Do you want to learn how to make money without a job?
If you don’t want a traditional 9 to 5 Monday through Friday job, there are other ways to make money. Yes, many of the below can definitely still be called jobs as you are still working for money, but they aren’t jobs in the traditional sense.
You may be earning extra money with the below, or they may be a way to make money while having a much more flexible schedule, or even working for yourself.
If you are a stay-at-home parent, unemployed (or underemployed), want to make side money, or something else, there are many ways to make money and pay your bills without a traditional day job.
How To Make Money Without A Job
Search for unclaimed money owed to you
Unclaimed property is property or accounts where there has been no activity in over one year. The account/property is then turned over to the state by law.
This includes checking or savings accounts, refunds, customer overpayments, utility security deposits, and more.
According to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, 1 in 7 people has unclaimed property.
There are billions of dollars currently as unclaimed property, so you may be owed something!
You can see if you have any unclaimed property by clicking here.
Sell on Etsy
Etsy is an online marketplace where you can buy and sell items, from handmade goods to craft supplies to vintage goods.
Some items that are sold on Etsy include jewelry, clothing, furniture, greeting cards, and so much more.
Items on Etsy are sold directly from the seller, which means this is different from Amazon because there is no Etsy warehouse. Instead, you would be shipping the product directly to the buyer yourself.
You can learn more at How To Sell On Etsy Successfully.
Sell items online
If you want to make money without a job, then finding items to sell may be something to look into.
This may include finding items around your home to sell online or even looking for items at yard sales, thrift shops, thrown away items on the curb, and more.
And, there are so many different kinds of items that you can sell. From clothing to old electronics (such as an old cell phone!), unused gift cards to jewelry, and more. The list can go on and on.
There are many websites you can use and other places to sell items such as:
- Facebook buy/sell groups – There are groups on Facebook where you can list items for sale to others who live in the same area as you.
- Thrift stores – Thrift stores may pay on consignment, cash on the spot, or with store credit. Taking your stuff to a thrift store will probably be the fastest way to sell things as they will be able to pay you cash right away for items that they need. But, they won’t pay the highest as they still have to make money on the items as well.
- Poshmark – This is a website for selling clothing, shoes, and accessories.
- Decluttr – This app is for selling electronics, like cell phones, tablets, game stations, and video games. Decluttr gives you a free valuation for your item so you know how much you can sell it for. If they can buy an item from you, they will give you instructions on how to ship the item to them. (It is easy and I have done it).
- Craigslist – Craigslist allows you to sell items in your area, from furniture to cars, and so much more.
- Garage sale – This can be an easy way to sell many things at once, plus you can do it all from your home. However, you usually do not earn much per item with garage and yard sales as these are mainly a way to clean out your home.
- eBay – eBay allows you to list your item online and have it be seen by people from around the world.
I recommend watching the free webinar Turn Your Passion For Visiting Thrift Stores, Yard Sales & Flea Markets Into A Profitable Reselling Business In As Little As 14 Days to learn how to make money by flipping items.
Find Craigslist gigs
Your local Craigslist can be a way to make money without a traditional job, as there are many one-time gigs that are listed on this website.
Plus, you usually get paid right after you complete your gig, which means that you can get paid the very same day and before you go home.
To find Craigslist gigs in your town, just go to Craigslist and look for the “gigs” section.
Here are some gigs I found through a quick search on their website:
- House sitter
- Furniture mover
- Demo cleanup
- Dog walker
- House cleaner
- Help with cutting trees
- Passing out flyers and brochures
- Handyperson
Of course, you do want to be careful, as some Craigslist gigs may be scams. If something seems too good to be true, then skip it and look for something else. For example, no one is going to pay you $1,000 to hand out flyers for 5 hours or to complete a mystery shop.
Rent out your baby gear
BabyQuip is a website where you can rent baby gear. So, if you have baby gear, you can list it on this website to families who are traveling and need baby gear such as cribs, car seats, strollers, high chairs, toys, books, bouncers, hiking packs, and more. This can be a great idea if you are looking to learn how to make money without a traditional job.
This is available to people who live in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Australia, and New Zealand. It’s simple to apply, and they have training and an onboarding process so that you can start right away. Plus, you don’t need to have a lot of baby gear in order to get started – instead, you can start with as little as a crib (which is the most commonly rented item).
According to BabyQuip, the average person can earn around $1,000 a month, and some are able to make over $10,000 per month. You get to keep 78% of your rental and delivery fees, and BabyQuip keeps the other 22%.
