34 Ways to Make an Extra $500 a Month in 2022 (Legit Opportunities)

Everyone will agree that having extra savings and multiple streams of income gives us a sense of security. It prepares us for emergency, allows us to grab a rare opportunity and helps us to achieve financial independence and financial freedom.

No matter if you are a student, working adult or retiree, being able to earn extra money is empowering. For example, making an extra $500 a month could have a huge impact psychologically and financially. Luckily, there are many ways available for everyone to diversify their income sources either through making money online or offline.

To make things easier for you, we have consolidated some ideas on how to potentially make an extra $500 a month. Let's get started!

1. Make Money With Online Paid Surveys

Most brands and companies want to understand consumers’ reactions towards their products or services. In exchange for the time and honest thoughts on a product or service, they will reward survey respondents with incentives for participating in paid surveys as a token of appreciation.

You can join many survey panels that may widen your survey-taking opportunities and fasten the speed of redemption of rewards. You may also consider using PanelPlace.com, a marketplace listed with various survey companies brand. Not only it helps you to find and discover survey opportunities and survey sites, it also keep you informed of new paid surveys opportunities from time to time.

Additional Tips: Online paid survey is one of the common ways individuals can take up to earn extra money. There are already many people earning extra money from doing online surveys casually. However, it does not happen overnight as it requires time and effort. Check out our paid survey guide for more details.

2. Earn Cashback When You Shop Online

Getting cashback and rewards may not be a way to make extra cash through jobs but you are getting cash back on purchase made. It is a simple and quick way by turning your receipts into extra cash or rewards while shopping for groceries or paying for expenses. There are many cashback and rewards apps available on the Internet and some of them are on PanelPlace.com marketplace.

For example, US and Canada consumers can shop at MyPoints.com and find the latest promotion codes and deals for thousands of stores. There are at least 2000 top retailers such as Walmart and Amazon to shop and earn up to 40% cashback as an MYpoint member! Join now for FREE and get a $10 welcome bonus.

3. Earn Cash By Selling Stuff Online

Are you always baking delicious goodies or crafting artsy sort of handmade goods? Many online platforms allow you to sell handmade products (Esty) and items at a lower operating cost (eg. eBay, Taobao, Shopee, Carousell). This flexible idea can even be adopted by retirees to earn money online from home while staying physically healthy and having sufficient time in catching up with old friends or vacationing!

4. Make Extra Money With Blogging

If you love sharing your views with others in the form of writing, creating a blog is the way to go! As it only requires little capital, blogging could be the way to launch a low-cost side business. All you need is a domain name, some YouTube tutorials, and a head full of ideas to share.

Additional Tips: As a blogger, perhaps we may need an extra pair of eyes to vet through our article to ensure minimal writing errors. Grammarly will be a good choice to try as it has an automated grammar checker that will correct any grammatical errors. As such, it helps to enhance the clarity and effectiveness of your online writing.

5. Publish an eBook

Do you have an amazing story plot running wild in your mind? It might just be another way where you can earn some extra income by publishing your own book. Traditionally, publishing a book could be difficult as you require a publisher to distribute the content to various bookstores. In today's day and age, there are e-books platforms that allow self-publishing of e-books without the need of a publisher, which brings convenience to all content creators.

6. Be A YouTuber

If you have a flair for videography or creating content visually, YouTube is right up the alley. It could even be a powerhouse when coupled with your other online side hustle! This platform comes very handy in engaging with people, selling yourself or the products you created, and earn extra income through ad revenue for your videos. To be qualified to monetize your video on YouTube, check out the YouTube Partner Program.

7. Be an Instagram Influencer

Within these few years, influencer marketing has become one of the most effective marketing tactics adopted by many brands to reach out to their consumers. So, why are these influencers well-received by shoppers? Well, consumers have perceived reviews posted by influencers were genuine. As Instagram continues to bloom, anyone can be an influencer on the digital platform now, as long as you have a distinctive personality that can attract a pool of fans.

