How to make $10 a day: the stupid way, the clever way, and the genius way

I’ve been doing side hustles for well over 10 years now, and if there’s one thing that I learned it’s this: you’ve got to start small. Way before you reach the point where you’re earning a full-time income, you need to prove to yourself that you can make any money at all.

To help get you started, I’m going to teach you how to make $10 dollars a day – which you can then scale up as much as you want.

There are several ways of going about this. If all that you’re looking for is a list of ideas for things that you can do that will get you $10 a day starting now, here you go:

• Mow lawns in your neighborhood
• Babysit
• Wash cars
• Clean houses
• Sell your junk on eBay / craigslist

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

There are 3 main ways to make at least $10 dollars every day

As you can see, it’s not all that difficult to find something to do every single day that will earn you $10. However, you’ve got to be smart about this.

What you absolutely don’t want is to build a business model which requires you to hustle every single day for the rest of your life to make a little extra cash.

If you’ve never done it before, you’re gonna find out really quick that it’s a grind and it sucks. That’s why most people quit. It’s a crappy business model.

The point of this entire article is to give you ideas. I’ve already given you a list of quick tasks that you can do that will put $10 in your pocket starting right now, but I actually don’t recommend doing any of those. Before explaining why, you need to know that there are three main ways to go about generating extra income as a side hustle:

1. The stupid way: Exchange your time for dollars
2. The clever way : Be a middle man
3. The genius way: Earn passive income

There are advantages in disadvantages to each one of these methods, but let me just say this: the third option the genius way is what you should be striving for.

All three of these methods contain the same amount of work, but only the genius method will provide a constant stream of income for you no matter if you’re working or not. That being said, let’s just get into the details of all three methods:

How to make $10 a day the stupid way

To me, there’s nothing more stupid than trading your time for dollars. Yes, it’s a usually quick way to get paid, but it isn’t scalable. There are only a certain number of hours in a day, and there’s only a limited amount of money that people will pay you to do work for them. You’ll have very little hope of becoming extremely wealthy from exchanging your time for dollars.

An example of this is the job you have now. The fact that you’re reading this is a pretty good sign that you’re not happy with the money you make with that job, and it’s likely that your boss isn’t willing to pay you any more then he or she already is.

The bullet points at the top of this article are other examples. You’re not going get very much money for mowing the lawn. Babysitting doesn’t pay much. And you know what?

Those kinds of side hustles are extremely hard work. They may not be mentally challenging, but they will push your body to the limits. I don’t know about you, but making $10 dollars a day and feeling utterly exhausted (and sore) at the end of it is not worth the effort/

Pros and cons of the “stupid” way

I just want it to be known that I’m not totally against this method of earning extra money. It works for a lot of people, especially the ones who are very strapped for cash and they’re desperate to do anything.

Pros

• It’s quick. There’s no setup this method, and you can start earning money immediately.
• You work when you want. If you don’t feel like working today, you don’t have to.

Cons

• If your goal is making $10 a day, it means that you’re going to have to do this kind of work every day. This method is not for the lazy!
• You’ll likely be very underpaid for the services you provide. This is because you’ll be competing with other people who are just as desperate (or even more so) to make a little side cash of their own.
• It’s quite a bit of work to actively search out these kinds of jobs. Be prepared to spend time scouring classified ads and making phone calls.

The clever way to make $10 a day: be a middleman

It was so hard for me not to classify this as a “genius” method. You see, I’ve got a friend who is always thinking outside the box, and he’s making pretty good money being a middleman. I know it sounds cheesy, but his business model is this:

He created an account with 123Print.com, and anytime he notices that a friend family or colleague needs something printed, he jumps in and volunteers to do it for them (for a small fee).

• Nobody likes printing stuff (it’s really hard), and he saves them a lot of time and hassle bye doing that work himself. More specifically, he just gets it done through 123Print.com
• His profit margin‘s are pretty good. Especially on larger print jobs. For example, he just had a batch of business cards printed for somebody. 123Print.com charged him $40 for the batch, but he charged his client $55.

Personally, I never would’ve thought that a business model like this would work, but it does. What he’s essentially doing is saving people from a painful and frustrating experience. Would you pay $15 to not have to deal with a major headache? I know I would, as matter fact, I have gladly payed a lot more for avoiding bigger headaches.

Note: 123Print is currently offering discounts, so you’ll be able to put more money in your pocket if you take advantage of those deals.

Pros and cons of the “middleman” method

Just as I described with the “stupid” method above, there are things you need to know about this one before you jump in with both feet.

Pros

• It’s easily scalable. Think about it: These online printing companies do extremely well. Even in this age of “everything Internet”, people still need things printed all the time. Business cards, posters, mailers, whatever. You shouldn’t have any difficulty finding people who have stuff to print that don’t want to print it themselves.
• It’s not very time-consuming. All you need to do is take the digital files that your clients give you, and pass them over to 123Print.com. Set the shipping address as your clients address, and you won’t have to do anything after that. It’s completely hands off from that point on.
• The potential to make more than $10 dollars a day is huge. Depending on how good of a sales person you are, you’ll build up a regular client list in no time that will continue paying you for years to come.
• This will get easier over time. The more and more print jobs you do in the more you get to know how the 123Print system works, the less time you’ll have to spend on each order.

Cons

• This method does require a little extra work upfront to find clients. That being said, chances are that you’re not going to have to look far. There are most certainly people in your daily life who need things printed from time to time.

The genius way of making $10 every day: passive income

For those that don’t know, passive income is money that keeps coming in whether you’re working or not. This is my entire business model, and my full-time job is building income streams that will pay me on a monthly basis for years into the future.

