How to Make $10,000 Fast – Ways to Bring in the Bucks
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Whether you need to make $10,000 fast to pay off credit card debt, student loans, or just want to make more traction on your path to financial freedom, there are plenty of side hustles for you to try. There’s never been a better time to make money, and personal finance sites like Joy Wallet are here to show you your options.
Before we get started, note that the term “fast” is relative to the situation. Every side gig listed here has the potential to make you $10,000 or more — but it might take a few months or longer. The amount of time and money you have to get started also plays into the speed of your success. But know that with consistent action, you will be able to make $10,000 from any of these business ideas.
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Sell items on Amazon or eBay
While you certainly aren’t limited to selling on Amazon and eBay, they are household names and many people start their online shopping searches with them. Before you start setting up online shops, figure out what exactly it is that you want to sell. Here are three ways to make money selling online, each with a unique twist.
Offer your own products
This is probably not the easiest or fastest way to sell on a third-party platform, but it’s one way to get your items in front of everyone. From physical products to Kindle books, there’s virtually no limit to what you can sell.
One creative way to create your own products is to put together items from different sources and make them unique, new products. Dustin Riechmann from Engaged Marriage writes about one of his side gigs — selling shin splint kits on Amazon. He and his son assemble the kits that include ready-made products that give relief to runners, along with a helpful guide that Dustin wrote about how to use these products together.
Earn Real Money Fast by Filling Out Surveys!
- Sign up for FREE & complete your profile
- Earn points for taking surveys
- Redeem your points for cash or gift cards
- $55k+ Paid to Survey Junkie members daily
- Complete 3+ surveys a day, earn up to $100/mo.
Sell second-hand items
Do you love the thrill of finding designer jeans at Goodwill for $2.99? Then selling second-hand items on eBay or Poshmark may be the thing for you. There are lots of people who make it their full-time job selling second-hand items for hefty sums. A pair of like-new designer shoes might cost just $4.99 but net them $95 after they’re sold.
For larger items, you can sell on a local level. My dad, bored by retirement, started going to estate sales and farm auctions just to meet up with old pals. On a whim, he bought a China cabinet for $17 and took it home. My mom, declaring that there was no room for it, did some research to see what its value was, and then listed it on Facebook Marketplace for $125. It sold in just a few days and now they have a thriving part-time gig that gives them a nice income stream.
Do retail arbitrage
Last year my daughter lost a stuffed animal that she dearly loved. It had been a gift two years prior, and I couldn't find it on Walmart's website anymore. So I headed over to eBay, assuming there might be a few items listed. I found more than a dozen of the exact toys, with tags, and for two to three times the price I’d paid. At some point, this toy was put on clearance and savvy practitioners of retail arbitrage scooped them up to list online. They had a hunch that at some point, people would come looking for this toy again. And they were right! Luckily for me, the toy was found before I bought a replacement.
Retail arbitrage can be done with anything you would buy on Amazon. Jessica and Cliff Larrew at The Selling Family teach people how to scoop up new items that are at rock-bottom prices and sell them online with Fulfilled by Amazon. This can be done with everything from Lego and Barbies to books and bedding sets.
Earn Real Money Fast by Filling Out Surveys!
- Sign up for FREE & complete your profile
- Earn points for taking surveys
- Redeem your points for cash or gift cards
- $55k+ Paid to Survey Junkie members daily
- Complete 3+ surveys a day, earn up to $100/mo.
Create an online community with a blog or YouTube channel
There are so many ways to make money online by creating your own online content in an area that you’re knowledgeable about, passionate about, or both. Unless you go viral for a post or video or are in an underserved niche, you probably won’t see the money rolling in at first. It takes consistency and lots of learning about search engine optimization (SEO), ads, and strategy to make money online, but it can be done.
Here are a few ways to make money online by creating useful content. You can do one of these, a couple, or do them all to make the largest amount of impact and make the most money.
Blog
It’s never been easier to set up and start a blog — you could do it tonight. You can create content that serves your target audience with a blog as your home base. Let’s say you are a gardener and passionate about helping people save money on food bills. You can provide written directions, along with photos, for readers.
If you love the idea of growing a blog but not managing one, you could also consider looking into website flipping. This is when you grow a website from the ground up and then sell it to the highest-paying buyer.
