Are you ready to earn extra money through a side hustle or a new career move? In today’s world and with the right skills, you can boost your monthly income or make a steady stream of passive income relatively quickly. And so if you’d like to know how to make 5K a month working from the comfort of your couch, we’ve got you covered.

Earn some extra cash with these methods. They may require an initial investment of your time and energy, but they can yield huge dividends when you want to start making money online. 

Let’s dive in!

Top 10 Ways to Make 5K a Month

Here are ten creative ways to boost your monthly income starting right now. 

Freelancing with Skills You Already Have

Chances are you have a few talents you started to hone at your current job. Whether you have a knack for words or a way with graphic design, you have a skill that other people might be willing to pay good money for. You can easily find freelance gigs in online marketplaces such as Upwork or Fiverr. 

That being said, a freelance gig is still great because you can complete it around your other hobbies, family commitments, or responsibilities. It’s a great way to earn more money during evenings and weekends when you need a little cash infusion. 

You can even complete your work from anywhere in the world, making it great for people who want to travel and afford a luxurious life abroad. 

A few skills that you might be able to make a living with include: 

• Writing or copywriting
• Graphic design
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Transcription
• Translation
• Web design

Blogging or Content Creation

Chances are that you have already seen how much monthly income successful bloggers make. You can earn money through blogging by paid advertising, affiliate marketing, or starting your own affiliate program for products that you might sell on your site. You can even write a sponsored blog post for another company and watch the income start to stack up! 

And there are lots of great courses that teach you step by step how to start and grow a profitable blog like The Authority Site System (TASS). It’s a blueprint developed by SEO and affiliate marketing experts with the exact direction you need to kickstart your online business journey.

Of course, blogging isn’t the only form of content creation to consider. 

If you feel comfortable on camera, then it might be time to consider starting a YouTube channel. Once you reach 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers, you can apply for their YouTube Partner Program, where you earn money based on ads that run on your videos. 

Virtual Assistant

Have you worked as a receptionist or an executive assistant? Maybe you just have great organizational skills and want to experience financial freedom. You can start your own online business as a virtual assistant. 

Virtual assistants make almost $25 per hour on average which means you would need to work 50 hours per week to make a $5,000 monthly salary. 

While it may not be the fastest path to bolstering your savings account, it can be great if you have experience in this area that allows you to command top dollar. The more you can charge per hour based on your experience, the more lucrative this position could be. 

Most virtual assistants will want to specialize their skills and charge a per-project rate. For example, you may charge a monthly fee for managing social media accounts or keeping an email inbox clear. This keeps you from trading hours for dollars and grants you a bit more financial freedom. 

Start an Amazon FBA Business

Amazon is easily recognized as the go-to place for most people to make a purchase. Take advantage of their name brand recognition and start selling your own wares on their site. Fortunately, this is even easier when you start an Amazon FBA business. 

FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) is just that: an order that is fulfilled by Amazon while you pocket the profit. How does it work? 

• You find an item on sites like Alibaba or Jungle Scout that has profit potential. 
• Set up an Amazon FBA account. 
• Send the products to Amazon fulfillment centers. 
• Someone orders your product. 
• Amazon packages and ships it for you (for a fee). 

For more information on Amazon FBA businesses, here is our case study on starting an Amazon FBA business. 

Taking Pictures and Selling Stock Photos

Do you have an eye for taking good pictures? Even a beginner can make good use of YouTube channels and the library to learn more about the art of taking a great photo. Plus, with the improvement in the quality of smartphone cameras, you may not even need to invest in any new equipment.

Instead, you can sell your pictures online to stock photo websites for extra cash. There are tons of places where you can upload your pictures to earn money, including Shutterstock, iStock, Getty Images, and more. 

Of course, if you have a knack for photography and some good selling skills, you can also make a living as a freelance photographer. You can take pictures for businesses, couples sessions, maternity sessions, and newborn photographs, just to name a few times when a professional photographer could be involved. 

If you have some equipment and a little bit of creativity, photography is a great side hustle (or main income source). 

Proofreading or Editing

While most people think of becoming a freelance writer, this isn’t the only area where your skill with words could prove useful. There are lots of different ways to approach a career as a freelancer. Proofreading and editing are also highly sought-after skills for those with a strong command of the language and an eagle eye for technical details. 

You will spend your days reviewing documents for spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors. While it may not necessarily be glamorous, and it isn’t a source of passive income, it can be a great online business idea. 

You can learn proofreading through online courses to give you the confidence to start charging what you’re worth. A good proofreader can make up to $70,000 per year – well above 5k per month! 

Facebook Marketing

Many people want to use social media to advertise their goods and services. Unfortunately, few business owners have the time or energy to keep up with their Facebook ads. This is where you can come in: earning up to $85,000 annually as a Facebook ads manager. 

Perhaps the best part of managing Facebook ads is that you don’t have to trade hours for dollars. Instead, you can charge a flat monthly fee based on the services you specialize in.

If you can sell your services to local businesses, you’ll be well on your way to bolstering that savings account in no time at all with the extra income you’ll earn. 

The best part is that you don’t need a degree in marketing to be successful here. You can learn through the free and extensive library of resources offered by Meta. 

Learn more about whether this is right for you by learning some Facebook ad tips from expert Monica Louie.

Self-Publishing Books on Amazon KDP

If you truly want to bolster those retirement savings, then it might be time to think about what you can do with Amazon KDP. You can self-publish several short books or even short stories to earn a solid income, mostly passively. The more books you can publish, the higher the likelihood of making money with this passive income idea. 

It’s similar to being a freelance writer, but you’ll be working completely for yourself. 

What do you do if writing isn’t your strong suit? You can still self-publish on Amazon KDP by publishing low content books like notebooks, journals, and more. For more information on how to start a self-publishing business with low content books, see our complete guide here. 

Creating a Course

Do you have a marketable skill that other people would pay to learn? You can market an online course that will help you earn passive income monthly. Plenty of platforms, such as Teachable, make creating your online course a breeze. 

If you want to know how to make 5k a month, creating a course is one of the best ways to go. Some course creators can earn up to $50K per month – a great way to supplement your income. 

The best part is that you can set it and forget it. Once the content is created, you can have a completely hands-off way to earn money. You can even set up an affiliate program for your course, allowing others to advertise for you in exchange for a cut of the sales.

Given that you have to do minimal work for this, it’s a great way to start a thriving online business. 

Real Estate Crowdfunding

If you have some money upfront to invest, you may want to consider real estate crowdfunding. Using apps like Fundrise, you could see a return on your investment as high as 22 percent (the actual returns for 2021 were 22.99 percent).

You purchase a share of a real estate investment trust, where the property may be used differently. Some might be flipped for profit, while others are established as rental properties. Either way, it generates solid returns month over month. 

The best part is that you don’t have to be an accredited investor to start investing in real estate. You can get started with just $10 per month, but you must invest a pretty significant amount to earn $5K per month. 

Final Verdict: How to Make 5K a Month 

Are you ready to achieve a new state of financial freedom? Whether you want a side hustle or a full-time income, these different ways of going about it will help spark your creativity. With a little hard work, you can start earning serious extra cash to save money, pay your bills, and afford the lifestyle you have always dreamed about. 

You can even stack several of these strategies on top of one another for compounded effects.

So ask yourself – which method will you try first?