I’m doing about $10,000 a month with passive income. It all started out with me wanting to make $10 a day, which I did very quickly. Here’s how:

I monetized the things that I’m good at

I’m pretty darn far from being the most talented person in the world. However, I dug deep to identify all of the things that I was good at. More specifically, all of the things that I was good enough at to be able to teach others how to do.

I like to call these “super power”, and we all have them whether we realize it or not. My mother may not think so, but she’s crazy talented with knitting needles. One of my good friends has the ability to fix anything.

They both could make a lot of money summarizing their skills into a PDF or quick video series, but they think they’re not talented enough to do so. It’s thinking like that which is going to keep people from making the kind of money they really want to be making.

Anyway, once I identified my super powers (and trust me – I didn’t think they were all that super), I set up a system to monetize that information.

The 5-step system that automatically pays me every month for my super powers

These are the exact same steps that I took to create a perpetual income business model that’s generating a lot more than $10 a month:

1. Set up a blog

You are going to need a home base on the Internet (a website of your own). Not only does it establish credibility, it’s a super organized way to present your information.

Anyway, don’t overthink this. WordPress is the platform you want to use, and the easiest way to go about setting that up is to create account at WP Engine.

It’s a extremely simple and easy to use WordPress hosting service that anybody can use. The reason why I like WP Engine so much is that it’s super easy and understandable for beginners, yet powerful enough to grow into an add features as you advance.

Note that they are currently offering 3 months free to all new customers, so you won’t have to pay a cent as you get things set up.

2. Do Keyword research

One of the biggest mistakes that I made at the very beginning was not doing keyword research. Basically, the goal is to figure out if people are actually searching for the things you’re going to be talking about. The easiest way to do this is to simply go to Google and start typing things into the search bar.

For example, if your super power is knitting with black yarn, simply start typing that into the search bar and see what auto suggestions Google presents to you. Those auto suggestions are the things that people are actually searching for. If you see nothing at all about black yarn in those suggestions, it might not be worth your time to pursue the topic.

However, don’t give up yet! Try typing something like “black yarn” into the search box, and see what kind of suggestions Google will give you. That might give you some ideas for other things to write about that you hadn’t thought of.

3. Create posts / videos around those keywords

If you don’t like writing, make videos. If you don’t like making videos, write blog posts. But no matter what, post whatever you create to your blog so that it can grow!

Pro tip: writing can be very time-consuming, and if you don’t have a time for it, consider using a content writing service. I use Content Development Pros for some of my blogs, and it’s totally worth the cost.

5. Create a PDF guide (or video series) and sell it

Once you have your website to the point where it’s looking established and lived in (10 to 20 posts is a good start), pause your regular content creation schedule and start creating a digital product that you can sell.

My best performing digital products are in-depth video tutorials. Usually what I do is I take one specific topic that people keep asking me about over and over, and I do an extremely deep dive with video.

Some things to keep in mind about selling digital products

• These videos don’t have to be fancy! My best performing video series was filmed on my iPhone in a hotel room in bad lighting. However, because the topic of the video series solves problems that people are having, it does well.
• You don’t need to spend a lot of time on it. Most of my video tutorials are 10 to 15 separate videos and I filmed them all within two hours.
• Note that you’ll have to do a bit of work up front to create the outline for the video series. You’ll also have to spend some time on the back end doing some editing. But again, don’t overthink this! It’s very much possible to go way overboard and make it so complex that it’s not even useful, so keep things as basic as possible.
• Selling PDF guides which breaks down a complex topic into simple terms sells very well for me as well. You can certainly go that route if you don’t feel comfortable with video. Just know that PDF guides don’t typically earn as much money as a video series will.

Once you have your video series or PDF complete, you’ll need a place to sell it. I personally sell my digital products on Gumroad and Shopify. Both are extremely great. Both provide a seamless experience for my customers, with a simple to use interface and a very secure e-commerce platform.

	Gumroad	Shopify
Sell digital products (PDFs, videos, images, courses, audio files, etc)
Sell physical products
Sell items directly from your blog
Offer subscription plans to your customers
Fully functional e-commerce website with themes and customization options
Pricing	$10/mo	Starting at $29/mo
	Try Gumroad	Try Shopify

You can check out my comparison of Shopify and Gumroad if you want to learn more about each.

Pros and cons about the “genius” way

If it isn’t obvious by now, passive income is my favorite way of earning money from side hustles. It all started out as me wanting to learn how to make $10 a day, and I’m at the point now where I am generating over $3000 a month passively. There are some good points and bad points about this:

Pros

• After a little bit of upfront work, you’ll get to a point where it’s completely passive and the money will keep coming in. I have several passive income streams that I built five years ago that I haven’t touched since 2017. They continuously generate monthly income for me to this day.
• It’s completely scalable. The amount of money that you can earn using this method is completely unlimited. That income is entirely dependent on the amount of work that you put into this. If you only want to make $10 a day, that’s great, that’s super easy to do. You could be earning that within a couple months if you take it seriously. Keep going for several years, and you can be making thousands of dollars a month. Personally, my goal is much higher than that, which I’ll be documenting here on traderscooter.com.

Cons

• Earning money passively online is not a get rich quick scheme. It’s going to take you at least six months to get that $10 a day level. For some people, it can take up to a year.

The most important thing: persistence!

Most people who ask me how to make $10 dollars a day won’t follow through on the advice that I give them. Time and time again, I see people start out strong, but they give up within a week because they think it’s too hard. And you know what? It is hard.

The bottom line is this: if you want to make a better life for yourself and start earning $10 a day or more from this point forward, you’re gonna have to put in the work. And as you have seen, there are several ways of going about this. Only you can decide what is the right method for you.