There is no bad time to become a blogger. Simply the sooner you start, the larger a blog can grow. In this article, we’re going to show you how to start a money-making blog in under 5 minutes.
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
We all have the stress nightmare where your boss comes out of the blue and says “You’re fired”. That’s it and we spend the rest of the night in a panic. The problem is if it did actually ever happen, most of us don’t have a plan in case we do get fired.
Whether you’re thinking about losing your job due to stress, COVID-19, or any slew of reasons, it helps to have a plan. To lay out a blueprint, if this ever happened to me, here are 10 things to do if you lost your job and need money now.
It seems silly and not productive, but taking a breath is essential. People are let go or fired for a number of reasons and it’s not always a reflection of you or your work. Some things are just out of your control. Take an hour or take a day to let is sink it so it doesn’t consume you later.
Take a look at all the money you currently have. I personally use Mint to see all my bank accounts, credit card debt, and student loans all at once. You don’t need this, but make a list of every dollar in your possession. Look over your finances and get a feeling of how long you’ll last without a paycheck. It may not be pretty, but it’s something you absolutely need to know.
Know how much you need to spend each month, here is an example monthly breakdown:
PS. Also, consider health insurance as a cost. In most cases, your old employer would have provided this for you, but you need to talk to your HR to see how long this lasts. You may need to pick up supplemental health insurance until you get a new job.
Hopefully, you have some sort of Emergency Fund you can access if you lose your job. Your emergency fund will help cover rent/mortgage, food, and those expenses your paycheck normally covers. Most emergency funds should cover 4-6 months of expenses. If you don’t have an emergency fund, start saving up now but the following tips can still help.
I personally have an emergency fund I keep in a savings account, that will last me around 6-7 months. I know many people don’t have that. It took me 5 years to build. However it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done because it provides a mental safety net.
Let’s continue though as if you have $0 emergency funds.
If you just lost your job, you shouldn’t be watching Netflix, Hulu, or listening to Spotify. If you have any kind of subscription services that cost money regularly, you should cancel these until you get a job again. It may feel like a nice break watching Netflix between job applications, but you need to save all the money you can until you’re working again. If you feel this is too hard to do, consider using your parent’s or friend’s account temporarily to save money.
Needless to say, don’t make any crazy purchases thinking you’ll get a job next week when “you really try”. Until you have a signed contract with a company, I’d suggest avoiding the mall and any kind of gift ideas. If you can, cancel any flights, trips, running races, etc. Plus always ask if you can get your money back. It may not always be possible, but every little bit helps!
For me personally, I would cancel my gym membership ($73/mo.), cancel my Spotify account ($10/mo.) since there is a free version, and I’d probably quit investing in my brokerage account ($200/mo.) until I have a steady paycheck.
During hard economic times, many companies are willing to work with you because they prefer late payments to nothing at all. Student loan services are often willing to reconsolidate loans or defer payments. Banks are sometimes willing to defer a mortgage payment or at least help with options. It often just takes a call and asks.
For me personally, I would call my student loan companies and ask to defer my payments until I get another job. That would save me $537/mo.
One of the biggest ways people spend money is food and eating out. If you just lost your job, avoid going out to eat with friends (unless it’s a networking thing) or ordering in. It may not be sexy, but cold cut sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and ramen got you through the dark years, it will again.
You know what you can cut to save money and you’ll see instant savings in your bank account. Remember one of the easiest ways of having more money, is not spending it!
One of the most popular tricks people use to limit spending is paying for food only with cash. The act of seeing the money physically leaving your wallet and the empty vacuum it creates, helps people be more selective with their purchases. I personally use credit cards because I enjoy the cash back, but I can’t argue with the success physical money has in limiting spending.
If you lost your job and actively seeking new work, you can file for unemployment. It varies state by state, but essentially you would file a claim with the Department for Labor and Employment and prove you’re actively looking for work every 2 weeks (depending on your state). Unemployment benefits will pay you a portion (likely small) of your previous salary. This is meant to help lessen the negative impact that unemployment has on the economy. It won’t be a glamorous option and you’ll meet some interesting people, but it will help.
This is the time to update your resume with the latest accomplishments, promotions, volunteer efforts, jobs, references, etc. As you start the job search you want to make yourself look as good as possible. However, this isn’t limited to your resume. You should be updating your LinkedIn, Facebook, etc with the latest info so you’re casting a wider net for employers.
Don’t worry too much about how your resume looks, just that the information sounds grammatically correct and makes you look good! Many companies will force to you to copy all the exact same information into their often terrible online web forms. On the bright side, if your LinkedIn is up-to-date, you can always use their “one-click apply” to jobs posted on their site.
YouTube is also a great resource if you use it to better yourself now that you have free time. There are great exercise tutorials on YouTube, classes on coding (if you’re into high-paying jobs), and even brush up on software like Microsoft Excel. Use this opportunity to start a new job with a new skill set!
It may feel embarrassing for you to tell anyone that you’re jobless. It’s a very vulnerable situation where you feel like something is wrong with you. There isn’t! It’s a normal thing, and job searching is a $200 billion dollar industry. People are constantly moving and switching jobs, you are now just one of them.
In most cases, when you tell people that you’re looking for a job, they want to help! They’ll often share new job openings they’ve heard of, or perhaps make recommendations to people they know in your industry. The fact is your chances of finding a new job dramatically increase when more people are on your team, helping you get a job.
I personally will change my LinkedIn page to “Looking for an Awesome Opportunity” and email my friends and family that I’m actively looking. More often than not, they will understand (because we’ve all been there before) and they’ll want to help!
If you just lost your job and looking for extra money, consider selling your extra stuff on Craigslist or eBay. All that extra stuff in your apartment/house like old bikes or snowboards could make a couple of hundred dollars with a new family. That’s a lot of extra ramen noodles! Plus it’s a rewarding feeling getting rid of some of the junk in your life.
I write all the time for a blog, but I discovered there are other places on the internet that pay you for writing! I’ve written a couple of articles on Seeking Alpha that pay $35 per article and $0.01 for every page view. It usually comes around $70/article in the long run.
With your new free time, this is probably one of the easiest ways to earn extra money while unemployed. You’ll have lots of extra time and most of the sites I listed pay between $50 – $100 per article.
For me personally, this is my plan. Spend my mornings looking for new jobs and my evenings writing articles. If I can write 1 article a night, at $50 per article. That’s an extra $1,500/month!
We regularly talk about creative ways to make money, but some of the quickest ways to make extra cash are side-gigs. These are tasks that you can do anytime on different established platforms:
Many of these could be done in your afternoons while you spending your mornings (often the most productive time of the day) job searching for new opportunities.
Losing your job is incredibly scary, but there are TONS of resources here and online to help you find a new job and supplement your income. Hopefully, this helps make losing your job a bit less scary and aids in setting up your own backup plan!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
For the record, I actually won money with the StepBet app, and the money was delivered the next day via PayPal. See how much below.
