If you're looking for a few good ideas on how to make money fast, you're in the right place.
I've compiled a list of the fastest ways to make money online. These are not loans or grants, no applications or approvals necessary.
These are money earning opportunities that you can start and complete within a short time to put some extra cash in your digital pocket.
Some opportunities come in the form of gift cards, some are cash payouts to a Paypal account, while others are premier online jobs in the gig economy – which pay to a bank account.
Whether you need $20 for beer money this weekend or an extra $100 towards a car or credit card payment, you can find it on this list.
Get Paid for Surveys
Market research companies, also known as survey companies, are always looking for people to share their opinions and get paid for it. My favorite survey company is Survey Junkie, who pays anywhere from $0.50 to $75 to answer surveys. The shorter ones, which take just a few minutes, pay less. If you are selected for longer focus groups, that's when you can earn closer to $75.
Swagbucks is also well regarded as another place to get rewarded for taking online surveys (more on that below).
Like the other legitimate survey companies I recommend, they are free to join. Here is a full review of SurveyJunkie if you want to learn more.
Become a Shopper for Instacart
Want to make money driving your car but don't want to pick up passengers? Join Instacart and become a full-service grocery shopper. As a full-service shopper, you shop groceries on demand for people. You take the job, shop for groceries, and then deliver those groceries.
If you don't want to deliver, you can just become an in-store shopper. For that, you just handle the shopping in a store and someone else delivers it.
You set your schedule and can work flexibly.
Collect a New Bank Account Bonus
Our list of the best bank bonuses has over thirty banks offering at least a hundred dollars to open an account.
The bonus takes a little bit of time to arrive but getting a hundred dollars or more to do something fairly simple is unbeatable. One of the most popular options is to open a Chase bank account (or one of their sweet credit cards) because they have branches nationwide.
And the best part is you can repeat this at different banks over and over again.
Drive for Lyft
Don't mind picking people up and driving them around? Lyft is one of the best ridesharing services because they will guarantee that you make $1,000 in 30 days as long as you do 125 rides.
If you aren't familiar with Lyft, it's an on-demand ridesharing service where you pick and drop off passengers. You keep all of your tips, get paid weekly, and are paid on time and mileage. You just have to be 21+ and have a smartphone.
Rent Out a Room on Airbnb
If you have a spare room, consider renting it out on Airbnb!
You have to check your local community regulations and laws but it's not unheard of to make a few hundred dollars a month on Airbnb. My neighbor converted his basement to an in-law suite and started renting it out for $80 a night. It's often rented out and it's a single bedroom with a sleeper sofa. In fact, I've even rented it out for a new nights when we had family in town and not enough rooms in our house to host them.
Another friend of mine rents out his entire apartment whenever he's away. If he's gone for the weekend, he just pops it on Airbnb to see if there are any takers. It's sporadic but why not subside your vacation right?
(and if you haven't used Airbnb before, you can get a $40 travel credit from us!)
Join Nielsen Computer & Mobile Panel
You've heard of Nielsen, they do television ratings (among other things) and they will pay you $50 a year to install an app on your devices to report internet usage. The Nielsen Computer & Mobile Panel is their internet market research arm and if you're OK with sharing usage data, they'll give you sweepstakes entries and rewards.
Learn more about the Nielsen Computer & Mobile Panel
Get $10 from Ibotta
Ibotta is an app where you can get cash rebates for taking photos of your receipts. Companies partner with Ibotta to offer cash rebates when you buy their products. So you load up the app, check to see what products are offering rebates, and then add them to your account. When you buy them, just scan the receipt and you get cash.
Every few days they offer anywhere from $0.10 to $0.25 for “any item.” That means you get ten to twenty-five cents just for scanning in a receipt.
The best part is that they offer a $10 welcome bonus when you sign up.
Trim Your Bills
Trim is an absolutely free personal finance assistant. You download the app and link your credit card or bank account. Trim will analyze your transactions and look for recurring charges like subscriptions, then they will negotiate the bill (if they can) or help you cancel it with the click of a button. The app itself is free but if they find you savings, they take a small percentage only if they secure a lower price for something you're already paying for.
If you aren't sure what you're subscribed to, Trim will you and, if you don't want it anymore, cancel it for you and you don't need to sit on the phone for an hour with some operator trying to get you to stay.
Sign up for Swagbucks
Swagbucks is one of the most well known “beer money” type of sites – places where you can quickly make a few bucks for beer money, but don't expect to get rich. You can earn points answering surveys, signing up for offers, watching videos, searching the internet, using their mobile app, and much more.
Each Swagbuck is worth about a penny and you can turn them into gift cards to places like Amazon.com.
$5 from Drop
Drop is an app that builds an instant loyalty cashback program to five stores you pick. When you shop that these five stores, you'll earn a small percentage (up to 2%) in points to your Drop account.
