How to Make $10K a Month

Earning $10,000 each month will net you over $100,000 per year. While that might seem like a dream salary that you just can’t obtain, a few lucrative side hustles could certainly increase your chances of earning six figures and potentially quitting your day job.

Scams and con artists will advertise ways to make it big with little skill and no time involved at all. They may promise you the six-figure income you’ve been waiting for, with the potential that you could earn beaucoup bucks. So when you hear that you might be able to earn $10,000 per month with some strategically selected side hustles, we don’t doubt you for being skeptical.

At the same time, our guide offers you realistic ways you can work up to making $10K per month. It might seem out of reach now, but with a solid work ethic and dedication to both yourself and the work ahead of you, this six-figure salary might not be so unachievable after all. It just takes a single step forward.

When you boil it down, side hustles are also just a great way to diversify your income and protect you from losing all your income streams if you end up losing your full-time job. In fact, the best side hustles can buffer your savings so that you’ve got a sizable nest egg to help achieve your financial goals. 

Are you ready to find out more about how you can work to earn $10,000 per month? Let’s get started with these real opportunities for achieving financial independence.

Requirements for Making $10K a Month

Before we get too deep into how you can make $10K per month, let’s first set out some expectations. These will help guide you and support you in your journey towards that $100,000 mark.

  • Patience: Establishing these side hustle opportunities below will take some time, though most can easily be done within a few hours. It will take time to develop your income source, as your income will vary as well. Be patient with the process and with yourself.
  • Dedication: Make a pact with yourself to see your efforts through. Most side hustlers spend about 10-15 hours per week on their side hustle, so put in the time, even when you feel discouraged.
  • Game plan: Call it a business plan or even just a plan of attack. No matter what it is to you, it should delineate what goals you have and how you’re going to meet them. There are lots of opportunities in the gig economy, so it’s easy to get distracted and thrown off course. Stick to your plan and work toward that $10K-a-month pay. 
  • Accountability: Never underestimate the power of a support system. Establish friends and family that will help push you and support you when times get tough and you feel like quitting. 
  • Flexibility: Overcoming hurdles in your side hustles will help you develop as a person and a gig economy worker. Work to pivot when it’s critical to stay competitive, both for in-person as well as online opportunities.

Preparation is key for setting yourself up for success. Strategize before you get too involved for a better end result.

18 Ways to Make $10K a Month

Here’s a list of ways you can realistically make $10K per month. We’ve also included real-life calculations to help you put these side hustles in context.

1. Buy and Flip Items

Buying items low and selling them for profit has been part and parcel of the world of supply and demand. If you’re looking to make $10,000 per month on buying and flipping items, sourcing them is your first hurdle. You’ll need to visit flea markets, garage sales, and clearance sections of many major retailers.

Most people who buy and flip items will then sell them on eBay or Amazon. It’s best to narrow down your product category before you begin so you can focus on a single niche. This will allow you to better estimate supplies and costs associated with any repairs or listing processes necessary.

Calculations: Most buy-and-flip side hustlers earn anywhere from $200 to $2,500 per month in their first year, but if you’re able to achieve over $2,500 in profits, you’re a quarter of the way there to earning $10K per month.

2. Earn Money as a Virtual Bookkeeper

Many virtual bookkeepers work remotely, which can be an easy way to accomplish this side hustle from home. You can take virtual bookkeeper courses in order to get certified and stand out from the competition. The more you can do to showcase your training and certifications, the more higher-paying clients you can attract.

Salary.com reports virtual bookkeepers earn an hourly rate of about $20 on average.

Calculation: $20 per hour with 20 hours per week is 80 hours per month, or $1,600 in profit. That’s easily something you could increase with a retainer and/or multiple clients once you get on your feet as a virtual bookkeeper. If you had 4 clients at this rate, you could earn over $6,000 easily.

3. Coach Your Peers Online

Many people rely on coaching to drive them towards their goals and keep them accountable. If you’re particularly motivated to help others do what they want to do, a side hustle in coaching can be incredibly rewarding.

Coaching can be done in-person or remotely. There are numerous areas in which you can provide coaching, including many listed on the International Coaching Federation website. There, you can also find ways to price your coaching programs to be both enticing and competitive.

A median coaching rate for one hour of meeting time one-on-one can cost around $100.

Calculation: If you did this for 20 hours a week, at $100 per 1-hour coaching session, you’d make $2K.

