Sell a Service

• Offer to babysit or pet sit. Put up flyers offering to watch people's homes while they're away on vacation. Be prepared to offer references and talk about your experience in these areas. You also can do lawn work, shovel snow, mend clothes or advertise your services to clean out garages and basements. If you're tech savvy, pitch your skill at converting old slides to DVDs or loading someone's entire CD collection onto their iPod. Look at your skills and advertise them to others who might need them. You can do these things intermittently whenever you need extra cash, or set up a small side business that doesn't require a big investment.
  
  

Sell Your Crafts

• If you make jewelry, knit baby booties, paint landscapes or do some other kind of craft, sell your work at local craft fairs, flea markets or consignment shops. Or sell online through auction or craft sites. Make a quantity of items you can sell at an economical price and take good pictures to use in advertising them. Price the items high enough to pay for your materials and your time. Give your crafts creative, enticing names to attract attention.
  
  

Set Up a Website

• Choose a topic that interests you and that will interest other people. Try to pick something that 5,000 other people aren't already writing about. Learn to write using search engine optimization techniques to attract web searchers to your site. Sign up with AdSense or other services that pay for ad clicks. You also can sell ads and other items on your site. This kind of project can take a while to begin earning income, but once you set it up you only need to write articles once a week or so to draw in traffic.
  
  

Sign Up For Research

• Contact your local university and ask if they have any paid research studies. You could earn less than $100 up to several thousand dollars, depending on the study and the time involved. Also, do a search in your area for focus groups. Market research companies hire people to participate in one- to two-hour meetings in which they share their opinions about new products or marketing campaigns. You also can register with mystery shopping companies who will pay you a few dollars to pose as a shopper and provide a report about your experience.