You get $5 once you link up a debit or credit card, which is how they know how to reward your purchases, and you earn those rewards passively. No coupons to clip, receipts to scan, or app to “check-in” on – you just spend and earn points. These points are in addition to whatever rewards you may earn from your credit card.
You can cash out points at 1,000 points = $1 for places like Amazon.com and Starbucks.
Find Missing Money
I love getting these emails!
It takes just a few minutes to check. Go to MissingMoney.com, a website set up by the Unclaimed Property Clearinghouse, and check your name and every state you've lived in. You may be pleasantly surprised! (while you're at it, check for your family members too – they'd love to know they have some cash lying around)
Get $10 from Ebates
Ebates is an online cashback portal that will give you $10 after you make your first purchase. The app is free to sign up and they are one of the oldest cashback portals, which means they have partnerships with a lot of brands. It won't take long for you to find somewhere you already shop at and take advantage of the free Hamilton!
Get $150 from This Credit Card Bonus
Credit cards want your business and they will pay handsomely for it.
Consider the Platinum Rewards Credit Card from ABOC, which stands for the Amalgamated Bank of Chicago (FDIC #903). This card will give you a $150 statement credit when you make $1,200 in purchases within the first 90 days of opening. You have three months to spend $1,200 on the card and then they will give you $150.
There is no annual fee and you even get 0% intro APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months.
Earn 2.00% on Your Savings
Are you earning 2.25% APY on your savings? If you aren't, then you are leaving money on the table.
Aspiration has a Spend & Save Account (their name for a checking and savings account) with a 2.00% APY PLUS a 0.5% cash back debit card. It's one of the few checking accounts offering a debit cashback card plus the 2.00% APY is one of the highest in the nation.
They also offer a few other perks like $1,000 in expense reimbursement for ID theft as well as secondary cell phone protection insurance of $600 per claim.
Get Free Stock
There are a lot of new brokerage apps competing for your business – you can get free shares of stock from Robinhood and Webull when you open an account with them.
You can read more about their new account programs:
Donate Blood Plasma
Blood plasma is the yellowish liquid component of your blood and what holds white and red blood cells in suspension. That plasma is valuable and if you are healthy, you can earn quite a bit of money for donating blood plasma (and about an hour and a half of your time to collect it).
Generally, if you are over the age of 18 and weigh more than 110 pounds, you are eligible to donate. Local state laws may override these general rules so double check with the donation centers. You are compensated based on how much you donate but it could be anywhere from $20 to $50 per donation. You can donate many times within a month so this can be a quick source of cash if you're willing to spend the time.
Teach English
If you have an education background, you could join one of many English tutors who are teaching kids in China how to become better English speakers. There are several platforms to choose from and we recently interviewed a teacher who was making $2,000+ a month as a tutor on VIPKid. These are one on one tutoring 30-minute sessions and you can up to $22 per hour.
Two other platforms that are popular are SayABC and Education First.
Look for Class Action Settlements
There are class action lawsuits happening all the time and you may not even know you're part of the class!
I periodically review these websites to see if there's a settlement that I can claim that I didn't know about previously. This is a simple way to get cash that's owed to you but unfortunately, won't be fast. Settlements have to be reached, then approved by a judge, and then finally paid out.
It is, however, very easy to claim so I kept it on the list.
Two sites that seem to have the best lists of class actions are ClassActionRebates.com and TopClassActions.com.
Evaluate Websites
If you have a microphone, a camera, and a willingness test websites – you can join User Testing and become a website tester. The jobs are in 20-minute increments and involve some pretty mundane user testing situations, like searching for and then adding a product to a shopping card. Website operators want to make sure their website is working as expected and will pay you $10 for each 20-minute user experience test. You're paid via PayPal exactly 7 days after completing a test (they use this time to review it).
Sell Unwanted Stuff
If you have a pile of unwanted stuff, whether it's old DVDs or electronics or other detritus, there are a lot of services that will help you get rid of it quickly.
Gazelle is one of the best places to sell old cell phones. Decluttr will help you turn DVDs, CDs, games and other tech into cash. (if you don't like those, here are 21 apps that will help you turn junk into cash)
Or you can always turn to trusty old eBay if you want to sell it one by one… but you knew that already. Check out Gazelle and Decluttr and save yourself some headache.
Is your favorite way to earn money fast NOT on this list? Tell us all about it!
Susan Dippold says
February 5, 2019 at 12:59 pmCheck your taxes. If you are getting a refund of $1200 or more, you should change who you claim on your W-4. If you are cash strapped on a monthly basis, this could put $100 a month in your pocket instead of Uncle Sams. Of course, you would not get as big of a refund in May.
Jim Wang says
February 5, 2019 at 1:06 pmGreat tip!