Do you have a bit of extra time on your hands every day?
You know, a spare couple of minutes or half an hour you spend googling funny cats or reading malicious comments that only make your head hurt?
Or simply scrolling Facebook?
If you do then it’s time to snap out of it and put that time to good use!
There are thousands of things you could do that will earn you a couple of dollars – liking photos on Instagram is not one of those things.
If you can’t string together a couple of hours to work on something constructive, that’s fine. Even a couple of free minutes will do when it comes to online gigs.
These gigs aren’t exactly jobs. Think of them as online equivalents of car washing and babysitting you did as a teen. Gigs are small tasks that can be completed fast and earn you a couple of bucks in the process.
You won’t get rich doing online gigs. To do that you’re going to have to go into online freelancing (I’ll deal with freelancing in my next post). However, if you don’t have time for that and just want to put your couple of minutes of free time every now and then to good use, then gigs might be right up your alley.
Who Can Make Money with Online Gigs?
Anyone…and I mean that.
The only thing you need is a computer and knowledge of where to look for those gigs. One of the biggest sites offering micro jobs is Amazon Mechanical Turk – the payout is pretty low (only a few cents per task) but all tasks are extremely short and you can probably do them with your eyes closed.
This is just one example of a gig where there is no previous knowledge required, no expertise to speak of needed. You simply complete a very mundane, boring task in one minute and you get paid for it.
Ways to Make Money with Online Gigs
Of course, that’s one way of approaching online gigs and it’s a very casual approach that doesn’t require too much thinking.
There are several more examples in that area:
Receipt Hog – get paid to scan and upload your receipts. This company sells them to businesses doing consumer research so you’re helping to shape future sales tactics.
User Testing – get paid $10 to test new apps and pages for 15 minutes max.
If you’d like to earn a bit more, you’re going to have to approach your gigs in a more organized fashion.
There are tons of ways to do this but I’ll just give you two examples – language lessons and Fiverr.
iTalkie – we all take English for granted but there are millions of people who can’t speak it well but need to because of their work. iTalkie allows you to help those people practice the language most of us take for granted and get paid for it – you don’t even have to be a certified English teacher!
Fiverr – are you a caricaturist, animator, voice-over artist, or anything of the sorts? Create a gig on Fiverr and earn $5 (or more) by offering your services to the world. The time it takes you to complete a Fiverr gig will depend on your line of work but gigs are usually short and can be done in less than 20 minutes if you have the skills
Recommended Resources
Where to Find Online Gigs
If you find yourself checking Facebook and Twitter constantly throughout your day, add up those minutes and see how much time you're actually wasting?
How much better would it be to put those minutes to good use, doing small tasks and earning a dollar or two every time you feel bored? Stop wasting your precious time - it's worth more money than you think!