We’ve all been there. Maybe a few unexpected expenses hit you all at once – you need to repair your car and book a vacation. Suddenly, you need a few hundred dollars overnight.
It can be tempting to max out your credit card or take out a loan, especially if you’re in a panic.
But what about making that money? Is that even possible? In a few words, yes.
The internet has unleashed hundreds of ways to make quick cash, most of which don’t require you to ever leave the comfort of your own home.
20+ Ways to Make Some Fast Cash
Here are some great ways to make fast cash now:
- 🏆 Deliver Food
- Grocery Shop
- Take Online Surveys
- Freelance Gigs
- Deposit Bonuses
- App Bonuses
- Earn Cash Back
- Rent Your Car
- Sell Stuff Online
- Drive Others
- Rent Our Your House
- Dog Walking
- Run Errands
- Complete Microtasks
- Rent Out Your Belongings
- Recycling
- Sell Your Clothes
- Have a Garage Sale
- Sell Your Knowledge
- Negotiate Your Bills
- Redeem Coins for Cash
- Redeem Giftcards for Cash
- Babysitting
- Street Performing
1. Deliver Food
Not everyone has a car. But as long as you have a motorbike or even a regular bike, you can make some side money by delivering food with a company like Doordash.
The sign-up process is generally quite simple: just fill in an application, sign on, and start taking requests for deliveries from local establishments.
DoorDash pays you daily, so you really can earn money instantly this way.
2. Grocery Shop
People are so short on time these days that they’re willing to pay for almost anything that will help them to save time. One of the more unusual forms is by paying somebody to do their grocery shopping for them and delivering them – this is exactly what Instacart set out to do.
You could be the one doing the shopping and delivering for others in your neighborhood if you sign up.
Although the exact rate you can expect to be paid varies depending on factors such as order size and miles are driven, you could be earning around $15 an hour.
3. Take Online Surveys
If you know anything about survey apps, you’ve probably heard of Swagbucks. It’s one of the biggest survey sites out there and has an endless number of questionnaires available, which you can earn ‘Swagbucks’ for answering.
The only downside is that you may be told you don’t meet the eligibility requirements to earn a reward for taking a survey – this can be irritating, but with a bit of patience, you’ll start to make money.
Even though the site specializes in surveys, you can earn in other ways too, such as by watching videos or playing games. However, surveys are certainly the most profitable and reliable way to make money.
Swagbucks also offers a $20 bonus for anyone who makes a new account with the site and earns enough points. However, you’ll need to earn a $25 minimum before you can withdraw your money.
4. Freelance Gigs
Essentially, Fiverr is a freelancing website based on the concept of selling a service for $5. In reality, most sellers are charging far more than this.
Amongst the other freelancing websites on the internet, Fiverr stands out for how quick and easy it is to get started. All you need to do is fill in your profile, create your gig, and you’re good to go.
However, you might find it difficult to find clients straight away when you have no reviews. Plus, even when you complete a task, it takes a couple of weeks for the payment to clear so you can withdraw it.
5. Deposit Bonuses
If you’re like most people, you probably keep the majority of your money stashed away in a checking account with an interest rate of next to nothing.
Switching to a high-yield savings account is an easy way to make a few extra dollars a month. And, even better, lots of banks offer substantial deposit bonuses to anyone who switches their account over to them.
The providers who offer this tend to be online banks, who often provide stellar service but don’t have the trusted status of more traditional institutions, who pick up the majority of their customers easily.
The best bonuses offered by banks are constantly changing, but here is one of the easiest offers:
6. App Bonuses
Acorns is a new investment app known for rounding up any purchases made using your card and investing your spare change and when you sign up you get a $10 bonus.
The idea of starting to invest might sound daunting to you, but with Acorns it’s simple – you just need to answer some basic questions about your demographics and risk tolerance, and there’s no minimum investment amount needed to get started.
There are other ways Acorn can make you money, too, such as the ‘FoundMoney’ cashback program. This means that you can continue to earn money even after you receive the $5 since your money will make more returns as it’s invested.
7. Get Cashback
Rakuten is a major cashback site: you can make purchases through their shopping portal, and they’ll give you a percentage of the amount spent back in cash.
This is generally a very small percentage that varies slightly between retailers, but if you use it for every grocery shop, it really adds up over the course of a year.
It’s possible to earn up to 40% cashback with some retailers, but the most common percentage is 5-10% – which is still very respectable. You can also earn an extra $25 every time you make a referral.
