Day jobs tend to take up a lot of our time, making it increasingly difficult to go for a side hustle to earn a little extra cash. Luckily, there are several ways you can make money in just under an hour.
Whether it’s selling your clothing items or providing a pet walking service, you can earn some money in a pinch.
You may be looking to save up for holiday gifts or your salary can’t come any sooner, either way, these money-making methods ought to help you out.
Stick around to learn more about how to make money in one hour.
Sell Something
Selling any item of your belonging can reap many monetary benefits in just under an hour. You can sell something as small as a gift card or as valuable as jewelry. Check out some ideas below on what you can sell.
Clothes
Chances are, you probably have some articles of clothing and shoes that you barely wore lying around. To get some real benefit out of them, you can sell them. Luckily, there’s no shortage of mediums you can use.
For instance, you can visit a thrift or consignment store. The owners will browse through your items for about 30 minutes. Once they deem your items sellable, you get paid in cash.
Now, if you don’t have a lot of thrift stores around your area, you can resort to social media and other online platforms. From Facebook Marketplace to eBay, you can present your items and sell them in under an hour.
Now, you can even use other platforms like Instagram. Post your clothes in a story and some of your friends may be interested in what you have to offer.
Additionally, if you have kids, then you likely own a lot of forgotten baby clothes. In this case, you can visit the Once Upon a Child website and sell your children’s gently-worn clothes. The best part is that it’s sustainable and helps a lot of families that are unable to afford regular retail prices.
Other Items
Aside from clothes, you may have other sellable items. We’re talking furniture, toys, and unused gift cards. Similar to clothes-selling, you can use sites like Facebook Marketplace and eBay to sell these random items.
All you have to do is take a high-quality photo of the item and present it at a fair and discounted price. For faster cash, you can sell these items to a consignment store instead.
Scrap metal is also a sellable commodity. Whether you find metal parts in unused toys or furniture, you can offer them on online sites as well.
Sought-After Items
Sought-after items can encompass several categories. For example, you can sell electronic items, such as an unused chargers. Aside from that, you may have an old musical instrument somewhere in the basement collecting dust.
Give it a wipe, and head to the pawn shop to get some cash from it in under an hour. Having said that, if you have a sports trading card, you can also make some big bucks out of it. You might also want to try pawn loaning.
In this case, you provide a valuable item, let’s say a diamond ring, and the pawnbroker assesses its value and loans you accordingly. That ring will remain in their hands as collateral if you’re unable to pay back the loan.
This is a highly risky business, and we would recommend selling your items rather than risk losing a valuable asset through pawn loans.
Gold and Precious Metals
Over the years, gold barely depreciated in value, despite its volatile nature. That being said, your gold jewelry can earn you a lot of cash easily in under an hour. Subsequently, this earning method is best for those looking to get a large sum of money.
Before you sell your gold or other precious metal items, we suggest thoroughly researching the market. That way, you’ll be able to determine your gold’s worth and avoid getting a lower value.
Now, you can sell your jewelry through three main routes. There are local jewelry stores, pawn shops, and online gold sellers. Out of the three options, the first is the fastest and can get you the cash in under an hour. Consider visiting a trustworthy gold buyer near you, who will offer you the highest prices for your pieces, whether they’re in the form of jewelry, bullion, gold coins, or scrap gold.
Nevertheless, going the online route could give you a higher selling price, albeit, you’d have to wait at least 24 hours to get your payment secured.
Meanwhile, pawn shops are also a fast option, but they’re not as reliable as jewelry stores. The pawnbrokers may not be experts on gold and insist on a lower price. For this reason, if you’re willing to wait a bit longer, we’d recommend selling your gold online to get the best value.
Spare Change
If you like to save your spare change, then it might be time to bust open that piggy bank and cash it in.
Don’t forget to fish in your purse and turn over your couch cushions for those extra coins. Once you have them ready, go to your nearest coin-counting machine and feed it your spare change to see how much it’s worth. You can find them in pharmacies and supermarkets.
Then, visit your bank to exchange those coins for bills in less than an hour. Alternatively, you can get your change cashed through Coinstar, but you’d need to pay an additional 11.9% service fee plus 25 cents as a transaction fee.
Sell Your Hair
Are you overdue for a haircut? Well, don’t let all your precious locks go to waste. You can sell a six-inch long, three-inch thick, brown, virgin hair for around $91. Virgin hair refers to locks untreated with bleach, perms, dyes, and chemicals.
Provide a Service
Rather than sell something, you can also provide a service to earn your fast cash. The service can range from babysitting to mowing some lawns. These door-to-door services will usually take less than an hour to cash in.
Babysit
If you enjoy children’s company, then a babysitting gig could be a win-win for you. In this case, you wouldn’t necessarily be earning a large number per hour. The average hourly rate for babysitting one or two kids is $20 or $23, respectively.
If you’re not sure how to start babysitting, you can resort to online platforms like Urbansitters to get started. Over time, you’ll build a responsible reputation and earn more gigs.
Walk a Pet or Pet Sit
Walking a pet or pet sitting is also an easy way to earn some fast coin. Now, the amount you’ll get in an hour wouldn’t surmount to more than $40. You can go through this service if you’re not in too much of a bind and want to gradually earn your cash.
Plus, if you love dogs and could go for some exercise, you’ll be getting more value out of the pet walking service.
To get a pet sitting or pet walking gig, you can resort to sites like Rover or Wag. Additionally, you can ask your clients to spread the word about your service.
Lawn Care
If you’re willing to put in some sweat, then browse your neighborhood’s lawns. For those unkempt yards, ring their doorbell and offer your lawn mowing services.
Similar to dog walking and babysitting, lawn mowing offers a similar hourly range of $20. Now, depending on how large the yard is you can charge extra.
