The $1,000/Month Playbook: 6 Simple Income Ideas That Actually Work

No BS, Just Actionable Steps That You Can Try TODAY

What would an extra $1,000 in your wallet do for you each month?

This is the kind of income that can pay down bills, help wipe out debt, and make a massive difference for someone’s finances.

Today, I’m sharing 6 actionable steps to earning this kind of monthly income.

I can’t promise results; anyone who does has an expensive course to sell you. But I can share realistic ideas that have worked for me over the 8 years I’ve been testing side hustles and documenting my progress.

PLUS some of these ideas are ones you can try in the next 5 minutes. Let’s get to it 👇

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Step 1. Claim EASY Online Freebies

This isn’t the kind of money that replaces your day job. However, it gets the ball rolling. And if you’ve never made a dollar online, this is the fastest way to change that and to open your eyes to what’s possible.

1. Use GPT Websites

GPT websites, or get-paid-to websites, pay you for completing simple online tasks. Think answering surveys, downloading mobile games, watching videos, and even clicking on search results.

NOW most GPT offers don’t pay more than $1-$3 per hour. Trust me, I’ve tested over 100 of these sites since 2017.

However, these days certain GPT companies have pretty lucrative sign-up bonus offers. When used correctly, you can potentially earn $50 to $300 in an afternoon of work.

The three main GPT platforms I suggest using include:

➡️ Scrambly (US): Has excellent FinTech and gaming offers.

➡️ Gemsloot (Global): Also has excellent sign-up bonuses and nice freebie offers.

➡️ Freecash (Global): This is the largest GPT site in the world.

Here’s an example of this in action.

💸 Take a look at this Chime banking offer from Gemsloot. It pays you $350 for opening up a free Chime checking account and then moving your direct deposit over to it.

This is a 100% free offer. It exists because Chime is on a massive spending spree and is willing to pay $400 or whatever to acquire a customer. Gemsloot facilitates this transaction and passes the bulk of the earnings on to you.

You can find all kinds of FinTech offers like this. There’s even offers that let you earn by signing up for free trials, shopping for products you were going to buy anyways, or doing things like ordering Uber Eats.

I use plenty of these platforms and cherry-pick the best offers every single month.

👉 Here’s some proof: You can see I have $1,079 in lifetime Scrambly earnings, and 53 withdrawals.

And here’s $521.91 in earnings from Gemsloot:

Again, these platforms won’t make anyone rich. Most people use them incorrectly as well, grinding out surveys or low-paying offers for a couple bucks a week.

Use the large sign-up bonus offers to your advantage. There are so many churning and freebie-opportunities up for grabs if you look in the right spots. Just note that offer availability is subject to change and varies by country oftentimes.

💎 PRO TIP: I’ve made a tool called Hustle Buddy which consolidates the best ‘arbitrage opportunities’ in the GPT space. This is updated weekly, so you can find the best offers without doing all the research yourself.

2. Try Paid Market Research Work

Researchers are willing to pay to talk to people. Especially if you have niche knowledge from your job, certain medical conditions, or use particular products.

I use User Interviews to find these opportunities. It’s free to join, and as a member, you can browse open focus group requests and apply to ones that are a good fit.

Here’s some more proof this works 👉 I’ve earned about $500 from User Interviews so far:

This isn’t life-changing money. But I’ll happily take $50 to $80 for hopping on a 30-60 minute Zoom call to chat with someone and share my thoughts. Studies can also be quite lucrative. Like the $200, 45-minute study I took a few months back talking about AI.

Just note it takes a while to get accepted into a study. I average about one study every 2-3 months right now, but again, it’s easy money.

3. Complete Simple Online Gigs

There’s many other ways to earn $10 to $25 per hour online if you’re willing to grind out fairly repetitive work. This is the world of microtasks. Think data entry, AI prompt training, fact-checking, image annotation, and similar gigs.

Historically, platforms like Amazon MTurk, Appen, and Clickworker dominated this space. They still do, although the hourly pay is quite abysmal here.

Instead of using these sites, I suggest trying AI-training jobs from companies like Micro1 or Stellar AI.

