How to Make an Extra $1000 a Month | 17 Ways To Make Extra Money

Wondering how to make an extra $1000 a month? You’ve landed in the right post, as here you’ll find not one but 17 different ways to increase your income on a monthly basis!

Do you find that at the end of the month, all of your income has been eaten up by the various necessities of daily life, and you have nothing to spare?

That money may be paying for a comfortable lifestyle that pays for accommodation, taxes and food but also for our car bills, travel, social life or hobbies, but the balance inevitably hits zero at the end of each month. 

This isn’t really a problem if you’re staying out of debt, but if you want to explore the possibilities of saving money for the future, putting a down payment for your house or creating a retirement account you need to either cut down your expenses or, even better, have an extra monthly income that goes toward that goal. 

If you are in fact stuck in a debt cycle, the increased income could also help you get out of debt. So, how to make an extra $1000 a month? We’ll be discussing 17 different ways that can get you that money. Check them out!

Introduction: Getting into the Right Mindset

A big part of earning additional income is first about getting into the right mindset. To earn an extra 1000 a month will almost certainly require you taking on additional work on top of your main job. If you want the benefits of the additional income, then you have to be in the right mindset to start with. Remember the following:

• Earning extra money will mean more work than usual.
• Earning extra money will mean giving up some of your free time.
• Earning extra money will take a real commitment, and significant willpower.

If you’re looking to make $1000 a month in passive income, you’ll need to have built a business first, but if you’re just starting out, you need to be prepared for those three things.

Let’s look at the many legitimate ways to make extra money each month to achieve your savings goal!

How to Make an Extra 1000 a Month

1. Freelance Writing and/or Editing

Many people have good writing and editing skills, and perhaps don’t even know it yet. To be a writer, you don’t have to be some great wordsmith or the next J.K. Rowling. In fact, copywriting is a very accessible form of professional writing that is in great demand and can offer very decent money. 

To get started you could write 400- to 500-word blog posts on topics with which you are familiar. For each of these pieces, you could get anywhere from $10 to $30 as a beginner, and can go up to $100+ depending on your skill and experience level.

But where can you find customers? There are many platforms that will allow you to get started as a freelancer, such as Upwork and Fiverr, and some others dedicated to writing content such as ContentFly.

Such platforms do take a cut of your payment – Fiverr, for example, takes 20 percent – but you’ll be avoiding the work and expense of marketing offsets that commission quite a lot.

If you have more time and energy, you can build up a writing business from scratch and keep all the money, but it will take time and continuous marketing and social media effort to spread the word about your service. To make extra 1000 a month faster, writing pieces on ready-built platforms is better.

If writing original content isn’t exactly your strength, but you do have an eye for detail, editing is another good and flexible option.

Through the same platforms mentioned above, among others, you can find customers with written content that you can check for spelling and grammar mistakes, as well as flow, logic, structure and other matters. It’s a great way to earn money when you have some spare time.

Both writing and editing are jobs for which you can accept as much or as little work as you want.

2. Audio Transcription

Those with nimble typing fingers can find a great opportunity working as a transcriptionist. You will receive audio files that need converting into pure text.

You listen and type, and can earn anywhere from $12 to $35, depending on how much experience you accrue and how happy clients are with your work.

Platforms like Rev regularly accept new transcriptionists, and it’s a great way to make extra money from home. Platforms will typically filter applicants via a test.

If you don’t pass the test the first time, however, don’t lose heart. You can get some resources to help you practice and improve your basic skills. It’s something that just about anyone with good ears and the skills to type can do, with the right amount of practice.

3. Freelance Graphic Design

If you have a knack for graphic design, you can also offer your freelance services. Lots of the most successful graphic designers got into the industry by accident or via side gigs. You never know, you might just stumble across hidden talents for which people are willing to pay top dollar.

You can charge between $65 and $150 an hour for quality work, and even between $25 and $50 if you’re a newbie and still finding your feet.

The great thing about graphic design is that provided you have the right laptop or computer, you can work on it whenever you have free time at home, or while you’re getting coffee in the morning, during your lunchtime or any space when you’re free.

In a world in which things are moving to the digital space, the need for graphic design talent is growing in a seemingly never-ending pattern. From attractive thumbnails to social media images, event posters, banner design, the opportunities are seemingly endless.

There is a world of online “canvas” upon which a graphic designer can work their magic…whenever they have time, of course.

Even at the absolute lowest rookie rate, you’d only have to put in 40 hours for this side hustle to make you 1000 a month. As your popularity grows, your pay rapidly rises, and required hours rapidly shrink.

4. Website Development

As an extension to graphic design, website development is another area people often need help with and seek freelancers.

Even with the advent of “drag and drop” website builders like Wix and WordPress, people still struggle to make their websites look really professional and dynamic. If you can add that touch, your skills can be well rewarded.

Furthermore, if you know about SEO, you can also help optimize people’s websites via their chosen engine. If you know what you’re doing, it’s actually very easy to optimize a website via a platform such as Wix or WordPress.

You can make sites far more effective in a very short time, and start making 1000 a month online.