StepBet, owned by WayBetter, is both an Android and Apple app that pays users money for reaching their daily step goals through walking or running. The StepBet app achieves this by offering multiple mini-games or step challenges for users to choose from. At the start of each mini-game, all participants are required to put in their own money ($10-$100) along with a pool of people (I’ve seen up to 1,000 people) and each must reach their individual step goals every day for multiple weeks (average 6 weeks). If you fail to reach your goals, you lose your money. While if you reach your goals, you split the pool of money along with the other winners.
Once you download the highly reviewed StepBet App, it will automatically run through a couple of prompts.
You WILL need to sync with an actual electronic pedometer. These can be a wearable Fitbit, Apple Watch, Garmin Device, or your phone’s internal pedometer through Google Fit or S Health. It’s vital to play. For the StepBet Review, I chose to use my phone and since it’s a Samsung, I synced with my default “S Health” app.
StepBet will link to the device you’ve chosen and review your past step history to create new step goals for you. There is no easy or hard difficulty, your goals are automatically calculated from your device’s past data. If your electronic pedometer shows you normally walking 20,000 steps a day, your daily goals are going to be around 20,000 steps and vice versa if you’re new to walking. Each “daily goal” is specifically set for you as an individual so you’re not competing with anyone except yourself.
I was initially encouraged to sign up for a “Members Only” mini-game but I decided to try a “normal” experience for this StepBet Review.
The StepBet Membership is a monthly $6.99 rate that allows you to play more games, different types of games, multiple games at a time, and has higher payouts since StepBet has reduced fees for these games.
My girlfriend purchases a monthly StepBet membership and enjoys it. So far it’s paid off as she’s been able to earn more money than it costs.
Each mini-game is hosted by real people also participating in the step challenge, so you can set up your own game with friends, open it to the public, or join someone else’s game. Since StepBet is an app based on a community pot payout, the larger the buy-in and more players involved create higher rewards if you win and other people fail.
StepBet has a number of mini-games to choose from, but you will notice quite a few “Members Only” games that StepBet will rank higher and shows noticeable favoritism. However, most mini-games were similar in terms of buy-in ($40 average) and length of weeks (6 weeks).
For the StepBet Review, I choose a mini-game called “Stepping into Spring w/ DSM”. I don’t know who this person is, but they had a nice description for the StepBet and shared their Instagram “Diary of A Shrinking Mommy“. I loved their story so I joined her StepBet!
After I selected “Join Game” I was asked for my $40 payment and how I would like to pay. They provided 3 easy payment options “PayPal”, “Venmo”, or “Credit or Debit Card”. I went with Venmo and authorized it.
Week 1 I learned was a warm-up week. I could walk and attempt all my step goals, but I would not be penalized if I didn’t reach them (Thank goodness, because I did not). It’s a warm-up period for you to acclimate using the app and getting into a routine. This warm-up week was much appreciated!
This is what my StepBet Dashboard looked like in Week 1 of the StepBet Review:
Thoughts:
I’m excited about the additional motivation to exercise, plus the potential to win money. However, I’m a little worried that I started this StepBet during the COVID19 pandemic.
I’m forced to walk in circles isolated in my tiny apartment to reach my goals. Hopefully, my neighbors aren’t making too many judgments through the window.
At the end of week 1, I noticed more people joined this mini-game (814 players) and the pot had grown exponentially to $32,560. It didn’t stop growing until the end of Week 1. At that point, everyone was locked in.
Active Goals and Power Goals took me a second to understand. It’s done automatically so you can hit your Active and Power days any time of the week. You’ll notice in the screenshots I’m all over the place.
This is what my StepBet Dashboard looked like in Week 2 of the StepBet Review:
Honestly, it was a little tough to constantly remember to meet my step goals, especially since I usually left my pedometer/phone at my desk. I had to consciously remember to have it on me at all times for my steps to be counted towards StepBet. There were nights I had to walk in circles in my apartment because I simply forgot to have my phone on me during the day. I lost a lot of steps simply because my pedometer wasn’t on me.
If I did this again after the StepBet Review, I would get some wearable pedometer so every step I made during the day was recorded and counted towards StepBet. I know Adam has the Garmin Fenix 6, and loves it! I personally have been looking to get a cheaper version after this challenge, the Garmin Forerunner 235. If you’re an Apple fan, just get the Apple Watch since it will integrate with everything in your life. Yet for the cheapest pedometer that will work with StepBet, a regular Fitbit will be perfect!
I did it! I was so excited I took a screenshot to show all my friends. Many of them could care less, but for me, it was a big victory. It was a testament that I went above and beyond for fitness goals (and money). It was a good feeling!
I was pleasantly surprised at how streamlined the winning process was through StepBet. It took only one day after the end of the mini-game for the app to finalize everyone’s data and send out the final results/winnings. Plus I was allowed to immediately request a payout and deposit my winnings into PayPal (PayPal Only).
I’ll admit I expected a bit more than $2.99 for my total winnings. Especially since I had been calculating the math every week of the StepBet Review as people dropped out. I could see 645 players of 813 original won, and the $32,520 pot was going to be split between all of us winners. I figured each person would get $50.41 or $10.41 in profit. I was wrong because I didn’t calculate fees for StepBet. However, I still won money!
I absolutely do not encourage cheating, as this was a great community of people bettering themselves through walking and I was just happy to be included. While I did not cheat, nor know anyone who has ever cheated. After my 6-week StepBet Review experiment ended, I did test a few ways people can fool their phone’s pedometer if they had ill intentions.
While these are effective for fooling your pedometer, they do require a bit of effort to pull off continuously day after day, week after week. I personally think StepBet should remove or identify users who use phones over wearable devices since phones seem to be easier to fool steps.
Yes! If you are used to doing lots of steps every day, I would easily recommend StepBet. It combines exercise and winning real money. You’re not competing against anyone except yourself, so as long as you’re vigilant in meeting your individual step goals, you’ll leave the app with money in your pocket. Plus, if you’re lucky, maybe a few walking friends.
Our winnings, along with all the money we make with these different money experiments are added to our Investment Portfolio. Join our email list below for new experiment ideas and see how we invest our winnings!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
There’s always the potential for certain side hustles to turn into long-term, stable jobs as well, depending on your commitment and success.
If you’re searching for that all-important side hustle inspiration, here are some ideas you might want to try.
Not only is this a fun pastime for those wanting to keep their hands busy, but it’s also a potential money-maker if you’re particularly skilled. Furniture upcycling is not only a fantastic way to earn a little profit, but it’s also putting old goods to better use and reducing waste impact.
You can seek out old or second-hand furniture and give it a new lease of life by updating it, or perhaps even completely transforming it if you have the skills. You can then aim to sell the new items for more than you paid for them (you may even be able to find some old furniture items for free!).
You may be thinking this is a little ambitious for a side-hustle, but you don’t have to have aspirations to be a bestselling author to make money from your writing work (though, of course, if you do want to become a bestselling author, writing on the side is a great place to start!).