There are two ways you can make extra money as an Instagram influencer:

• #1: Post content sponsored by brands
• #2: Selling your own products

Post Content Sponsored By Brands

Nowadays, the reputation of social media influencers is on par with celebrities. As such, there are plenty of reasons why brands will approach them.

Most of the brands will select suitable social media influencers based on the 3Rs:

• Relevancy: Social media influencers’ distinctive personalities and content published is relevant to your business and target audiences.
• Reach: Number of followers the social media influencers can reach out to after publishing the sponsored content.
• Resonance: The potential level of engagement the influencer can create with an audience relevant to your brand.

Being a social media influencer requires you to recommend products and services related to fashion, travel, and etc to your followers on your personal profile to earn extra money. Usually, the influencer will earn a fixed sum of money by posting an Instagram feed or stories that mentioned the specific brand, product, or services. For example, an influencer may receive $100 to create an Instagram post that promotes a skincare product. The income potential of each social influencer mainly vary on the number of followers they have. For example:

• Nano-influencers: 1000 - 10,000 followers
• Micro-influencers: 10,000 - 50,000 followers
• Mid-tier influencers: 50,000 - 500,000 followers
• Marco-influencers: 500,000 - 1,000,000 followers
• Mega-influencers: >1,000,000 followers

Ultimately, companies are concerned with their sales performances and how much social media influencers can bring in for businesses. Hence, the most effective influencers always persuade their followers by garnering their interests towards the products or services rather than hard-selling them.

Selling Your Own Products

After building a solid foundation of followers, the majority of social media influencers will establish their own brand. Often, they will advertise and sell products on their own Instagram profile as well. For example, the YouTube legend, Pewdiepie, who has more than 100 million YouTube subscribers, earned a monthly revenue of about 8 million in 2019, while the majority of his income (6.8 million) comes from selling merchandise rather than in advertising.

So, if you already have a large follower base and wants to turn your Instagram account into an online store, you just need to complete these following steps:

• Step 1: Convert your personal profile to a business profile
• Step 2: Feature all your products on your Instagram account
• Step 3: Get your business profile reviewed and approached by Instagram

With that, you're now a business owner and ready to earn some good money by selling your products on Instagram!

8. Work as a Virtual Assistant (VA)

Being a VA can mean helping a person whom you never met to open inboxes and reply to emails, scheduling appointments with clients, or creating surveys for customer feedback. So being reliable and good in time management are crucial for a VA. Depending on your schedule, being a VA can be a full time job or a part time job that earn you extra cash at the side. Since being a Virtual Assistant doesn't require you to be in the office, this can also be one of the flexible jobs for stay-at-home parents to take up while balancing between parenthood and earning money from home. You can search for related job openings on sites like Upwork or Fiverr.

9. Providing Consultation Service

To all the experts out there, no matter in medical, legal, or even love, you can earn extra with your expertise. Similar to being a consultant, Just Answer is a website that will pay you to answer questions either on the phone or online. Just register, input your area of expertise and get started with this additional income stream.

10. Be a Social Media Platform Manager for Other Businesses

Many businesses nowadays are willing to outsource their social media platforms for others to manage as they might be too tied up with their daily operation. You are expected to post updates, create Infographics or short video clips to engage with their social media followers, in a way to help businesses in their marketing activities.

11. Be a Search Engine Evaluator (SEE)

Google has come a long way before having success like today, so do other search engines too. This is when SEE are needed to seek out bugs or errors using commonly-accessed search engines.

Depending on the task given, SEE are usually being paid on an average of $12 to $15 per hour. For instance, The Smart Crowd does offer an independent SEE position, where you need to upload your CV and probably follow up with a phone interview to land the gig.

12. Make Money Online With Affiliate Marketing

As an affiliate, you’ll earn commissions by bringing traffic or sales to the company you are affiliated with. How can you actually earn from this? An example would be joining the PanelPlace Affiliate Program and start earning extra income by driving traffic from your blogs or social medias to the our website.