These gigs involve rating prompt responses and helping to train future AI models. You have to apply as a ‘human expert’ and get approved, which takes a brief interview. But once you’re approved, you can work on paid projects and generally earn around $15 to $20 per hour.

I got approved for Micro1 recently. It has hundreds of AI training jobs, and some of the more specialized ones pay $50+ per hour.

My Micro1 dashboard. I’m shown writing, marketing, and video editing gigs based on my skills/work experience.

This is a newer side hustle I’m testing to be fully transparent. But AI has so much funding currently, so these AI-training companies have sprung up like weeds and are on a hiring spree.

Step 2. Set Up Automated Financial Wins

The idea here is to optimize what you already have and what income is coming in. This should take 30-60 minutes of focus one afternoon. Think of it as some financial housekeeping.

Some automated wins you can start today include:

➡️ Setting up automatic deposits from your paycheck into your savings account so you ensure you’re putting money aside each month (and not overspending.)

➡️ Researching the top high-yield savings rates on the market and moving your savings there. If you can stack this idea with a GPT sign-up bonus or bank deposit bonus, even better.

➡️ Setting up automatic monthly deposits into your investment account. Even if it’s $50, this builds the right habit and lets you benefit from time + compound interest.

➡️ Earning cashback automatically when you shop. If you’re responsible, you should use a rewards credit card so you earn cashback automatically. I also use Coupert and Rakuten when I shop online to earn additional cashback.

Again, you can set up all of these automations in an hour. They help prevent overspending and ensure your money lands where it’s supposed to.

💸 Pro Tip: Check out these 4 money-making automations I use every month.

Step 3. Play Some Financial Defense

Like setting up simple automations, playing financial defense goes a long way in improving your bank balance. A penny saved is a penny earned, as they say!

Here are some simple ideas you can implement quickly:

➡️ Look through the last few months of bank statements for any weird charges. I’ve caught issues before, called my bank, and saved $20 to $200+ on charges I shouldn’t have paid for. This is one habit you should do monthly at a minimum, honestly.

➡️ Cancel subscriptions you don’t need. Again, you’ll spot these recurring charges on your bank statements. Trim ruthlessly here.

➡️ Call your insurance providers annually and shop around for cheaper coverage. Or, update your insurance providers of any changes that justifies lower premiums. Even small wins add up; I put my car into ‘storage’ when I leave the country as a nomad and told my insurance company to lower my estimated annual mileage from 20,000km to 5,000km. My monthly premiums dropped massively.

➡️ Renegotiate phone & internet bills. Just like insurance plans, shop around for more affordable coverage. You can even call, complain, and say you’re thinking of changing to a competitor. You’ll probably get something if you haven’t changed plans in a while.

Step 4: Make Money With Gig Work

Turning to the gig economy is another reliable hustle you can use on your path to an extra $1,000 per month. I’ve done this periodically since college. From shoveling snow via Craigslist cash gigs to completing mystery shopping work. Not glamorous, but easy to do.

There’s tons of gig apps out there you can apply to, including:

• Uber Eats & DoorDash (food delivery)

• Instacart and Shipt (grocery delivery)

• Rover (walking dogs and pet sitting)

• Taskrabbit (furniture assembly, errand running, cleaning tech help, etc.)

• Dolly and Lugg (help people move)

• Sharetown (pick up bulky return items and resell them on Facebook Marketplace, super cool gig)

• Lawn Love (landscaping and lawn care)

• Field Agent and Premise (mystery shopping)

• Care.com (caretaking work)

• Amazon Flex and GoShare (package delivery)

In many markets, these gigs pay about $12 to $20 per hour. But you have to work smart, and track expenses like fuel and vehicle depreciation.

OR do what my buddy does. He delivers for Uber Eats and DoorDash on his bike in downtown Toronto. He only works during dinner shifts with peak pricing, and he earns about $15 to $20 per hour with tips, gets exercise, and doesn’t spend money on gas.

This is his food delivery setup.

Niche gig apps also tend to pay more. For example, gigs like Sharetown let you start a flipping business where you resell bulky items like sofas and gym equipment. It’s more work, but the payouts are higher.