4. Teach What You Know

Teaching what you know is very similar to coaching. Rather than providing additional motivational support, however, teachers instead focus on bringing you quality knowledge on a topic in hopes that it leads to more learning opportunities down the road.

If you are knowledgeable about a specific topic and want to teach others about it, a course on Teachable could provide the $10K per month you’re looking for. Teachable handles all the payment processing and customer service necessary, while charging you 5% for this service.

At the same time, you could be making anywhere from $20 per course to $2,000 per course, depending on what topic you choose. You will have to join Teachable in order to earn money from the platform, but even at $200 per month in platform fees, the potential is there to earn quite a bit.

The best thing about teaching what you know is that in the case of Teachable, your income is mostly passive once you create the course. A single course could earn you extra money for years to come.

Calculation: If you charge $75 per course and you have 100 sales within the month, you’ll make $7,500. However, you’ll have to subtract the 5% as well as the $200 for the premium subscription, but you’d still be just under $7,000. 

5. Rollin’ in the Dough with Retail Arbitrage

We talked about buying and selling items on eBay in our first side hustle, but retail arbitrage takes a bit more strategy than just picking up items and turning them for a profit. You might have to put work into the items you buy at flea markets and garage sales, but with retail arbitrage, the products stay as they are for the most part.

Retail arbitrage consists of selling products on Amazon that you find on clearance at retailers who do not sell on Amazon. This side hustle is simple in terms of goal, but the strategy is really where creativity kicks in.

For example, if you were to pick a niche such as children’s books, you might visit a Goodwill or thrift store to find used children’s books for cheap. You can then relist these books on Amazon and potentially make $5 to $10 profit on each one. This same concept can be extended to a number of niches, from spotting goods and kids toys to clothing and home goods.

Calculation: Smaller sales of $20 profit would have to total 150 to make $3K. But if you find a larger item on clearance and resell it on Amazon, you could earn a few hundred dollars at a time, giving you thousands of dollars in profit each month.

6. Manage Social Media Accounts

Finding a business that’s not on social media in one way or another is uncommon these days. Many businesses don’t have the infrastructure to support promoting themselves on social media networks, which is where you come in.

If you’re passionate about social media and know your way around, you can easily become a social media manager for companies in your favorite niches. In this role, you may create and manage social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn.

If you can swing your schedule just right, you may even be able to become a social media manager for more than one company, which will increase your profits dramatically. All the same, Comparably reports the median salary of a Social Media Manager to be $58,000 per year. 

Calculation: The median salary divided by 12 months is about $4,800 per month, which is nearly half-way there to making your $10K goal.

7. Virtually Assist Via Remote Opportunities

In the same vein as social media managers, but with a few more interpersonal skills, virtual assistants can manage social media as only a single facet of their job description. Other duties include arranging travel, customer service, and even emailing and/or calling on the boss’ behalf.

The field of virtual assistants is growing as small businesses gain ground. The average hourly rate is about $21 per hour, and both in-person and remote opportunities are available.

Calculation: At an average rate of $21 per hour, if you’re able to gain 2 clients that pay this rate, and you work 160 hours per month between them, you’ll earn $3,360. That puts you a third of the way there towards your $10K per month goal.

8. Add Affiliate Marketing

As one of the most lucrative ways to earn passive income, affiliate marketing can support some entrepreneurs on not only a $10K per month salary, but even more, depending on what their strategy is. Affiliate marketing is really just the evolution of word-by-mouth, which is to say you recommend a certain service and receive commission on any sales that result.

To find affiliate programs for niches you’re passionate about, google “[niche] + affiliate programs.” There are many opportunities for all kinds of affiliate programs, some offering up to 40% of sales for referrals. You can provide affiliate links in many ways, from social media posts to websites and email lists.

Calculation: If you make an average of 10% per sale and you complete 50 sales at prices of $500 or more, your profits would equal $2,500. This is passive income so you’re not necessarily having to work for it either.

9. Register as a Notary Loan Signing Agent

Getting a document notarized is a requirement for things like purchasing a house, but you can profit from becoming a notary loan signing agent to start earning $10,000 per month.

Notary loan signing agents work with a title company in order to verify signatures at the closing of a home. These agents are trained to work with the borrower to get the necessary documents completed, signed, and notarized to finalize the sale of the house.

