I write quite a bit on my blog about making extra money on the side, but I don’t often put all of my ideas together into one place. I decided that I should probably do it today so that you can pick whichever idea fits you best to make an extra $1000 a month!

This list outlines 5 specific ways to make an extra $1000 a month, and they’re all ways to make extra cash that have worked for me and my friends. These aren’t just hypothetical ideas!

I hope you find something you like in this list or, at the very least, I hope it gets your creative juices flowing so you can find the perfect money making idea of your own.

5 Ways to Make $1,000 on the Side

One of my favorite things to do on my blog is help other moms figure out how to make an extra $1,000 or more from home. I do it on my blog, and while it didn’t happen over night, it did happen with a LOT of dedication and a solid plan in place.

These money making ideas are just to get your creative juices flowing. I hope you find an idea here that sparks your imagination and helps you envision what it might take to get to $1,000+ a month.

Don’t ask me why I chose $1,000 and not $500 or $200 or $5,000. I think $1,000 just sounds like a nice round number that isn’t just pocket change – it’s an amount that could really make a big difference in your family’s financial bottom line if you’re able to funnel that money into savings or a smart expense like a home repair or maybe even to pay off a car loan.

Whatever you need $1,000 for, I hope you are able to achieve or even exceed this extra income goal! Good luck my friend!!!

1. Become a Virtual Assistant

Another great way to start making an extra $1000 a month is to become a virtual assistant (or “VA”) to work with bloggers. With this it’s best to find what you’re good at in the online space. Do you make beautiful images, or could you live your whole life on Pinterest? Pick a specialty and get to work!

The VA who helps me on my blog does this job at night after her kids are in bed. She’s a fellow blogger who is trying to supplement her income while she grows her own blog. She told me that she likes to jump into bed with her hubby and then spend a couple hours with him while they watch a movie or tv show and she gets some work done on the computer simultaneously. I think she works 3 hours some nights (I only give her about 2 night’s worth of work per week) and she earns $20 an hour. It’s easy to see how this side gig can easily scale into $1,000 or more per month on the side.

2. Make and Sell Crafts

If you’re crafty and you love finding ways to make things yourself instead of buying them at the store, why not make them for sale? Are you great at sewing or crocheting? Get on Etsy or Amazon handmade! If you’d love to make an extra $1000 a month, but you can’t quite think of anything to sell, I’ve got you covered in this post with 50 crafts to make & sell.

A few of my friends sell crafts in local shops, and they find time to make these crafts when their kids are in school. I don’t think they work much in the evenings, although I think weekends are fair game. This is a good side business idea for someone who has some free time to spend working on the business but wants something flexible enough to fit into their existing schedule.

3. Start a Blog Writing About Your Passions

Okay, you know I couldn’t get through this list without recommending this one! I make well over $1000 a month from this blog ($7,000 average for the past 4 months), and I’ve seen so many of my friends grow their family’s income from just starting a blog.

Blogging is the most fun job in the world! I’m serious. I get to write about what I like (tips I want to share on family finances, kids activities, holidays, meal planning, etc) and then I can make money by doing so! I get to do it whenever and wherever I want. Sometimes I work from my kitchen table, while other times I work from a coffee shop downtown. It depends on what I feel like doing that day and how it jives with my kids’ schedules. Keep in mind that blogging is something I did as a <10 hours per week thing while I built up my site. It wasn’t until I started earning more than $1,000 extra per month that I decided to focus on it as more than just a “side hustle.”

I won’t lie – it’s a lot of hard work spending hours in front of the computer. But blogging is one of those things where you can write about what you want and figure out a way to make money from that passion. And blogging income builds on itself (my favorite part) so work you do today has the possibility of adding to the work you do tomorrow and so on. If you monetize your blog with ads and affiliate products (explained here), your main job is to get people to read your blog posts by promoting them on Pinterest, Facebook, etc.

I like to think of a blog as the equivalent of a TV show or magazine. Your job is to create something unique, helpful, interesting, and fresh, and then companies are going to want to advertise to your viewers, or readers.  If you are truly helping someone and not just purely entertaining them, then you’ll also be able to sell your own products or recommend products others are selling. Solutions are in demand! 🙂

If you want to learn how I would go about creating a money-making blog if I had to do it all over again, you can read all about it in my step by step tutorial here.

