How To Make $500 A Day - 10+ Realistic Ideas (2024 Guide!) (2024)

When it comes to boosting your monthly income, I always think it’s helpful to set measurable goals. This could be true for finding a new side hustle or starting a new job. Whatever the case, what gets tracked actually gets done!

So, if you’re wondering how to make 500 dollars a day and this is your financial goal, you’re in luck! This post is covering legitimate ways to make $500 a day so you can increase your income.

I’ve personally used several of these methods to make this amount of money, and I also know many other freelancers and side hustlers who have as well, so I know these methods are legit.

How To Make $500 A Day

Making $500 a day might seem like a lofty goal, and honestly, it is. In fact, it’s over $10,000 a month if you’re working every day during the week. But in this post, I’m covering some realistic online money-making ideas and gig apps you can use to earn $500 a day.

1. Freelance Writing

Freelance writing is how I make most of my income these days. And I know this side hustle can make $500 a day because I’ve made this sort of income from writing for the last few years.

In fact, freelance writing isalso what let me quit my office job, move to Colombia and Dubai, and spend time making money with my laptop as a digital nomad.

Now, the beautiful thing about freelance writing is that the earning ceiling is incredibly high. If you have enough clients and charge a solid rate per word, you can easily make $500 a day with writing or much, much more.

For example, when I started freelance writing, I was charging around $0.05 to $0.07 per word; a fairly standard rate for new writers. After gaining experience and learning how to sell my skills online, I landed higher-paying clients in the $0.15 to $0.25 per word range.

These days, I have clients who can pay $200 to $500 per article depending on the subject matter and length. This means I can easily earn $500 from a solid day of freelance writing work if I have enough articles to work on that day.

The video above walks through my steps on how to become a freelance writer if you’re curious on how to get started with this online job.

Making $500 dollars a day with freelance writing takes a lot of time and effort. However, it’s certainly possible, so I had to include this job idea in this post!

You can check out my brand new eBook, Freelance Writing For Freedom, for the step-by-step blueprint I used to scale from $0 to $100,000 in writing income!

2. Blogging

Like freelance writing, making money with a blog is another way to make $500 a day that usually takes a few years to develop.

However, if you want to earn passive income and also love writing, I think blogging is one of the best ways to make $500 a day or much more.

For example, This Online World makes $500 a day or more when you add in display advertising income from Mediavine and all of the affiliate marketing income.

And that’s what I love about blogging; you have somany different ways to monetize your traffic, including:

• Running display ads with companies like Mediavine and Monumetric
• Affiliate marketing
• Influencer marketing deals
• Selling courses
• Selling online coaching
• Selling your own products or services

As you can see in the screenshot above, Mediavine ads made $515 in one single day, so it’s possible to turn a blog into a pretty significant income stream.

This is how I made $92,000+ blogging in 2021, which is up from the $22,000 I made in 2020. And in 2022, This Online World made $272,000, which is over $500 per day on average.

It took me five years to get here, so this isn’t a fast way to earn $500 per day by any means. However, I know bloggers who make much more than me and got there much faster, so the earning potential here is incredibly high.

3. Start An Online Business

Another way to make 500 dollars a day is to start your own ecommerce business.

Once again, making $500 per day with an online business isn’t going to happen overnight. However, the income potential is here. Ecommerce is booming and not going anywhere either, so if there was a time to start an ecommerce business, it would definitely be right now.

Plus, there are tons of different online business ideas you can try out like:

• Selling print on demand products with Etsy
• Starting your own Shopify store and selling merchandise
• Selling subscriptions or digital downloads through a blog or your own website
• Making money with POD websites like Redbubble and Zazzle
• Starting your own Amazon FBA business
• Selling books online or with Amazon Kindle

I used to work on Shopify stores when I worked in paid advertising, and let me tell you, ecommerce stores can generate some serious cash. I also tested out different Etsy POD partners and ended up making money with memes by selling mugs on Etsy back in college.

