Have you been living paycheck to paycheck? Are higher paying jobs proving difficult to come by? Is adding another permanent job to your schedule out of the question? If your answer is yes to anyone or all of these questions, perhaps it is time you considered a flexible side income job. With such a job, you get to pick your own hours and decide how much work you want to do. You can even decide to have several such jobs and turn your side income into your main income. There are many ways to make a little extra cash on the side. These range from traditional real world jobs like babysitting to modern internet based options. Here are some of the best side income jobs you can use to start making money today.
I have compiled this list based on a variety of factors. I made sure that all the jobs here are easy to do, easy to get, and they do not need any sort of training or education if you want to get started with them. You do not need to spend any money to get started with any of them. They are also all very flexible, meaning you can work whenever you want and however much you want. Let’s begin!
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1. DRIVING
If you know your way around town and you have a reliable car, you could make a decent side income as a driver. You can do this by either becoming a delivery driver or by driving people around. As a delivery driver, you can either choose to deliver regular packages for companies like Amazon and UPS, or deliver food for a company like Uber Eats.
If you want to drive people around, there are also several companies that will give you an opportunity to do that. You may need to check with your company to find out whether ride sharing is permitted in your city.
You can easily apply for these jobs on your computer or phone as long as you have an internet connection. As a driver, you will be able to choose your own hours and work around other commitments.
You can check out sites like Amazon Flex, CitizenShipper, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, Juno, Roadie, Grubhub, UPS, and Via.
Here is an article on the best way To Make A Passive Income Online
2. HOUSEHOLD SERVICES
Can you cook and clean? Can you fix things really well around the house? Are you good at organizing or perhaps just really handy around the house? Such services are in very high demand especially in urban areas and city settings. All you have to do is sign up with a site like TaskRabbit or advertise your services on job boards like Craigslist.
If you are organized and you enjoy cleaning out closets, you can sign up on a site like Bellhops which is extremely popular with people looking for moving and home organization services.
TaskRabbit, Handy, Craigslist, Amazon Professional Services, Bellhops, and Goshare are some of the platforms that have job opportunities for people who can provide household services.
3. CAREGIVING
If you are good with children or the elderly, there is no shortage of care giving services. This means that you can easily get a position that has flexible hours. You can use the internet to source jobs or rely on word of mouth and self-advertising to find work. Either way, you have the opportunity to determine your own availability based on your schedule.
Care.com and Craigslist are great places to start if this sounds like something that might interest you.
4. PET SITTING
Just like care giver jobs, there is a ton of work available for pet sitters. So if you prefer hanging out with animals to people, you can easily make lots of money as a pet sitter. To get started in this business, first talk to family, friends or neighbors and do a few jobs for them. Referrals are important in such service jobs, and this is the easiest way to get them.
Next, start marketing your services on relevant sites to find clients around your location. Clients will then find you and you can start making money!
Wag, Rover, and DogVacay are some of the best options you can start with.
5. CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE
Customer service is a rapidly growing field. This means that there are many opportunities for customer service representative positions. When you apply, you can either get hired for an online position or an in-person post. There are also lots of weekend and evening jobs, so this is perfect for you if you want to keep your regular job.
You can bid for customer service representative jobs on job boards like Upwork or try contacting companies directly. Apple is a company that hires this type of customer service rep all over the world!
6. FREELANCING
Anyone can freelance. It does not matter what your skill is, there is someone out there who would pay you good money to share it with them. Freelancing gives you the rare opportunity to do what you are good at whenever you want and get paid for it. Eventually, you can even transition from your regular job and become a full time freelancer.
Wondering how to start? Start by creating accounts on these sites: Upwork, Freelancer.com, Servicescape, FlexJobs
7. MICROJOBS
Microjobs are almost like freelance work, but on a much smaller scale. These jobs often require no commitment, are easy to do, and can be done pretty quickly. The pay is however quite low when it comes to them. However, you can do lots of them, which means that your earnings will add up over time.