Find a roommate
Getting a roommate in your home, whether that be a full-time roommate or renting out an extra room in your home on Airbnb or Craigslist, can be a way to earn extra money without a normal job.
The amount you can make by getting a roommate will depend on factors such as:
- The location of your home
- The space you are renting to a roommate (for example, do they get their own bathroom?)
To find a roommate, there are many places where you can advertise your space. You can announce on your personal Facebook page that you are looking for a roommate, place an ad online on a website such as Craigslist, create a rental listing on Airbnb, and more.
Personally, I had several roommates back when I was younger and owned a home with spare bedrooms. We would rent them out to long-term renters and people that we personally knew (friends and my sister).
You can learn more at What You Need To Know About Renting A Room In Your House.
Join a focus group
A focus group is similar to a paid online survey but you can make a lot more money. They are typically done over the phone or on a video call, which is why they pay more. Someone would be personally asking you questions. This can be a great way to make money without a job.
I once completed a focus group that paid $450 for 75 minutes of my time.
While $450 is more than the average, focus groups usually pay between $50 to $100, or more, per hour.
There are many focus group companies that pay people like you and me to share their opinions. Companies such as Pinterest, Spotify, Macy’s, Home Depot, and many others use the feedback to improve their products and services.
User Interviews is one company that I recommend signing up for, and they need participants to share their opinions.
You can sign up for User Interviews by:
- Clicking here to register
- Answering short questionnaires to see if you qualify for a focus group
- Signing up for a focus group
- Getting paid
You can learn more at User Interviews Review.
Scan your grocery receipts with your cell phone
Fetch Rewards is an app that rewards you for purchases that you’ve already made, such as at the grocery store.
After you are done shopping, you simply scan your receipt (any receipt!) with your phone and submit it to the Fetch Rewards app. They then give you points for sharing your receipt with them.
With the points that you earn, you can redeem them for gift cards to Target, Amazon, and more, as well as other rewards.
You simply just shop as usual and it only takes about 30 seconds to scan your receipt to earn points.
While this isn’t a full-time income, this is one of the easy ways to make money without a job.
You can sign up for Fetch Rewards here.
Get cash back
Rakuten is a cash back website where you can earn a percentage back on your online shopping.
Many online stores are listed on Rakuten as a cash back website, so you’ve probably been missing out for years on easy cash back by simply shopping like normal online.
To get cash back, you simply just need to create a Rakuten account, head to their website, and click on the store that you want to shop on. They then direct you to that store and you simply shop online just like you normally would.
Rakuten earns a commission for referring you to the store you shopped at online, and they give you some of that money back as a reward.
Take part in a paid market research survey
By taking part in paid market research studies, you can make money in your spare time. Now, you won’t make enough to replace a full-time job, but you may be able to make some extra money.
Back when I was paying off my student loans, I would complete paid online surveys nearly every single day, either before work, during my lunch break, or after work. While online surveys never earned me a lot of money, they did allow me flexibility because I could answer them whenever I wanted to.
With survey companies, you are paid to answer surveys, watch videos, and test products. Sometimes you even get products for free so that you can evaluate them.
They are free to join, but please keep in mind that they typically only pay between $1 to $3 per survey answered.
If this is something you are interested in trying out, I recommend signing up for as many survey companies as you can. This is because they will typically only offer you a few surveys a month, so by signing up for many different survey companies, you will have more opportunities to take surveys.
Some of the survey companies I recommend include:
- American Consumer Opinion
- Survey Junkie
- Swagbucks
- InboxDollars
- Branded Surveys
- Pinecone Research
- PrizeRebel
Please head to Paid Online Surveys to read more.
Pet sit and walk dogs
If you love pets and don’t want a traditional 9 to 5 job, then pet sitting and dog walking may be the gig for you.
With this, you may be watching pets in your own home, or going over to the client’s home to take care of their pets. This may include walking dogs, feeding animals, administering medicine to their animals, giving treats, spending time with their pets, and more.
As a pet sitter, you may be able to make $25 to $100+ per day. This will depend on factors such as your skill level with animals, your experience, reviews, the type of yard you have (some pet owners may pay more if you have a big yard for their animals to run around in, for example), and more.
For us, I have paid $50 per dog to a pet sitter, and since we used to have two dogs, the total was around $100 per day. And, our dogs were pretty easy to watch too, and our pet sitter always seemed happy to watch our dogs. We were always very grateful to have her as a dog sitter as well, as our dogs loved her and staying with her.