Some payments can go as high as $210 per yard, but those kinds of payments are usually reserved for professionals. That being so, don’t limit yourself to lawn mowing. You can rake, power wash, and shovel snow to keep your neighbor’s yards tidy.
Try House Sitting
If your neighbors are out on vacation, you can volunteer to house-sit for them. This could involve taking care of their belongings, cleaning, and watering plants.
You can earn around $20 per day from house-sitting. If there are more tasks involved, then you can charge more.
Complete Small Tasks
Completing small tasks can encompass several platforms. Whether it’s filling out surveys or picking people up. Here are some ideas worth considering below.
Driving Service
Initially, this service will take some time to begin since you need to sign up for a ridesharing app like Uber or Lyft. Once you’re done, you can profit a large net from an hour’s worth of driving service.
We suggest going through longer rides such as airport pick-ups or drop-offs to earn more efficiently. To get into the ridesharing business, you’ll need a U.S. driver’s license as well as a four-door vehicle.
Delivery Service
If you’re not a fan of driving people around your car, then you can opt for a delivery service like DoorDash or Instacart.
Like Uber and Lyft, signing up for these delivery services can take longer than an hour. After you sign up, it’ll take around four days or so to get employed and start earning your hour’s worth of money.
The average Instacart earning can be anywhere between $7 to $25 depending on the fleets you take.
Task Service
Through platforms like Taskrabbit, you can get paid to do all sorts of things. Some of these include furniture assembly, running errands, minor home repairs, and even shopping.
In terms of how much you’ll earn, it depends on the task. For instance, a deep clean can cost an hourly rate of $31. On the other hand, electrical repair help can earn you as much as $40. Make sure you’re confident with the tasks you pick, and you’ll be on your way to earning that hourly rate.
Become a Freelancer
This suggestion is leaning more towards being a side hustle, but you can easily schedule your tasks to keep them short. Sites like Upwork can allow you to express your talent in sales, writing, IT, design, or other markets.
Create a profile and perfect your portfolio to gain more clientele requests. Aside from that, if you’re looking to specialize, then you can look at sites that cater to your talents. Content writers could benefit more from sites like TextBroker. Meanwhile, developers can check out Gun.io and Toptal.
Additionally, you don’t have to limit yourself to one platform. Presenting your work on different sites can give you better chances of finding requests and earning faster money.
Listen to Music
Yes, you can earn money by listening to music. All you have to do is provide a review, preferably a detailed one, and submit it to sites like Playlist Push.
In addition to this, you can transcribe lyrics on sites like WeLocalize. With these sorts of services, you’ll need to initially sign up, which may take more than an hour. Like Ubering or DoorDashing, once you’re in, you can start earning.
Complete Surveys
Despite being long and time-consuming in some cases, completing surveys can reap some monetary benefits. To start, you can visit Opinion Outpost, create your profile and begin reviewing as many surveys as you can.
These mini-tests usually come as product reviews, Ad survey studies, or location-based services. Overall, these surveys are meant to help public and private organizations gain data from the masses.
Mystery Shopping
Mystery shopping is a marketing method used to analyze a service’s quality. In other words, companies hire undercover shoppers to assess their customer service standards.
The good news is that you can find several online sites that allow you to become a mystery shopper. One of these sites includes Secret Shopper.
Watch Previews
Rather than drive, shop, or complete surveys, you can watch videos and earn money. Sites like InboxDollars offer you money to sign up and watch movie trailers. After earning about $30 from the site, you can cash out through PayPal.
Join a Focus Group
Similar to completing surveys, focus groups are also one of the many methods used to help businesses do their market research.
The group analysis allows them to determine aspects such as their target audience’s wants and needs. Essentially, your feedback is the value sought after. You can join a group through websites like Find Focus Groups.
Try Website Testing
Some companies offer website testing. This tasks you with going through the website, completing certain commands, and weeding out any bugs or issues.
It’s a simple task that’ll likely take less than an hour. For about 20 minutes, you can earn $10 to $15. You can find several websites offering this job such as Testing Time, User Crowd, User Testing, and Try My UI.
Try Street Performing
When trying to make money, you’ll want to assess all the talents you can offer. If one of them is an artistic one, then head to a crowded street corner, put a cap in front of you, and do your thing.
It could be singing, playing an instrument, or even dancing. If you’re more artistic, then you can offer a portrait drawing for passersby. This could be best done in scenic areas like a park or beach. Make sure your local laws allow this.
Aside from drawing and dancing, photography is also a money-making talent. Grab your polaroid camera and a sign offering pictures for a fair sum. This service has the best potential in tourist spots.
Look Back at Your Finances
In addition to selling something and providing a service, you can earn extra money by reviewing your financing.
Return a Recent Purchase
Instead of selling something, you can return an item you bought. You may have recently purchased a piece of clothing that hasn’t been worn in a week.
It could be a toy, game, pair of shoes, furniture, or any other recently bought item. That way, you’ll spend the returned money on something more important.
Cut Out Unnecessary Costs
You may have a monthly cost that’s hanging over your head, unused. This could be a gym, Netflix, or news membership. These tend to pile up in costs over a few months.
In turn, you can cut those costs out and save up on a lot of cash. For example, cutting out your gym membership can save you as much as $50 per month.
Make Money in Only an Hour
How can you make money in an hour? Well, the options mainly vary between selling something and providing a certain service.
In these categories, you can choose between a variety of choices based on how much money you’re trying to make.
For instance, if you’re looking to acquire large sums in a short time, then selling your gold or jewelry is one of the best fast cash methods.
Meanwhile, if you’d rather score smaller amounts, then services like lawn mowing and pet sitting are more suitable.