Earn some dough on the go—or at least see how others are doing it—with these mobile tools.
Could you use a little extra spending money? Say yes. Even if you don’t need it, say yes. It makes the rest of us feel better.
Here are five free apps for making an extra buck while you’d otherwise be binge-watching Scandal, forearm-deep in kettle corn.
1. If you actually have some marketable digital skills
Check out Freelancer (Android, iOS, Web). You can browse available projects, responding with a bid from your phone like some sort of bigshot jetsetter. Some of these people will pay up, too: at the time of this writing, someone is wiling to pay $30 for help pointing a domain to a web server. Want to translate something from German to Thai? You get $280! Know Java? Seventeen bucks an hour can be yours.
2. If you’re looking to build your empire five bucks at a time
Try Fiverr (Android, iOS, Web). You’ll get to duke it out with seemingly endless hordes of people willing to do things for five bucks. And man, there are a lot of people willing to do things for five bucks. To be fair, services “start” at five bucks, but there’s no shortage of stuff that seems like it should cost way more than five bucks: proofreading 1250 words, for example. Professionally mastering an audio track, being another. Get creative: you’ll be offering the service while people with five bucks browse what’s available.
3. If you buy way too much stuff from Amazon
Sell some of it back to other people who can’t control themselves. People just like you! The Amazon Seller app (Android, iOS, Web) lets you scan the barcode of your copy of David Lee Roth’s Crazy from the Heat (the book, obviously; you’d never part with the album) in order to pass it along to another DLR diehard. In mere moments, you’ll have it priced and listed. If barcode scanning isn’t really your speed, you can list things the old fashioned way: by searching through a vast Internet-connected database of products virtual and tangible. The website lets you semi-automatically print shipping labels once you’ve made a sale, too.
4. If you wear T-shirts and use Instagram
You might as well design your own T-shirts and sell them. Note that you don’t have to be cool enough to use Instagram in order to design and sell T-shirts with the Snaptee app (Android, iOS, Web). You can take regular photos with your phone instead. But you should really use Instagram for this, right? “Oh, nothing. I’m just choosing a hella-dope sepia-tone squarsie to make into a shirt, which I’ll then sell for $20 and make 10% off the top,” you’ll say to nobody in particular. (Is that how Instagram users talk?)
5. If you like to shop and you own a smartphone
You can make a few extra bucks with the Secret Shopper app (Android, iOS, Web). Once you’re signed up as a mall ninja, your phone’s GPS will direct you to your nearest target, at which point you’ll snap photos of price tags or test your patience with surly customer service representatives. Once all the pertinent data has been collected, you sling it to your overseer and wait for that sweet, sweet green to roll in.
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