Here is where to start: Fiverr, Fourerr
8. PARTY PLANNING
If everyone has been telling you how great you are at planning parties, consider trying your hand at being a party planner. This is a simple side job that you can get started doing almost immediately. However, consider first offering your services to people you know to build your credibility. When you have a good number of people that can attest to your party planning abilities, you can scale up and start offering your services as a full-fledged business.
A few points to note here: Party planning does not come naturally to everyone. If you have never done it before, start small with something simple like a kid’s birthday party. Then move on to more complicated parties. Do not try to plan something as important as a wedding, for instance, if you have zero experience. Also, getting some form of certification will help put your clients at ease.
A good way to get started in this business is by planning parties for people you know, then scale up.
9. WORKING FOR A CATERING SERVICE
This is a great way to make a little extra cash on a very flexible schedule. Catering jobs are often quite irregular, unless you want to be a permanent member of staff. This means you can do your own thing and only show up on days when you can take a job.
Catering services usually hire servers, drivers, bartenders and other event staff. You can negotiate your pay with your employer depending on your level of skill or experience.
Indeed.com is a great place to start. You can also search Google for jobs in your area, or check with local caterers and ask to be hired.
10. TUTORING
Tutoring is another great side income job that you can do on the side. You only need to be good at a particular subject to start lining up jobs. College students are often hired to tutor high school and elementary school students. If you have a bachelor’s degree in a particular subject, there will be no shortage of work for you especially on evenings and weekends.
Before you start, be sure to check with your school district for guidance on what you need to do before you can take high school and elementary school jobs. If you want to tutor college kids, check out the campus student employment office for advice on what you need to do to get started.
You also have the option of tutoring people online. Most online tutoring sites will require some proof that you are who you say you are and that you are actually qualified in the areas you claim to be qualified in. If you pass the screening process, there are many online tutoring jobs available from all over the world. Online tutors make anywhere from $15 to $25 an hour depending on their qualifications and on the company they choose to work with.
Tutor.com, Craigslist, and Chegg are great sites to get tutoring jobs.
11. FREELANCE WRITING
I have already talked about freelancing, but freelance writing deserves an entire category of its own. It is a massive online industry that millions of people are making a living off of.
Websites need content to stay relevant. Very few sites have full time writers. Instead, they rely almost entirely on freelance writers for their content. And millions of websites are popping up every day, so you will never lack work if you choose to be a freelance writer.
The best part is that you do not even have to be a professional writer to do this. As long as you are willing to put in a bit of work and practice consistently, you can produce content that people will be willing to pay you for.
The pay for freelance writers usually varies depending on who you are writing for. If you are really good at it, you can set your own rates. The best way to get high paying clients is to pitch to them directly from their websites or email addresses. However, you should know that cold pitching is a skill that takes some time to learn, so do your research and figure out how to do it right.
If freelance writing is something you would be interested in, I would strongly recommend you start your journey with popular content mills first. The pay from content mills is extremely low, but at least you will get some guaranteed work and hands on experience in what freelance writing entails. Do this for a few weeks, define your niche, then start pitching directly to potential clients. It helps if you have a website to make you look even more professional.
Here is where to start: Textbroker, Writeraccess, Crowdcontent, Fiverr, Upwork, cold-pitching directly to clients
12. TESTING WEBSITES
Whenever a company launches a new website, they need to make sure that it is simple enough for people to use and easy enough to be understood by everyone who visits it. They can only get this kind of data by looking at what several people think. Since it is difficult to get this kind of resource, they pay other companies to ask people to test the site for them and give them feedback. This is where the entire concept of user testing comes from.
You should know that this method pays very little, so you have to either test a large number of sites or combine it with other jobs on this list to make a livable income from it.
13. TRANSCRIPTION
Transcription involves listening to an audio file and typing out what you hear.