Writing a book for extra income can be done in many ways. You should mainly think about the areas you can make money from and which are in demand. Writing non-fiction books for areas you have expertise in, for example, is a good way to use your existing knowledge to potentially earn some money. You can find guides on how to write a book for non-fiction purposes, or if you feel as though you’re onto a winner for a fiction book, you can always try self-publishing with the potential to earn royalties!
You may already have a beloved hobby that sees you making unique pieces; this could be anything, from artwork, acrylic work, making your own jewelry, knitting, and more! Anything you’re already skilled with and which you can make means the potential to sell and earn some cash.
Blogging is a great way to let your creative juices flow (with a little less pressure than writing a book!) and build on your writing skills. There’s potential to earn money with successful blogs if you build your online profile enough, and you can also look for guest post submission opportunities to build your expertise.
Do any of these appeal to you? Just remember, you don’t need to have these skills from the off in order to make money or protect your financial future. You can work on building any of these skills and more in order to set yourself up for extra earning down the line.
If getting paid to play your favorite games sounds like a dream, you should consider starting a Twitch stream. Of course, before embarking on any new online venture, you need to ask the important questions: Is it lucrative? How much do Twitch streamers make, and is it worth your time to become one?
To answer these questions, we have to start with the basics. Here is everything you need to know about what Twitch is and how streamers make money with the platform.
Twitch is an online platform dedicated to live streaming. It began as Justin.tv in 2007 as a way to let anyone broadcast content online. Gaming quickly became one of the top categories for both viewers and creators, so in 2011 the category was separated from the original platform and rebranded as Twitch. In 2014, the original Justin.tv shut down, and the Twitch portion was sold to Amazon.
Although most users are still gamers, the platform has expanded to include an array of content creators. You can find artists, fitness enthusiasts, computer builders, and a wide variety of niche entertainers live streaming their content on the platform. The possibilities are endless.
Streaming on Twitch is a popular and rapidly growing side hustle. The number of Twitch users doubled during the pandemic, with people turning to online work for both an outlet and a way to make extra money from home.
To start making money on Twitch, you first need to get your stream set up and organized, and then you need to work towards becoming a Twitch Affiliate.
To achieve this, you need to stream for at least 500 minutes on 7 unique broadcast days in the last thirty days, have at least fifty followers, and maintain an average of three concurrent viewers over the thirty-day period. This sounds easyenough, but it’s more complicated than it seems to get three or more people to watch your stream regularly. There are some tricks to it, and if you work hard at it, you can become a Twitch affiliate in less than thirty days.
Once you achieve affiliate status, you can start earning money by playing your favorite video games. There are four main ways that affiliates make money: subscriptions, cheering, affiliate marketing, and ads.
Most Twitch Affiliates first start earning money with subscriptions, commonly called subs. Subs are a way for fans to show support and appreciation. There are three subscription levels, and streamers make different amounts of money based on what tier someone subscribed with.
The revenue is split with Twitch, so streamers will only make half of each sub’s subscription cost (i.e., $2.5 for every tier 1 subscription). Most fans only subscribe at the tier 1 level, so most streamers make about $2.5 per subscription. If you only get tier 1 subscribers, you would need approximately 425 subs per month to be above the Federal Poverty Level. According to Twitch Tracker, only a little over 120 streamers meet that criteria. It’s important to note that Twitch Tracker is flawed, as only streamers who have volunteered to disclose their statistics are featured. However, it’s the only source of data available.
One cool thing about subs is that all Amazon Prime users get one free subscription per month with their Amazon Prime membership. If you are a new affiliate, you can probably get some family members and friends to subscribe to you with their free Prime sub. That’s the easiest way to start making money on the platform.
Cheering is another easy and popular way to earn money on Twitch. Fans can buy bits, Twitch’s virtual currency, and then “cheer” with them when their favorite streamer does something complex or entertaining. Bits are only worth a penny apiece (though it costs more than that to purchase them, as Amazon takes about 20%), and most fans cheer in 100-bit increments – though that’s not a requirement. Fans can cheer as little or as many bits as they’d like.
Twitch streamers can also monetize with bits by adding extensions to their stream that allow viewers to pay for a particular action to happen. Most of the extensions will play a specific sound or make something pop up on the screen. Each streamer controls how much each action costs and usually sets them between 50 and 100 bits.
One way that Twitch Streamers can make a paltry amount of money is through ads. Once a streamer reaches affiliate status, a pre-roll ad will automatically start playing when new viewers check out the channel. Twitch shares the ad revenue with the streamer, but unfortunately, if you don’t have many viewers, it will be so low that it’s almost negligible.
After doing the math based on my own streams and revenue, I determined that most Twitch Affiliates earn about one cent per average viewer. New affiliates who only get between three and ten average viewers per stream will only make between three and ten cents in ad revenue per stream.
However, as your average viewership increases, your share of ad revenue will increase as well. Streamers who can draw fifty or more average viewers can make 2-3 cents per viewer, and streamers who draw huge crowds can make even more. Even so, ads are not the primary source of income for most streamers.
A final way that Twitch Streamers make money is through affiliate marketing. Once you become an affiliate, you gain exclusive access to Amazon’s Blacksmith program, which is really just the gamer’s version of the Amazon Affiliate program. The advantage to joining the Blacksmith program is that you earn higher commissions on certain items, and you don’t get kicked out after three months without a sale.
With the Amazon Blacksmith program, you can set up an extension that adds your affiliate links directly to your stream. If viewers click those links and make a purchase, the streamer will earn a small commission.
Affiliate marketing is not limited to the Amazon Blacksmith program. There are various affiliate programs designed specifically for streamers; and others that lend themselves to streaming. Streamers can drop an affiliate link in the stream chat, in a panel, or even in their discord server.
Although it’s possible to make money via affiliate marketing as a small streamer, it’s not likely to be a top income source. To earn money with this method, you need to attract viewers, and those viewers need to click your links to purchase an item. If you are only attracting a handful of viewers each stream, the odds that one will click your link and make a purchase are incredibly low.
Even with all of these monetization methods, the harsh reality is that most streamers won’t make a lot of money. Small streamers may get a handful of subs and a few cheers, but they won’t make enough to quit their day jobs. Although there is no solid data on how much Twitch Streamers make, the reality is that most don’t make a lot. Many streamers don’t even make enough money each month to reach the payout threshold of $100.
The streamers you hear about making millions of dollars, like Ninja (here’s Ninja’s Net Worth) and Disguised Toast, graduated from Twitch Affiliate to Twitch Partner.
A Twitch Partner is a streamer who can draw an audience. Partners have contracts with Twitch that give them exclusive access to various tools, including more emotes, priority support, and access to special promotional opportunities to help grow their channel.
To apply for the Partner Program, you need to stream for 25 hours on 12 different days and reach an average of 75 viewers during the last 30 days. Unlike an affiliate, a partnership is not guaranteed. Twitch manually reviews all applications to its Partner Program to decides whether the applicant is a good fit. Many streamers have to apply numerous times before they get accepted. Twitch doesn’t offer any further clues about what they are looking for in Partners outside of saying they want streamers who will be role models for the community.