Most notary loan signing agents make $75 to $125 per appointment, which can last a few hours at a time. However, you may be able to make up to $200 per hour, depending on the terms available.

On a side note, did you know that if you earn $10K per month, you can easily qualify for a home loan of $350,000 or more?

Calculation: With 3 appointments per week, at $100 per appointment, you’d make $1,200 per month for a few hours during the week or on the weekend. 

10. Self-Publish Your Book

Here’s another great passive income opportunity. It might take you some time to write your book for sale, but once you do, sales will continue without you having to worry about putting more effort in.

Most self-published authors choose Amazon to sell their writing about what they know. You can write non-fiction and/or fiction alike, depending on what you prefer. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is again the most common, but you can also self-publish via Draft2Digital and BookBaby as well.

Calculation: If your book sells for $25, and you get 50% royalty on it, you’d make $12.50 per book. You would need to sell 5,000 books to make about $62,500 per year, which is roughly $5,200 per month. That puts you halfway to your goal right there.

11. Take Care of Run-Down Properties

Boots on the ground can be invaluable in real estate, but when the ground isn’t doing much to sell a house, that’s where a Property Preservation Contractor comes in.

In this side hustle, you are required to repair and maintain a property in a service area. This property might be up for sale now or will be on the market soon, but it’s just not giving out great vibes when it comes to curb appeal. Property preservation contractors address this issue, most often outsourcing work in order to make at least a semi-passive income.

Calculation: According to ZipRecruiter, the median salary for a property preservation contractor is $35,154, or $17/hour. Full-time, this would make you about $2,720 per month for simply coordinating yard work in order to help homes sell faster.

12. Make it Big on YouTube

Social media and YouTube vie for our attention on a constant basis, but you can easily earn up to $10,000 per month with YouTube. Simply create a channel, upload a few videos, and if you earn enough views and subscribers, you could be making quite a killing on this side hustle.

Earnings from both YouTube ads and page views vary. Active YouTubers can earn $18 per 1,000 ad views and $3-$5 per 1,000 video views. The best part is that there is no formal training and you can start as soon as you have a video camera or smartphone to film with.

Calculation: According to Gigs Done Right, successful YouTubers can make around $5 per 1,000 video views for ads. With 10 videos up and 10K views on each, you’d make $50 per video or $500 for this passive income. The more views you have, the better.

13. Give the World Something to Print

Printables might sound odd in this technologically advanced world of ours, but nothing beats putting pen to paper for some folks. In fact, this side hustle could net you $10K per month in passive income you only had to spend a few hours making.

For example, printables include coloring pages, activities for kids, home shopping lists, cleaning lists, meal planning, meal trackers, and more. While it’s best to have a keen eye for design, as long as you know what people need, you should be able to make a solid profit. Adobe Creative Cloud and Canva can be great software to invest in, but other than that, you only need a selling platform (such as Etsy or Shopify) and an accounting program (like PayPal).

Calculation: By charging $2-$5 on a single download, or $10 on bundles, you would need to sell 1,000 bundles to make $10K per month. If you create a budgeting tool printable package, it’s very possible at least 1,000 people will try it out.

14. Blog About What You Like

Starting and maintaining a blog can be very rewarding, especially since you get to write about what you want to, how often you want to, and practically whenever you want to as well. Most bloggers make their money through affiliate marketing, ads, digital or physical products they sell, and coaching/consulting. Diversifying your income with a blog can jumpstart your income to achieve $10K per month.

Calculation: Alone, affiliate marketing could net you $75 per hour, which means you’d need to work part-time (80 hours per month) just to make $6K. If you put in 2 hours per day each weekday and 10 hours between both weekend days, you’d be able to build quite a blog in just a few months.

15. Open Your Own Etsy Store

If printables aren’t your thing, and you’re not really into shopping and reselling items, opening your own Etsy store could be the solution. Here, you can sell crafts and pieces you create by hand to earn more for what you make. If you deal in larger pieces, your profits could be bigger, depending on what the item is.

You can also sell digital products if you are good at graphic design. These products can help other businesses achieve their goals or even be useful to individuals in their daily lives. You will have to pay listing fees as well as a seller’s fee for products you do sell, but they’re not cost-prohibitive to make a profit.

Calculation: Let’s say you sell an item that costs $40 and you make $30 off of it after the Etsy fees. You would need to sell 300 items in order to make $9K per month, which is so close to $10K that even just a few more sales could put you over the goal line. 

