With the holiday season fast approaching, a lot of us are thinking, “I need money for Christmas!”
The holidays are a pricey time. In fact, consumers spend more than $1,000 during the holidays!
Between the Thanksgiving dinner and festivities and all the gifts, you have to get for loved ones, trying to fit this cost into your budget really can seem impossible.
Maybe you don’t have a lot of savings?
Or perhaps you make a similar amount to what you spend?
Whatever the case, if you need extra cash this Christmas, then we’ve got you covered.
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In today’s post, we give you simple tips for making money during the holidays.
Table of Contents
Ways to Earn Extra Cash for Christmas
For jobs you can do in your jammies to interesting gigs where you can meet new people during the holidays, we give you more than 150 places below where you can find paying gigs this Christmas.
Write
- Pay: $10 to $55 an hour. Pay can be per word, rather than per hour. Per word rates can be from $0.005 a word to $0.06 or more.
Pick up some freelance writing work over the holidays and you could put extra cash in your bank account.
From articles to books, you can make money writing a range of different things. And, you don’t need to leave the house for this gig, because there are tons of online freelance writing gigs available.
Here are some places where you can find freelance writing work:
Babysit
- Pay: $7 to $15 an hour.
Parents post gigs for baby-sitters online, so finding babysitting work is easy nowadays.
Just browse gigs, take the ones you want, and then you’ll make money.
If you’re good with kids, then this could be a good way to make some extra money for Christmas.
Here are a few places where you can find babysitting jobs:
Deliver food
- Pay: $10 to $25 an hour.
Are you looking to make quick cash for the holidays?
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Give food delivery gigs a try!
Whether it’s food from the grocery store or a meal from a restaurant, you can make money delivering food to people’s homes and workplaces with food delivery gigs.
You take food orders in an app, pick up the food, and then deliver it to the customer.
It’s pretty simple. And, you can take on as many or as few gigs as you want to.
So if you’re looking for something to do to make money during the holidays alongside your regular job, then food delivery could be the gig for you.
Here are some places that’ll pay you to deliver food:
Sell your old gift cards
- Pay: Varies
Have some gift cards from last Christmas that you didn’t use?
Sell ‘em!
We’ve all gotten a gift card for a store we don’t really shop at, so instead of letting it go to waste, use a gift card resale website to get some money for it.
You won’t get the full value of the card back, but you will get money you can spend anywhere, rather than being stuck with a gift card you’ll never use.
Since people are also looking for discounted gift cards for the holidays, gift cards are one of the best things to sell for Christmas.
Here are some places where you can sell your unwanted Christmas gift cards:
Sell your old phone (and other unwanted tech!)
- Pay: Varies depending on what you sell.
Have an old phone you don’t need?
Or maybe you have a tablet that you don’t use.
Whatever it is, if you have an electronic device, like a phone, games console, or tablet, you could sell it online.
Not only is this a good way to make space in your home for holiday gifts, but it’s also a great way to bring in some money for Christmas.
Here are some great places to sell your unwanted electronics:
Pet-sit
- Pay: $8 to $25 an hour.
If you’re anything like me and love pets, you might want to give pet sitting a go.
Basically, you’re paid to look after cats, dogs, and other pets.
Since people are out at holiday parties or shopping during the holidays, pet-sitters are in high-demand.
What’s great about pet-sitting is that it’s a flexible gig – so you can take on as many or as few jobs as you want to. So if you’re looking for a side gig during Christmas, pet-sitting is a great option.
Here are some places where you can find pet-sitting work:
Shop with cashback websites
- Pay: 1% to 70% cashback, but you can get higher rates in some cases.
At Christmastime, we find ourselves shopping quite often.
That’s why we’d highly recommend you use cashback websites to do so.
These sites give you money when you shop.
It’s generally a percentage of what you spend.
For example, a website might offer you 2% cashback when you shop on Amazon. So if you spend $100, you’ll get $20!
It’s such an easy way to make money.
Since you’re shopping anyway, using cashback sites really is a no-brainer!