13. Create a Mobile App to Sell Advertisements

According to Statista, Worldwide mobile app revenue earnings is expected to increase to almost $809 billion by 2022 and the top grossing apps are all free to download. Now, you might be thinking, how can those free apps help developers to earn extra money?

Basically, one of the easiest ways to monetize your app is by allowing advertisements to display through a third-party ad network such as Google display network. As an app owner, you can make extra money every time a user watches or click the commercials shown when interacting with the apps.

Additional Tips: If you are looking for ways to learn how to develop an app or relevant technical skills, you can consider online learning platforms like Udemy. Udemy is a global marketplace for learning and teaching online platform where students harness new skills and achieve their goals by learning from an extensive library of over 100,000 online courses taught by expert instructors.

14. Make An Extra $500 Freelancing

The gig economy refers to a labour market that contains a pool of employees who are entitled to either freelance or short-term contracts. Although the gig economy is viewed as a temporary solution to earn money, it actually has advantages that you could leverage on. There are tons of job opportunities available due to the proliferation of mobile apps and online marketplace. As it is flexible and may not require work experiences, you can work on multiple side jobs as long as time is well-planned and organized against your own schedule. The best part is, you can gain marketable skills for your future professional career simultaneously.

Freelancing jobs can be referring to self-employed individuals who take up contracts or project works assigned by a client. For example:

• Freelance Customer Support

Many employers choose to outsource their live chat customer services to freelancers. They can work from home after attending basic training organized by the hiring company. These job openings are available in most freelancing websites such as Upwork or PeoplePerHour. Freelancers can earn between $10 up to $50 per hour depending on job experiences and responsibilities given.

• Freelance Writers or Editors

If you have a talent in writing stories or enjoy editing of content, maybe you can put it to good use and earn extra money as a freelance writer or editor. Many online platforms like Problogger offer relevant job openings for you to sign up. On average, freelance writers or editors earn between $14 to $50 per hour.

• Freelance Transcriber

If you’re not good with speaking or writing, explore the option of transcribing. These transcription jobs are typically broken down into 3 categories: general, legal and medical. Unless you have prior knowledge in the medicine or legal field, look towards the general transcription and get started, it’s a legitimate way you can make money from home. Sites such as SpeakWrite pays an average of $450 a month for transcriber.

15. Online Tutoring and Teaching

Do you love sharing your knowledge with others? Online teaching is a rising trend in the education industry due to the covid-19 pandemic. Online learning platforms such as Udemy and Skillshare have provided a viable channel for everyone to learn from teacher or instructor everywhere in the world. The online teaching industry has also expanded into other learning categories catered to parents and even their children. The list of content available goes on to many areas, such as hobbies, career development, and early childhood. The advancement of technology has allowed online instructors to conduct interactive sessions with the student using collaborative features.

There are quite a few benefits for online teaching, such as you are able to earn extra income from the comfort of your home, enjoy flexible lesson timing, get to know people from different part of the world and keep the operational cost low.

Additional Tips: If you are conducting lessons online, you may want to consider using some tools to provide your students a good user experience, such as using Krisp to remove background noise or Grammarly to check your writing.

16. Pet Sitting

Can’t resist the “cuteness” brought by little furballs and love interacting with them? If you don’t have any allergies to cats or dogs, you can sign yourself up to become a pet sitter to earn extra cash flexibly.

For example, Rover is an award-winning business that aims to make pet care safe, easy, and affordable so that everyone can experience the unconditional love of a dog. They provide a platform for individuals who need dog boarding, pet sitting, dog walking, or daycare services. You can manage the appointments through the Rover app and earn up to $1000 per month with insurance that covers any form of injuries. Playing with lovely doggies and earn a little extra money during the process? Sign me up anytime!