Even with people in some markets shifting more to social media rather than fixed websites, having a web page and URL is still important, even if it’s just an “About Us” landing page and contact information.

If anything, this makes the market for website development even easier to access, since complex sites with intricate functionality are no longer needed. You can focus more on design, layout, and SEO optimization. For any experienced web developer, these matters are easy.

5. Virtual Assistant

Did you know that there are positions available as remote or “virtual” administrative assistants? As it turns out, even with countless functions being shifted online and with AI being smarter than ever, a great many people prefer to have the human touch in their administrative work.

When working as a virtual assistant, there are a number of duties you might have. The most common tasks are preparing schedules, making travel arrangements, preparing itineraries, typing letters and emails, making phone calls on behalf of the clients, and more.

People pay anywhere from $5 an hour for a newbie up to $50 per hour or more for a more experienced and professional assistant.

It’s a great way to make an extra 1000 a month doing work that’s not complex and not that time-consuming. You can easily fit it around other tasks, especially if you already work at home.

Many parents of young children take on this kind of work as a way to keep earning money after leaving work for maternity or paternity leave. It helps support the family but doesn’t get in the way of family duties.

6. “Retail Arbitrage”

Retail arbitrage is a little trickier to get into but offers interesting opportunities to those who can get it right. In short, retail arbitrage involves buying items at discounted prices from both online and offline retailers, but then waiting for the right moment to resell them online for a profit. 

You might pick up items from a clearance shelf in a local supermarket, for example, and then sell them again at the original price they were intended to go.

Let’s take something simple like coffee mugs. Imagine that they normally retail at $3.99. You see a set of 10 mugs in Walmart available for just $0.50 each, part of a clearance deal. You snap up the 10 mugs for $5.00 and then resell them at $2.50 each plus shipping costs to make a clear $2.00 on each item.

That’s just a simple example, and as you can see it normally means quite thin margins, but if you have the time to put into it you can start to find higher-margin items and turn it into a nice little side business earning hundreds of dollars, even thousands of dollars a month.

The top operators make hundreds of thousands a year doing this. 

7. Giving Up Your Car

OK, this one isn’t technically a way to earn an extra 1000 a month, but it’s a great way to save that amount of money, or possibly more. For most cars, the average cost of ownership is anywhere from $8,000 to $10,000 every year when you factor in financing, insurance, gas, maintenance, and everything else.

If you are able to give up your car because you have ample public transportation, can carpool with others, or mix public transport with ride-sharing, you’ll end up spending far less overall than you would by owning your own car. 

If you do need to keep your car, then consider at least exchanging it for a smaller, more economical model and a more reliable brand that will require less maintenance. Cut down on unnecessary maintenance by boosting reliability, and cut down on gasoline consumption by boosting fuel economy.

8. Babysitting or Child Care

If you have friends with children, then you might consider offering your services to them as a babysitter while they go out and socialize. Having someone the children know and who the parents trust is like manna from heaven for parents looking for help with sitting and child care.

Babysitters, on average, earn more than twice the federal minimum wage now at about $16.75/hour for one child and $19.25 for two.

If you’re at home with a young child yourself, you could equally offer up your services to friends as a daycare option. You can easily undercut local daycare centers and provide an affordable, trustworthy alternative for your friends who are looking for child care.

It’s one of the easiest making extra money ideas, and you’ll probably end up having plenty of fun!

9. Tutoring

A lot of kids need help in their academic journey. They don’t always respond well to their teachers’ methods, and can benefit massively from a fresh perspective. This is where the multi-billion dollar tutoring and private home-based education sector comes into play.

Now, you may not be a qualified teacher and you may not have any formal qualifications in a subject, but that doesn’t mean you can’t teach it effectively.

Becoming a private tutor is one of the most effective side hustles to make 1000 a month, and you can easily charge between $25 and $80 an hour, depending on your experience and the subject you’re teaching.

What’s more, in the wake of the global pandemic, tutoring is now something that you can do online from home. This makes it less time-consuming by removing the journey time you would normally take to and from a student’s home or other agreed meeting place for the class.

If there are subjects you can teach, you can offer them through platforms such as Fiverr, Freelancer, or Upwork, or just reach out to your friends and family network to get the word out that you are able to tutor.

You could also join a formal tutor’s network such as Tutor, but these kinds of platforms are better mostly for those with formal teaching experience and qualifications.

If you are in possession of such credentials, then not only will you likely find work faster, but you can probably charge more for your services, as much as $100 an hour.

10. Teaching a Foreign Language

In the previous point, we mentioned tutoring already, but foreign language teaching and tutoring deserve their own special category because it’s a field that’s much more widely open to those without formal credentials than most other subjects.

Not all people who wish to learn foreign languages are school students. Many adults are also interested in learning, and that means you don’t need prior knowledge of school curricula or standardized test requirements.

You can follow courses of your own choosing, or allow your students to pick textbooks that you use as the basis for lessons. 

Of course, you could also tutor in a much less formal way, just in conversation. This is more relaxed, and you only need to prepare conversation topics, prompt questions, key vocabulary for students to learn, and come up with creative ways for them to use the knowledge they gain.