According to Twitch Tracker, there are about 46000 Twitch Partners. That means less than 1% of all streamers have reached partner status, where streaming on Twitch becomes profitable.
Twitch Partners make money in much the same way as affiliates, with subscriptions, ads, cheers, and affiliate marketing. However, as they have far more average viewers per stream, they tend to make a lot more money on these four methods.
There’s also one additional way that Twitch Partners make money, and that’s through sponsorships.
Sponsorship is when a brand pays an influencer to promote their product. As Twitch Partners can draw a large audience, brands like to pay them to use their items and sell them to their viewers. Some Twitch Partners have been sponsored by gaming companies, clothing companies, chair companies, and various other industries. Top streamers make the majority of their income via sponsorship deals.
Although it is possible that you can score a sponsorship opportunity before becoming a Partner, it’s not likely. Please be careful of any company that claims to offer a sponsorship but makes you pay for the product in advance. In that case, you are not a partner, you are a customer, and the business is preying on your desire for brand sponsorships to sell you their products. Please don’t let them take advantage of you.
Twitch affiliates get paid the month after they reach the $100 payment threshold. If you reach $100 in your account during May, the payment won’t be processed until the 15th of June. It generally takes 3-5 business days to process, so you should receive the payment around the 20th of June. The payment will cover all of the money you earned in May as well.
Although most Twitch streamers make money via the methods addressed above, they aren’t the only ways to make money. There are a variety of ways to make money online using your Twitch stream as a marketing tool.
Donations are the easiest way for non-affiliated streamers to start making money. All you need is a free Streamlabs account and a PayPal account. Streamlabs has a menu that allows you to configure your PayPal information securely. Once you have that setup, you need to add a link to it in one of your Twitch panels. Viewers can then click on the link and send money to you directly via Paypal.
Keep in mind that although the setup is easy, getting people to donate to you is not. As a small streamer, it won’t be easy to convince a few viewers to donate. However, difficult doesn’t mean impossible, and if you are creative, you can find ways to entice viewers to donate.
Some streamers make money by monetizing their discord servers. Many who go this route offer access to the general discord for free and lock specific channels so that only those who pay can view them. These locked channels may offer exclusive access to content in a popular streamer’s discord or additional partnership and collaboration opportunities in a stream growth discord. Others don’t offer any free access and make users pay for a general invite. They may even offer tiers so that higher-paying members can access more content.
Others may monetize their discord servers with affiliate marketing and merchandising. Instead of having people pay to join, they draw their Twitch viewers. Then use the server as a sales funnel for their products.
It’s not easy to monetize a Discord server. It can be challenging to grow the server to a point where people would want to pay to access it. However, for those who don’t want to rely solely on Twitch for income, it can be worth the effort.
A lot of gamers create branded merchandise and use Twitch to promote these items. Gamers may create merchandise with their catchphrases, emotes, or logos on them. Although some create the products themselves, most utilize print-on-demand platforms to handle sales and delivery. A site like Teepublic is perfect for making an online store to display and sell your gaming merchandise.
Other streamers use Twitch as a way to advertise their freelance services. Graphic designers, crafters, and artists of all types broadcast their creative process to promote their online business. Users who show interest in the work can pay for commissions on platforms such as Fiverr.
It’s weird to say that Twitch streamers monetize via YouTube, as the two platforms are technically competitors. However, many streamers use both. Although it’s against Twitch’s terms of service to live stream to both platforms simultaneously, you can upload content to YouTube that you streamed on Twitch after 24 hours. Many streamers use Twitch for a live platform, then edit and upload the videos to their YouTube channel. This allows them to monetize both platforms and lets them reach a larger audience.
Showcasing all these methods of making money online with Twitch is to answer the big question. How much do Twitch streamers make? And clearly, the answer is that it varies wildly. There are so many money-making opportunities on the platform that it’s impossible to say how much streamers make average.
However, one constant and important thing to remember about streaming on Twitch is that you will not make money quickly. It is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Many gamers decide that they want to turn their hobbies into a side business and think they will earn a lot of money immediately if they plug and play. That’s not the case. If your primary goal is to earn extra cash in your spare time, streaming probably isn’t the best option. Instead, it would help if you looked into side gigs like pet-sitting, driving for Lyft, completing chores with TaskRabbit, or freelancing with Upwork. These side hustles are great ways to make extra money quickly.
Streaming is not an easy way to make money. It can be extremely profitable, but you need to put in a lot of upfront work to start earning any money. However, if you are a passionate gamer and serious about building a community, it’s a gratifying undertaking.
This article originally appeared on Your Money Geek and has been republished with permission.
Over 30 million Americans and countless people in other countries around the world have already lost their jobs because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There might be more of them in the future as the recession becomes worse. And even if you are one of the lucky ones who are still employed, your salary might take a dip. And don’t forget that prices will likely grow fast and hard.
All in all, now is the time to get all the side hustle income you can. Amazon is one of the prime providers of such. It’s not only launching an Amazon affiliate website that can help you make money on this platform. Becoming a full-fledged seller is a much better route if you want to make substantial money.
The first thing you need to do in order to become an Amazon seller is to choose products to sell. If you are planning this business as a side hustle, there is no point for you to develop a personal brand. Instead, you should start selling products that already exist. This will allow you to get straight to selling as you will be able to use existing listings. You also won’t have to promote the products from scratch and try to generate reviews.
When you are starting out, you should focus on products that are likely to sell well. Amazon itself will help you with its Best Sellers list.
Also, use price-tracking tools like CamelCamelCamel. They will allow you to track the volatility of the product’s price. You should always choose the most stable option you can. This will reduce your risks as you won’t have to worry about sudden price drops that will make you lose all your revenue.
As to the precise product you should sell, pick something you have easy access to. First of all, do some calculations and research. You need to determine how much money you can spare to build your initial stock. From there, see what kind of products you can afford to buy.
Many sources recommend building a personal brand to increase your profits as an Amazon seller. It used to be a valid strategy. However, today the platform is packed with personal brands that all sell the same cheap poor-quality products.
Unless you can afford to splurge on developing a good branding package and invest in high-quality products, starting your own venture like this will be a waste. Instead, make use of a well-known third-party brand by selling its products.
Before you begin, look at our guide on How To Become An Amazon Affiliate, like we did!
If you want to succeed as a seller today, you need to think outside the borders of your own country. Of course, local sales are good. However, you have more opportunities by offering your local top brands to people from different countries. They usually don’t have access to such products, so the demand should be higher.
That said, to become a global seller on Amazon you simply need to register and list your products in chosen foreign marketplaces. Amazon offers a variety of tools that will help you through this process. You can even synchronize your listings and prices across marketplaces and translate product descriptions using built-in services.
All in all, the only work you’ll need to do yourself has to do with money management. You’ll need to research permits and taxes you’ll have to pay as a seller depending on the location. Also, you’ll need to develop a strategy for shipping the products. The cost of shipping might make selling to some countries unviable from the business point of view.