Discover Gig Economy Opportunities To Earn Extra Money! View More

17. Rent Out Your Room

In the past, we believed in the concept of personal consumption and travelling can only be done with our vehicles or public transport. However, the evolution of technology has brought people closer via the Internet. At the same time, the concept of the sharing economy has also developed. It is an idea built on collaborative consumption in which people can share their possessions or services with others. This revolution has brought upon a sharing culture where you do not have to own an item to experience the joy brought by it.

For example, you can earn extra money by leasing your vacant bedroom on Airbnb. The well-known platform does not charge an additional cost to list and advertise your properties to their already strong based global community. While renting out your rooms, you may get an opportunity to expand your social circles through meeting people with diverse backgrounds and nationalities.

18. Rent Out Your Car

Besides renting out your room, you can rent your car out when you are not driving it! This can be another way to make extra cash to cover your petrol or car insurance expenses.

Getaround in the US provides a safe and seamless way for people to share cars. The car-sharing platform lets you make money by turning your car into a second paycheck while you are not driving it. On the other hand, if you want to rent a car, enjoy $20 off for your first transaction using this promo code: 20FORYOU

19. Turning Your Car Into a Moving Billboard

If you are uncomfortable sharing your vehicles with strangers, why not consider sharing the exterior of it? Many car-sharing businesses pay advertising fees to people who are willing to use their car as billboards. This money-making method is also known as car wrapping. It is a common way for businesses to advertise and reach out to more audiences. For instance, you are paid $350 to $1500 per campaign for wrapping advertising stickers on your car with Carvertise in the US.

20. Rent Out a Parking Spot

Cheers to those who live in the cities! You might be able to rent out your parking space to make extra money. But for those who live in an apartment or a condominium, do check with the management prior to renting out your parking lot as some proprietors have a strict policy when it comes to parking. Websites like Parada might be able to help you to find your potential renter, as they work like Airbnb, but for parking lots.

21. Sell Your Recyclables

There are other ways to make money from home that may not require us to work or own any specific possessions to earn extra income. Look around you, among all the clutters, how much stuff are you still using frequently? Clutters can be anything that is not useful or take up unnecessary space at homes such as textbooks, clothes, and baby items. Through decluttering, you can remove non-essential items from your life to improve your overall wellness. Besides improving psychologically, you can also turn those unwanted clutters into extra cash in your pocket by selling them away.

If you have plenty of unused items to sell, you may consider organizing a garage sale. If you do not have a garage, you can look out for spaces with low rent or you can make use of your car boot (if you have a car) or join a flea market in your neighborhood! A quick tip, when you don’t have time to price everything, try grouping similar items together and tag them at the same price (e.g. all for S$10) or let buyers be the ones making an offer.

22. Sell Your Old Tech

If your old mobile phone or MP3 player is still in decent shape, you could consider selling it online to make some extra dollars. By selling it on classified websites or online marketplace that focus on secondhand items is one way to get quick cash.

23. Gain Extra Cash With Fintech Apps

Finance technology (Fintech) is the modernization of traditional financial systems that enhances and automates the use of financial services. The improvements have changed how we transact and made the whole process easier and convenient. On top of earning extra money through Fintech products, you can also save money from using it. Every dollar saved means there is extra cash in your pocket.

Are you always hearing experts or people around you emphasizing on the importance of tracking your spending and allocating a budget? While using a budgeting app, it can easily record any transactions made. The payment history tracked helps to make better money decisions by minimizing unnecessary spending. It also keeps you aware of where your money has been spent too.

The introduction of Fintech products has also fastened the adoption of digital payments such as AliPay, WeChat Pay, Grab Pay and many more. In this cashless society, you can make use of digital wallet to make payment and save money on transaction fees. Multi-currency digital wallets such as YouTrip and TransferWise also help you to save on exchange rate and credit card fee when you are overseas.

