5.5 Side hustles for up to $500/day

Working less for more

Earning money is hard, fatiguing, and time-consuming. At the end of the day when we get that paycheck, we’re often not satisfied with what we get for all the work we put in.

Perhaps you’re a medium writer, and your stats are just not going up no matter what you try. Perhaps you work at a typical 9–5, providing all sorts of mental and physical labour. Or perhaps you are just looking to be productive and make some extra money on the side.

The truth is, there are so many ways to make money that don’t require previous experience or an advanced skill set. Some jobs can pay well over $100 an hour with minimum requirements.

Others can save you thousands of dollars with minimal commitment, or pay higher than the national average pay in the US doing what you love.

To get you started on your side hustling journey, below is a compiled list of 5.5 side hustles that can make up to $500 a day; much more than many full-time jobs.

1. Italki

Italki is a job almost everyone can do; as long as you are a fluent English speaker. It is one of the largest legitimate language learning platforms online, with millions of students worldwide and thousands of tutors.

How much can you earn?

You don’t need a degree or other specific qualifications, and you can earn on average from $5-$80 an hour.

Italki works as a teacher marketplace, so you can set your own pricing. Typically, new tutors begin with lower wages and offer trial lessons, but as you become more popular and successful on the platform, you can begin increasing your price over time.

What you want first is to get demand via low prices, and then you can increase your price once that demand is secured.

How do you get started?

The application process is extremely simple. The link above takes you straight to their application section.

It consists of answering basic questions, completing a video introduction, and uploading any teaching certifications if you claim to be a professional teacher.

If you’re not a professional teacher, you can still be a community tutor, and a lot of people hire community tutors to help them get used to a language by speaking to different people.

You also get to choose different video platforms for teaching, and the sheer popularity of Italki will bring you a lot of clients.

However, success will not come quickly and is dependent on a variety of factors such as how much you charge.

Remember, while you should set your wages to be low and affordable in the beginning, I don’t recommend setting them to extremely low amounts.

You don’t want your clients to think you’re just offering poor-quality teaching or scamming them. You want a price that suggests you are worth something but is also affordable for them.

I would recommend starting with approximately $10-$20 an hour, then periodically (per few months or few weeks) bump your prices up by $1 or half a dollar. This is primarily to keep up with the current high inflation and also increase your profit in the long run.

2. GoTranscript

Have you ever wondered where the captions of videos you watch come from?GoTranscript is an example of a Speech-to-Text service, where transcriptionists and captioners do their job. Luckily, you can join in as a freelancer.

Working for GoTranscript may sound like a boring, repetitive experience. That’s not true. Not only are you able to watch various videos, but you also have those weekly payouts to look forward to.

How much can you earn?

On GoTranscript, you are paid decently up to $0.60 per minute.

On a larger scale, you can earn up to $1,215 per month part-time (this time not considering the nine-to-five scenario). It’s quite a rewarding amount for a part-time job.

You might be asking: Why would I work for Go Transcript at a lower pay rate when I can work for the other higher-paying transcription services out there?

You do the choosing.

The truth is, none of these jobs are meant to be full-time. While there are constantly projects to do for other side hustles, if the current deadlines do not match your schedule, there’s nothing you can do.

Go Transcript can be an alternative when working at another side hustle (e.g. transcription service) is temporarily not an option. Additionally, sometimes you may find an easier task on one platform that you would prefer to do.

Captioning is a simple task that becomes part of your muscle memory. If you’re looking for a day of rest, this is a much better job than others where you have to come up with solutions with your clients, hold interviews, or write long articles and never-ending reports.

GoTranscript can serve as an excellent backup plan for killing time and getting at least some compensation for it.

Personally, I always like to have multiple options to choose from. This allows me to maximize my productiveness and earnings; hence why I recommend you keep Go Transcript on your list.

3. Vocal

Vocal, much like medium, is a platform where you write. Although it is much smaller than medium, Vocal can make writers a lot of money.

Writers can publish their written articles on medium to vocal and make a few extra bucks from them. You’d be creating an entirely new income source from articles you had previously written.

How much can you earn?

Vocal has a feature for readers to send writers tips, which can further add to their earnings. There are also regular writing challenges you can compete in for a grand cash prize.

For example, in Vocal’s Fiction writing challenge, 25 winners were awarded $5,000 and had their short stories published in Vocal’s book.

The most attractive part yet of writing on vocal is the occasional bonuses you may receive. Although these bonuses are usually minor from $5.00-to $50.00, they are easy to achieve as you can get bonuses for publishing a certain amount of articles or reaching a certain amount of views.

Otherwise, your base earnings are completely dependent on how successful your articles are. If your article was successful on medium, chances are it would be the same on vocal.