You will need to be a decent typist and have some good listening skills to be good at this. The average pay is not too bad either. Transcription pays per audio hour, and you can make anywhere from $20 to $60 on average for transcribing a one-hour audio file as you start out. However, you should know it takes anywhere from two to five hours to transcribe a one-hour audio file depending on how good you are. This is because most of the files you will be getting are either low quality audio recordings with lots of background activity, or recordings of people with heavy accents that may be difficult to transcribe in one listening session.
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14. MONETIZE YOUR LANGUAGE SKILLS
If you are bilingual or multilingual, you can make monetize your language skills and earn a decent side income with it.
There are many settings where interpreters are often needed. You can post a listing for your services as a court interpreter or in international affairs offices and get hired for these jobs.
Alternatively, you can sign up to be an online foreign language teacher to people who want to learn your language from all over the world.
15. TOUR GUIDE
If you know your city or town well, you can become a tour guide on the side and make some fairly decent money.
A tour guide simply gives tours of the city or town they live in, showing visitors what’s so great about it. You can go the extra mile and share little known secrets about the city or some hidden gems that they can visit while there. People appreciate finding out stuff they otherwise would have never known about by reading a guide book.
Shiroube, and Vayable are platforms with jobs for tour guides if this sounds like something you would be interested in.
16. BECOME A SUBSTITUTE TEACHER
If you have a very flexible schedule, and you have a passion for teaching, you can sign up to be a substitute teacher in your area. All you have to do is contact your school district to find out if you are eligible. When a school needs a sub, you will be contacted.
Being a substitute teacher is a great way to share your passion for teaching without being tied down to a particular school. You might also discover a career you had never considered before, and perhaps make up your mind to become a full time teacher based on your experience.
17. BARTENDING
If you know how to make great drinks, or you have always wanted to learn how to do it, bartending might be just the job for you.
Bartending is a really fun job, particularly since you get to meet lots of different people every day and hear different hilarious stories from each one of them. If you do not mind a few late nights every week, you can do this job on the side and make quite a bit of money. Bartenders make most of their income from tips, because on a good night the tax-free income from tips can really add up.
18. PLAY DRESS UP
This can be a lot of fun, and you don’t have to do it every day. Stores all over the country are constantly hiring people to dress up as mascots. All you have to do is apply and you could be the next mascot, dancing around in costume and entertaining shoppers.
You can also apply to a Santa Claus agency if you think you can make a good Santa. These agencies usually recruit people for mall Santa jobs then send them out to different locations for gigs.
If you are lucky, you may also get the chance to be the mascot for a professional sports team. However, you should know that these jobs are few and highly competitive because the pay is good and regular.
19. WORK OUT FOR MONEY
Do you enjoy keeping fit? Have you taken so many workout classes that you can practically give them yourself by now? If so, you can become a personal trainer or instructor.
Pilates and yoga classes are particularly in high demand, so they may be a great place to start if you have some background in them.
An important point to note here: It is always a good idea to get certified before running such classes. Certification may cost you some money, but it will eventually all pay for itself especially once you start getting regular clients.
20. AFFILIATE MARKETING
From my experience, affiliate marketing is hands down one of the best side income jobs you can ever do. Not only do you get to be your own boss doing this, but you also get to make as much money as you want while investing just your time and effort in your business. It is very inexpensive to get started as an affiliate marketer, and there are no barriers to entry so anyone can do it, no matter their experience level. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you everything you need to know about this business and how you can take advantage of the opportunity it offers.
What is it?
Affiliate marketing is a business model that allows you to earn a commission from promoting other people’s products. You do not own any of the products personally as an affiliate, you simply recommend specific products to people and earn a commission when they buy those products from your recommendation.
Think of it this way. If I have a product that I need to sell fast, and I have no idea how to get buyers for my product, I can approach you and ask you to help me out by handle that part of my business for me. If you happen to have several friends who might like my product, you simply recommend it to them and they buy it from me. Once I sell my product, I’ll be happy to give you a cut from the sales I just made as a thank you. In this analogy, I am the product owner and you are the affiliate marketer. You do not own the product but simply make money from recommending my product to people who might be interested in buying it.