Read More:

< WhatMommyDoes Income Reports / How to Start a Blog for Less Than $5 a Month >

4. Learn an in-demand skill like photography

If there’s a skill that you have that others don’t, you can always make some extra money for your family! Honestly, if there’s anything that you can do better or faster than someone else, you’ll be in business. Just remember that you don’t have to be the BEST at something, just better than some. 🙂

One of my favorite in-demand skills to use to make money is photography. Most people can’t take high quality pictures of themselves, either due to lack of equipment or skill, and they’ll be more than happy to pay you to do it! If you’d like to brush up on your photography skills, be sure to check out the free Craftsy class on photography!

My sister-in-law took that Craftsy class, purchased a used DSLR camera (Nikon, I believe) from a friend, practiced taking photos and editing them, and now she has a side business taking family photos on the weekends. It’s perfect for her because she has 4 kids and needs something really flexible! She just schedules her photography sessions around the times her husband is home. I know they love having a little extra money in their budget, so he is happy to do this while she works.

5. Start a weekend side job

If you are determined to bring in an extra income each month, it might be worth picking up a weekend side job. If your husband works traditional business hours, you can leave the kids with him and save on daycare costs. That way your entire paycheck can go directly to extra bills or savings!

If you have a significant other who’s interested in working alongside you, then you’ve hit the jackpot, my friend! Here are three weekend jobs that I recommend that are traditionally male dominated industries, but there is room for both men and women here.

If You Made $1000 Extra per Month…

If you made more than $1,000 a month, what would that mean for you? Would it pay for a vacation, build your savings, or just give you more wiggle room in your budget? Our reasons for having a side gig are as diverse as we are.

I am working on a blog post containing 100 ways to earn money on the side that my brother and I came up with, but it’s still in draft form. I will let you guys know when it’s complete by linking it up here!

A Word About Work Ethic

No matter who you are or what you choose to do on the side for extra income, one thing holds true – those who succeed will have a strong work ethic. In fact, I wrote a blog post about the process you can follow and the attitude you need to have to reach ANY $1,000+ per month income goal. It’s not as hard as you think with a smart plan and consistent hard work. You can read about that in The Money Making Theorem.

Over my years of working from home, I’ve found that the biggest distinction between someone who succeeds and someone who fails at a home job or business is the level of sticktuitiveness (is that a word?) that person has. It took me writing 250 blog posts and spending over 1000 hours on my blog before I started seeing a significant return on my time investment. At around 200 blog posts, I was making $150 per month, and I finally cracked the code on getting traffic to my blog and monetizing that traffic…that’s when my income quickly scaled to $7,000 on average at 450 posts. If I had given up at post #250, I would have never know what was possible.

If you asked me why I believed in myself back when I was working 20 hours a week on the blog and still only earning $150 per month….I would tell you the only thing that kept me going was knowing other “normal moms” like me were becoming successful at blogging. That’s why I publish income reports on the blog….I’m not trying to brag….in fact, it’s quite uncomfortable to put this information out there.  But if it hadn’t been for other bloggers showing me what was possible, I wouldn’t have ever stuck through the long hours for little pay…I would never have known what was possible.

A “However Long It Takes” Attitude 

Every successful blogger I know has a “however long it takes” attitude about them. They are also able to adapt to changing times and implement changes quickly.

The same goes for my friends who are small business owners. A friend of mine sells Mary Kay and brings in $2,000 per month already in her third month of business because she hustles her tail off and follows up with customers consistently. She’s a hustler.

Another friend of mine joins a new sales organization every year, but she doesn’t actually jump into her “businesses” head first…..and nothing ever comes of them. All of the organizations and job opportunities she finds seem completely legit…she just doesn’t treat her opportunity like a business, and her sales reflect this.

So which type of person are you going to be?  Are you going to the be the person who latches onto a good idea but never takes it seriously? Wishing all the time you could just get the “perfect opportunity” like others seem to find?

Or are you going to be the person who comes up with a GOOD PLAN and executes that plan to the fullest? <== I hope you’re this person.

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