Finally, you need to decide how exactly you are going to get paid. Amazon offers some payment management options for global sellers, including the Amazon Currency Converter. However, that solution is expensive and has some hidden fees. Using third-party money transfer services will be a cheaper option for the majority of sellers.
With the Amazon Currency Converter, you might lose as much as 4.5% of the money your customers pay. This is definitely unacceptable because the revenue margin on such sales is low by default.
Bank wire transfers are out of the question because they are even more expensive. Depending on the country, such transactions might cost up to 10% of the transfer volume. No buyer will agree to pay such a hefty extra charge on something they can buy cheaper from a different seller.
PayPal is a popular payment processing service, but it does have many cons. Those include but aren’t limited to high transfer costs and bad customer service for the sellers.
The best solution for global sellers, at the moment, is offered by money transfer platforms. Companies like TransferWise, WorldFirst, Moneycorp, and OFX, to name a few, specialize in providing cheap international transfers.
A Global Amazon Seller will benefit most from using a service that allows one to create multiple foreign currency accounts. For example, WorldFirst, one of the leaders in the money transfer industry-renowned specifically for its multi-currency accounts, enables online sellers to open USD, EUR, and CAD accounts in nearly every part of the world. Moreover, it even allows for creating foreign currency accounts for sellers in China and Japan.
WorldFirst was recently purchased by Alibaba, so it’s not surprising why many of its services are targeted toward online sellers. With a multi-currency account, a seller will not avoid paying huge fees. They will also get a chance to exchange currencies at near mid-market rates. WorldFirst has one of the lowest FX margins on the market right now. It also has those margins fixed, similar to TransferWise, which is another good money transfer provider online sellers can use.
In the end, the choice of a money transfer company should be determined by your location. These companies offer different rates and terms in different countries. Therefore, you should choose the one that will suit your future customers best.
Now that you’ve registered your Amazon Global Seller account and set up an international payment processing account in preparation for your first sale, you need to make sure that sale happens. To that end, you need to promote your products effectively.
This would be a challenge if you sell the same products as other sellers. In this case, you should do your best to make your specific offer stand out. Try offering the product in rare colors or add a discount coupon for future purchases.
Making your product offer unique might not be an option, but there are other online marketing tactics you can use.
The COVID-19 pandemic has already launched a wave of at-home entrepreneurs and their number will only continue to grow in this recession. Selling on Amazon is one of the side hustles that can truly make a difference for you in this situation. In fact, this business might be able to help you stay above water if you lose your main job.
But in order for your Amazon listing to be successful, you need to treat it like a real business. Take the time necessary to market it well. Make sure that your product pages stand out among competitors by giving better product descriptions and pictures. Offer additional services and, above all, sell internationally. Reaching out to customers abroad will increase your opportunities greatly. And with modern money transfer services, you’ll be able to get revenue from these deals, instead of losing all of it in international transaction fees.
I first heard about Twitch about five years ago and to be honest I thought it was the stupidest idea ever. I thought the idea of watching someone else play video cames sounded like the biggest waste of time. Then I learned that people actually pay others to watch people play. I mean, who honestly would have thought you could earn extra money streaming on Twitch? I would rather just play the video game myself.
About a year later in 2016 news came out that Amazon was going to buy the streaming service for almost one billion dollars. I couldn’t believe it. I finally decided to check out what all of the hype was about.
To my surprise, I was very amused. It was so fun to watch StarCraft videos and learn more about the game I thoroughly enjoyed. To this day I still enjoy watching people play games I enjoy playing. This still includes StarCraft and most recently Call of Duty: Warzone.
Personally, I have always wondered what it takes to get started on Twitch. So once I heard that today’s Side Hustle Spotlight, Tom Siegrist, streamed on Twitch, I knew I had to ask him about it. Luckily for all of us, he agreed to share his story with the Wallet Squirrel family as well.
Back in 2015, Tom and I worked together at one of the country’s major retailers. He might know this but he also gave me the courage to get my photographs into a small Colorado artist only consignment shop. Let’s read what he has to say.
My name is Tom Siegrist. I am a machine operator at a mail-order food kit delivery service. I joke that it is for people that want to eat healthily but are too lazy to shop for everything themselves. My side hustle is that I stream video games on Twitch.
I got into streaming when I walked into a gaming lounge and all the TVs on the walls had people playing video games and recording themselves. I had no idea how they did it or even what IT was they were doing so I asked the manager about it. He told me all about Twitch. From that moment it was a goal of mine to start streaming.
As far as what I bought to stream and my start-up costs if you will, I bought an Xbox One X and a webcam. The new consoles come with the software needed to stream already installed. However, I wanted my stream to be nicer than what the consoles are capable of doing. For that, I needed an external video capture card ($160) and a laptop nice enough to handle the workload of streaming which, at the time, cost me $950 (cheaper options were available).
I have an Xbox One X, a Nintendo Switch, PS4, and a PC. I stream from them all. Initially, I owned just a PS4, but when I decided to start streaming it was when the Xbox One X was released so I decided I wanted the most current console to stream from.
As for why I got the other systems I decided that I want my stream to be as open as possible. All consoles are great and have really fun games, I want to play them ALL MUAHAHAHAHA!
I stream for roughly 3 to 4 hours a day on days I work my day job. Then I stream roughly 7 – 10 hours on my days off. I have been doing this for the last two years.
My favorite part of streaming is the relationships that I have been able to build with people from all over the world. I am by no means a big streamer, but I do have people that have been watching me for a long period of time. I have never met them in person but it doesn’t matter, they stop by and we get to hang out as long as they are there.
Challenges? Good lord too many to name, I have NO idea what I’m doing when it comes to computers and technology so this was/is an abrasive learning experience, to say the least. Every step I’ve taken to advance my stream has had obstacles. When I FIRST started streaming from my Xbox all I had was a capture card and a crappy laptop, only to find out that the laptop wasn’t compatible with the card so I needed to get a NEW laptop. Then when I started streaming my internet plan wasn’t NEARLY enough to stream on (streaming is a data MONSTER) so I had to upgrade my internet plan. Everything you see on my stream (Follow alerts, sound queues, scene transitions, overlay, etc) took COUNTLESS hours of watching how-to videos on YouTube, as well as A LOT of help from my more technologically savvy friends.
I wouldn’t say I specialize in anything really. I do play a lot of 1st person shooters (Halo, Apex Legends, COD: MW) to name a few.
As far as what I would recommend getting started with, it’s easy to pick a popular game like Fortnite or League of Legends, but it’s more important that it be a game you have fun playing. After all, once you get a following it’s really not about the game as much as it’s about being in the streamers company while they are playing the game. Sure some of them may stop by to see you play, but they will come and go quickly, once you have a loyal fanbase they will come by simply to visit with you!
The Last of Us Part 2 looks amazing (the first one was great).
Advice? Grind. This is going to take a while. Success will not come overnight. It’s going to take work. It’s going to take sacrifice. It’s going to have to be your top priority.
