If someone pays you $10 per hour to bash your head against your keyboard–you could bash your way to your magical $200 goal (assuming your keyboard holds up) — but you’d probably hate your life.
Rather than wasting your time by suggesting that you do some repetitive boring stuff (like take a survey, click on ads, or some other soul-killing activity) I’m going to share a some things that you can do to make approximately $200 per week (sometimes a lot more than this) while having fun.
Yes, it’s possible to earn some extra money and actually enjoy it as well.
All of the items on the list are things that I’ve done personally or would do myself (no spammy survey BS).
Ok let’s dive in.
First–let’s match your skills + interests with marketplace opportunities
Your personality has a lot to do with the sorts of things you’d be good at.
Here are some questions you’ll need to ask yourself before you jump in:
- Are you an introvert or extrovert?
- Would you rather create written content, audio, or video?
- What topics do you like to learn about?
- What do you know that other people struggle with (specific knowledge)?
- What feels like play to you, but looks like work to other people?
You might have come to this post looking for a quick list–but buckle up. I want you leaving here with a framework to go out and create sustainable income–not just make a couple of extra bucks doing more of the things you hate.
Now that you’ve done a little self-reflection, Let’s work our way down the list. At the end, we’ll dive deeper into how you can take these concepts to go from $200 per week, to $200 per hour (and a lot further).
Editing Video: Enabling the World’s Creatives
Would it surprise you to learn that I know of a Personal Finance YouTuber that was making 7 figures from their Youtube channel but was still spending hours per day editing their own videos?
Crazy, I know.
There are thousands (maybe more) video creators on YouTube, TikTok, IG and elsewhere that are making 6-7 figures from their work–but still have no help on the video editing side.
All of these creators would gladly pay you $200 per week (and probably a lot more) to edit their videos so they can focus on actually creating the content and bringing value to their audience.
If you get lucky, you may just strike up a relationship with the right creator that is on the rise–and that relationship can lead to something magical for you.
Now, you might think that editing videos sounds complicated and time consuming.
The fact is, the software is getting easier and easier to use.
Companies are popping up that allow you to create awesome jump cuts and animations with just a few clicks.
For example, I just found one called Magisto within a couple minutes of Google searches.
Don’t believe me? Take an afternoon to search around yourself and sign up for a few free trials. I bet you’ll find one that you can reasonably master within 1-2 weeks.
You’ll also find that a lot of these creators use a similar format for every one of their videos–so there won’t be a ton of complicated customizations needed for most videos.
How you make money
This is the fun part. Now you can do a few things to get customers:
- DM / Email Creators and offering to help with edits
- Put up profiles on Upwork, Toptal, Fiverr etc.
- Go on Clutch.co and cold email marketing agencies offering to do their video editing work
I won’t go into too much detail on how to perform those steps, but just know that it’s possible to get some amazing results through cold outreach if you’re thoughtful about it.
I was able to get ahold of two billionaires, both in the same morning, through cold outreach. All you need is one yes to start making your $200 per week doing video editing.
Remember, focus on quality over quantity here.
Video editing is a skill that I highly recommend as something that can start to earn you 50 bucks per hour with no college degree, no debt, do it from anywhere in the world, and it’s growing in demand.
Audio Editing: Enabling the Podcast Revolution
This one is likely less lucrative than video–but a lot easier to master. There are thousands of podcast episodes that go live every single day–and some creators are making a killing off of their podcast (think Joe Rogan).
Each one of these requires some editing.
Again, some creators are still doing this themselves, but many are growing to the point that they would be more than willing to outsource that to you for $200 while they go and spend more time with their family and friends.
How to learn Audio Editing
There are a ton of resources online that cover how to edit audio–so I won’t go into too much detail on that here.
There is a lot of free software out there that provides an relatively easy to use interface that you can master within a short period of time.
$200 per week isn’t much, so all you need is one or two podcasters to say “yes” for you to have a couple of clients paying you for every episode that you edit.
Blogging
This one is my personal favorite. I am a huge fan of writing–and over the years I’ve learned how to channel that in the right ways to a fun side hobby into a lucrative source of income.
My first blogging adventure was a real estate website that I sold in 2020.
When I started that website, I had no idea how it would ever make money–but I enjoyed every minute that I worked on it. It never felt like work.
It took me a long time to build it up–but it never was my full time focus and I would often spend months not touching it at all when life would get busy.
Despite this, the growth on that website would continue to compound over time and eventually the traffic sources that they website was generating had real marketplace value (especially in the real estate niche).
There are bloggers that make anywhere from $200 per week to $2M per year on their blog.
I can attest first hand how lucrative blogging can be –espeically if you’re the type of person that enjoys writing.
One word of caution though, it takes a long time to start generating income from a blog.
That being said, there are traffic sources that you can tap in to (like Pinterest) to start monetizing your blog within 4-6 months.
$200 per week really isn’t that much, so I’d bet you can start a blog, leverage Pinterest, and start generating income to the tune of $1K per month within 6 months time in just about any niche as long as you put in the work.;
And unlike the other methods of making money that I suggested early–the effort put forth on a blog will compound over time. 1hr of work = $50 when you’re editing videos.
