Yahoo Finance 9 Websites to Help You Make Retirement Income
Even if you've saved enough for retirement, you may decide you want to bring in some extra income during your golden years. Whether you're looking for a part-time gig to fill in some serious financial gaps or you just want to give the grandkids better gifts, these websites can help you bring in an income from your own living room.
1. Upwork. Two of the most popular websites for freelancers, oDesk and Elance, combined into Upwork. This site can help you find gigs, regardless of your specialty. When you sign up, you create a profile that features your skills. Then you can search for and bid on jobs. You get a set number of bidding points per month, depending on your membership level. Potential employers will contact you if they think you're a good fit. Upwork offers gigs in a variety of fields, including design, writing, virtual assistantship, sales and marketing, accounting, consulting, web development and customer service. Translating your past work experiences into an Upwork profile could help land you work.
[See: 10 Ways to Make Extra Money in Retirement.]
2. Fiverr. This site is built on the idea of small jobs for small fees. Jobs generally start at $5 each, but can pay more depending on the job and the requirements. Competition for jobs is stiff, but you can build a decent side income on Fiverr if you translate skills into a great profile and excellent bids. Though Fiverr caters to jobs that can be done remotely, some people offer or ask for in-person services, such as personal assistants. Jobs are available for a variety of skillsets and interests.
3. Swagbucks. This site lets you complete tiny tasks, such as taking online surveys, shopping online, watching videos and even playing games in exchange for points. The more points you gather, the more you can earn. The one caveat with Swagbucks is that you aren't paid in cash. Instead, you're paid in gift cards. But with gift card options to versatile retailers such as Amazon and Wal-Mart, you can easily translate Swagbucks points into groceries, new clothes or holiday gifts for the kids. You can complete many Swagbucks tasks while relaxing in your living room watching TV or listening to an audiobook.
4. Toptal. If your professional background is in software, web development or design, Toptal is where you can make the most of your background for great pay. Toptal vets its freelancers, so you'll have to go through a serious application process. But if you can pass, you could get high-paying freelance jobs. Toptal has a funnel-system application process, which screens your language, personality and technical skills before conducting a live interview and test projects. They say that they only take the top 3 percent of freelancers, making this a competitive process.
[See: 10 Jobs Hiring Older Workers.]
5. About.com. This website has been around for years, and it continues to be a useful resource. About hires experts in various fields to write about specific topics from travel to parenting. Experts who draw in a lot of traffic can get paid decent rates for their articles. About hires both guides, who run entire content sections, and writers, who are paid per article on specific topics. Some training is required, but could be worthwhile if you want to write about something you're passionate about, but don't have the time, expertise or interest to create your own topic-based website from scratch.
6. Shutterstock. If you're more into photography than writing, check out Shutterstock. You can sell your own footage, images, vectors or illustrations. How much you earn depends on who buys your images and under which terms. The more images you sell, the more you'll earn from individual images sold. You'll get a bump in earnings when you hit the $500, $3,000 and $10,000 lifetime earnings milestones.
7. Skillshare. If you want to teach others your skills, rather than just using your skills to make money, check out Skillshare. This platform allows you to pass on your skills, such as crafting, cooking or writing. You can create mini courses using videos, screencasting and voiceover. Once 25 people sign up for one of your classes you will be enrolled in a Partner Program that lets you earn royalties on your work. You can also refer members to the premium program, which is another way to earn.
8. Mechanical Turk. In spite of all today's technological advances, computers still aren't good at some things. For instance, they're not always great at telling the difference between images. Amazon created Mechanical Turk to help businesses bridge this gap. On this platform, you can sign up for various human intelligence tasks, which are simple tasks that require human input. HITs pay very little, starting at just a penny. But you can often complete several HITs a minute, even while watching TV. Some people become efficient enough to earn $10 to $11 per hour doing HITs from Mechanical Turk.
[See: The Best Cities for Retirement Jobs.]
9. Kindle Direct Publishing. If you have always dreamed of becoming an author, but don't want to go through the traditional publishing process, publishing books independently on Kindle Direct Publishing may be an option for you. You can publish a book you've written in about five minutes, and it'll hit the Amazon marketplace within two days. Earnings from independently published Kindle books vary greatly, depending on the price you set and how popular your book becomes. But this can be a fun way to put your knowledge and creativity into the world in exchange for some extra cash.
Abby Hayes is a freelance blogger and journalist who writes for the personal finance blog The Dough Roller, which covers topics ranging from credit scores and banking to how much money you should be saving.
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