27 Realistic Ways to Make an Extra $1,000 per Month (Legit Ways that Actually Work!)

But before we get started, I’d like to be clear in stating that this article won’t be discussing any “get rich quick” schemes– these are legitimate avenues which will require your energy and diligence. However, if you’re serious about getting that extra $1000 a month, this list will help you figure out how.

If you manage your time right, you can do all these in addition to your regular source of income.

How to Make an Extra 1000 a Month

Here are some of the best ways you can earn a thousand dollar or more every month with another full time job.

1. Sell Your Old Books on BookScouter

If you’ve taken any college courses, you’ve almost certainly accrued a lot of books by now. Resources, novels, test prep books, miscellaneous required readings. You can sell all this back for up to 80% of its original cost.

Use BookScouter.com to find the highest paying book buyback site for any kind of book. Simply enter your book’s ISBN, and get a price within a few seconds.

It’s not a bad way to recoup some of the original costs, and it’ll help you towards that extra $1000, at least for one month.

Of course, if you like, you can take this a step further, building a small side business by buying books from garage sales, thrift stores, estate sales, etc., for cheap and selling them back online.

I actually wrote this detailed guide about making money buying and selling used books.

2. Use TaskRabbit

TaskRabbit acts as a connector service between people who are willing to pay for small jobs and people who are willing to do those small tasks for cash.

For example, someone might need their groceries delivered and would be willing to pay up to $15 for it. The job gets posted on TaskRabbit, then people can start bidding on it. The lowest bidder gets the job.

Of course, TaskRabbit does a thorough background check before letting you in.

The payment varies by job and location.

But depending on your skills and availability, it’s not too far-fetched to think you could earn an extra thousand dollars a month from it.

While browsing the site, I came across many profiles of people who have done hundreds of tasks. There is one guy named Reza in San Francisco, who mostly does furniture assembly. He has completed over 350 tasks, averaging $60 per task.

That is over $21,000, and he has been a member since only May 2014!

3. Sell Pictures

Every blog and professional-grade Photoshop user is in need of legitimately obtained, licensed photographs to use in their works.

And all of those photos have to come from somewhere.

The method we’re talking about here is not the one-shot-masterpiece style of photography. We are talking about taking a lot of pictures with a high-quality camera and selling them to stock photo sites in mass.

If you’ve ever looked through a stock photo site (like ShutterStock) you’ve probably noticed a lot of weird pictures– there’s a good reason for that.

Some sites will buy your pictures for $0.50 a pop. It’s peanuts, at first, but if you take a large chunk of photographs, now you’re looking at some pretty money.

They aren’t too strict about what they’ll accept, so long as you’re clever enough about it. Try checking out their galleries to get a feel for what you can do.

Check out my post on making money with stock photography for a bigger list of stock photography sites.

4. Do Odd Jobs on Craigslist

When it comes to finding odd jobs near me, I always look on Craigslist first.

Now, the big risk with Craigslist is that there is no intermediary service, which means nobody to monitor the interactions between you and the posters. But, if you’re willing to trust someone based on a personal level, there is lots of work to be done on Craigslist.

You can look for tasks that need to be done (in the Gigs section) or for more long-term employment (in the Jobs section).

There is lots of work being posted daily, so it’s smart to check it frequently– they even have many local job postings listed by companies who are actively seeking employees.

5. Become a Craigslist Entrepreneur

I have been saying this for years… the free section of Craigslist is a gold mine.

I have made thousands of dollars by simply picking up stuff people want to get rid of, cleaning them up and selling them back on Craigslist for a profit.

If you even pick up 10 appliances each month, clean them up, and sell each for a mere 100 bucks, you have got an extra $1000.

And I am not just saying this, I have done this, and I know people who do this as their main source of income.

6. Offer Gigs on Fiverr

This one is good if you have any skills that are marketable and quick to do.

Fiverr is a service where you agree to do a service for 5 dollars as a flat rate (though the website takes 1 of every 5 dollars.)

If you are doing something quick, like a few lines of voice-over work, this is a great way to pump out a bunch of work and make your profit efficiently.

If you have another, more time-consuming skill like Adobe Illustrator, this might not be the best way to earn extra money, but it might still be profitable depending on the cost of living in your country (and yes, Fiverr is an international service!)

At the very least, it’s a good way to make a buck while sharpening one of your skills. The work you do here can go into your portfolio and help you towards some higher-paying work down the line!

7. Do Lawn Care

Yes, this is one of the most classic ways to earn extra income!

This one is an obvious “yes” for anybody who has the equipment or the physical condition to do it.

Assuming that the lawn care business in your area hasn’t been totally covered already (as it has where I live), then this is a surefire way to make some extra money.

