Need to make money ASAP?
Today we are going to share seven ways to do it!
Reality Check: You Probably Won’t be Able to Make Money Overnight
Look, we’ll be real with you:
You shouldn’t count on making money literally overnight because that is extremely unlikely to happen. Don’t listen to people who tell you otherwise because they are just preying on your desperation.
If your situation is so dire that you aren’t sure if you are going to be able to meet your basic needs, your best bet is to seek help from family, friends, religious institutions, charities, or governmental organizations, whatever is available to you.
However, if you aren’t worried about food and shelter and just need extra cash for whatever reason, you can probably make some within a month and establish a stable source of income within three months.
Also, it’s important to be realistic about the workload that you should expect: the more money you need, the more you will have to work, especially if you need it within a relatively short timeframe.
Depending on your circumstances, it might make sense to go beyond the regular 40 hours per week, which you may be able to accomplish by combining several ways to make money instead of focusing on just one.
We don’t recommend doing that for an extended period of time because it can lead to burnout. But working like crazy for a few months might help you reach your short-term financial goals faster, assuming that your health allows it.
Now, with all that out of the way, here are seven ways to make money as quickly as possible…
#1: Sell Old Stuff That You Don’t Need Anymore
We all tend to accumulate clutter as we go through our lives.
Arguably, the fastest way to make money is to take inventory of that clutter, determine what can be sold, and then put it for sale online.
Consider selling your old:
- Books
- Clothes
- Handbags
- Accessories
- Electronics
- Hobby equipment
…etc.
You might be able to make a few hundred bucks this way depending on what kind of stuff you have lying around and collecting dust!
#2: Become an Airbnb Host
If you have a space that can be rented out, you might want to consider becoming an Airbnb host. Just make sure to comply with the local laws.
You can rent out:
- An entire house or apartment
- A room in a house or apartment
- A separate space on the same property (e.g. a guest house, a caravan, a tent cabin, etc.)
Obviously, this strategy is going to be the most viable in touristy places, especially in expensive locations.
Just know that being an Airbnb host is not all unicorns and rainbows. You need to ask yourself if you are prepared to deal with terrible guests that you will inevitably encounter at some point if you remain on the platform long enough.
You may want to check out Airbnb Hell, a website that catalogs uncensored stories from both guests and hosts and lists reasons why you shouldn’t use Airbnb.
Also, if you are thinking about letting strangers stay at the place where you are currently living, it’s important to consider the safety risks that come with that, especially if you have a family!
#3: Get a Gig Economy Job
The ever-growing gig economy has received a lot of criticism over the last decade over its poor working conditions, questionable compensation structures, and lack of employment benefits.
That criticism has merit. Doing this type of work probably isn’t a viable path to long-term financial security. However, it can provide a temporary boost in income when you need it.
The most obvious way to make extra cash within the gig economy is to work as a driver for rideshare apps like Uber or as a courier for food delivery apps like DoorDash.
If you are considering going this route, make sure to calculate how much money you’ll be left with after everything is accounted for including vehicle maintenance and insurance, gas, taxes, etc.
Then there’s the remote gig economy work. For example, on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform, you can get paid to fill out marketing research surveys, categorize data for AI training, and participate in scientific studies.
However, the consensus among the Mechanical Turk veterans seems to be that the platform has declined significantly since the late 2010s. You are unlikely to make more than $5-10 per day, even working full-time.
It’s also possible to work across several platforms like that, say, Mechanical Turk, Prolific, and CloudResearch, but even then you are unlikely to make more than $15-20/day.
Consequently, going this route makes the most sense for people based in low-cost-of-living countries. Ask yourself: what will enable you to make more money, working on these platforms or getting a minimum-wage job?
Also, keep in mind that there’s an approval process, you can’t just start working immediately. Plus, your access to gigs, especially the high-paying ones, will be limited at first.
This means that the timeline from signing up for these platforms to reliably making a few hundred bucks per month can be somewhat unpredictable!
#4: Get a Minimum-Wage Job
Generally speaking, minimum-wage jobs are easy to get because they typically don’t require any qualifications, aren’t that appealing, and have a high employee turnover.
