10 Simple Ways to Make Extra Money From Home

Are you wanting to pay off debt, save for a trip, or just want extra spending money? You have have come to the right place! I have come up with 10 ways to make real money while sitting on your couch. I know I know, many people have lists of 75+ ways you can make money, but are those really tried, true and tested? No. The tasks listed below can be done at home, from your computer and anyone can do it. Whether you are a broke college student or an adult working a full time job, you can find time for these easy money making ideas. All of them give you the flexibility of working when you want while making more than just a few dollars. I wanted to write this post because I feel like these are great and honest ways to earn extra income.

**Disclosure: I am a professional website author that receives compensation from the companies whose products I review. I test each product thoroughly and give high marks to only the very best. I am independently owned and the opinions expressed here are my own.**

1. Fancy Hands Virtual Assistant

Fancy hands has been one of the most lucrative online ventures for me. Once you become accepted as a virtual assistant you are given access to a dashboard full of tasks to choose from. An average task ranges from $3-$5. If it takes more than 20 minutes, you can request to double the task and get double the money. I really like this website because I can choose which tasks I want and some end up being really easy. Below are a few examples of tasks I have completed:

Example 1: What is Ghee? Can it be substituted for butter? 

For this task I got paid $3.85! It took me about five minutes to copy paste the definition of Ghee from Google and I then found a link that gave information on exactly how to substitute Ghee for butter. Pretty easy right?

Example 2: Yesterday, my son was playing in a baseball tournament at Bernes Park in Elmhurst. We left a black baseball glove and a plastic bin filled with plastic baseballs (black and yellow collapsible balls) and we were wondering if anyone turned them into the lost and found. 

They also gave me the number to the baseball field. I called the baseball field, asked for lost and found and determined they had not found the equipment. I notified the client and got paid $4.29 for a few minutes of work.

I also once had a task where I had to enter data from a piece of paper to an excel document. It took me a little less than an hour and I received an $18 payout. The money adds up quickly and I find myself with a hefty paycheck every two weeks.

2. Transcribe

I did a lot of transcribing for UpWork at the beginning of my online money making days. On UpWork there is a large need for people to transcribe audio files. Once in a blue moon there are jobs to transcribe a PDF but those usually are snatched up pretty quickly. This website has a pretty easy sign up and you can get started quick!

If you are interested in more transcribing ideas, check out this guide of the Top 23 Transcription Jobs for Getting Paid to Listen and Type. 

3. Upload camera photos to FOAP

Do you have an eye for photography? Regardless if you do, FOAP will pay you to upload photos to their platform. The way it works is that you will upload your photos, and if they get a high enough rating they will be posted for sale on their website. If someone buys the licensing for your photo, you will receive $5. Once you upload all of your photos you don’t have to think about checking if they sold because you will receive an email keeping you updated on their status.

4. Create a blog

This is one I heard over and over again and again. “Create a blog” they say, “you will earn $100,000 a month” they say. I have been blogging since September and I will agree there is money to be made in this field. It doesn’t come quickly, and not without hard work….but it comes.  Maybe not $100,000 a month like top bloggers, but there is a small amount of income when you are a beginner. This is the most time consuming money making idea on this list. Although time consuming, this has been very fulfilling for me. I never knew how much I loved writing and sharing my thoughts until I started this blog. I started my first blog in September of 2016 through Bluehost. I was happy with the service they provided and the help they gave me as someone new to website development. I was happy with them……until I got hacked. Getting hacked was a telling moment for me as I really got to see how important my blog was to me. I had lost it all, everything I had worked on was just gone. I called Bluehost and they said they would fix it if I signed a year contract and pay $180 a month for my blog. At that time, my blog was making $0 a month so I was not about to spend that kind of money on security. Bluehost did give me my money back on the months I didn’t use so I have no ill will towards them.

Getting hacked ended up being the best thing for me. I used this as an opportunity to take everything I learned from my few months of blogging and start new, from scratch. And that is where Mindful With Mal came to light in February of 2017. I decided to go with a new hosting provider, Site Ground. Site ground has proven to load fast on any computer I have been on. It also provides security for $1 a month at sign up, you can’t beat that! If you are wanting to start a blog I would recommend Site Ground without a doubt. Please feel free to email me at mallory@mindfulwithmal if you ever need help setting up your blog or website! I know I needed support when I started so I would love to be that support for someone else.

5. Freelance Writer

I have dabbled a bit with freelance writing and have made a little bit of money here and there. A free platform I have used to find writing gigs is through Problogger. Problogger is nice because there is no financial risk if you don’t get any writing jobs. If you know you have what it takes, I would recommend checking out Contena. There is an monthly cost to being a Contena member but it is highly likely you will make your money back if you work hard at getting writing gigs. It seems like Contena is able to find even the most obscure writing jobs. There are tons of options available and you can sort for what types of writing jobs you prefer to show up first. Once I joined Contena I started making money pretty quick! If you are interested in learning more about Contena, check out my post How to Make Bank From Anywhere as a Freelance Writer.

6. Money Making Apps

A passive way of earning a small amount of extra income is through Savvy Connect. All you have to do is install the Savvy Connect app on your iPhone and start earning $5 for every month you have the app. You earn $5 just for joining (you have to keep the app for 30 days before receiving payment). There are also opportunities to do surveys to earn even more!

7. Test Websites at UserTesting

If you are interested in making $30/hour for flexible work, UserTesting is for you. In order to use UserTesting, you have to download their screen recording software and have a microphone. This company has you look at websites and review the navigation. You say your thoughts out loud as you navigate through the website and they are able to hear you as well as see what you are doing on your screen. The usual payment is $10 per website and it takes about 20 minutes to complete the tasks. It feels awkward talking out loud at first but after a while I got used to it. This is one of the easier, more interesting ways to make extra money.

8. Amazon Mechanical Turk

The job of an Amazon Mechanical Turk is similar to Fancy Hands, except the payout isn’t as large. Mechanical Turks do smaller jobs that usually start at prices below $1. One task I did had me go on a webpage and use my up, down, right, and left arrows to make sure that feature worked on their website. I only got paid $.05 but it only took me a little less than two minutes. This is definitely not a way to get rich but it can add up to make you a little extra money.

9. Review Music

I have been reviewing music on a website called Slice the Pie for a while now. It is an easy way to make money and as an added bonus you can learn about the newest songs! The way it works is you listen to a song and write a review about it. Sometimes you make $.05 for a review, and sometimes you make more. It varies from song to song and how well of a reviewer you are. They recently added reviewing movie and TV show promos as well as other topics!

10. Online Mystery Shop

Online mystery shopping has been an easy way I have made money for about 2 years now. After applying at many mystery shopping websites, I have determined BestMark is the easiest and most lucrative website. BestMark makes it easy to to choose which mystery shop you would like to do. There are tons of shops on this site where you can go to restaurants, haircuts, and get oil changes, but for this post we will focus on what you can do while staying at home. BestMark has the option where you can call different places and take a five minute survey on how your interaction with the company was. Usually phone calls make about $4 per call. There are also website visits where you can navigate the website and give information on the ease or difficulty it is to find what you need on their webpage. Those also range from $3-$4 per survey.

I love to hear success stories from ways you made money online! Please feel free to share with me if you have had successes in any of these ways or a different avenue!