Depending on where you live, you could also offer some seasonal lawn care, like leaf removal or snow shoveling.

Assuming that you can get a rate of $40/lawn, you only need to mow 25 lawns in a month to make a thousand dollars. If you can’t cut that rate, you could always try to bump down the price per lawn and make your business through volume.

8. Paint Curbs

This is a job that focuses on the suburbs.

You don’t need to live in one; you just need to be able to get to one.

All you’ll need are some stencils and a few cans of spray paint.

Go door to door and offer to paint the house address on the curb for the owners for a reasonable price (like $5). It’ll only take you a moment to get done and will net you a nice earning if you can get multiple houses done.

Charging a low rate is important because it will mean more business for you! Very few people are going to get their curb painted for $10 or $15, so you need to offer a rate that will entice.

9. Sell Your Hair

Hair can earn you around $5 or $10 per ounce, which isn’t bad if you consider that the average head can have anywhere from 6 to 10 ounces of hair on it!

If you’re willing to take a chance, you can check out buyandsellhair.com, which seems to be offering far more than that for a full head of hair.

You can read a detailed version of this idea, along with a list of sites you can sell your hair for cash on, here.

Of course, you can always donate your hair to charity. If you’re interested in that, do a quick search to find hair donation centers near you.

10. Try Tutoring

Being a paid tutor is a good avenue of work regardless of your age.

There is always tutor work available person-to-person, but you can also try to go through a tutoring agency. There are even tutor contractors available online!

Of course, it’ll help you land a tutoring job if you already have a degree in the subject you want to tutor, but not all agencies require you to have one.

Look into this if you are good at teaching people, and it’ll easily start to count towards your monthly $1000. Tutoring is usually at least a $10/hr job!

You can either try tutoring sites like Tutor.com, or create classes (make a video or an article about whatever subject you are an expert on) and upload to a site like Udemy where people can pay to access your material.

11. Become a Professional Organizer

The opportunities for this work might not be coming out of the woodwork, necessarily, but there is a definite market for it out there.

Some will be willing to hire you as a professional organizer to rearrange and organize their offices, studios, garages, etc.

Of course, you’ll need to be capable of getting organized yourself. This is organizing at a professional level, after all, and you wouldn’t want to disappoint your client with a cheap job.

Professional organizing is serious work; there is even a National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO).

This is a more long-term option, but if you’ve got the will, you might want to look into it. It’s above entry-level pay, so it might be a step up from what you make already, or it might just make a nice addition to it.

Some organizers even specialize in special niches, like corporate offices, so it is a job with a surprising amount of diversity.

12. Be a Dog Walker

Surprisingly, this is a legitimate and popular avenue for income.

It works best if you live in a city, but also would work well for residential development.

Lots of pet owners are too busy to take their animals on a walk, and they need somebody to give their pet some exercise during the day.

That’s where you come in!

You can ask for a daily or a weekly rate, but when it comes down to it, you’re going to want to make around $10 a day, per customer, and you’re going to want multiple customers.

Just shoot for getting one pet, at first. This is the type of business that will spread by word of mouth.

Sometimes you might get jobs for pet-sitting which will pay better, but these will be more sporadic.

If you want to work through an agency to help you score some clients (at the cost of middleman fees), look into something like Fetch Pet Care.

13. Be a Pop Culture Icon at Parties

For those who have the heart, there is work as a character for children’s parties.

We’ve all seen a clown, or a Mickey Mouse, or a Buzz Lightyear at a party at least once!

If you can get your foot in the door, this could be $25/hr work, when you have a gig.

For some, this might seem a little stressful. And it’s true, you do need to have the will to deal with children (and their parents) along with the strain of a birthday party.

But some people find the work easy and even gratifying. This is a job that you should look into if you can handle it.

14. Become a Paid Participant in Medical Trials

And by this, I’m referring to those “clinical trials” you often hear about. That means you’ll be taking pills, injections, or other types of treatments before they’re certified safe for the market.

It’s true that this is pretty easy money, but you are going to want to do some reading on paid clinical trials before you decide if it is for you.

15. Sell Products Online

There is a market for your products online. It’s not just limited to your second-hand goods, it’s also applicable for your handmade goods as well.

If you go through shops like Etsy, you can find thousands of people who are potential customers for your handmade wares.

The more popular Etsy shops are run by people who can afford to do their business full time, but many more shops are run by people who produce some wares in their downtime and sell them for supplemental income.

Etsy isn’t just for knickknacks, either.

There are people who sell high-quality wares like wedding dresses with 4 and 5 figure price tags. Talk about an extra $1000 a month!