You’ll get a respectable $10 for signing up for the service, but there’s one catch: you need to make $25 of qualifying purchases first.
However, this shouldn’t be difficult since you can use Rakuten for everyday purchases such as in grocery stores.
8. Rent Out Your Car
There are other ways to make money from your car, too. You could rent it out to strangers using an app like Turo, which offers a cheaper alternative for those who want a hire car. You don’t need to worry about your car getting damaged either, because you’ll be covered by a $1 million insurance policy.
Turo is a similar app that lets you rent your car out. It’s particularly lucrative in rural areas and for those with in-demand vehicles, such as minivans and convertibles.
Next Steps:
9. Sell Stuff Online
With the Decluttr app, you can scan the barcode of whatever you want to sell (or enter it manually) and sell directly to Decluttr. They’ll let you know the price offered, and you’ll be able to print off a free shipping label and then deliver the package straight away.
As long as the item you send is of the quality you promised, you should get paid a few days later and receive the full amount. You can sell a wide variety of items, including books, DVDs, and CDs, plus larger items like cell phones.
10. Drive Others
You might be surprised at just how easy it is to get started as a driver in the virtual economy.
Uber: With Uber, it can take just 60 days as long as your car meets the requirements. The average Uber driver earns around $19-21 an hour, and you’ll be issued a special debit card that allows you to cash out your earnings straight away with no clearance period.
And there are competitors being launched every day.
Lyft: Lyft recently introduced a program whereby they guarantee $1,000 to everyone who becomes a driver within a certain time frame – even if you don’t meet this minimum, they’ll make up the difference for you. This is certainly a strong incentive to choose Lyft over its competitors – but it’s reported that its drivers earn less than those on Uber.
11. Rent Out Your House
Other than delivering food or passengers, the other mainstay of the gig economy is renting out a spare room or second property using Airbnb.
Lots of people have a spare room within their house, especially if they have children who have left home or they have a guest room. Why not take advantage of this extra space by offering it up to tourists or other people passing through your locality?
The idea of sharing your living space with others might sound strange at first, but you might even find that you enjoy the social aspect and getting to know people from different parts of the country – or even the world.
You might be worried about items being stolen or damaged within your property, but as is the case for renting out your car, Airbnb provides a huge $1 million insurance policy to reimburse you.
Learn More:
12. Dog Walking
All dog lovers have dreamed of making money by doing nothing more than spending time with furry friends.
It might sound too good to be true, but this is now a legitimate job opportunity, thanks to an app called Rover, which brings pet owners together with people willing to care for them.
As well as taking dogs for a walk, this could include looking after pets for a night or an extended period while their owners are away.
You might even find yourself making $20 an hour or more for walks or $49 for an overnight stay.
13. Run Errands
Completing small tasks for neighbors has long been an accepted way for children to make a bit of pocket money.
Now that we have the gig economy, that concept has been expanded beyond children to connect people who need work done with those who are willing to do it.
TaskRabbit is a platform made with this exact purpose in mind. You could find yourself doing work like cleaning, assembling flatpack furniture, or even personal assistant work. The nature of this type of work is that it’s very flexible, and it can pay quite well too.
Of course, the app works best for people who live in big cities, because there will be more users of TaskRabbit around ad thus more possible errands for you to complete.
14. Complete Microtasks
Microtasks are simple, online-based tasks that can be completed very quickly for a small amount of money.
A few websites are offering to give this type of work, but the most popular is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (otherwise known as M Turk).
The tasks available vary enormously. You could end up doing anything from taking surveys to tagging photos to editing transcriptions.
Although the amount you can earn is generally quite low, once you get used to picking out the highest-earning jobs and completing them quickly, the pay can be decent.
15. Rent Out Your Belongings
It’s common knowledge that renting out your car or house are good ways to make a bit of additional money, but a lesser-known fact is that you can rent out other, smaller belongings.
Fat Llama lets you list anything you own online to be rented. This is often specialist equipment, such as a professional camera or speaker system, but it could also be something simpler like a drone or tux.
You can also rent out your baby equipment to tourists on Babyquip or your parking spot on Craigslist.
16. Recycling
We all know there’s some money to be made from old belongings that still serve their original function – but what about rubbish? Surely nobody would want to buy that?
Actually, that’s no longer true. It’s often possible to pull in a few dollars by taking recyclable items into a recycling centers, such as bottles or cans.
If you want to go big, you could also ask your friends, families, or neighbors if they have anything for you to take, too.