To find success to earn extra money streaming on Twitch, make sure you are playing a game that you love because you will have to do it for a long time to get anywhere. Also, take chances, your stream is only limited by your imagination. It’s like having your own tv show written, directed by, and starring YOU! Don’t be afraid to get crazy with it. For a long time, my hair was dyed pink and I wore a chicken on my head (I still have Mr. Cluckles).
I go by Ryowashu. I am the strangest streamer on Twitch. You can find me at www.twitch.tv/ryowashu
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Yes, it’s Day 137 of when we started the Epic Niche Site Battle. A competition to see who could build a better niche affiliate website between myself and Barnabas over at SerialBoss.com. So far I’m doing well considering.
The rules were simple, we would start on January 1st of 2018 and see who could build a better site. This meant who’s site could get more visitors, earn more money and gain more email sign-ups would be the winner. This is in addition to both of us running our other main blogs to show how difficult it is to balance side gigs like this. Time management is key.
I officially launched my affiliate website on Day 68 of this year. I’m not revealing the name of this site since we don’t want to affect traffic rankings, but you’ll just have to believe me that it’s up.
What I can tell you is that it’s an affiliate website centered around holiday gift ideas. The main page is loaded with awesome gift ideas and the blog post (only 1 so far) is focused on “List Posts” which normally do well with SEO. The idea is the more people who visit the site, more sales are made and that’s how the site generates income.
I’ll admit I haven’t been able to put in much effort into this affiliate site since its creation on Day 80 because most of my attention has been focused on WalletSquirrel.com, but without too much initial marketing. It’s somehow found steady traffic.
This is the visitor trend since it starts on March 10th. It picked up about 45 views a day on average since its start. Honestly, that isn’t great, but considering how little attention I’ve given this site (maybe 1 hour since the start), it’s better than I thought. Especially with a bounce rate for an affiliate site.
So with an average of 45 views a day, you can’t expect this website to gain much money. All of my income is through affiliate links which are perfect for me. I’ve noticed I make a lot more on affiliate links than banner ads. Plus I really hate the look of banner ads, so I didn’t include any on this new site.
It’s only had a few sales, but most of the income is merchants paying me for the clicks through the links I have on the affiliate website. I’ve been using Viglink for all my affiliate marketing tracking. Since March 10th, this affiliate site has made $5.90. Wahoo, I gained some pennies. =)
Yes, $5.90 isn’t much but considering the 1 hour I’ve put into this site since starting it on March 10th, it’s pretty great. Plus that income is pretty consistently $0.40 a day. That’s actually really impressive since its so consistent. It gives me a lot of motivation that it will do well if given more attention.
One thing I can absolutely do better on is collecting email address. I only have one email opt-in form on the contact page. So far this has only collected 10 email addresses. That’s pretty awful. There are plenty of tricks I’ve learned recently on Wallet Squirrel to gain more email addresses. I’m looking forward to trying all of these.
Just curious, are you tempted to sign up for Wallet Squirrel’s email list from our Opt-In form below? If not, why not?
Even though I’ve trailed off on my effort for this new affiliate site, I’m still way ahead of Barabas who just got his site up last week. ;P
However, I’ve only written one blog post on my affiliate website and he’s already written 10. We took different approaches with him writing a bunch of content first then publishing the website. I did the opposite by adding content after the website was launched. It’s funny how people do things differently.
I’ll compare the stats of our websites side by side once he has had a chance to market his site a bit more. In the meantime though, I’m ramping up to write 3 more blog posts and started using SEMrush to do some awesome keyword research and backlinking to make the site more popular. Stay tuned to see how we compare against each other!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
What To Write About: Anything with a Top 10 Tagline
How Much Can You Make: $100 per 1,800 word article (via PayPal)
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 8.02M monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
Listverse is full of (you guessed it) lists! Top 10 lists and such are a great attention grabber for readers and Listverse pays for articles with at least 10 list points. They will easily shell out $100 for good quality list articles. If you have a great idea for an attention-grabbing list, submit your list idea to Listverse for consideration. It may be a quick way to get paid to write articles, making $100 per article on our list of websites that pay you for writing. Just make sure that you do your research on your lists, avoid easy grammar issues and create a really attention-grabbing headline.
What To Write About: History, Science, Innovation, Arts & Culture, etc. (Smithsonian stuff)
How Much Can You Make: $1,000 per article
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 9.81M monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
How ambitious are you? The Smithsonian is a big deal and one of the more prestegious websites that pay you fro writing. So you may be surprised to hear they do accept submissions from freelance writers. Although you need to provide at least 3 links to previous writing examples, and if you don’t have good ones, you should move on. If you do have all of that, you should “pitch” an idea for an article you have. Don’t worry about having crazy good photographs, they’ll provide the photography your article needs, you just need to supply the 250-300 worded idea and eventually final article if approved.
What To Write About: Anything
How Much Can You Make: Pennies Per Page View (via ads)
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 3.18M monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
HubPages is an online community that writes about anything and everything. Once you sign up for free, you can write about whatever your passionate about. Your article will have ads on them and you’ll receive a portion of that revenue while you get paid to write articles. The more popular your articles are, the more money you’ll make. This is similar to having your own blog, but HubPages host your articles for you in return for a small portion of the ad revenue your articles produce.
What To Write About: Topics They Ask For
How Much Can You Make: Up to $40 for a 500 word article (depending on writing level)
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 591.52K monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
How iWriter works is that people pay iWriter to write articles for them. So a client will pay iWriter to write an article on “Baking Bread”, for example. Then iWriter will send the request to its army of writers (you) and you’ll take the job. The client will pay iWriter and iWriter will pay you in return. The more great articles you write, the more you’ll earn from iWriter based on their 4 tier (Standard, Premium, Elite & Elite Plus) writer levels. Once you receive Elite Plus level, you’ll be paid $40 for a 500-word article. You’ll pay will depend on the level of writer you are and the number of articles you write. What’s nice is you can accept/decline as many articles as you can write from the comfort of your own home. This is nice because the email request will come in with different topics where you can get paid to write articles.
What To Write About: How To Articles for coding, web design, Adobe Products, anything graphic
How Much Can You Make: $200 per tutorial (increases the more you submit)
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 19.74M monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
Tuts+ is a site I used to visit all the time when learning Photoshop. They have some great tutorials by some awesome teachers, so this probably isn’t for new writers, but people who can prove they’ve written similar tutorials for well-known websites. This makes them one of the top websites that pay you for writing, paying around $200 (starting out) for How-To’s. There are opportunities to create written and video how-to-tutorials. Just make sure you have the depth of experience to back up what you’re teaching. Here is a list of tutorials they’re looking for people to teach.
What To Write About: Tips to help out bloggers (blogs, social media, making money online)
How Much Can You Make: $100 – $200 per article
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 303.49K monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
The Income Diary is a website focused on helping new bloggers to set up their site, write content and monetize it for future revenue. Since this is a specific niche, there is much similar content that currently exists on the site. While you may be able to earn $200, it is a very difficult way to get paid to write articles and get your content accepted. However if you have an idea that you think fits well with their audience, submit your idea and they’ll tell you if it’s worthy. Otherwise don’t bother writing an entire article until your idea is accepted. If you do get your article idea accepted, you should jump for joy because they are one of the top paying websites that pay you for writing.
