How to Make $2000 a Month

When you want to make $2000 a month, you need a strategy that allows for flexibility, big paydays, and work you actually enjoy doing. Before taking any odd jobs that come your way, get a strategy for earning more that aligns with your skills and interests. Here’s a round-up to get started.

Create Ambient Sound Videos for YouTube

You don’t have to invest in a complex camera, mic, and lighting setup to create money-making videos on YouTube. You don’t even need to appear on camera or do more than a few minutes of editing. Instead, you can create ambient sound videos for YouTube. Look for royalty-free sounds that are also free for commercial use. Sites like Premium Bat and Pixabay are a few places to start. An editing system like WeVideo can help you put everything together, or you can hire someone on Fiverr for a nominal fee to create your videos.

Check out this video that’s nothing but an image of a cabin with a backdrop of cicadas and crickets:

As you build up page views and subscribers, you can monetize your channel. YouTube requires you to hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past 12 months to start running ads. The good news is ambient videos can be hours long, making it easy to hit those 4,000 watch hours. This YouTube side hustle does take some time to scale up, but it also requires a low investment of time and resources to get up and running.

Rent Out an Old Dumpster

I was surprised to see a dumpster rental service in my community and how brilliant it was. A police officer ran it in his spare time with his wife, and they bring the dumpster to you and haul it away to the dump in 24 to 48 hours, depending on what type of service you booked.

The fee was about $150, which was far cheaper than the bigger players in the area.

But their pricing made sense and targeted a specific market. They were renting out a smaller dumpster perfect for someone decluttering or doing a minor renovation. They weren’t providing 40 ft dumpsters that were more practical for a commercial construction site.

If you provide dumpster service, start small. See what happens with just one dumpster before investing in several units. You can also charge more for weekend hauling or trips to the dump outside of your service zone. For example, you can charge another $25 on up for areas outside your zip code that want to book your service.

Become a Tech VA

When you want to make $2000 a month, you need a highly desirable skill. For example, I primarily work as a copywriter and content marketer but also offer VA work to upload content and help maintain clients’ websites. You can also provide general administrative assistance as a VA but won’t command high rates and payouts. A general VA might charge $15 to $25 an hour, but a highly specialized Tech VA usually charges a minimum of $35 on up to $200, depending on the service.

Making $2000 a month part-time is totally doable as a Tech VA. They’re in high demand in skills ranging from:

• Email service provider management (MailChimp, ConvertKit, AWeber, Active Campaign)
• WordPress maintenance – Upload content, optimize for SEO with plugins like Yoast, and format per the client’s requirements.
• Database maintenance
• YouTube management (editing and uploading videos, optimizing channels)
• Fancy funnel program manager – think ClickFunnels and LeadPages.

Remember, there’s not just one way to be a Tech VA; it just means you have at least one technical skill that clients will eagerly pay for. You also don’t need to know how to do everything and don’t even need to be tech-savvy! You just need to go out and master one skill that’s in demand. If you don’t have any real skillset to offer, browse Udemy or Skillshare to develop ideas and focus on learning a particular software.

Offer Freelance Sales Copywriting

Writing is a great side hustle, but you will command higher rates when you help a brand or business sell something. Freelance sales copywriting is persuasive, gets results, and dramatically impacts a client’s profit margins. It’s a no-brainer that clients will pay higher rates for sales copywriters that get results to the tune of $1,000 on up per project. Companies hire writers to produce:

• High-converting sales pages
• Email campaigns
• Social media posts
• White pages

Looking for clients in your own community or via LinkedIn are a few places to start. You’ll need to create some sales copy examples to get going, but freelance platforms like Upwork or Fiverr are usually more friendly toward beginners.

Narrow down your niches, such as software sales or real estate, and look for sales copywriters who perform those services. Look over their examples and scour their technique. What kind of tone do they use? Do they include statistics and references? How long is the work? What kind of persuasive language does it have? The goal is to create like-minded, unique articles that establish your style and ability to sell.

Sell Complex Budgeting Spreadsheets

Creating Excel spreadsheets went from something people shrugged at to an in-demand skill. You can monetize your own Excel knowledge by creating complex budging spreadsheets. Think through different categories you can offer, including:

• Home budgeting spreadsheets
• Debt reduction spreadsheets
• Bookkeeping and tax clean-up spreadsheets
• Side hustle spreadsheets to earn enough income to travel or quit your job

Once you’ve established what you want to sell, see what other types of spreadsheets are already on the market and how they’re formatted. Despite its reputation as a crafting haven, Etsy has its share of stores selling complicated spreadsheets customized for sellers or as an immediate downloadable product. If you have your own audience or interested buyers from your personal network, you can sell through Gumroad or as a digital product on your own website.

