I recently took a vacation that was way out of my budget. I spent five days at a special park that shall remain nameless but is located in Orlando, Florida.
Well, it would’ve been way out of my budget if I did not have the financial assistance of my side hustles.
Using side hustle money to take a trip — or ease the financial burden of a trip — is common. Many people only do side hustles for that reason alone.
The problem here identifying side hustles that will pay you enough money within a certain number of months to take a vacation. I call these quick-paying side hustles.
For example, if your side hustle is flipping websites then it could take you anywhere from several months to years to start seeing money roll in.
In my situation, I needed to make and save about $2,000 in 6 months to help me pay for my vacation. I still used some money from other income sources, but most of the trip was paid for by side gigs.
Here are the side hustles I used to do it.
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Many people don’t like taking surveys, but I’ve found a lot of success with it on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). I don’t dedicate too much time to online survey sites, I just do it when I get bored.
The great thing about taking surveys on MTurk is users have the option to get paid every three days. I had payments rolling in twice a week for nearly six months.
Sometimes these payments were $4, sometimes $10 or $12. But those small amounts added up quickly.
By the time I was done with MTurk, I earned a little more than $600, which averages about $100 per month for 6 months.
Most people who have an Amazon account can participate in surveys on MTurk. Most of them are college studies, so they should really pick up again next semester in 2022.
Selling on eBay
This was my heavy hitter. I listed anything and everything around my house that I didn’t use. Old T-shirts, weights, video games. You name it, I sold it.
I recently posted on LinkedIn about how I had done more than $3,000 in sales on eBay in the past 90 days. Not all of those sales were house junk for my vacation, but $800 worth was.
Some of the bigger sales I made were:
- An old Sirius XM radio ($200 profit)
- An old Apple iPhone 8 ($175 profit)
- Two old Nike hoodies ($60 profit)
I basically traded old stuff lying around my home for a trip to Orlando, and I’m OK with that.
Learn more about reselling sneakers and other items for profit.
Constant Content
At this point, I should be sponsored by Constant Content. I published a story a while back about my opinion of them. Is Constant Content worth it for writers?
I uploaded a ton of stories in June and made about six sales since then. You might not think six is a lot, but since Constant Content lets you price your own stories, that’s all I really needed.
Each of those sales was for articles I wrote and priced at $50. You do the math.
Note: Constant Content isn’t necessarily a quick-paying side hustle. But it can be. All of your stories could technically immediately sell after they are listed. But realistically, it will take some time to make sales on the platform. For more immediate results, try writing for Textbroker instead.
Start now, vacation later
If you start doing some of these side hustles now, you could find yourself on a sandy beach somewhere come June 2022.
I made about $1,700 ($1,600 technically after fees and whatnot) in 6 months. It nearly covered my entire vacation package which included hotel and park tickets.
I suggest creating a separate bank account specifically for payments from these kinds of quick-paying side hustles. It’s basically a rainy day fund.
If you’d like to know how I got my airfare completely free for this trip, that’s a story for another day.