Potential (not guaranteed) milestones:

• $5 for your 5th article
• $10 for your 10th article
• $50 for your 50th article
• $5 for “top story”
• $5 for “awesome story” (a story with Vocal as the topic)
• $5 for 1000 views
• Bonus for 10,000 views

Visit this helpful vocal article for a detailed list:

4. Rover

If you love hanging out with animals, especially the likes of cats and dogs (and get paid for it), this is the job for you. Rover is a pet-based online marketplace where people offer and purchase pet care services.

The best thing about it is that it is extremely flexible, you can be as involved as you want, and hence be working on your other income streams while working for Rover.

The signup process is also fairly simple as they have included a guide on their website rover.com. Essentially you’ll go through the following:

1. Setting your rates, availability, and pet preferences.
2. Create your profile.
3. Provide testimonials from past clients (to help boost your success in getting hired).
4. Pass a safety quiz and submit a background check for pet owners to trust you.

How much can you earn?

Working for rover as a side hustle can earn you up to $1000 per month. That’s an extra $12000 a year to add to your income. Of course, ultimately your earnings are dependent on your commitment to the job and the type of service you offer.

According to Indeed.com, the average salary on Rover is $18.04 per hour in the United States, which is 13% higher than the national average. However, there have been cases where people were paid up to $38.25 an hour.

If you have some extra time on your hands that you’d rather spend with the animals you love, why not get paid for doing it? Although Rover’s pay is not as substantial as some of the other items on this list, having no requirements and high flexibility certainly makes up for it.

5. UserTesting.com

UserTesting is a place where you can easily earn money by simply doing tests that help various brands improve their products and services. You can be testing websites and apps for big online companies such as Canva, Subway, or GoDaddy.

The great thing is that each of these tests can be as short as 5-minutes, making this an excellent low commitment side hustle that also has great earnings potential.

How much can you earn?

UserTesting pays varying amounts depending on the test:

• $4 USD for a 5-minute test
• $10 USD for a 20-minute test
• $30-$120 USD for live interviews and longer tests

With the availability of live interviews and longer tests, working for UserTesting.com can potentially make you over $500 a day.

To give you an idea of how much this can make you if it was a full-time 9–5 job, by only doing 20-minute tests you can earn up to $30/hour and $87,600 a year.

If you commonly participate in those live interviews and larger testing projects, you can very well boost that full-time income to $100,000+ annually.

However, since there may not be an infinite amount of tests for you, working for UserTesting every day for 8 hours is not always possible. According to Glassdoor, a more accurate “salary” for a tester is $67,962 a year on average.

Tests are still released daily, and the best will be matched to your profile.

I would recommend focusing on those higher-paying tests and interviews, as they are better worth your time. Instead of working for hours a day looking for new tests, occasionally check back for high-paying tests and only do those. After all, this is a side hustle and you’re not meant to be working on it full-time. Doing so also ups your chances of making +$500/day, and sets your hourly wage to $100 an hour.

The key takeaway to the estimated annual earnings is that if you work for multiple user testing websites as well as other high-paying side hustles, you can very well make such a high income comparable to full-time jobs.

How do you get started?

Getting started with UserTesting is simple and easy. The whole process consists of four steps:

1. Apply. Enter your email and complete a practice test to join the team of trusted contributors.
2. Browse. Complete a quick survey that will help you match with test opportunities.
3. Test. Share your opinions and perspectives on the product or service you are testing.
4. Make Money.

Payment for a test comes via PayPal 7 days after completing it.

5.5. Field Agent

A bonus “side hustle” that can help you save and make money conveniently

Grocery shopping can be a painful necessity or a “fun” luxury. Either way, getting paid while you shop can greatly enhance your experience.

Field Agent is an app you can download on the app store that pays you for going to certain stores and taking pictures of products they ask you to take.

There are also a variety of different tasks you can choose to do, including product testing (the product will be given to you for free), surveys, or asking store employees a few questions.

By following their instructions carefully and correctly, you can immediately make money within a few minutes.

How much can you earn?

While there is no set amount, some people have been able to make over $100 a day, while others have earned around $20 dollars with minimal commitment per week.

Your earnings are dependent on your commitment and overall schedule. On average, I estimate that you can earn $20-$30/hr on average. Assuming that working on Field Agent can be a full-time job, this means you’ll be earning $58400-$87600 annually if you work 8 hours a day.

Quite impressive for a simple, easy, and no-requirement job.

However, your location is a determining factor in your success using Field Agent. Moreover, there isn’t an infinite amount of tasks to do.

Field Agent should not be something you completely rely on for income, but it’s a great tool to save up on your expenses, and probably the most convenient way of making money.

For more information, you can check out my article featuring an entire guide on Field Agent:

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