Add affiliate links
You can add affiliate links to items like gardening tools, books, and seed sources in your blog posts and emails. These may only generate a few cents to a few dollars each time your readers use them, but it adds up over time. As your audience grows, the amount of money you make from affiliate links will snowball
You can also promote another person’s online course. Often, these affiliate partnerships will pay you 50% or more of the sale price. Let’s say there’s a course you love on how to build raised garden beds and what to plant in them to make the most of your garden space. You promote it to your email list of 1,000. Let’s say the course costs $100, and you get 50% of each sale, and 2% of your list buys the course. You earn $50 from each of those 20 sales, which means you get $1,000. All for sending out a few promotional emails!
Earn Real Money Fast by Filling Out Surveys!
- Sign up for FREE & complete your profile
- Earn points for taking surveys
- Redeem your points for cash or gift cards
- $55k+ Paid to Survey Junkie members daily
- Complete 3+ surveys a day, earn up to $100/mo.
Create a course
Once you know the needs of your readers or have an idea for an online course that would be useful for them. As you build up a readership, you can create an online course to sell to your readers. To help sell your course, you can partner with affiliates who will tell their followers about it and send them to your online store. While it’s true that you won’t earn as much per sale, wouldn’t you rather have an extra $1,000 for each person who helped promote it? Find 10 partners, and you’ll make $10,000!
YouTube
Making videos and putting them on YouTube is a great way to build your audience and earn a small stream of passive income from ads. Even if you’re not comfortable being on camera, you can make videos that show photos or text while you do the talking off-camera. Create step-by-step tutorials on how to make your own garden mulch or show five ways to cook with green tomatoes. Don’t forget, in your videos and in the show notes, you can share affiliate links as well.
Podcast
One of the simplest ways to create content for your podcast is to repurpose your blog and YouTube content. Simply read the blog posts, and extract the sound from your videos to create a podcast. There’s a bit of a learning curve to this, but you can find many tutorials from sites like Smart Passive Income. Again, there’s an opportunity to get sponsors or affiliate links to put in your podcast and the show notes.
Earn Real Money Fast by Filling Out Surveys!
- Sign up for FREE & complete your profile
- Earn points for taking surveys
- Redeem your points for cash or gift cards
- $55k+ Paid to Survey Junkie members daily
- Complete 3+ surveys a day, earn up to $100/mo.
Social media
Instagram and Facebook are great places to both build your audience and sell products. You can start organically, by posting content with links back to your blog, YouTube channel, or podcast. Over time, you may want to invest in some ads to grow your earnings.
Use your skills to freelance
Freelancing is an amazing way to earn money quickly. While there are lots of opportunities to freelance from the comfort of your home, it’s not limited to those whose skills require a computer or smartphone.
If you’re unsure about what type of freelancing you’d like to do, start with your career and your skills. A teacher may explore tutoring, writing, coaching, and babysitting. Of course, if none of these are things you’d want to do away from the classroom, try something that piques your interest.
Freelancing platform sites like Fiverr and Upwork connect business owners to freelancers for everything from freelance writing to website design. You can create accounts with those sites and start offering your services. Or check out these ideas to start your own freelance side hustle.
Earn Real Money Fast by Filling Out Surveys!
- Sign up for FREE & complete your profile
- Earn points for taking surveys
- Redeem your points for cash or gift cards
- $55k+ Paid to Survey Junkie members daily
- Complete 3+ surveys a day, earn up to $100/mo.
Online freelance opportunities
- Writing
- Graphic design
- Website setup
- Transcription
- Customer support
- Video editing
- Website development
- Translation
- Community manager
- Tutoring
- Social media management
Offline freelancing opportunities
- Youth sports coach
- Referee for youth sports
- Handyman
- Bookkeeping
- Interpreter
- Photographer
- Lawn care
- Party planner
- Babysitter
- Painter
- Housecleaner
- Custom sewing or alterations
Earn Real Money Fast by Filling Out Surveys!
- Sign up for FREE & complete your profile
- Earn points for taking surveys
- Redeem your points for cash or gift cards
- $55k+ Paid to Survey Junkie members daily
- Complete 3+ surveys a day, earn up to $100/mo.
Invest in real estate
There’s lots of money to be made in real estate. It could be the fastest and most profitable depending on factors like the type of investing you do and the area you’re investing in. Some Airbnb hosts make thousands of dollars a month, and it’s possible to do a fix and flip in a month and make a $10,000 profit.
