There are plenty of reasons why you'd want to make $100,000 a year.
Maybe you want to reach an ambitious financial goal like buying a house. Maybe you want some extra spending money to go on that vacation you've always dreamed of. Or maybe you just want to become financial stable.
Regardless of the reasons you have, earning $100,000 a year is actually not as hard as it seems. In fact, thanks to the Internet, it's something you can start doing right away.
In this post, we'll outline some of the best ways you can earn $100,000 a year to accomplish your financial goals. But first, you're probably wondering…
How Can I Make 100K A Year?
Making $100K a year might seem like a distant, unattainable dream, but it’s actually possible to do it if you make smart choices as you go along. Being able to focus on your goals, pursuing the right opportunities, and educating yourself is key to increasing your income.
Besides, there's also a myriad of side-hustles that you can do remotely and will help you earn up to $60,000 per year. Income from side hustles, when combined with the income you receive from a well-paying job, can make the goal of achieving six figures per year a reality.
Here are 10 ways you can combine with your primary income source to start building a six-figure income, no matter what you do or where you’re starting.
#15 Getting Into Data Entry
Data entry jobs can be pretty tiring, but they're an efficient way of making cash quickly.
As a data entry worker, you'll be tasked with introducing data (usually in a spreadsheet), updating databases and archives, and other data-related work.
#14 Website Testing
One interesting way you could make money quickly is by using a platform like UserTesting to get paid for testing apps and websites.
You can earn around $10 for every 20-minute assignment, which is pretty good — however, the demand for testers is not constant, so you’re not guaranteed to find opportunities every time you log in to the platform. In some cases, a website may only be looking for feedback from a specific demographic as well, so you'd need to qualify in order to test that website first.
With some luck, though, it's a pretty generous contribution to your income, and it should help you in your path to getting $100,000 or more annually.
#13 Blogging
Running a blog can be pretty hit or miss as far as success is concerned, but considering how small the initial investment is, it's definitely worth a try.
Having a successful blog is one of the best ways of earning passive income (AKA money that you earn with minimal or zero active effort), and you can learn plenty of useful skills like SEO (search engine optimization) and how to market your blog — however, it can be pretty time consuming (especially in the beginning), so make sure you give plenty of thought to this idea before fully committing to it.
Now, if you're interested in learning ways to earn passive income, you can see our article on it here.
#12 Online Tutoring
You can also earn plenty of quick money if you specialize in a particular subject matter, as this allows you to become an online tutor.
There are plenty of subjects currently in demand, but some of the most sought-after are math, science (encompassing subjects like chemistry and physics), and English. Depending on the site you use to engage in online tutoring, you might also need to have more or fewer certifications in order to get started with tutoring students.
If you'd like to learn more about online tutoring, we also have an article on the topic that you can read here.
#11 Renting Out Your Car
Just like with Airbnb, you can rent out your car (preferably an extra vehicle you don't drive much) and make a considerable amount of money fairly quickly with it.
To do so, you can use Turo, a platform where you can list your car for rent to anyone looking for a car. It has around 14 million members and 450,000 vehicles listed to date, so there's a lot of potential to be had.
#10 Freelance Writing
Becoming a freelance writer is a perfect way for people with a talent for words to earn a considerable amount of money.
There's a chance you won't be seeing immediate results if you're just getting started, though, and you might need to use an app like Upwork to find projects to work on and gather experience that way. But once you've become a skilled freelance writer, you can make a lot of money with this remote job.
#9 Online Courses
This is a more advanced way of making money because you'd need to be an expert in a particular skill or subject matter, but in case you are, then you have the option of creating an online course.
Of course, the success to be had with an online course can fluctuate a lot, but if your course performs well, then it's a big source of passive income.
As an additional tip, it'd be useful to have an existing blog or a social media account that has potential buyers — it naturally increases the likelihood of your course's success.
#8 Deliveries
You could also become a deliveryman to get some quick cash.
Delivery orders tend to be mostly food and/or groceries for people who are too busy to get them themselves, but you could also deliver items coming from Amazon.