16. Freelance Write for $10K/Month

Freelance writers create many of the blog posts you read, along with marketing materials, emails, website content, and more. Most freelance writing positions are remote, giving you the opportunity to work from home when you choose.

In order to find work, freelance writers typically have to pitch clients. They may work on platforms such as Fiverr, Upwork, or WriterAccess, proofread their materials with Grammarly, and implement SEO strategies. Showcasing your talents with a portfolio and/or website can help impress clients as well.

Calculation: If you earn roughly $50 per blog post and complete 10 of them per week, that’s $2,000 each week. Double that in terms of $100 per article and 20 posts per week, and you’d be looking at $8K per month in earnings.

17. Drop Service Your Commitments

In order to get a leg up on tasks you need to accomplish, you can easily use a strategy called drop service. This entails acquiring work that you then outsource to freelancers who will work for less. Because you are the middleman, you won’t have to do the actual work, but you will still get paid for it, minus the profits you share with the freelancer you hired.

This strategy is often popular in freelance writing, but it can be applied to website design, animated videos, and SEO as well. The idea is to work smarter, not harder.

Calculation: If you are making $0.25/word, you’ll need to write 40K words per month in order to get $10K. However, if you pay someone $0.05/word to complete the articles and spend only 20 hours a month editing and uploading/submitting, you’ll still make $8,000 and your time is open to spend 140 hours on other lucrative opportunities.

18. Build a Car-Sharing Fleet

Sharing your car might not sound like fun at face value, but getting paid for someone else to rent it out can earn you a respectable amount of passive income each month.

Turo allows you to offer your car for rent. Insurance is included in the fees Turo charges their pre-screened customer base, so you’re likely to rent to someone who won’t trash your vehicle. Depending on how big your fleet is, there are relatively low requirements for oversight necessary.

You can also use Getaround to accomplish the same task. In many cases, the income you earn could be similar to what you’d receive from an Airbnb, without the need for investing in a home.

Calculation: A typical fleet car like a Ford Fusion could make $10K per year in Denver but a Toyota RAV4 could make $12K per year in the same area. In contrast, a Jeep Gladiator in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area could make $13K per year. That’s about $1,000 per month for just loaning out your vehicle. 

FAQs

What traditional jobs offer a $10,000 per month salary?

Traditional jobs that earn six figures a year include software engineers, pilots, dentists, sales managers, lawyers, healthcare workers, and those involved in the technology industry.

How long does it take to make $10K per month?

Depending on what opportunities you choose, making $10K per month could only take you a short time. However, it most often takes about 1-2 years for these side hustles to gain traction and start earning you the $10K per month you’re looking for.

What should I do with my $10K per month earnings?

There are many things you can do with $10K per month in profit. After you pay your bills and other financial commitments, you’ll want to invest. Not only that, but you should also diversify your investments just as you did your income streams.

You should also work to pay off any debt you might have, including student loans. Build up your savings with a high-yield savings account and retirement fund so you can depend on income in your later years. At the same time, don’t forget about taxes. They can hit harder for self-employed individuals, but some consider it worth it when they think about going back to a typical 9-to-5 job.

What does $10,000 per month translate to in terms of hourly pay?

If you break it down, $10,000 per month could be earned in many different ways. You could work 20 days out of the month with 8 hours put in each day and earn $500 per day. In an hourly rate, that translates to about $60-65 per hour, which can easily be achieved with multiple streams of passive income.

You’ve heard the expression not to make a mountain out of a molehill, but who says you can’t make a mountain of money from a few side hustles? We hope this article has shown you that an income of $10K per month is possible, it just takes hard work and dedication. If you’re serious about earning over six figures a year from a few strategic side hustles, you’re not alone. The future of work is already here, and all you have to do is catch up with it.

Brian Meiggs
Brian Meiggs
Brian Meiggs is a personal finance expert, and the founder of Smarts, a personal finance site helping you easily explore your best money options. He helps readers follow the smart money in order to increase their earning potential and start building wealth for the future. He regularly writes about side hustles, investing, and general personal finance topics aimed to help anyone earn more, pay off debt, and reach financial freedom. He has been quoted as a top personal finance blogger in major publications including Business Insider, Yahoo! Finance, NASDAQ, Discover, and more.
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