Rent out a room long-term
This is the easiest way to earn money if you need it ASAP — but only if you have the space and the other people in your home agree. If you’re single and the idea appeals to you, put your extra rooms up for rent today. Depending on your home's location, the room's size, and amenities (do they have their own bathroom or not?) you can earn $300 to $1,000 or more a month per room.
Put your home on Airbnb
Some people get really creative when it comes to making money by renting out their homes on Airbnb and other short-term rental sites. One way that could make you the most, is to rent out your home and crash with family or friends on the nights when your house is rented. Alternatives include staying in your car or an RV to save money while you’re earning money. Another option is to rent a small apartment if your home is booked for more nights than it isn’t. Really, one of the only limits is your (and your family’s) comfort level.
Invest in a real estate fund
An easy way to earn passive income is to invest in real estate funds. You can do this by buying shares of real estate investment trusts (REITs) from brokers like Vanguard, investing platforms like Stash, or through crowdfunding.
When you invest in a real estate deal on a crowdfunding platform, you’re connected to people who have real estate deals but are lacking the funds. By investing money in their deal, you may get monthly interest payments and you’ll receive your money back at the end of the term.
Of course, not all deals are successful but crowdfunding platforms generally vet borrowers pretty well. Before investing, read about the expected rate of return and other information that’s provided. Remember to only invest what you can afford to lose.
Many crowdfunding deals are only open to accredited investors, but a few open to anyone include Fundrise, RealtyMogul, Groundfloor, Streitwise, and CrowdStreet. Some allow you to start by investing as little as $10. Starting small, the risk and reward are both low, but over time it’s a great way to build an ongoing source of passive income.
Earn Real Money Fast by Filling Out Surveys!
- Sign up for FREE & complete your profile
- Earn points for taking surveys
- Redeem your points for cash or gift cards
- $55k+ Paid to Survey Junkie members daily
- Complete 3+ surveys a day, earn up to $100/mo.
Flip a house
In the real estate world, flipping a house means buying a run-down one, getting it fixed up, and then selling it. Of course, you want to get it at a really low price, do the repairs well (lest you earn a reputation for being a cheapskate), and sell it for a tidy profit. Assuming you can get a short-term loan and do the repairs quickly, you could resell it in a month or two. Some people can profit $10,000 or more, making this a great way to make money fast.
Drive for dollars
For people who enjoy being out and about, a side hustle that allows you to earn extra money by doing errands, picking up meals, and shopping for groceries may be a way to meet your financial goals.
Many people find that you can earn at least $15 an hour, usually more when you include tips, with these gigs. It’s not a lot of money if you just do it occasionally, but if you take in $20 an hour and spend 25 hours a week on your side gigs, you could make $10,000 in four months.
Find side hustle gigs with these apps:
- DoorDash: Food delivery
- Grubhub: Food delivery
- UberEats: Food delivery
- Instacart: Grocery delivery
- Shipt: Grocery delivery
- Amazon Flex: Deliver packages to customers from Amazon’s warehouse
- Roadie: Peer-to-peer transportation such as furniture, parcels, appliances, and pets
- Taskrabbit: Help people complete whatever “to-do” tasks they have
Earn Real Money Fast by Filling Out Surveys!
- Sign up for FREE & complete your profile
- Earn points for taking surveys
- Redeem your points for cash or gift cards
- $55k+ Paid to Survey Junkie members daily
- Complete 3+ surveys a day, earn up to $100/mo.
The bottom line
While it might not be realistic to expect to make $10,000 in just a month, with some serious effort, you can make a lot of money to put towards your financial goals. I suggest starting with something that you find interesting and will stick with long term. Do not go out and buy a $15,000 fixer-upper house if you’ve never set foot in a Home Depot. Your project will cost — not make — you money!
Also, be sure to set aside some of your newly earned extra income for Uncle Sam. When tax time rolls around, you’ll need to pay in a portion of your earnings and it will be much easier if you have the cash in your bank account. I like putting at least 30% of every dollar I earn into a separate savings account. While I still cringe to see it leave my account, at least I’m not scrambling to pay it or taking on extra debt.
Most of all, have fun with your side hustle. The more you enjoy it, the more you’ll work at it. This is especially important with driving gigs where you’re delivering things to people. A smile and cheerful attitude will go a long way in getting you a nice tip.
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Writer
Charlotte Edwards is an educator-turned-freelance writer based in Beijing, China. She writes personal finance and parenting content for both digital and print publications around the world.
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