4. Flip Stuff For Money

Flipping money is another common side hustle idea that can get $500 a day, and there’s also a surprising amount of money on the table here.

The idea here is also pretty simple: you basically buy popular products if you find them on clearance and then resell them for a profit. This is basic retail arbitrage, and usually, sellers buy products from stores like Walmart and Target and then resell them through Amazon FBA.

Granted, this is a tough business with tough margins, but for sellers who source enough inventory, the income potential is there. I mean, I interviewed a side hustling couple who run a million dollar retail arbitrage business, so people do this full-time.

But you don’t have to start an Amazon FBA business and pour a lot of money into upfront inventory. There areplentyof other selling apps and marketplaces you can try to test the waters first.

Some popular ones include:

• The Facebook Marketplace: Ideal for in-person cash sales for a variety of goods.
• Poshmark: One of the best marketplaces for selling clothing, accessories, and shoes.
• Depop: Another fashion marketplace that’s great for selling thrift-store finds.
• Mercari: A popular selling app where you can sell anything from Pokemon cards to electronics.
• OfferUp: Another great selling marketplace that’s similar to Facebook.

If you’re selling a variety of products, listing them on websites like Mercari or eBay is one great way to begin selling. As you earn money from your first sales, you can reinvest the profit into more inventory to keep the cycle going.

5. Use Gig Economy Apps

I don’t think it’s too realistic to use gig economy jobs to make $500 dollars a day. However, if you have a high-paying job and are really looking to hustle, you can always put in some extra hours with various gig jobs to make up the difference.

For example, if your day job pays you $300 to $400 a day, you can hustle after work and on the weekends to hit that $500 a day goal.

There are also plenty of odd jobs and gig apps you can use to make extra cash with, including:

• Making money as a DoorDash driver
• Delivering groceries as an Instacart Shopper
• Completing odd jobs with marketplaces like TaskRabbit
• Finding same-day gig jobs with Wonolo
• Making money as a handyman with Handy
• Delivering food as an Uber Eats courier
• Walking dogs with Rover

Again, none of these are going to make you $500 a day unless you get insanely lucky somehow. But, if you want to make $500 per day and are willing to put in the hours, these gig jobs can help boost your regular income to potentially make this amount.

Jobs like DoorDash and Instacart are the quickest driving gigs to get started and have the highest earning potential, but you can always use a variety of gig apps to make extra cash.

Start making money with Uber Eats!

Extra Reading – Is DoorDash Worth Working For?

6. YouTube

Like some of the other ideas to earn $500 a day, making money on YouTube isn’t something you can do overnight in most cases.

However, YouTube has insane snowballing potential, and a single video can end up making thousands of dollars in its lifetime if it ranks.

For context, I’ve been YouTubing for almost two years now, and my channel now earns around $30 to $40 per day in ad revenue.

This is still very far away from making 500 dollars a day, but hey, it’s easy autopilot money so I can’t complain. Plus, some people make millions of dollars on YouTube, so it’s not unrealistic to think you can eventually make $500 per day with this online business.

And, when you add affiliate marketing into the mix or selling your own courses, the traffic you get from YouTube only becomes more valuable.

7. Rent Out Assets

There are lots of ways to rent stuff out for money which can be a great idea if you prefer passive income over active income.

Like gig jobs, I don’t think this is a common way to make $500 per day, but the extra income can potentially bump up your daily earnings to five hundred dollars.

There are also lots of things you can try to rent out, including:

• Spare storage space with Neighbor Storage
• A spare room or entire home with Airbnb
• Your vehicle with Turo or HyreCar
• A music instrument with websites like Fretish
• A parking spot with websites like Spot Hero
• An unused RV with companies likeRVShare

Rental businesses work best in larger cities since you have more people to potentially rent stuff to. However, you can really get creative here. I mean, people make money renting out land to camp on or land to farm on, so there are plenty of lucrative ideas to explore here.

8. Ask For A Raise

One simple way to make five hundred dollars a day is to ask for a raise if doing so helps you reach your goal.