What To Write About: Trip Ideas, Destinations, Hotels (travel stuff)
How Much Can You Make: $1 a word (articles range from 400 – 2,000 words)
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 6.03M monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
With an audience of 1 million viewers per month, Travel + Leisure receives many writer submissions so they’re looking for high-quality articles from writers with previous writing experience. If you’re interested in writing for them, go over their website and understand what type of articles are published. Then go over to their contact page and email them a short email with your “pitch”, don’t bother writing your full article. If they like your idea, they’ll email you back with the guidelines they want. About 95% of the articles on their site are from freelance writers so you may have a shot. They’re one of the few proven websites that pay you for writing.
What To Write About: Volunteering, Work, Living and Studying Abroad
How Much Can You Make: $50 – $150 (for a 1,250-2,000 word article)
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 422.94K monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
While not the most aesthetically pleasing website, these guys have tons of articles submitted by people around the world relating to volunteering, working and living abroad. So much so that their “Travel Writer Guidelines for Submissions” page is heavily detailed on what they’re looking from their writers. Overall this is a great place to share that amazing study abroad adventure you had in college and share all those little secrets you learned along the way like don’t buy cheap outlet plug converts or how to use hotel key cards as knives for your PBJ sandwiches. If you have any of those wacky travel stories, consider this one of the first websites that pay you for writing that you try.
What To Write About: Things important to adults going back to college
How Much Can You Make: $55+ (for a 1,000-1,500 word article)
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 386.82k monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
This is an old-school website but maintains high popularity for people interested in going back to college later in life. This site makes money by ads and selling leads to college recruiters. So articles about sharing your personal story about going back to college or how your thinking about going back to college may be ideal. This may be a great place to get paid to write articles if you’ve ever considered going back to school.
What To Write About: Getting paid to travel whether it’s writing, photography, tours, etc.
How Much Can You Make: $50 – $200 (for a 300-600 word article)
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): less than 10K monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
This is an interesting writing topic because The Travel Writers Life showcases popular ways people are making money while traveling. So you won’t find any fluffy travel stories here. It’s more about how you paid for your study abroad apartment by working at your landlords banana stand. If you have any stories where you made a little money while traveling, this is a great place to share your story on one of the few websites that pay yforfro writing.
What To Write About: Wide range of topics from life style, culture to family and night-life
How Much Can You Make: $20 – $60
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 3.35M monthly visitors
Since this is such a popular website they receive numerous writing solicitations and thus don’t have to offer much money for people looking to get paid to write articles. While they don’t pay much, this may be a good place to start if you’re a beginner writer. If you’re looking to try it out, you’ll have to create a profile on their contributor page and send them your article idea. It’ll take them a month or two to review it and if you don’t hear back, don’t take it personally they get a lot of ideas. Try submiting another idea. When it comes to larger websites like this, it’s a numbers game. Luckily you have the option to write about a wide range of topics on their websites that pay you for writing.
What To Write About: Web development related to code, content, design, process, business, etc.
How Much Can You Make: $50 – $200 (1,500 word articles avg.)
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 543.71K monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
This is a very niche website related to website development. If this topic interests you, send their team your pitch idea (ideally in a Google Doc) for review. They review all ideas once a week and rarely accept pitches on the first draft. However they’ll likely help you develop your idea further making it worthy of their website. They’re currently looking for new writers so if you have a story to share regarding web development or user experience, shoot them an email.
What To Write About: All things WordPress Website related
How Much Can You Make: $50 (They give you a list of topics with prices)
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 712.64K monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
These guys have one of the most efficient ways to get new writers. Beyond their super easy sign-up page where you submit your credentials, they give you a list of topics to write about and how much they’ll pay for each one. It looks like someone on their team realized keywords they want to rank for and added that list for potential writers to write about. Most of the articles they currently have posted only pay $50 per article, but they claim up to $150. Keep in mind, most of the articles they are looking for are related to how to code WordPress websites, so it may be a little niche for most people. If you have the WordPress knowlege though, it’s one of first websites that pay you for writing you should consider.
What To Write About: Trip Ideas, Destinations, Travel Adventures (travel stuff)
How Much Can You Make: $50 per article (articles range from 1,200 – 2,000 words)
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 160.98K monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
This is a site I really enjoyed right after researching. It’s a very indie type travel site where it encourages really exploring your travel destinations over high-end resorts. If you have a travel story/idea that you want to pitch, send it to them after you check out their article guidelines to get paid to write articles. Most of is it pretty basic, but something to keep in mind. If you’re not sure your work is good enough to submit, try their “Guest Post” guide where your article won’t be paid for, but you can submit it in front of their audience. It’s a great way to gain travel writing exposure without much pressure on our list of websites that pay you for writing.
What To Write About: All things related to retiring overseas (cost, living, places, etc.)
How Much Can You Make: $75 – $400
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 712.64K monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
International Living has both a blog/newsletter (they call it a Postcard) and monthly magazine that they’re looking for contributing writers to get paid to write articles. If your article gets accepted to the Postcard, it’s worth around $75 while the monthly magazine is worth $250 for 840 words and $400 for 1,400 words. If you’re curious what to write about, they love inspirational stories about retiring abroad in your dream location (use SEMrush for popular keyword ideas). They want to know how your money will stretch longer in other countries and how that affects healthcare and other lifestyles. If you’ve ever been thinking about retiring in a small tropical country or somewhere cooler, maybe this is one of the websites that pay you for writing for you.
What To Write About: Anything Pop Culture with a funny twist
How Much Can You Make: $100 – $200
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 19.24M monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
While most websites actively look for experienced writers, Cracked is all about encouraging new writers to submit ideas with lots of different ways to contribute and get paid to write articles. You can write the long lists they’re known for like “26 Sexy Halloween Costumes That Shouldn’t Exist” or creating funny graphics they can use on their social media accounts. They are heavily reliant on content writers like you can contribute to their online publication. If you think you have a sarcastic or satire writing personality, definitely register as a writer for them and jump into the hilarious world of Cracked. This is one of the most popular websites that pay you for writing on our list.
What To Write About: Articles About Great Photography
How Much Can You Make: Likely Around $50, not listed
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 151.96K monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
This is a really open category, photography. Everyone has tried photography at some point in their life. It’s pretty easy to point and click to great a great image. Either to sell via stock photography, share with your friends or hang up in a gallery. The point is, most people have a photography lesson learned or story to share and Photodoto is the perfect place for topics such as Photography Inspiration, Tips, Gear or post-production. Take a shot at this website to write a guest post, they seem to be very excited to hear about pitch ideas.