Rover is a great company that you can sign up with in order to become a dog walker and pet sitter. You can even interview possible clients to make sure that the pets are a good fit for you (all of our past good dog sitters have interviewed us – so I think it’s normal!).
Mystery shop
As a mystery shopper, you would be reviewing the customer service experience and service/products that you purchase from a company. And, the employees would have no idea who you are!
I have been a secret shopper many times in the past, and it can be an interesting way to make extra money.
Now, this is not a full-time job, instead, you may find a few mystery shopping gigs each month to do.
The pay will vary depending on the type of mystery shop, and you may get free items or even restaurant meals as well.
Some mystery shops may be completed entirely over the phone (to review their customer service phone experience), whereas others may want you to go in and actually purchase something from the company).
Companies hire secret shoppers because they want to see what they can improve on, to see how their employees handle customers, and to get feedback from an actual customer.
You can read more at How To Become A Mystery Shopper.
Rent out your RV
Renting out your RV can be a way to make extra money on something that you may have just sitting around collecting dust (and rust!).
By renting out your RV, you may be able to earn $100 to $300 a day or even more.
RVing is so popular these days, and people rent RVs all the time to explore on a vacation, or even just to test out a specific RV model before they purchase one.
One RV rental platform that I recommend is RVshare. RVshare is basically an Airbnb just for RVs. It’s a website where you can list your RV for rent, and RVshare also handles all payments and bookings.
Another idea somewhat similar to renting out your RV may be to park your RV that you are not using somewhere and list it on Airbnb as a place to stay. Many people are doing this, and this way you do not have to worry about someone driving your RV – it would be permanently parked and simply just a place for guests to sleep and eat.
You can learn more at How To Make Extra Money By Renting Out Your RV.
Rent out your car
Similar to renting out your RV, you can also rent out your car.
If you’re not always using your car, then this can be a way to make extra money as a side gig on something that is just sitting there, such as if you are working from home and don’t need your car, or are a two-car household.
People like to rent out cars from people like you and me, instead of from a traditional rental car company, for many reasons such as:
- Being able to drive a specific model car that may not be available at a rental car company, such as a Tesla, Ford Bronco, or luxury vehicle
- Being able to make a long-term rental deal (such as if you are staying somewhere for a month and need to rent a car)
- The option to have a car dropped right off to you (which is something that you can ask for easily with Turo car rentals)
- Many times, it can be more affordable than a traditional rental car company
Turo is one of a few different places to rent out your car. Turo covers your car with up to a $1,000,000 insurance policy, and you can pick when your car is available and set your rates.
Sell printables on Etsy
A printable is a digital product that your customer would purchase from you and print in their own home. So, you would not be shipping a thing. Printable examples include checklists, gift tags, printable wall art quotes, and more.
Creating printables on Etsy can be a great side hustle because you just need to create one digital file per product, which you can then sell an unlimited number of times. It becomes a fairly passive way to make money.
I recommend reading How I Make Money Selling Printables On Etsy to learn more.
Become a real estate investor
As a real estate investor, you may be able to earn money without a traditional job.
This may be a mix of renting out spare rooms in your home, buying real estate properties to rent out, flipping homes to make a profit, and more.
You can learn more at How This 34 Year Old Owns 7 Rental Homes.
Sell on Amazon
You can start your own business where you sell items on Amazon.
This is where you basically have an online store that is run by Amazon. You find your own items to sell and send them to an Amazon fulfillment warehouse, and Amazon stores them for you until they sell on their website. The warehouse employees pack the items and send them to customers.
You can also learn more about this topic in my article How To Sell Items On Amazon FBA, which answers questions such as how to decide what items to buy and sell on Amazon and how much income you can earn.
Earn dividends
Earning dividends can be a great way to earn passive income while not having a normal day job.
So, what is a dividend? A dividend is a distribution of a company’s profits to its eligible shareholders.
The amount you get as a dividend is determined by a company’s board of directors, and they are given as a way to reward those who have invested in their business.
How do dividends work? If you own shares of a dividend-paying stock, then a dividend is paid per share of that stock. This means that if you have 10 shares in Company XYZ and they pay $10 in cash dividends each year, then you will get $100 in dividends that year. While dividends can be paid on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis, they are most commonly paid out quarterly – so 4 times a year.
It is important to know that not all companies pay dividends. Larger companies that have been around for a long time are usually the ones that pay dividends. But, even though a company has paid a dividend in the past, it does not mean that the same company will always pay a dividend.
Some dividend-paying stocks include Ford, Verizon, Coca-Cola, Target, and Walgreens.
You can learn more at How I Became A Successful Dividend Growth Investor and How To Start Investing For Beginners With Little Money.