If you need to establish a stable source of income as quickly as possible, getting a minimum-wage job may be the most straightforward solution.
Consider applying for:
- Cleaning jobs
- Retail jobs
- Fast food jobs
- Waiting staff jobs
- Barista jobs
…etc.
Something that you may not be aware of if you haven’t worked these types of jobs before is that they often offer opportunities for career progression.
Obviously, that varies from company to company, but if you show up on time, do good work, and get along with your co-workers, you may be able to get a promotion to a supervisor within a year.
That is especially true for jobs that tend to be primarily done by young people. When you are competing against teenagers and college kids, it’s easy to stand out as a good employee by simply doing the basics!
#5: Get a Temporary Seasonal Job
If you already have a full-time job, you can get a part-time temporary seasonal job on top of it.
That will likely require working around 60 hours per week but if you can handle it then it might be a great way to make some extra cash.
What kind of seasonal jobs will be available to you is going to depend on your location.
For example, if you live in a country that celebrates winter holidays, you should be able to find temporary work in the hospitality industry from the middle of October to the end of December. Catering agencies are always hiring around that time because it’s their peak season.
It’s also worth noting that getting a temporary seasonal job may provide an opportunity to transition into a full-time, permanent position at the same company if you do good work.
Say, every year, Amazon hires temporary warehouse workers during the run-up to the winter holidays and then offers some of them permanent positions.
So if you want a regular full-time job but the businesses around you are hiring temporary workers right now, it might be worth considering going this route just to get your foot in the door!
#6: Start a Local Service Business
Starting a local service business can be a great way to make quick cash because typically, once you finish the job, customers pay you that same day.
What Service Should You Offer?
If you need to start making money as soon as possible, offer a service that you can begin providing immediately.
Here are some ideas:
- Lawn mowing service
- Snow clearing service
- Mattress-cleaning service
- House cleaning service
- Residential moving service
- Laundry pick-up and delivery service
All these have a “minimum viable service” version, the service business equivalent of the minimum viable product. You don’t need special equipment, you just need to be willing to do the work.
Want some inspiration? Rapper 50 Cent once spotted a money-making opportunity after a blizzard and started going door-to-door, offering his neighbors to shovel snow at a rate of $100 per house.
He got so much work that way that he had to hire a few neighborhood kids as his “employees” to get everything done!
How to Get Your First Customers
You can get your first customers with these old-fashioned marketing strategies:
Go Door-to-Door
Yes, this approach still works, especially if you learn the basic sales principles.
Consider reading “The Psychology of Selling” by Brian Tracy. It’s a classic sales book that is a great introduction to the subject.
Distribute Flyers
Design a simple black-and-white flyer that explains what you are offering, what your rate is, and how to contact you.
The size of a standard sheet of paper is A4. If you use the A6 size for your flyers, you’ll be able to get four of them out of one sheet of paper.
If you don’t have a printer at home, look for places nearby that offer printing services with volume discounts.
If you don’t feel comfortable putting your personal phone number out there, you can set up a Google Voice number and automatically forward calls to your phone.
Generally speaking, you can probably expect to get 1 lead for every 100 flyers that you distribute.
Learning some basic copywriting can help you increase your flyer conversion rate, though. We recommend reading “Copywriting Secrets” by our friend Jim Edwards. You can get it for free, all he asks is that you pay for shipping.
Of course, not all of those leads are going to become customers, but if you can convert at least 10% of them, you’ll get at least 1 customer for every 1,000 flyers that you distribute.
That may seem like a lot of work to get a single customer, but keep in mind that if you do a good job, they might become a regular and may even recommend you to their family and friends.
So yes, getting customers is going to require a lot of work in the beginning when no one knows you exist, but it will become easier once your business starts gaining momentum.
Post Ads on Local Community Notice Boards
You can probably find community notice boards nearby in places like grocery stores, cafes, libraries, etc.
Create ads for your business and post them there. You can use the same A6 size as for flyers, but make the font larger. Also, consider printing your ads on colorful paper so that they would draw more attention.
