ready to accept orders within 24 hours! Just as we mentioned with eBay flipping, it is important to do research when it comes to choosing which items to dropship. It’s best to find and start with a product that is high in demand and low competition.
11. Advertise with Your Car
Carvertise: With Carvertise you could earn up to $1200 during an ad campaign and can usually expect around $100 a month, just to use your car as ad space. Check out their site to see if they’re currently advertising in your area.
Wrapify: Wrapify operates a lot like Carvertise, but differs in how you get paid. With Wrapify, you track your mileage and location. The more you drive, the more ads you qualify for, and the more money you make, which can add up to $200 a month.
Vugo: Vugo is an awesome way to earn passively alongside rideshare driving. All you do is mount a phone or tablet to your dash and play ads, games, and videos. The app is compatible with Google Maps and Waze. Drivers can earn up to $200 more a month playing the ads, and there’s a driver tipping feature built in.
12. Flip Goods on eBay
There is a simple equation to flipping goods on eBay and making money. That equation is: buy low, sell high and repeat.
To get started, you will need to set up an eBay store. Then you need to do research on items that you want to sell. As with everything, you don’t want to blindly purchase items to flip without any knowledge on that item. Some research that you need to do includes market price, profit margin and shipping/packaging.
You can find items to flip on the “free” section of Cragislist, your local Goodwill or on eBay! Then follow the equation above and buy the item for a low price, list and sell it for a higher price and then repeat.
13. Get Paid to Snooze With Sleep Studies
I’m not even kidding. If you’re in decent health, catch plenty of sleep, and are in an area where a sleep study is being conducted, you could make the most passive income of all.
If you qualify, you could make thousands of dollars in one study. Once accepted, you’ll probably have to undergo a physical, alongside an exam from a psychologist to ensure you’re up to the task. Did I mention you get paid every step of the way?
Keep in mind, though, that these studies have their own challenges, like cutting you off from media sources and your social life and requiring you to be watched and studied for the duration of the experiment.
You might also be asked to sleep in potentially uncomfortable positions for an extended period of time. But the pay is impressive. For sleep studies and other medical and psychological studies, search ClinicalTrials.gov and filter results based on your location, age, and other factors.
14. Get Paid For Your Opinion
Did you know you can get paid to take online surveys? Right from the comfort of your couch, you could be earning money just by surfing the web. There are tons of great survey sites out there, and some of them give you a bonus just for signing up.
15. Peer to Peer Lending
Peer-to-peer lending, or P2P Lending, is a favorite of mine. The idea is to lend money to individuals or a business. They then pay you back, plus interest.
Let’s say someone needs to borrow $10k to consolidate their debt. They create an account with Lending Club (for example) and depending on their credit history, income, etc. are given an interest rate on the loan.
The investor (you) also creates an account with Lending Club and buys the debt. When the borrower makes monthly payments, the principal and interest are paid to you in your Lending Club investment account.
There are several companies that underwrite P2P lending, some like Lending Club facilitates personal loans, while others, like Worthy, facilitate business loans (the process is the exact same).
Expected returns are in the 5% range (depending on platform and loan type). While not exactly stock returns, 5% or more is better than most national bank interest rates.
16. Become a Social Media Influencer
Did you know that you can get paid for posting on social media? There are a variety of ways to earn money as a social media influencer. You can work with companies to produce sponsored posts/content which the company will pay you for. Typically rates for sponsored posts are calculated by how many followers you have and your engagement rates. You can also earn income as a social media influencer by sharing affiliate links, writing sponsored blog posts or by hosting events/attending events as an influencer. To get started earning money as a social media influencer, it is a good idea to create a media kit highlighting your social media accounts, your niche and samples of your work.
17. Car Detailing Service
An employee of mine worked a couple summers in a detail shop in high school. The manager told him how he could start a side hustle easy with some cleaning supplies and a buffer! People pay up to $300 to get their cars detailed!
Car detailing businesses make money through the services they offer and are paid on a per-job basis. Car detailing is not something you have to go to school for, however you do need to know the proper methods for detailing. Then, you will need to invest in the proper equipment, such as a pressure washer, buffer, towels, buckets, sponges, etc.
After you have purchased all the proper equipment, it is time to start building your customer base. As you are getting started, it may be a good idea to reach out to local businesses, such as a hotel concierge, to see if there are any opportunities to partner.
18. Invest In the Markets, Passively
Investing in public stocks and bonds is the main way people build long-term wealth and income through their retirement plans or brokerage accounts. The data is pretty good, however, the average person like you and I should be passively investing through ETFs and index funds that have low fees.
There are two ways you can do this:
Set it and forget it with a robo-advisor
Letting an algorithm manage your investments is about as passive as you can get. Robo-advisors like Betterment allow you to set your willingness for risk, then sit back and let the income flow. And the fees are much lower than what you’d pay a human account manager. Below is a rundown of a few of the leading robo-advisor platforms.