16. Try Your Hand at Dumpster Diving

This is a somewhat more controversial way to add towards your $1000 monthly, but it’s a way to do it, nonetheless.

Go looking for things that are still in resellable condition, or looking for things that you can easily fix and sell (and don’t forget to factor in shipping if you have to mail it off!).

“Dumpster diving” doesn’t need to be taken literally, either.

You can accomplish the same basic thing by looking into thrift shops or maybe even at your local recycling center. Refurbishing or “flipping” is not just a way to make money, but a good way to make money if you’ve got the skill.

17. Write for Websites

So, let’s start by saying that there are a lot of sites that pay writers!

“Hire” might be a little strong; it’s more like they allow you to pick up small contracts from them.

Either way, there are a lot of websites that need things written, everything from short news blurbs to more dynamic, full-length articles.

Short News: One of these news-based sites is Newslines.org, a website that provides timelines of daily topics contributed by users.

The way this works is that Newslines has a style guide for all posts. Users follow this guide and submit content (50-100 word updates on a current news topic) and are paid $1 per accepted submission.

Once earnings reach $20 or more, users can cash out via PayPal.

It’s a straightforward system with a clear review process. If a post is rejected, you are informed why and allowed to revise it.

This is a clear and easy way for writers of any level to earn some money.

Feminine Content: A more specific type of news-based website is The Women’s International Perspective, located at www.thewip.net.

They are a journal that focuses on the state of affairs around the world from a feminine perspective.

It’s a scholarly site with a rigorous acceptance process, and the exact payment is unknown, but it is worth investigating if you are capable of producing academic-level articles.

They don’t actually require that you be female to submit works to them, so don’t let that stop you from submitting a request to write an article.

General Content: There is also writing for general content providers to consider, such as a website like WritersDomain.net.

They aren’t always accepting new writers, but they are prepared to offer $5-$15 per article (ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand words).

Writing for these websites can be a great way to contribute to a higher monthly income than you currently have, but you’re probably not going to make the full $1000 this way alone. Consider it a good way to earn some money during downtime between other methods!

18. Donate Plasma

Plasma donation can net you up to $260 per month at centers like BioLife.

Some places will pay you less per donation, and some will stay consistent, so your local rates may vary.

If you donate plasma, make sure you do not drive yourself to the donation because you will be drowsy when you finish.

Times between allowed donations are also inconsistent between locations, so you’re going to want to research plasma donation centers near you before you go.

19. Donate Sperm (for Men)

It seems like it’s too simple to be true, but some men actually do make some income selling their sperm.

There is a very rigorous application process, and virtually none of the applicants are accepted (you might imagine it’s a crowded method of income).

However, if you meet the criteria, you could be making $60 or so dollars per donation.

For some, that’s a full day’s worth of pay!

And according to nwcryobank.com, you can earn as much as $1000 per month for donating sperm.

You can use a site like SpermBankDirectory.com to find sperm bank centers near you.

20. Donate Eggs (for Women)

By far the most rigorous of all the options, this is available only for females who are prepared for a harsh drug regimen, lots of shots and blood draws, and a whole host of nasty side effects.

The entire process can take between 3 and 6 weeks, but here’s the catch: you can make 4 to 5 thousand dollars by donating your eggs.

It might make those rigorous weeks seem well worth it, but of course, always be careful when involving yourself with something that may concern your health.

Use TheWorldEggBank.com to find centers where you can donate your eggs for cash.

Other Ways to Earn an Extra Thousand (or More) Every Month

There are actually a lot of ways you can make more money without a job or in addition to what you make with your 9 to 5 job.

1. Participate in university studies: Many universities will pay you to participate in their studies.
2. Make and sell stuff on Etsy: Read this post for help on how to make money on Etsy.
3. Do micro freelancing: Try other sites like Fiverr.
4. Submit tips to magazines: These magazines will pay up to $1500 for a good photo and story.
5. Write for websites: These websites will pay you up to $3000 per post.
6. Driver for Uber and Lyft: Read this and this to learn the secrets of drivers who make top dollar for ride sharing.
7. Deliver groceries: Use apps like Shipt to make money delivering groceries for people in your area.

Again, these are just a few options just to give you an idea of the kind of extra income opportunities that are available these days. There are many more. You just have to be willing to put some work into it.

In Closing

Like any way of making money, these methods require your effort, consistency, and careful planning.

By no means are any of these get-rich-quick schemes, unless you manage to chain all of the easiest options together!

Make sure you think critically about your situation before you make any serious commitments to these ideas.

Some of the methods are quick and easy– stick to those until you’re ready to get into the more daunting tasks.

By combining a few of these options you will have a much better chance of earning an additional $1000 per month without getting a second full-time job.