We cover a lot of content on This Online World like jobs that pay $5k a month or ways to make $3,000 fast, and asking for a raise is a common theme here.

I mean,somany people don’t ask for raises regularly and just wait for their employer to make the first move. But, if you’ve been at your company for around a year or more and are delivering a lot of value, it could be time to ask for a raise.

I did this after about one year of working at my first job out of college at a digital marketing agency. I was able to get a $5,000 raise just from one conversation with my manager.

9. Consulting

Consulting is another very lucrative job, and it can certainly let you make $500 a day if you have enough clients.

I also like this side hustle idea since plentyof industries hire consultants, including departments like:

• Business development
• HR
• Marketing
• PR
• SEO

I’ve actually made money with two types of consulting before. The first was SEO consulting and the second was paid advertising consulting back when I ran Facebook ads for clients. I wasn’t making $500 a day, but the hourly rate was very good and I was just trying this side gig out.

If you’re an industry expert and have more experience, there’s a good chance you can make much, much more as a consultant.

The trickiest part is finding clients and gaining that experience in the first place. However, you can turn to your network to look for opportunities. You can also look for consulting jobs on Upwork if you want to try finding work online.

Extra Reading – Ways To Make Quick Money In One Day.

10. Subscription & Recurring Revenue

Another way to potentially make $500 a day is to build up passive income through subscriptions and recurring revenue.

This is actually one of my favorite ideas and is one I want to focus more on this year.

The idea is actually very simple though on paper: build up recurring passive income streams to reach $500 per day. My friend actually does this very well with YouTube, and he’s able to earn a significant amount of income through recurring affiliate revenue:

Ben promotes offers for podcast hosts and social media research tools that pay him a recurring commission of his referee’s monthly account cost.

Extra Reading – 14 Same Day Cash Jobs That Pay.

11. Other Freelancing Gigs

Freelance writing is how I make most of my money. But there are so many other free online jobs that pay and freelancing routes you can explore.

Some popular freelancing gigs you can consider include:

• Accounting and bookkeeping
• Coding
• Graphic design
• Digital marketing
• Editing and proofreading
• Private tutoring or online tutoring
• SEO
• Social media management
• Web design
• Video editing
• Virtual assistant work

I also made a video covering some legit online jobs and micro task sites that are perfect for beginners.

And again, you can start out small and raise your hourly rates over time. I experienced this with writing, and making $500 in a day is very realistic for me now that I’ve increased my rates.

Extra Reading – How To Make $500 A Week.

Tips For Making $500 A Day

Now that we’ve covered some methods to earn 500 dollars in a day, here are a few tips you can keep in mind as you start different side hustles.

1. Set Realistic Goals: If you’re brand new to side hustling, it might take a while to start making $500 a day. So, set micro goals and work your way up bit by bit. Even if it’s making $50 a day first and then $100, $200, $300, you’ll get there eventually.
2. Decide On Passive vs Active Income: Options like investing in dividend stocks or in income-generating real estate with companies like Arrivedare passive. In contrast, other side gigs require putting in the hours to make money. Decide on how much time you have and what balance you’re looking for.
3. Grow Over Time: Time and compound interest work magic. The same goes for growing a side hustle into a more significant stream. So, don’t give up in the short run and know this process takes time.

Extra Reading – 18 Ways To Make $2,000 Fast.

Final Thoughts

I hope this guide on how to make 500 dollars a day inspires you to tackle and accomplish a new income goal.

There are honestly so many ways to make extra money every month, and it can feel a bit overwhelming when picking an option. So, my advice is to try one or two ideas, see how you like them, and to not give up before really giving things an honest effort.

Some online businesses or side hustles can take months or years to develop, but the income potential is definitely worth the effort.

Looking for other ways to make extra money? Checkout:

• How To Make $1k In 24 Hours.
• How To Double $10,000 Quickly.
• How To Make $500 By Tomorrow.