Things are even easier when it comes to being an affiliate marketer online. On the internet, affiliate marketers have referral links. If you intend to recommend a certain product to people, the product owner or the company selling the product will give you a unique referral link that you can share with everyone you think might be interested in making a purchase. When someone clicks on your referral link and makes a purchase, that purchase is registered under your account and you will earn a commission from it.
What makes affiliate marketing so great?
Affiliate marketing has a ton of benefits. Here are some of them:
– You get to be your own boss. As an affiliate marketer, you will no longer answer to anyone. You choose the products you want to promote, then work whenever you want for as long as you want.
– It has an uncapped earning potential. What this means is that as an affiliate marketer, the more you sell, the more money you make. The sky is literally the limit. You can promote and sell as many products as you want and make as much money as you want.
– There are no barriers to entry in affiliate marketing. Anyone can do it, and anyone can find success with it. The beauty of affiliate marketing lies in the fact that it is a learning process. Everyone is learning on the job, and you get better at it as you go.
– It liberates you. Nothing matches the level of freedom that this business can give you. As an affiliate marketer, you can finally live life the way you have always wanted to, with nothing holding you back. You can work from anywhere, and make money all day every day once your business takes off.
– It also offers you financial freedom. You will never have to worry about when your next paycheck is coming in. As an affiliate marketer, your business will make you enough money to ensure you live comfortably even without a regular 9 to 5 job.
So if you haven’t been thinking about affiliate marketing, you need to start seriously considering it. It will take quite a bit of work to get your business up and running especially in the initial stages, but once it takes off, you will never look back. Affiliate marketing is the one side income job you will never regret making part of your portfolio.
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HOW CAN YOU TELL THE TYPE OF JOB THAT WILL BE THE RIGHT FIT FOR YOU?
To decide the type of side job that will be perfect for you, you need to think about whether you are ready to jump into something new or whether you simply want to leverage skills that you already have.
If you have absolutely no idea what to do, consider doing something you already have a background in. What are you passionate about? What do you do in your current job? What did you study in school? What have you always been interested in? All these questions will offer valuable insights into potential side income jobs that could be the perfect fit for you.
A good strategy is to try out several different jobs for a start to find out which one you like best. Since it costs you almost nothing to get started with most of these jobs, it doesn’t hurt to start with a bunch of them and start eliminating the ones you do not like as you go. Just be sure to start with a manageable number of side income jobs and give yourself enough time to understand each one well before eliminating it.
Read through this list. Write down the jobs that catch you eye most. This will start to show you the kind of work you may be interested in. Do some further research on these opportunities on the web, look at the resources and sites where you can get some of these jobs from, and eliminate a few more. Aim to be left with 3 or 4 jobs that you feel you have the best chance of success at. Once you have these, just start! That’s it! Sign up to the relevant sites or approach local businesses and pitch to them, then start making money from your side job.
Remember, do not quit your regular job even as you dabble in these side income jobs. They are meant to be a source of a little extra income, so don’t quit your day job just yet. Give it a few months, and when the income you generate from these jobs is regular and able to sustain you, and you believe that by dedicating more time to your side job you could make even more money, then you can consider quitting your regular job and turning your side job into your main source of income.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Having a regular 9 to 5 job just doesn’t cut it anymore in today’s society. Unless you are absolutely loaded, you need to consider supplementing your income with a little extra cash or risk living hand-to-mouth month after month. This is why side income jobs are so important.
If you do not have a job, then they become even more important. Make one side income job your main source of income. Technically, it won’t be a side income anymore, so you will need to add another side income job to your itinerary eventually. Point is, if you want to live comfortably today, you need to find ways to bring in more money every month.
I hope you will find an opportunity that works for you from this list.
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If you are not thrilled about your current situation and want a side income job, check out the link above. You have nothing to lose and financial freedom to gain!
I hope you found this post helpful and useful,
To your success!
Mike A