Step 5. Make Money Freelancing

Online freelancing is another path you can consider. This is how I scaled my income out of college, eventually quitting my job to move to Colombia and then travel around the world:

Medellin, 2020. I had just quit my 9-5 job and gone all-in on blogging and freelance work. I took a 50% pay cut doing so. 6 months later, I was earning double my former salary.

Getting started here can be a grind. That’s why I recommend completing the earlier steps first so you get some quick wins.

Don’t waste time with Fiverr or Upwork either. Those platforms are so saturated and are a race-to-the-bottom in terms of pricing and quality. Instead, here’s where I recommend finding work:

➡️ Reddit r/forhire: Reddit has a surprising number of job boards where people look for developers, digital marketers, virtual assistants, video editors, and all kinds of specialized freelancers.

➡️ LinkedIn: I hate using LinkedIn, but honestly, it’s excellent for finding jobs and clients. This is how I’ve found some of my best freelance writing and SEO clients over the years.

➡️ FlexJobs: This is a paid remote job board I have also used to find freelance writing work. I now promote it as well because I’ve used it and feel comfortable doing so. I like FlexJobs because many listings actually have salary info, and the team does a good job at weeding out fake listings/scams.

➡️ Facebook Groups: Join Facebook groups with bloggers and online business owners. Wait for them to ask for help with your service. Then DM them, offer some free upfront value or insights, and try to land a client. This is also how I’ve found writing/marketing clients, and it’s 100% free.

ALSO: Set up job alerts! You can do this on LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, and basically any job board these days.

Step 6. Begin Building Your Own One-Person Business

The last step, building a one-person business that lets you scale your income way beyond an extra $1,000 a month.

If you need money immediately, please don’t do this. It always irks me when people suggest YouTube, dropshipping, or some other business model to people who just need cash to pay rent tomorrow.

BUT if you’re looking to build an asset that’s sustainable and scalable, this is the step for you.

I’ve written about the best one-person business models before. Here’s some of my favorites:

➡️ Creating a paid newsletter on Substack

➡️ Making money on YouTube with talking-head channels (you can see my $250,000+ YouTube earnings framework here if you’re curious)

➡️ Creating niche pages on social media for affiliate marketing purposes

➡️ Selling simple digital products (i.e. printables, templates, mini-courses)

➡️ Starting an Etsy print on demand business

Again, don’t expect results overnight here. Anyone promising this is easy and instant is likely pushing a course. But once you have your financial bases covered, I’d take a swing at starting a business.

This is how I ended up making $1M+ in my twenties and became financially free. I legitimately kept testing side hustles, found an idea that was scalable, and stuck with it from 2018 to 2024.

That first year, I made $1,700 with my one-person business. In its last year, I made $500,000 and then sold the business.

This is a slow game for most people. But it’s certainly a game worth playing.

Extra Reading: 20+ AI Tools That Actually Make Money.

Next Steps

I’ve been writing about side hustles and making money online since 2018. In that time, I’ve tested hundreds of ideas.

This has included plenty of wacky tests as well…I mean, I even ran a phone farm in my college dorm room:

Along the way, I’ve had tons of side hustle failures. I’ve been scammed. I’ve lost money. I’ve also been told I’m wasting my time and that the ideas I’m trying don’t work.

Oftentimes, these detractors are right. But you know what, when they’re wrong, they’re massively wrong and are the ones truly missing out.

The world is full of incredible opportunities. And consistent effort is the single greatest factor in determining if you get a slice of the pie. If you can commit to a goal and pursue it relentlessly, even when it gets difficult, you will accomplish that goal eventually.

Now, that’s not to say you should proceed with blind confidence. Be weary of promises that are too good to be true. Take my content with a grain of salt also; I share what works for me with my personal proof. But I can’t guarantee results, and your mileage may vary based on where you live and the skills you have as well.

At the end of the day, I know a lot of people are tapped out financially right now. It’s been a tricky few years. So I hope some of these ideas provide a realistic, actionable path to making more money each month. Even starting small is a start in the right direction. And you might be surprised at how some of these hustles work out for you once you give them a try.

Thank you for reading and for your support as always. I’ll catch you in the next one.

Tom from WiFi Wealth.

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