17. Sell Your Clothes
We all have clothes we don’t use – often far too many. Why not take a Marie Kundo approach and throw away everything that doesn’t spark joy?
There are various online sites dedicated specifically to helping you to sell clothes.
The classic site is eBay, a pioneer when it comes to second-hand e-commerce, and they still win in terms of users.
However, you’ll face high commissions from both eBay and PayPal.
Some alternatives to eBay are:
- Poshmark
- Tradesy
- Plato’s Closet
- Buffalo Exchange
18. Have a Garage Sale
Not everyone fancies selling their clothes online. Sorting out posting and packaging can be a hassle, and there are more fees involved.
Selling locally might mean you have fewer clients, but it can make the whole process a lot quicker or easier.
You can also merge the best of both worlds by advertising your garage sales using your social media profiles and Craiglist.
19. Sell Your Knowledge
Maybe you don’t have any belongings worth selling, or you’ve already sold everything worth selling.
In that case, you could still sell your knowledge in a specific area by making a course on a website like Udemy.
This isn’t the quickest way out there to make money – creating a high-quality course from nothing takes a decent amount of time.
Nevertheless, it’s a great way of establishing a passive income if you have the time to do it.
20. Negotiate Your Bills
This is one idea that really comes close to the concept of getting something from nothing.
Just by signing up on a website like Rocket Money and giving them the details about your bills, you can shave hundreds of dollars off the amount you’re currently paying.
You’re probably aware there might be a better deal out there for your phone or TV bills than the one you’re currently paying for, but sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day to be checking and calling up your providers. Rocket Money has a team of negotiators who will do this process for you and find you a cheaper deal.
Rocket Money also works to reduce the APR you’re charged for on your credit card bills.
They do take a cut of the total amount saved, but you’ll still be able to save more than you would by sticking to your current provider. It’s definitely worth doing, especially if you’re not a confident negotiator, and the idea of ringing yourself fills you with nerves.
Next Steps:
21. Redeem Coins For Cash
If you’re anything like me, you have a little jar somewhere in your house where you store all the pennies and small change that you don’t want to carry around, but nor do you want to chuck away.
Take them to a credit union or Coinstar machine to convert them into dollars.
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22. Redeem Gift Cards For Cash
It’s not just coins you can get some money for at Coinstar machines – some of them accept gift cards too.
You won’t be able to receive their full value – you’ll usually lose around 20% – but it’s better than nothing, right?
Once the sites have verified the balance on the card, you’ll get paid within a day or two. The process is fastest if you have digital rather than physical gift cards.
Learn More:
23. Babysitting
Another classic job for teenagers alike is to secure a babysitting gig – but it’s not just limited to teenagers. Care.com is a great website offering this.
However, babysitting isn’t known for being a well-paying gig; expect to earn $7-$10 an hour.
Next Steps:
24. Street Performing
It might sound daunting, but if you’ve ever been told you have a talent for singing or playing a musical instrument, then street performance could be worth a shot.
Even if you decide not to pursue it in the long run, it’s an interesting experience to try out.
I Need Money Now FAQs
How can I make $100 a day?
Many of the ideas mentioned in this article could give you the chance to make $100 or more. You might not make this much money just from signing up for apps to get the joining bonus or by taking surveys (although both these methods can help with bumping up your numbers), but some of the other ideas will.
With gig economy work, like renting out a spare room or driving people around, it’s easy to make at least $100 a day, if not more.
Where do I get free money?
The idea of ‘free money’ is a fairly strange one. After all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch – you almost always have to do something to receive it. Nonetheless, there are plenty of ways to make money fairly easily without ever leaving your home.
Most of these opportunities can be found online by harnessing the gig economy, but it’s also possible to make money within your local area – although this is easier in some places than others.
What do you do when you have no money?
The most important thing is to act on the problem straight away. Many people are tempted to live in denial about the fact they have no money, which can make their situation even worse as the debt continues to stack up. Instead, try to clear your mind and look for a solution
If the worst comes to the worst, you can always resort to borrowing money. Ideally, it’s best to borrow from a friend or family member who will lend to you without charging an interest rate. If this isn’t a possibility, you might have to resort for a loan – if that’s the case, it’s better to opt for a personal loan or installment loan than a credit card loan or payday loan.
How Will You Make Money Now?
It’s time to unleash your creativity and entrepreneurial side. You can make money quickly if you need to – it just requires a little effort and creative thinking.
As you’ve probably noticed, most ways to make easy money require a bit of planning and preparation, so it’s best not to wait until you’re desperate for money to start earning something extra.
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