In addition, Fintech products such as Remitly and Revolut also allow consumers to transfer money overseas without high transfer fees. By eliminating high transfer fees, these money transfer Fintech products have provided consumers with considerable cost savings.

Additional Tips: Check out the saving and budgeting product category if you're looking for tools to keep track of your spending to save money!

24. Investing Through Robo-advisor

Just like the majority of us, you may have minimal investing knowledge or had no idea how dividend stocks, cryptocurrencies, or other financial instruments work. It’s alright, as you can invest in the stock market through Robo-Advisor apps that allow you to follow the investment strategy of top traders if you are unsure of which instrument to pick on.

Many of the Robo Advisor apps with low investment fees can be found in the online marketplace. Similarly, on PanelPlace.com, there are many Robo-Advisor apps you can explore in our Investment products category.

Find Fintech Products That Improve Your Personal Finance! Browse Products

25. Invest in Dividend Stocks

Passive income is earnings generated from additional sources of revenue other than our regular full-time jobs. There are many ways out there you can use to earn passive income. Some of the methods include rental properties, business partnerships, and investment portfolios, which can provide a constant flow of income which requires little or no effort input, since you may not be actively involved in the operation.

You may be adventurous and want to challenge the advanced level of investing, without the assistance of Robo-Advisor. Usually, when you invest in dividend stocks, you will either purchase shares of a listed company or through buying mutual funds.

You will only earn dividends when the company distributes its profits, according to the number of stocks owned and the percentage of profit, decided by the company's board of directors. At times, other than the usual cash rewards, otherwise, you may receive additional shares of the company instead.

Investing in dividend stocks is one of the safer options to earn passive income as most of the companies listed are well-known and established globally. However, risks still exist. Since companies may fold suddenly and the businesses’ growth may stagnate due to unfavourable economic conditions. As such, passive income earnings may decrease.

26. Sell Music and Photos and Earn Royalties

Owning royalties can be one of the ideas to earn passive income by letting others use creative works done by you. For example:

• Music

Did you know that you could bid on royalties? To those of you who don’t know what royalties are, it simply works similarly to a patent for music. For instance, if a show wants to use Havana by Camila Cabello, then they have to pay whoever owns the song to use it. By exchanging royalties, you could earn money for profit from that particular music. To monetize on your music, you can consider partnering with LANDR which you'll get paid when people listen or use your music on platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and TikTok.

• Photos

If music is not your focus, there is another way you could earn royalties. Now, you could earn money by selling the photos you took. Whenever anyone downloads your photos, you could earn money from it. The picture you uploaded won’t have any expiry date, so you will always be paid whenever someone downloaded your photos. It basically becomes a continuous cash flow.

27. Earn through Annual Interests from Fixed Deposit

Instead of letting your spare cash sitting around in your savings account, why not put it in a fixed deposit account to earn interest? A fixed deposit account allows users to earn a higher interest rate by the end of a stipulated period, as compared to the ordinary savings account. You can still choose to withdraw the capital before the fixed deposit matures, it’s just that you may earn lesser interest as to the amount agreed initially.

28. Earn Money With Your Special Skills and Hobbies

Most people focus on qualifications and past job experiences when they are looking for a job. Instead of just focusing on educational level and job-related aspects, wouldn’t it cool that hobbies you enjoy can be one of the avenues to help you make extra money?

Do you have a proficiency in designing, writing, photographing, playing the piano or even flying drone? If yes, you can put your skills into good use. Out in the job market, many companies are looking for individuals like you to help them with small projects such as designing a company logo, write a company story or even helping them to shoot a video. While you can make extra money from these jobs, you can also practice skills and enrich your portfolio too.

If you are good in your sport, you can become a coach and teach others during your free time. If you enjoy designing bouquets as a hobby, you could create beautiful bouquets for Valentine's Day or for wedding ceremony. In this age, you can simply manage your side gig/business through social media platforms for free.