What To Write About: Anything to help people save time and money (stretch your dollar)
How Much Can You Make: $0.10 per word (Most articles 500-700 words)
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 151.96K monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
Now, this is a site we can get behind, another personal finance website! If you have some great ways to save money/time this is the place but keep in mind, The Dollar Stretcher has been in circulation since January 1998. They have TONS of articles on how to save money so if you’re going to pitch them you need to be creative, inventive and very specific. They ask you don’t pitch them “7 ways to save on groceries“, but rather “7 ways to save money on ground beef”. If you email them your pitch and don’t hear anything, they likely already have similar content and didn’t bother responding. Try pitching again being more creative, everyone does something cool to save money. It’s a great way to get paid to write articles if you’re able to niche down into specific money saving ideas.
What To Write About: DIY Home Improvement / Interior Design Projects
How Much Can You Make: Likely Around $50, you set your price.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 271.60K monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
Yay I’ve been looking for a good DIY site where I can get paid to write articles. Curby started as one man’s journey doing home improvement projects and grew into a vibrate community of 271 thousand visits a month focusing on cool home improvement and interior design projects inspiring people. Now they’re one of the top websites that pay you for writing about home improvement projects. If you have a home improvement project that all your friends just rave about, consider pitching Curby to see if it’s a good idea for their site and get paid!
What To Write About: Life of a Pet Owner (tips, hacks, pet stories, etc.)
How Much Can You Make: $75 per article
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): less than 10K monthly visitors
How To Become A Writer: Sign Up Here
Many websites that pay writers are related to web development or travel so it’s great to see sites like this that pay for articles that most people have experience with, like pets. This site focuses on connecting pet owners through their site and social media. More importantly, they help animal shelters and rescues connect with a wide range of pet owners for possible adoption. Blog Paws really tries to capture the reality of life with pets and can use writers that can help others navigate that world. If you’re a pet owner that can’t stop talking about how great it is to be a pet owner, this may be a perfect place to get paid to write articles on our list of websites that pay you for writing in 2018.
Writing for others is a quick way to get paid writing and build up your own portfolio. However, you’re working for other people and making THEM money. Consider using our guide to Starting Your Own Blog That Makes Money on Day 1! This is a nice alternative utilizing your writing creativity. Having your own website allows you to display a portfolio of your writing work and earn money for yourself from the awesome content you create!
Hope you like our blueprint for starting to get paid to write articles! We absolutely love websites that pay you for writing, helping fellow freelance writers and side-hustlers. While writing this and looking at the criteria these websites are looking for in contributing writers, it’s actually a really easy way to earn extra money. Most of these websites paying between $50 – $150 per article even for beginners, you could write an article every day for a month (30 days) and make $3,000.
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
As you’ll see below, as an Uber driver you can work whenever you feel and make money per ride. However, you are a freelancer in the eyes of the company and all costs of gas, insurance, accidents, wear & tear and taxes are your burden to pay. So in our examples, we note how much these Uber drivers make and include whether that’s before or after expenses.
Mr. Money Mustache did a great Uber driver experiment and shared his results after driving people around Boulder, Colorado for a while. He stressed the importance of driving costs and importantly your time. He was surprised with how much waiting around there was waiting for pick up requests, he noted how waiting around doing nothing affected his profit per hour. This profit per hour would be a lot lower if he didn’t receive tips, that is where most of this money came from, not the driving. You should consider this when trying Uber.
Harry who hosts the RideShareGuy, a blog centered around the ride-sharing economy, has been a big advocate of ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft hence the blog “RideShareGuy”. In 2017 he did a survey of 1,150 Uber/Lyft drivers on his website. He asked them a range of questions including how much do Uber drivers make and discovered on average, drivers made $15.68 per hour driving with Uber. If your curious, he found Lyft drivers made $17.50 per hour.
MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research did a survey of more than 1,100 Uber and Lyft drivers on how much they were paid by the ride-sharing companies as well as their expenses such as insurance and repairs. This study was heavily criticized by Uber arguing the questions weren’t worded fairly causing MIT to take down the study, but here are the main points. Researchers found that a median driver generates $0.59 per mile of driving but it costs them $0.30 per mile to drive.
A Stanford study focused on the gender earnings gap in the gig economy estimated an Uber driver’s gross hourly earnings at $21.07 before expenses. They even dug down into Uber’s payment formula and discovered Uber drivers are paid $1.70 as a base fare PLUS $0.20 per minute PLUS $0.95 per mile. While they estimated a driver’s expenses at $0.32 per mile.
For example a 2 mile &, 15 minutes trip could earn the driver $6.60 and cost the driver $0.64 in expenses. A real total of $5.95 for that ride.
SherpaShare did a 2015 study on Uber and Lyft drivers. They created an awesome graphic (below) and made a few assumptions from the data. In the larger cities where there is more frequent Surge time (fewer drivers & more requests = 30% price increase), drivers made significantly more. However, each city has different averages. Depending on where you live may determine if you should take advantage of being an Uber driver or not.
Source: http://www.sherpashareblog.com/2015/07/what-uber-lyft-drivers-earn-per-trip/
Cities with massive demand like New York had an insane $29.34 per hour for Uber drivers while smaller cities like Nashville had $10.14. If you live somewhere like Fargo, North Dakota, you may have a difficult time making any decent money.
Buzzfeed somehow gained a copy of internal Uber calculations to discover how much do Uber drivers make in three major US markets – Denver Detroit & Houston. It was important to them to include expenses into their calculations and found drivers in these markets earned less than an average $13.5 per hour after expenses.
For example, the average driver in Detroit earns $12.70 per hour or $8.77 per hour after expenses. Uber drivers in Houston earned on average $14.18 per hour or $10.75 per hour after expenses. Denver Uber drivers appeared to earn the most of the three major US markets, Denver Uber drivers earned $16.89 per hour or $13.17 per hour after expenses.
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/internal-uber-driver-pay-numbers?utm_term=.wcw78n4QN6#.mpxrRl8dkO
If you’re curious how much you could make, use this formula. The Stanford study above shared their formula for how much do Uber drivers make. Based on this formula, Uber really encourages long trips through heavy expected traffic for drivers to make the most money. The Uber Pay Formula is as follows:
You may notice that this is considerably lower than any taxi fare you’ve ever received. There’s a reason for that, the Uber Pay formula is heavily advantaged for Uber Riders. Meaning Uber is highly cost competitive with taxi drivers so people choose Uber over traditional taxis, giving Uber drivers more driving opportunities at the cost of more money per ride.
Lastly, the biggest variable in the formula for how much do Uber drivers make is TIPS. Tips are not a constant factor in Uber rides so I didn’t include them in the Uber Pay Formula but they’re the single biggest reason some Uber drivers make more money. Next time you’re riding in an Uber, look around and notice the bottles of water and snacks offered by your Uber driver to entice a bigger tip.
We’ve found Uber drivers make around average $10 per hour after all their expenses and, in most cases, Lyft will make you a bit more. If you put this in context, this is the same average wage for McDonald’s.
If you’re an Uber Driver please leave in the comments below how much you make per hour, we’d love to hear from you!
It may not be one of the most profitable ways to make money, but there’s a certain freedom and enjoyment knowing you’re the boss and working whenever you choose. Would you consider driving for Uber for this freedom?
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