You can tutor on platforms like Cambly, iTalki, Verbling, among others, which typically pay between $10 and $20 per hour, or you can set your own rates and work through an alternative freelance platform, or advertise in your community.

If you speak a second language, you can easily put that skill to work for you as well: this is how to make 1000 extra a month easily.

11. Cleaning Houses

Not all part-time or other additional work has to be glamorous, of course. There are many other essential jobs and services you could provide in your community to earn additional cash each month. One of those is cleaning houses.

If you are something of a “Monica Geller” when it comes to cleaning, then you might add value to your service either by doing a phenomenally thorough and great job, but also by creating and sharing your cleaning tips online to create a kind of online influencer persona to go alongside your work.

This can add to your marketing appeal and bring in new business as people seek out your unique service and brand.

For your work at a basic rate with no “influencer” element, you could earn $10-20 per hour. With the added unique element that helps you to become a sought-after cleaner, you might charge up to $50 or $60 per hour, gaining wealthier clients who are willing to pay.

12. Yard Work and Gardening

In a similar category to cleaning houses is the idea of offering yard work and gardening services for additional cash each month.

These services are especially welcome in suburban areas where there are many seniors. These older residents often struggle with yard work and garden management, and in some places in the US the city even penalizes you for having grass too long or bushes that are overgrown. You can therefore proffer a valuable service.

A typical gardener can charge anywhere from $12 to $21 for their service.

You don’t usually need to purchase much in the way of tools beyond some basic gardening attire, gloves, and perhaps some basic implements.

You can request that bigger machinery like lawnmowers, hedge trimmers, and other gear be provided by your client. You can trade off a couple of dollars an hour for that, allowing you more flexibility and no startup costs.

Even just offering this service in your neighborhood for 10 hours a week, with an average of $15 per hour, that works out to $600 a month; a great start to make an extra $1000 per month.

13. Bookkeeping

Were you under the impression that a bookkeeper had to be a professional accountant? In fact, this is not the case.

Bookkeeping is relatively simple to learn, but can be a quite lucrative way to earn money on the side. Typical hourly rates range from $18 at the low end to $43 at the higher end.

Bookkeeping is essentially just a kind of data entry, but with financial transactions. It is certainly part of the accounting process, but it’s not the part for which you have to be licensed (or “chartered” if you want to get real fancy) and so anyone with a head for numbers and keeping order in digital or paper ledgers can manage.

It’s a perfect side gig to have at home when you want something to do between errands, when your children are at school, or while you just have a bit of downtime. Some people even find it quite relaxing and therapeutic!

14. Personal Chef

How can I make an extra 1000 a month without leaving my kitchen? Well, here’s the answer for you, and you’ll probably love it. If you have a knack for wizardry in the kitchen, you could put your culinary skills to use; you’ll keep doing your thing and making good money in the process.

You don’t have to start up an entire catering business or a restaurant in your dining room, but you can offer your skills as a personal chef cooking at home and delivering the food for small parties and occasions.

If you are in fact willing to leave the kitchen (and earn more!) you can even go to people’s houses to cook meals for them.

There might be a particular dish or specialty you excel at, such as baking. You can charge anywhere from $27 per hour at the low end up to $50 an hour or more at the higher end when you have good reviews under your belt.

15. Personal Trainer

Just as great cooks can turn their culinary passions into profits, you could do the same with your passion for fitness. You could get a group of willing neighbors or other community members who want to lose weight and lead a workout group, and charge a small sum for the privilege.

A trainer leading a group session might charge each attending member up to $35 per 30-40-minute session.

There are so many fitness areas you might choose to work with, too. It could be yoga, aerobics, pilates, spinning, running, weight training or more.

You can work in your home, your clients’ home, or even use a local gym to do your workout together. Community centers often have spaces in which you can run classes for various fitness activities.

You can really build it into a nice side business, and earn money while you exercise.

16. Part-time Consulting

Are you now at home with quite a lot of time on your hands, but fairly recently just came out of another profession? Perhaps you created a business from scratch and recently sold it for a tidy sum. Perhaps you were an education professional, or an accountant, or an office manager.

In almost any sector now, if you have experience, you can also work as a consultant.

You can offer your services to local businesses and companies who might benefit from your experience, and charge them anywhere from $50 to $100 an hour for that privilege.

17. Home Repairs

A final idea is offering a service for home repairs. If you’re handy around the house, good at repairing things, especially if you have knowledge of electrics or plumbing too, you can turn it into a decent side gig.

These kinds of “freelance handyman” jobs pay as much as $60 an hour, depending on how specialized the work is and what you can handle.

If you are doing simple jobs, you can charge small amounts like $15-20 per job. If it’s something you enjoy doing, then it hardly feels like work.

You can build good connections and relationships with neighbors and nearby community members, while at the same time pocketing a nice amount of extra cash each month.

Hopefully, the above 17 ideas have helped to inspire you to see just how many ways there are that you too could make an extra 1K a month, and quite possibly more.