Start an Upwork Side Hustle

An Upwork side hustle is among my favorite (and most lucrative) ways to make money. Far from a race to the bottom where you only land low-paying gigs, I find my best clients there. I earn anywhere from $5,000 to $7,000 a month on the platform as a freelance writer, depending on the clients I’m working with. You can also land work offers:

• Graphic design
• Sales and customer service
• Consulting
• E-commerce development
• Bookkeeping
• Data entry
• Video editing
• … and more

It takes some time to get up and running on Upwork and land those first jobs to earn ratings and reviews. On the upside, you already know these clients are actively looking to hire, and Upwork takes care of the payments, reporting, and helping your profile get seen. Learn more here:

Upwork Side Hustle [Earn $5k Part Time]

Best Jobs on Upwork [Earn $25 to $100 an Hour Now]

Upsell Simple Services to Premium Offers

 Keep it straightforward whether you already sell a few services or are starting from scratch. If you have a tall ladder, consider leaf removal services from gutters and upsell window cleaning services. Or rent a pressure washer and line up a few houses that want their driveways spotless. You can also upsell them to wash and detail their vehicles while you’re at their home. Or, if you mow lawns, offer waste clean-up and disposal services for families with dogs. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

You can also think about seasonality when you sell services. Our neighbors were astounded by how expensive outdoor Christmas light installation was and started doing it for a reduced cost than the competition. Their fee was a bargain, but still $500 to $1,000 per house. He also did a few neighbors’ homes for free in exchange for helping him in his business. I passed the idea on to a friend whose husband was starting a landscaping business. He wasn’t sure how to handle the lulls in the winter months and ran with this idea to increase his profits and continue offering value to his customers.

Launch an Airbnb Side Hustle (with No Property)

Did you know you can launch an Airbnb side hustle without owning any property? Some Airbnb hosts rent out renovated school buses or an extra room in their apartment. You can also team up with a property owner to help rent out and host their property for a cut of the profit. Or you can work alongside property owners as a Virtual Assistant to create a consistent income stream.

Not sure where to start? Learn more about running an Airbnb side hustle with no property here and get unique ideas to start earning $35 on up to thousands per week.

Help People Move

When I lived in New York City, I moved nine times in 11 years! Moving sucked, and I would have eagerly paid a premium to get someone to pack my boxes and handle the whole process. It turns out people do offer comprehensive moving services to handle every aspect from:

• Decluttering
• Organizing
• Gathering estimates and hiring approved movers
• Purchasing and organizing packing supplies
• Packing
• Supervising movers
• Unpacking
• Taking away boxes and debris from the move
• Cleaning both your original home and your new one
• Dealing with issues with movers and vendors

Not everyone is organized, and even if they are, they can’t always deal with the stress of managing an entire move from start to finish. Moving organizer services for homes and offices are comprehensive and charge a premium. Depending on your area and the services offered, you can command around $100 an hour on up.

Switch Jobs

Sometimes the easiest way to make $2000 a month is to switch jobs or careers. When I got promoted from a receptionist to an apprentice video editor in my first career, I saw the writing on the wall pretty quickly. I wasn’t making market value, and my managers tried to convince me what I was earning was fair for my experience. They only planned to increase my pay by a couple of thousand dollars every few years.

Instead of waiting around, I strategically increased my skills over the next year before looking for a new gig.

I quickly realized working as a freelance video editor would command higher rates than on staff. Although there were inconsistencies with my income, the trade-off for the higher paydays was more than worth it. 

You can take the same approach in a more traditional career. Research what your company’s competitors are paying on sites like Glassdoor and LinkedIn and study up on the qualifications of similar jobs. Networking with friends, acquaintances, and old colleagues is vital to finding a new position. You may need to beef up your skills in your spare time or realize you already have what it takes to make a jump right now. But remember, the goal is to earn more. Don’t settle for a marginal increase in pay! Stick to your vision of being paid (at least) what you’re worth. 

Quick Tips: Make $2000 a Month

Before you venture out to make $2000 a month, consider your goals.

1) If you want to earn more to make ends meet, ask yourself what that means. Do you want to go out with friends more often? Go shopping without guilt? Pay off your debt? Without clarity around your goals, it’s challenging to stick to them.

2) It’s possible that trimming down a few bills, switching from cable to streaming, canceling subscriptions, and tidying up your food budget will free up several hundred dollars. You may decide you only need $1,500 a month, which can dramatically reduce how much time you need to spend on your side hustle. 

3) Breaking down your goals into a daily figure is also wise. Making $2000 a month may seem daunting, but that breaks down to $166.67 daily or about $500 weekly. You can then decide to work a few side hustles ranging from Doordash to freelance copywriting to hit your goals. Just make sure to pick the right side hustles to hit your goal of making $2000 a month. If you only want to work a few extra hours a month, you need a high-paying side hustle like sales copywriting to get there. 

Whatever you decide, stick to it and chart your progress. Watching your accomplishments and income grow will help keep the momentum going.