3 Ways to Earn Extra Income While Working Full-Time

Guest post by Kyle Kroeger

Earning extra income goes a long way in improving your personal financial picture. It doesn’t matter if you are earning an extra $50 per month or $500 per day. Any form of extra income becomes a windfall for you to save more money, invest faster, or pay down debt.

If you maintain a budget under your current day job income, that means that any extra income falls directly to your bottom line, thus creating new opportunities for you and your personal financial goals. Thanks to technology, there are plenty of ways to make extra money on your own terms. I’ll highlight some of the ones that are best for you while working full-time.

What constitutes the best way to make extra money while working full-time? Here are several considerations worth evaluating based on your schedule and priorities:

• Flexibility — You will need to work on your side hustle when and how you want.
• Pay for the effort — If you work full-time, some people don’t want to work with their side hustle. They simply want to work on gigs or routine tasks to make extra money. With others, people are using a side hustle to potential build a new career and want to find a gateway out of their day job.
• Ability to learn — Evaluate how much you want to learn. Some of my favorite side hustles were related to something I knew nothing about. This helped me learn new skills that I was able to deploy at my new job.

Here’s my list of the best ways to earn extra income while working.

Gig economy jobs

The gig economy is a great opportunity to work on your own terms. You can make your own schedule and find work with the click of a button. There are two types of gig economy jobs that you can do —

1. Gig economy jobs that require no experience or limited skills (examples would be walking dogs, delivering food, ridesharing, etc.)

2. Specialized gig economy jobs that usually require some level of expertise (examples would be gig electrical contractor jobs, gig babysitting jobs, gig marketing services, etc.)

You can either take the route of using an app to earn money in the gig economy or the traditional route of offering your gig on classifieds or bulletin boards. In today’s age, you are likely better off tapping into the demand through an app. There are willing customers waiting for you!

Freelance jobs

I like to classify freelance jobs separately from gig economy jobs. Unlike gig economy jobs, freelance jobs (generally speaking) offer the opportunity to tap into services targeted at businesses. In general, gig economy jobs help out other consumers.

Businesses have much larger budgets than consumers. Therefore, you have the opportunity to earn more with less time by opting for freelance opportunities. You will likely need to be specialized and experienced before offering your services.

Here are some freelance opportunities worth considering:

• SEO marketing services
• graphic design
• financial modeling
• consulting
• writing
• editing

If you have a skill, you can get paid for it immediately. That’s why freelancing is also called “skills as a service.”

Real estate investing

If you have extra money that needs to be invested, real estate is a great option to both increase your income and build wealth over time. With real estate, you have the flexibility to invest on a direct basis (i.e., buy single home real estate directly) or invest in REITs or crowdfunding. The optimal way is to avoid fees by investing in real estate directly.

This will take some time to learn and develop a method, but it can be very rewarding. Real estate is one of the few opportunities that allow you to earn cash flow and build equity in a real asset over time. Real estate can be a great option for those looking to stash away cash for the long haul.

Real estate investing is on the opposite side of the spectrum for making money compared to gig economy jobs and freelancing. You have to have a lot of upfront capital and then limited ongoing work. With gig economy and freelance jobs, you need no upfront capital, but you trade your time for money.

The bottom line

Using these three methods, you can start paying down debt or invest at a faster rate. These are some of the most proven ways to make money right away (and on your own terms). Start with a side hustle that allows you to build up a savings balance. Then, consider investing in real estate to harvest your savings for additional cash flow and compounding wealth.

Kyle Kroeger owns Financial Wolves, a blog focused on helping people make more money to achieve financial freedom. After repaying student loans from side hustles, he’s shifted his focus to make more money from side hustles, real estate, freelancing, and the online economy. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.