Making quick extra money can often cover a loan, payment, or necessary purchase. Even if there’s no rush, learning how to make 500 dollars fast can become extremely handy in the future.
We’ve listed out all of the best ways to make extra money in both sustainable, long-term ventures and short-term gigs. These strategies, however, shouldn’t be relied upon exclusively – build up an emergency fund and start a side hustle to keep a constant stream of money.
Leverage Your Assets
Leveraging your assets will often be a short-term strategy that lets you earn money quickly and effectively, but will be hard to sustain over time. Most of the time, leveraging your assets causes a detriment to your quality of life (such as by selling items), so while you can make money fast, it’s not the best option.
Sell your items online
There’s plenty of websites that will let you sell the things you own quickly and effectively. Ebay, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace are some of the more popular options. These platforms get tons of traffic making it easy to make money quickly.
If you want to sell effectively, find market prices, take good photos and write clear descriptions with concise contact information. Doing all of these will make your listings stand out, allowing you to make $500 fast as long as you have enough things to sell.
Unfortunately, this won’t work as a long-term strategy as you’ll run out of things to sell. You need to make money in other ways as well to create a consistent stream of funds to your bank account.
Rent out your space
AirBnB has made renting spaces a lot easier and accessible. Anyone with a free room can rent it out and make money out of owning a house or flat. The setup is rather quick and you can make $500 fast, sometimes in just a few days.
Renting out does have its overhead – you’ll have to take care of the guests and clean up after them. Making your space attractive to tourists will also have a large impact on profitability. Additionally, the location you live in will generally decide prices, so while some areas can be extremely profitable, others may not be.
So, you should treat AirBnB as a side hustle, not just a way to make quick money. It requires attention, work, and effort – everything a good side hustle needs.
Rent out your car or RV
Another way to leverage your assets to make money is to rent out your car or RV. While an inherently risky business, it’s a great way to make extra money without doing anything yourself. There’s plenty of apps like Turo, Getaround, and many others that make car sharing a breeze.
Your pricing will have to match the market rates as you don’t want to get outmatched by competitors in your area. Unless you have a unique, spacious, or otherwise useful car that matches some niche – then you have a lot more pricing freedom.
Similarly to AirBnB, renting out your car is more of a side hustle. You’ll need to perform maintenance, find clients, and do many other things to make good money – all the hallmarks of a proper side hustle.
Online Quick Cash Opportunities
If you don’t want to sell off or rent your stuff, there’s plenty of other opportunities to make money online. In fact, it’s even easier as you won’t have to meet other people, although doing enough work to make $500 fast is going to be harder.
Online surveys
There’s plenty of websites online that let you take online surveys to make money. These companies get surveys from other organizations (such as Amazon) that need consumer opinions on various topics. Surveys are then passed on to you to fill them in, allowing you to make money through your opinion.
Unfortunately, it may not be the best method if you want to make $500 fast. Most survey providers pay an average of $1 per survey, meaning you’d have to fill in ~500 of them.
Internet sharing
If you want to make truly passive income, internet sharing is a great option. While it won’t make you the next Elon Musk, it’s a great way to earn extra cash on the side.
Internet sharing works by installing an app that detects when you’re not using the device and its connection. Your internet is then made available to the company, which can forward the connection to someone that needs to access a website they otherwise would not be able to. In simple terms, it’s a lot like creating a short-term VPN.
Since you don’t have to do anything but install an app on your devices, it’s one of the true ways to create passive income. It’s a great way to build up your emergency fund over time or to simply earn extra cash for various things.
Test software and products
If you want a more active way to make money online, becoming a product tester is a great way to do that. You can even choose between completely online testing (software and apps) and physical testing (regular products like shoes).
If you want to make money, software testing is usually the way to go. For physical products, most companies “pay” you by giving the product away instead of asking you to pay for it. As such, you’d rarely make money from such tests or you’d have to sell them yourself to get extra cash.
Ways to Use Your Skills
If you have some marketable skills such as drawing, design, writing, etc., you can always make money by utilizing them. There’s gigs and freelance jobs for nearly any skill imaginable, so as long as you can sell your experience, you’ll be able to make money.
You can always turn these ways to make money into a real side hustle. Many people make a living off freelancing or the gig economy, so if you enjoy doing those activities, you can focus on the jobs to make good money.
Utilize the gig economy apps
For the past decade, many people have been making a living off the gig economy. Apps like Uber (Eats), DoorDash, Lyft allow you to earn extra cash by delivering food or working like a taxi driver.
You can both balance your schedule around the gigs or work there full time if you want to make $500 fast through these methods. While these jobs aren’t the best option if you want to build a career, they’re a great stepping stone for some extra money and work experience.
There’s also plenty of apps like TaskRabbit that are mostly peer-to-peer tasks to earn cash. Most of these tasks will have less skill requirements, so if you want to make some extra money on the side, they’re a great option as well.
Make money freelancing
If you want a more sustainable and global way to make money, freelancing is the way to go. You basically get digital orders (such as for writing or design) from companies and they pay you on a contract or project basis.
It’s a great way to get paid larger amounts of money as some of the skills, such as software engineering, are in high demand. You can look for clients locally or use platforms such as Fiverr or Upwork to make money.
Flip various items
If you can save money and have a good eye for valuable items, flipping can be a highly profitable venture. You will need some money in your bank account as anything worthwhile will have a cost, but flipping is highly scalable.
You can always start from minor things like hobby items or local artist paintings to earn quick cash while working your way up to the real money makers like real estate and vehicles. Remember to always save money along the way as flipping is a risky endeavor – sometimes you won’t make a profit.
