How to Make Money Without a Job

Jobs are so 20th century. Welcome to the "gig" economy, where more than 20 million Americans are full-time "freelancers," "consultants," "independent contractors" and other code names for not having a "real" job [source: Greenhouse]. True, the Great Recession forced a lot of workers into the freelance ranks, but more than half of "solopreneurs" actively choose the jobless lifestyle [source:Florida]. No time clocks, no cubicles, and best of all, no bosses.

But how much money can you make without a traditional job? That depends on your skills, experience and flair for self-promotion. There are wildly popular bloggers who pull in six figures a month, but the general trend is that freelance workers earn slightly less than their cubicle-bound colleagues – about $15.60 per hour versus $20 per hour [source: Florida].

Of the more than 200,000 members of the Freelancers Union — one of America's fastest-growing labor organizations — 58 percent earn less than $50,000 a year and 29 percent earn less than $25,000 [source:Greenhouse].

Even if you won't get rich as an independent worker, there are plenty of other benefits to going jobless: You can better adapt your work schedule to family life. You can tinker with many different projects instead of doing the same thing day after day. And, best of all, you call the shots.

But what if the freelance life is still too confining? What if you want to make money without working at all? Is it possible to keep food on the table and a roof over your head without doing the barest minimum of work? It sounds too good to be true, but let's explore the options, starting with the simplest of economic transactions: selling stuff.

Selling Your Services

In the age of Facebook and LinkedIn, every individual is also a brand. If you want to make money without working a traditional job, then you need to develop and market your unique skill set. You might be the best "human beat box" in three counties, but no one is going to pay you to record a beat box birthday card unless they can find you. That's where Fiverr.com come in.

At Fiverr — and copycat sites like GigBucks and TenBux — you can offer any service to the world for the low price of five dollars. Advertising your service is free, but Fiverr takes one dollar of every sale. Popular offerings are voiceovers in various comical accents, short writing projects, customized cartoons, logo design, Photoshop editing and Web site promotion.

Do you like taking surveys? (Check box A for "Yes" and box B for "No"). Companies like Harris Polls will pay you in points for taking 15 to 20-minute online surveys. The points can then be redeemed for gift cards to sites like Amazon and iTunes. There are other polling companies that pay in cash, but beware of scams.

You could also sign up to be part of a clinical medical trial – and get paid far better than for taking online surveys (sometimes thousands of dollars). Trials for weight loss, depression, diabetes and other issues are offered all over the country. The U.S. government has a Web site that lists them but hospitals and private sites also advertise for volunteers. Of course you need to weigh the risks of the trials against how much you stand to earn.

Then there's the fine art of blogging for dollars. Do you have fascinating things to say about technology, movies, politics, food, sports and/or celebrity news? Can you churn out 300-word chunks of scannable copy every hour? Do you basically live on Twitter and Facebook? Then you might be ready to become a professional blogger. The best way to blog your way to "riches" is by using Google AdSense. Google automatically posts ads on your site that it believes will be good matches for your readers. Every time a site visitor clicks on an ad, you get a cut of the fee paid to Google. Warning: You do need a lot of traffic to your site to generate some decent cash.

If you have financial savvy and a gambler's gut instinct, "day trading" offers the possibility of making Wall Street money from the comfort of Main Street. In the late 1990s, when the stock market was riding the Internet bubble, there was an explosion in home-based stock speculation. Now day traders are back [source: Segal]. Day traders aren't your average investor. They are looking for short-term gains, to flip shares quickly for a profit and get out before the momentum shifts. Just recognize that a very small percentage of day traders make enough money to quit their actual day job and a much larger percentage lose money [source: Segal].