One upside to this is that there's plenty of apps that you can use for food delivery (for example, there's DoorDash, UberEats, and Instacart just to name a few). By doing this, you could easily earn $14 per hour or more, which means that earning $100,000 over the course of a year or less is completely feasible.
#7 Airbnb
Another way that you could earn $100,000 over the course of one year is by using a spare bedroom (or your house, if you're up for it) and renting it out on Airbnb.
This depends on where you live, but the price for Airbnb rentals can range between $67 to $110 per night. And this is just for one room: you could get a lot more if you decided to rent your house for one night.
Of course, there's plenty of people who wouldn't feel comfortable with this idea, but if you're willing to do it, it's definitely one of the quickest ways of earning money on this list.
#6 Selling Books
If you have a lot of books that you've already read, don't have the time to read or you're simply not interested in reading, then maybe this is the perfect opportunity to do something about them.
Whether it's a ton of academic books or an entire science fiction saga, there's plenty of ways you can sell books that you no longer have any use for — you could do it the traditional way by opening a stall, or you could take advantage of technology by selling them online (Facebook, in particular, is pretty useful for this).
It could take a while for your books to get sold depending on what books you have, but overall, this is another efficient way of getting closer to making $100,000 in one year.
#5 Becoming A Virtual Assistant
As a virtual assistant, you can help busy professionals with their to-do lists or assist small businesses with their social profiles.
Being a virtual assistant allows you to work for someone else, even if they’re a thousand miles (or more) away, without ever having to step foot out of your home office.
And, considering virtual assistants earn upwards of $30 an hour, it’s realistic to earn several thousand dollars every year while working part-time hours.
#4 Proofreading
If you're pretty skilled at spotting other people's mistakes when writing, (whether we're talking about spelling, grammar, and/or syntax errors), then becoming a proofreader is the perfect job for you.
There's a lot of advantages to becoming a remote proofreader — you can work from anywhere, there's plenty of job opportunities as blogging becomes more popular, and making $2,000 as a proofreader is also pretty easy. The average pay you can expect as a proofreader is $26 per hour, after all.
Here's some more about online proofreading jobs that may help you on your way.
#3 Money-Making Apps
Money-making apps are a great way of making extra income with your smartphone during your spare time — it depends on what app you use, but some of them are as easy as creating a profile and doing a few simple tasks as you're watching TV.
Of course, using apps that pay higher (like Uber, Lyft, or TaskRabbit) would be the most straightforward way of getting close to getting six figures in a year, but there's a catch — the higher the pay, the more time you'll have to spend per task.
The income you can get from apps that have easier tasks can still add up, but it will take a bit longer to do so: in short, you'll need to evaluate how quickly you want to make money before choosing an app.
#2 Using Facebook
Facebook is a pretty versatile place for selling products and services, believe it or not — considering it's such a widely used social media platform, it's not difficult at all to find people interested in what you have to offer, especially if you use Facebook Ads to your advantage.
The downside to Facebook is that you'll probably have a slow beginning when you first create your Facebook Business page — after all, your most efficient way to promote yourself without a moderate initial investment will be through word of mouth from friends and members of popular groups relevant to what you're selling.
Once you have a reasonable budget, though, you'll be able to promote your business through paid Facebook ads, which are very effective — you might want to get some training on them to make the most out of your money, though.
#1 Cutting Your Monthly Bills
This is more of a preventive measure rather than an active measure to earn money, but if you think about it, you can also earn extra money by saving money, and cutting down your monthly bills is one of the best ways to do so.
Of course, you won’t see your cash show up immediately once you start cutting your monthly expenses. But the real power of engaging in this practice comes when spending a few hours of careful planning translates to saving a lot of money in the future without even thinking about it.
So, even if it doesn't translate to instant money, it's an idea worth considering if you want to save a few thousand dollars down the line.
In Summary
Whether you want to accomplish some financial goals or you want to earn some extra income to spend on yourself, earning $100,000 in a year now is far easier than ever.
For additional success with these ideas, you might want to combine them in order to make them more effective — it'll take some careful evaluation, but once you've found the perfect combination between these ideas and your schedule, you'll be able to make $100,000 in a year.