How to Grow Your Local Service Business
Once you have some money coming in, you can begin reinvesting it in growing your business:
- Do more of what works until you hit the ceiling. Did you get good results by distributing 100 flyers per day? Cool, start doing 200 per day. Keep increasing that number until it becomes unfeasible due to time constraints.
- Build a company website designed to rank for relevant keywords such as “[your service] [your location]” (e.g. “lawn mowing London”). You will need to learn the basics of local SEO if you want to get organic traffic from Google.
- Build a sales funnel for your business. We recommend reading our co-founder Russell Brunson’s book “DotCom Secrets” if you want to learn how to build sales funnels that convert. You can get it for free directly from us, all we ask is that you cover the shipping!
- Start driving traffic to your sales funnel with local Google ads. These are the ads that are shown at the top of search results for specific keywords. You can learn the basics by getting a Google Ads course on Udemy. Wait until the next sale and you should be able to buy it for less than $20.
#7: Start a Freelancing Business
If you have at least one marketable skill, freelancing can be a great way to make some extra money.
What Service Should You Offer?
Take inventory of your skills and figure out which skill would provide the most value to businesses if you offered it as a service.
Here are some ideas:
- Paid advertising
- Search engine optimization
- Social media marketing
- Backend development
- Frontend development
- User experience design
- User interface design
- Content writing
- Copywriting
- Video editing
All these skills are in high demand. You can make decent money with any of them, especially if you are good at what you do!
How to Build a Portfolio
It’s extremely difficult to get hired as a freelancer if you don’t have any work samples. That’s why your first priority should be to build a portfolio.
One way to do that is to work on your own projects and then show those projects to potential clients.
No one is preventing you from starting your own blog, publishing your own videos on YouTube and TikTok, building your own web apps, etc.
Another way to do it is to create something and give it to potential clients for free. If they decide to use it, ask if it’s okay to add it to your portfolio.
For example, if you want to build an email copywriting portfolio, start writing email sequences for businesses in your target audience for free.
There’s no need to ask permission, just do it and send it to them. Worst case scenario, they won’t use it. Best case scenario, it will lead to paid work!
How to Get Your First Clients
The best way to get your first freelancing clients is cold email:
- Create a new email account specifically for cold emails and use an email warm-up tool like Lemwarm to warm it up.
- Hire a lead generation expert on Fiverr and ask them to compile a list of 100 leads based on your dream customer criteria.
- Pick a proven cold email template and follow-up email templates. We recommend the ones provided in “The Cold Email Manifesto” book.
- Start going through your lead list at a pace of 3 cold emails per day. That way, it will take you a little bit more than a month to reach out to everyone on it.
- Keep track of all emails, responses, and follow-ups. You can either use a simple spreadsheet for this or specialized software like Lemlist.
- If those initial leads were high-quality, meaning that they met your criteria and the provided details were accurate, go to the same lead generation expert and get 1,000 more leads.
- Continue sending 3 cold emails per day but start optimizing your template by making one tweak per 100 emails. Look at the data to see what works best and what doesn’t.
The pace we are recommending is super slow as far as cold outreach goes.
However, it’s best to put a lot of effort into each message and really customize it, which takes time. Sending copy-paste emails doesn’t work and might get you flagged as a spammer by your email service provider.
How to Scale Your Freelance Business
The best way to scale your freelance business is to:
- Productize it – Instead of offering different services at different rates to different clients, create clearly defined service packages and list the pricing on your website.
- Build a sales funnel for it – Again, we recommend reading our co-founder Russell Brunson’s book “DotCom Secrets” if you want to learn how to build sales funnels that convert.
- Start driving traffic to your sales funnel with Facebook ads – You can learn the basics by getting a Facebook ads course on Udemy. If you wait until the next Udemy sale, you should be able to buy it for less than $20.
By the way, Meta, the company that owns Facebook, allows people to browse ads that are currently running on its properties.
You can learn a lot by going to its ad library and looking at the ads that are targeting various keywords related to the service that you are offering.
Keep in mind that the longer the ad has been running, the more likely it is that the campaign is profitable!
Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels That CONVERT?
Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.
He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?
His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.
This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.
But you can also get it directly from us for free…
All we ask is that you pay for shipping!
So what are you waiting for? 🧐