29. Hold Game Streaming Sessions

Do you know that the love of playing games can help you make extra money? Through live game streaming, you can earn donations from viewers that watch you play. Some viewers may also tip you when they learn some in-game techniques from you. Another way you can make extra money from live game streaming is through selling in-game items to your viewers. As most of the viewers are also players themselves, they will also be interested in the equipment you are using and may wish to buy it from you.

Bonus: Best Part-Time Jobs for Students In School

When you have other life commitments such as school and family but have the intention to earn extra money during your free time, getting part-time jobs will be a great idea! In the market, there are many choices you can choose from based on your skills. Sometimes, there are sectors that look for part-timers who can work on weekends, this is common in the Food & Beverage (F&B) and fast fashion industry. The jobs available can range from waitress, bartender, or being a retail assistant.

30. Teaching Assistant

Unlike high school, college students could be hired as a teaching assistant, or TA for short. This usually happens when you already took the class before and excelled in that certain subject. You would most likely run the recitation or lab section of the class, grade papers, and also cover a small part of the lecture. Most of the time spent on this job other than lecturing and communicating with the professors would be spent at home. Professors usually tend to hire anyone other than freshmen so if you are in that category, why don’t you go ahead and try to apply? If you are interested, the best way to find out would definitely be going through your professors or advisers for any job openings or internship.

31. Tutor

For those of you who are not comfortable teaching a class or working closely with a professor, I think being a tutor might be your best bet. Unlike a teaching assistant, tutors tend to teach a small group. Most tutors teach hard classes (ex. Math, biology, chemistry) but don’t worry if you’re not skilled in those parts. If you could speak another language that is offered by the campus, there is a high chance for you to take a tutoring job from them. Or you could teach English (and any other languages that apply for this scenario) for those English as a second language (ESL) kids. Since working as a tutor is more intimate, you could also schedule your shift whenever you want.

32. Resident Assistant

Are you currently living in a dorm that affiliates with your school? If you are, you might notice that some of the resident halls have resident assistants (RA) on each floor. Usually, your RA’s are responsible for keeping things safe and not letting the kids run wild on the dorms and they definitely have great perks. The payment for this job could vary depending on whichever method your school wants to use but usually, it’s either through cash or your lease for that year becomes free. In addition to that, for those of you who get a free room for a year, there will be a 90% chance that you’ll get the whole room to yourself, with the kitchen and all. If you have a knack of keeping things in order and socializing, why don’t you go ahead and try this?

33. Library Assistant

I might say that this is the most relaxed job out of all. If you are worried that you couldn’t juggle both your school work and your part-time job, this might be your best shot. Working in the library usually consist of responsibilities like organizing books, being in charge of rentals, working at the help desk, monitoring the study rooms and more. To that, of course, you’ll have perks of having more access to resources and you’ll tend to have more time to do your homework in a quiet space. I’d say that the library atmosphere will help you concentrate better. This job could be obtained by asking the library workers at your college library. Usually, they have job openings available, especially when a new year starts.

34. Tour Guide

Who doesn’t love tours? Well, one thing I know is that a lot of on-campus colleges provide tours quite constantly. If you’re not a freshman, this may also be an alternative part-time job for you. I would say that by now, you’ll at least already know half of the job since you’ve often walked through your campus (transfer students won’t count). If you’re good with talking in front of a crowd and know the buildings or the history behind your university, might as well work for your university’s admission office and give tours to prospective students. Oh and, don’t forget to be friendly, approachable, and ready to be bombarded by questions. If you can handle all of those, this job is literally handed to you on a silver platter.

After looking through the ideas above, you may discover some possible options on how to earn an extra $500 a month. You can take up more than one idea listed here to build multiple streams of income.

So how do you make extra money every month, or how do you plan to get started? Let us know in the comments!

P/S: If you are looking for digital products or services that can help to earn extra money online, you can visit our marketplace and explore the Earn Money & Rewards product categories. Sign up for a free account to receive update on any digital product or services that match your interest!

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