10 Simple Ways To Earn Extra Cash This Month

Struggling to have enough money is no fun. I know this from personal experience, and even though I’m thankful for having learned to live so incredibly frugally, there’s no escaping the fact that frugal living isn’t enough. You have to make money too!

Sometimes, making more money means getting a new job or starting a home business like blogging professionally, but other times, you just want a few extra dollars to spend on something and need to find a few simple ways to earn cash this month, right now.

There are many, many ways to do this, and these are ten of my favorite:

10 Simple Ways To Earn Some Extra Cash This Month

Take Surveys

Sites like Survey Rewards, and National Consumer Panel pay you to give your opinion on products and services offered, participate in market research, and test mobile apps and other technology. You won’t get rich doing surveys, but when you participate regularly, the dollars add up!

Survey Sites:

• Survey Rewards
• National Consumer Panel
• My Survey
• VIP Voice
• Opinion Outpost Canada

Search The Web

Many reward sites reward you for using their search engine rather than Google’s, but in my opinion, Swagbucks is at the top of the line.

When you use the Swagbucks search bar, you will randomly be rewarded with “Swagbucks” which, you guessed it, can be traded in for swag. My swag of choice is usually an Amazon gift card, but sometimes I go for a restaurant or Target gift card if I’m feeling indulgent.

100 Swagbucks typically equals $1.

There are numerous other ways to earn Swagbucks, such as watching SwagTV, taking polls, shopping through Swagbuck’s site link, and printing coupons. It can get pretty addictive, leading to more Swagbucks.

Again, you won’t get rich doing it, but I’ve earned hundreds of dollars using Swagbucks. Seriously, if you’re going to search, why not get paid?

Use Cashback Shopping Sites

Rakuten is my favorite way to earn 1, 3, and even 10% back on my purchases.

How cool is it that you can shop through a website’s affiliate link, and they’ll share their commission with you? It’s their incentive to get you to shop through them instead of through Amazon or whatever retailer you’re shopping at.

It’s legit, easy to use, and doesn’t cost you a penny – a win-win for everyone! 

While I haven’t earned hundreds upon hundreds using Rakuten like with Swagbucks, I’ve made almost $200 so far!

I like to order through Rakuten and then use my Amazon gift cards earned through Swagbucks to make the free stuff go even further. Boom!

Review Music

If you love to listen to music, this one is right up your alley! Just listen to the track and leave your opinion.

After you sign up, you’ll be asked a few questions about your music preference, and then you’ll review a few test tracks. So fun!

Test Websites

You can get paid up to $30 an hour to review websites. What?? It’s true! I went through the process of becoming a website tester and even tested a few websites just to see how doable it was, and yep, as long as your computer has a built-in mic or you have an external mic, you can do it!

Review websites are available on a first-come, first-served basis, which means that you won’t always have one available when you have a minute to do it, but it’s a great way to earn extra cash with very little effort!

Sign up with User Testing here.

Write For A Content Mill

Do you like to write? A content mill is a web-based company that hires many writers to create content for its customers.

These sites usually have an administrative area where writers can log in and find new jobs on a first come, first served basis.

You won’t get rich writing for a content mill, but it’s a great place to start if you’re looking to get into freelancing!

Content mills to write for:

• Needanarticle.com
• Scripted.com
• Textbroker.co.uk
• Zerys.com

Share Affiliate Products On Social Media 

Do you have a Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest following? You can share your affiliate and referral links to earn money!

Companies like Amazon.com have an affiliate program that pays you a commission for directing people to their websites to make purchases. It doesn’t cost the consumer anything, but it can result in quite a paycheck if they go through your link and make a big purchase (I’ve had people buy expensive camera equipment through my Amazon link!)

A referral program is similar in that you share your unique link, but in this case, the amount you earn is usually a fixed rate per referral. For instance, if you click on my Dressing Your Truth link and make a purchase, I’ll earn $10 credit to the Dressing Your Truth store.

You Can share these links across most social media channels (I have found Facebook to be the most effective – okay, I haven’t even tried Pinterest yet). Just be sure to disclose that the link you’re sharing is your affiliate or referral link to keep the FTC happy.

You can also get sponsored posts to share on social media through brand agencies such as SponsoredTweets.com

Amazon Mechanical Turk

It’s a simple program where you complete simple human intelligence tasks for a small amount of pay.

Amazon is a reputable company, but since I’ve never worked with them, here’s a short synopsis from The Simple Dollar: 

For those unaware, Mechanical Turk is a service from Amazon where you can complete simple tasks in exchange for a tiny payment. For example, you might look at an image and describe it in ten words for $0.08. You might fill out a multiple-choice survey for $0.10. You might be asked to write a product review for $2.50. For the most part, the tasks available through Mechanical Turk are quick and very simple. The problem is that, individually, they’re not big earners. You have to do quite a few in an hour in order to earn anything of significance.

Complete CashCrate Offers

CashCrate is an all-in-one site where you can get paid for taking surveys and offers, and get cash back on purchases made from their link (similar to eBates).

While eBates and Survey Rewards Are my favorites, CashCrate is a great way to diversify!

Be A Field Agent

Field Agent is a really cool app you can download to your phone to find tasks to complete in your area. For me, they usually include going to a store (Dollar General is pretty typical for my area) and taking pictures of product displays, scanning product bar codes, checking prices, and conducting short field surveys.

Assignments typically pay between $3-$12, and it’s pretty cool because you can complete them while you’re already out running errands.

None of these simple ways to make extra money are going to make you rich, but they can be the catalyst to take pressure off when money is tight or serve as a great way to earn what we call “fun money” – money you can blow on indulgences like expensive nail polish or pizza.

Totally worthwhile! (I mean, you SAW that screenshot of my gift card history from Swagbucks, right??)