Instead of waiting and possibly going broke while you pursue your dream, you can get creative, develop new skills, and earn money in the process. In fact, there are several things you can do to earn a side income, and most of these activities will easily net you $1,000 in extra income monthly. Here are seven such activities:

  1. Do Content Writing Jobs According to data from Contently, freelancers make an average of about $10,000 to $20,000 annually. A good portion of freelancers make over $50,000 annually. There are many ways you can earn extra income as a freelancer, but one of the most profitable ways is by being a writer. You don’t have to learn to code and you don’t have to be tech-savvy. With above-average writing skills and good marketing, you can build a sustainable working income as a part-time content writer. This is not surprising when you consider the fact that you can make as much as $30-$50 per hour doing content writing jobs on sites like Upwork. If you get paid $30 per hour and you are able to dedicate two hours a day and five days a week to content writing jobs you’ll be able to easily net $1,000 in extra income in a month.
  2. Blog to Make Ends Meet Many of us are familiar with blogging superstars like Arianna Huffington, Pete Cashmere, and Darren Rowse. It is easy to say to ourselves, “Oh, no! I can’t do this!” Do not despair. While your chances of earning a million dollars blogging are very slim, you can earn a realistic side income by blogging. You will achieve the most results by focusing on a small, specialized niche and then looking for a product or service to sell to these people. If done right, even with a small blog of a few thousand visitors it isn’t unusual to earn $500 to $1,000 on the side recommending products and offering your services to readers. Blogging isn’t as complicated as it used to be. Thanks to WordPress and guides like this one, you can have your blog ready in an hour or two.
  3. Make Your Car Work For You If you have a car, you’ve got a better chance at earning extra income than most people. Instead of doing nothing in your spare time or worrying about not having enough income, you can key into the sharing economy to generate some spare change for yourself. You can either rent out your car to others by the hour, or you can act as a temporary driver offering rides to others. This side job allows you to earn up to $35 or more per hour, and when you do this for two hours a day for a month, it quickly adds up to over $1,000 in extra income monthly. Services like Lyft make this possible and easy.
  4. Start a Consulting Business Since you don’t plan to consult full time, don’t expect to be rich from it. However, many people have started a full-time company from a part-time consulting business. A good example is Stefan Kartner, the founder of Realspace3d.com, a 3D printing company. He consulted with businesses on 3D printing while running his dream company. If you have specialized skills the only way to earn isn’t by doing. Instead, you can also earn by directing people what to do. Many companies need help with various areas of their sites. It could be with things like content strategy, marketing strategy, sales strategy, design optimization, etc. The point is that they aren’t very good at doing these things themselves, and they aren’t willing to hire a full-time staff for these basic tasks either. By offering consulting services to these companies you help them save money on employee costs, and you also earn enough on the side while you pursue your dreams.
  5. Be a Part of an Online Jury We’re seeing a lot of interesting cases and verdicts being delivered in the court these days, but how do attorneys know if a case will stand? Thanks to the internet, trial attorneys now hire people to review real cases before taking these cases to court. By having an idea of what regular people think about their case, they have a better idea of whether it will stand in the court or not. A simple Google search will reveal sites that pay you to join an online jury, and many of these sites will pay you up to $60 per case you review. This quickly adds up.
  6. Help Other People Do Their Assignments If you’re bored and need extra cash, what is an easy way to have fun and make money? Help other people do their assignments. There are lots of students who aren’t willing to do their assignments, and who will happily outsource the task online. Here’s an article listing sites that pay people to do assignments for others. It has probably been a long time since you have had school assignments, so have fun challenging your brain and earning money at the same time.
  7. Create Your Own Online Course If you have a special skill that others will love to learn and you’re comfortable in the front of a camera, you just got lucky! You can earn an extra $1,000 monthly by creating video courses for sites like Udemy. A major advantage to creating online courses for sites like Udemy is that you get to benefit from their audience. Udemy boasts over ten million students, and you get to benefit from such a massive audience. To make Udemy work, make sure your course is about something with high demand because it helps if there are not a lot of similar courses already on the site. Featured photo credit: Flickr via flickr.com