Related Content: What Are Dividends & How Do They Work? A Beginner’s Guide
Create Canva templates
You can create Canva templates to sell and make money all from your home.
What’s great about Canva templates is that you can sell your product an unlimited amount of times because it is a digital product. So, this can be a great way to learn how to make money without working.
You may be creating Canva templates for planners, ebooks, workbooks, presentations, and more. Businesses buy Canva templates all the time because it takes the hard part out of designing something for them.
If you’re interested in learning more, I have an article that explains:
- What is a Canva template? What is Canva?
- Who are typical customers? Who is buying a Canva template?
- How do I make a Canva template?
- Can someone with no tech skills make a Canva template?
You can learn more at How I Make $2,000+ Monthly Selling Canva Templates.
Deliver items
Food delivery has been growing in popularity over the past few years, and you can deliver items by car, bike, scooter, and more.
You may be working for companies such as DoorDash, Instacart, Uber Eats, and others.
Rent out your garage and other storage space
If you want to learn how to make money fast without a job, then one idea is to rent out your space for storage.
Neighbor is the Airbnb of storage space.
Instead of hosting people, you are renting out your storage space and storing people’s belongings.
Neighbor lets you list your unused space, such as your garage, driveway, basement, shed, attic, closet, and more. You can earn up to $15,000 per year by renting out your storage space too.
With this website, you are able to decide your rental rate as well as which reservations you want to accept. So, if you don’t feel comfortable with something, you can say no.
Neighbor also has $1,000,000 in host liability protection to keep you protected.
You can sign up for Neighbor for free here.
Freelance from home
Freelancers are people who own their own business and contract out their services to other business owners or clients. A business may hire you for one-time gigs or you may get a long-term job with a company as a freelancer.
This may include freelance gigs such as:
- Freelance writer
- Virtual assistant
- Graphic designer
- Web designer
- Programmer
- Bookkeeper
- Photographer
- Data entry
- Tutor
- Proofreader
- Social media manager
You can find freelance gigs on websites such as Upwork and Fiverr.
Start a blog
Having a blog is what I do instead of having a more traditional job, and I love it! I think this is a great way to learn how to make a living without working a 9 to 5 job.
A blog is content that is written on a website. It usually consists of articles, like the one you are reading right now. You may create a blog to journal, to teach on a topic, to sell something, to tell a story, and so on. There are many niches you can write about on your own blog as well, from finance to food to travel, and more.
There are no exact rules about what your blog has to be used for. You can make money blogging through sponsored partnerships with companies, selling a product on your blog, advertising (such as Google Adsense), affiliate marketing, and more.
Blogging lets me travel as much as I want, earn a great income, have flexible hours, and I also really enjoy what I do.
Similar to this, you may be able to make an income on Instagram and other social media accounts, as well as on a YouTube channel.
You can learn how to start a blog with my free How To Start a Blog Course (sign up by clicking here).
How can I make $100 a day today?
If you need to make $100 today, then there are things that you can do. Some of the quickest things that you can do so that you can get paid before the day is over include:
- Look on Craigslist to see if there is any same-day work available. This may include helping someone move furniture, doing yard work, cleaning a home, and more.
- Find items in your home to sell today. Everyone has something in their home that they can sell, and you can list it on Craigslist or Facebook and hopefully get a buyer on the same day. This may include selling clothing, electronics, appliances, jewelry, and more. If you have many items for sale, then you may even want to try and host a garage sale.
You can learn more at How To Make $100 A Day.
How to make $1,000 a week without a job?
If you want to learn how to make $1,000 a week without a job, there are some options. You can sell items online, rent out baby gear, rent out an RV, become a real estate investor, and more.
Which app is best to earn money without a job?
There are many apps that may allow you to earn money from just your cell phone. The apps and websites I recommend if you want to learn how to make money without a job include:
- Fetch Rewards
- Poshmark
- Survey Junkie
- Neighbor
- Swagbucks
- Decluttr
- User Interviews
- Mystery Shopping
- Rover
- RVshare
- Turo
- DoorDash
- Honeygain
You can learn more at 30 Best Money Making Apps.
How can I make money if I don’t have a job?
Whether you are wanting to make a full-time income or if you are looking to make some extra cash, there are many ways to make money without a traditional day job.
You can become a blogger, freelancer, tutor, sign up on survey sites, scan your receipts from your groceries, rent out your spare room, sell graphic design templates, sell items on Facebook Marketplace, and so much more.
Do you want to learn how to make money without a job?
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