Here are some great cashback websites:
- Rakuten (Formerly Ebates)
- MrRebates
- TopCashBack
- Extrabux
- BeFrugal
- SavingStar
- CouponCabin
- Pennyful
- RetailMeNot
Be a mystery shopper
- Pay: $8 to $25 an hour.
As a mystery shopper, you’re paid to visit stores and give feedback on your experience. You’ll need to offer feedback on things like, how clean the store was and how the employees treated you.
This can be a good gig to do over Christmas because you can take on as many or as few jobs as you want to. So you can easily fit mystery shopping jobs into your schedule.
Here are some companies that offer mystery shopping gigs:
- IntelliShop
- BestMark
- Sinclair Customer Metrics
- Market Force
- SurveyMini
- Mobee
- EasyShift
- iSecretShop
- Field Agent
Clear off your bookshelves and make money for Christmas
- Pay: Varies depending on what books you have to sell and where you’re selling to.
One of the things you can sell during the holidays is books. Get rid of the titles you don’t read, clear off your shelves, and make some money, as well as some extra room in your home, for Christmas!
You can sell books online, so you don’t need to go to a yard sale or a thrift store, or anything like that.
With book buying websites, you just enter the ISBN of the book or books you want to sell, and you’ll get a quote. If you accept the quote, you can ship your books to the site, and the site will pay you.
Some sites, like Cash4Books will give you a prepaid shipping label, so it’s totally free to ship your books!
Here are some websites where you can sell used books:
- Amazon Trade-In
- Book Scouter
- Cash4Books
- Sell Back Your Book
- Blue Rectangle
- CKY Books
- Paperback Swap
- BookFinder.com
- Craigslist
Be a virtual assistant
- Pay: $10 to $29 an hour.
Online assistants get paid to do tasks, like making phone calls, scheduling appointments, arranging meetings and other admin and organizational tasks.
Basically, you do all of the tasks a regular assistant would do in your traditional brick-and-mortar workplace, except you work online.
Here are some places where you can find virtual assistant work:
Do some data entry work
- Pay: $9 to $17 an hour.
Data entry is another good side gig to bring in money during the holidays.
Data entry clerks enter data into documents, spreadsheets, and other data management systems.
It’s a simple gig that you can do from home.
Here are some places where you can find data entry gigs:
Trade your receipts for cash
- Pay: Varies, but often a couple of bucks per receipt or offer.
Do you want some free money for Christmas?
Then you should definitely use receipt apps!
These apps give you free cash when you upload a photo of your receipt.
Some apps will require you to buy specific items to get money, but others will pay you for any itemized receipt.
Either way, this is such an easy way to make money, because you’re already shopping!
You make cash for doing something that you already do anyway.
If you use multiple receipt apps at once, you can upload the same receipt and get a rebate from all of these apps.
Here are some awesome apps that’ll give you a rebate for your receipts:
Give people lifts
- Pay: $5 to $43 an hour.
Are you wondering, “How can I make extra money in December?”
With holiday parties, family meeting each other, and shopping, lifts are in high demand during the holidays.
And you can make money from this demand by working with ridesharing companies!
Ridesharing companies pay you to give people lifts.
Basically, you open up an app, browse through customer requests for rides, and take the ones you want.
You’re essentially a taxi driver!
Anyone with a car can do this gig. Since you can take on as many or as few rides as you want to, driving for rideshare companies is a flexible gig for making cash over the holidays.
Here are some places that’ll pay you to give people lifts.
Do some cleaning work
- Pay: $9 to $25 an hour
Give cleaning work a try this holiday season.
It’s a good way to make money and since people often have people over during the holidays for Christmas parties and the like, there’s a demand for cleaners.
If you’re looking for a way to make money nearby, give cleaning work a try.
Here are some places to find cleaning jobs:
Get paid for your opinion with online surveys
- Pay: $1 to $25 per survey
Taking surveys is such a great gig for making some quick cash at home.
Anyone can do them, and since you can take on surveys when it suits you, it’s a flexible way to make money.
There are lots of great survey sites out there that will pay you.
Join a few of them, and you could easily make money to put towards your holiday fund.