But 1hr of work after 4 years of blogging will likely generate hundreds of dollars per hours (or more) since the blog traffic has been compounding in value over the course of years.
Heck, this is what I am doing right now writing this blog. I am creating an asset that will appreciate over time, and while my early efforts to grow this blog will likely net me little to no money–the gains in years 3,4,5 and beyond will be massive.
Delaying gratification now, for something greater later, is where all the big financial gains come from and blogging is no exception.
Can you tell I love blogging?
Let’s move on to some other interesting ways to get you to your $200 per week goal.
Consulting: The tried and true way to convert time into dollars quickly
What are you good at that other people find hard?
Chances are, there is something that you can do better than most people–and chances are there is a group of people out there that would be willing to pay you to teach them that thing.
Consulting is a really broad way of saying “teaching others to do something valuable that you’re already good at and getting paid for it.”
The other side of this equation is having a connection to a business or being able to get in contact with a business or person that could use your help (this is where most people get caught in an endless loop of trying to find more customers while helping the existing customers).
Consulting is a great way to get to the initial $200 per week mark–but you’ll eventually hit a ceiling for what you can do in consulting (typically 10K per month–unlike a blog which is limitless).
One of the things I like the most in the world of consulting right now is marketing consulting.
Marketing Consulting: The fastest way from zero to $200 per week
Don’t know anything about marketing? No problem! The internet, my friend, is for you.
You can learn marketing by starting a blog and generating traffic. You can then charge companies a fee to market their companies like you’ve been marketing your own stuff.
Even if your own stuff fails to generate an income for you– you’ll have built up the skills that you can then use to sell others on paying you for marketing services.
I’d be willing to bet that you could gain enough knowledge from just trying and learning within 6 months to then go out and get your first consulting client.
The key is to focus on one specific area of marketing and go ultra deep on that.
Selling yourself as a “social media strategist” won’t work.
Selling yourself as a “LinkedIn video influencer expert” will. The more specific your area of expertise is, the quicker you can learn it and the easier it will be for you to sell (and perform) the service.
Here are some specialties that I think you can learn and get your first client quickly:
- Instagram stories
- Driving traffic from Pinterest to eCommerce stores
- Linkedin Video Marketing
- Youtube marketing for local businesses
Programming Voice Apps for Alexa
Ok, so this is going to scare about 99% of you reading this right now.
It shouldn’t.
In fact, you can create voice apps visually–no coding required. There are actually apps that let you create voice apps with zero coding.
My favorite niche in this space right now is the guy that is creating a ton of random “noise” apps that help people sleep.
Like the sound of a fan playing continuously for sleeping? Like crickets? He’s created dozens and dozens of these things.
Folks, these are not hard apps to make, trust me. Gone are the days of HTML, CSS, and complicated server management when it comes to voice apps.
Mark Cuban, one of my favorite Entrepreneurs ever, has recently suggested that if he had to start all over from zero today, he’d starting creating voice apps.
When Mark Cuban speaks, we should all listen. If he says voice apps are the best side hustle right now–we should all listen.
““Alexa skills and scripting Alexa skills is really, really easy. But everybody thinks it’s really, really hard. And so that disconnect is a great opportunity,” Cuban previously told Recode’s Peter Kafka in 2019.
Taken from CNBC website
Mark has suggested that folks would be willing to pay up to $40 per hour to have someone set up their voice-enabled device with a few custom scripts.
You can see how quickly you can reach $200 per week when every hour get’s you another 40 bucks closer to your goal.
There are tons of tools and resources online to help you get started with creating these voice apps.
Amazon is even rewarding developers with cash that create apps that are heavily used by Alexa users.
Alexa has stories on it’s website about how developers were able to make 5 figures in 6 months with just the developer rewards alone.
Any good side hustle should have multiple ways for you to earn income from it–and voice apps check this box.
In many ways the Alexa apps store is similar to the early versions of the iOS and Android app stores back in 2006-2008 before they got huge.
The opportunity is massive in voice.
Conclusion
You really should avoid the unsustainable and spammy tactics that many folks recommend to people that want to make money online.
Sure, filling out a survey might get you 5 or 10 bucks this afternoon–but you need consistent and reliable sources of income to get to your $200 per week income goal.
Editing audio and video are both skills are increasingly easy to learn, and can easily land you 25-50 bucks per hour from home. As more and more creators are creating 6 and 7 figure incomes with audio and video content, you’ll have an opportunity to help them and create steady streams of income.
Blogging is my personal favorite side hustle, and the results from blogging compound over time. You’ll need to be patient and master traffic sources (like Google SEO and Pinterest) but if you do, you’ll create something of lasting value.
Finally, Alexa voice apps are dead simple to make–and even Mark Cuban would do this side hustle if he had to start over.
Remember to ask yourself some key questions to figure out where your personality best fits in with these options.
$200 per week is a good starting point–but it shouldn’t be the end goal. Remember to focus on long term sustainability of your side hustle so you set yourself up for success over the next 5 years (not just the next 5 days).