Here are some survey sites that pay you for your opinion:
- Toluna
- Vindale Research
- iPoll
- MySurvey
- Pinecone Research
- QuickThoughts
- SurveySavvy
- Darwin’s Data
- Google Opinion Rewards
- Ipsos i-Say
- Survey Junkie
- Qmee
Deliver packages
- Pay: $18 to $71 an hour
During the holidays, people order a lot of stuff. So companies need delivery drivers to deliver these packages to customers.
This is a great gig to do over the holidays.
You basically get paid to deliver stuff to people’s homes.
Often, you don’t even need a truck or a van. All you need is your car!
And, many companies allow you to take on as many or as few deliveries as you want. So if you have a busy schedule, it’s easy to fit this gig into your calendar.
Take a look at these companies that pay you to deliver packages:
With GoShare, you do need a truck or a van if you want to sign up as a Driver. You can sign up as a Helper though if you only have a car.
Sell your old DVDs
- Pay: Varies (Could be an extra $100 or so!)
Since streaming platforms, like Hulu and Netflix, have rendered DVDs obsolete for many of us, we have boxes of them that we just don’t use.
You can sell your DVDs online now, and it’s easy to do as well.
Just visit the site, get a quote, ship your DVDs to the company, and you’ll make money.
Some of these companies will even pay for the cost of shipping.
When you sell your DVDs, you won’t just make extra money for the holidays, but you’ll also make some extra room in your home for your Christmas gifts.
Here are a few places that’ll buy your unwanted DVDs:
Test websites
- Pay: It varies depending on which company you work with. Generally, you earn $3 to $20 per test.
As companies want their customers to have a great experience on their website, they’re willing to pay testers like you to make sure that everything with their website works properly.
This is an easy way to make money for Christmas from home.
As a website tester, you visit a brand’s website and provide feedback on a variety of things, such as how easy the site was to navigate, and how many broken links, if any, you found.
Basically, you’re checking to make sure that everything on a brand’s website works as it should!
Here are a few places where you can find website testing work:
Tutor people online
- Pay: $15 to $20 an hour.
Make money for Christmas by tutoring people online.
You can do this gig right from your home!
Rather than tutoring in a brick-and-mortar setting, as an online tutor, you teach students in a virtual classroom.
Here are a few places where you can find online tutoring work:
- Chegg Tutors
- Aim-for-A Tutoring
- Tutor.com
- TutorVista.com
- Homework Tutoring
- TutaPoint.com
- Smarthinking
- Kaplan
- Manhattan Prep
Work as a customer support/service agent
- Pay: $9 to $19 an hour.
If you’re personable and patient, you might want to give customer support work a try.
Customer service agents help customers with their questions and or anything they need assistance with.
You don’t even need to leave the house for this gig either.
A lot of customer service jobs are home-based.
Here are some places where you can find work as a customer support/service agent:
- UpWork
- Indeed
- Monster
- Hilton Hotel
- Apple
- American Express
- TeleTech
- The Chat Shop
- SiteStaff
- LiveOps
- VIPdesk Connect
- Concentrix
Do some data entry work
- Pay: $9 to $17 an hour.
Make some extra cash for Christmas by working as a data entry clerk.
As a data entry clerk, you enter data into databases, spreadsheets, documents, and other data management systems.
It’s pretty simple.
You can do this job from home too!
Here’s where you can find data entry work:
Sell unwanted clothes
- Pay: Varies (You could make $100+)
If you’re looking for things to sell for Christmas, start with clearing out your closet.
A lot of us have clothes we don’t wear anymore. Rather than simply throwing them out, sell them instead.
Nowadays, there are websites and apps that are solely designed for selling used clothing.
This means that unlike sites like eBay and Craigslist, where customers can buy and sell everything, customers on these platforms are looking to buy clothing specifically.
Here are some websites and apps where you can sell your unwanted clothes:
Closing Thoughts
There are so many ways to make extra cash for the holidays. So if you need money for Christmas, give the places above a try.
What’s your favorite way to make extra money during the holidays?
Let us know in the comments below!
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