How to Make $10,000 a Month and Earn a Six-Figure Income
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The average U.S. salary is $53,490 per year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s almost $4,500 per month.
Imagine if you could more than double that to $10,000 each month. What would you do with an annual income of $120,000?
To start, paying your bills would probably be a lot easier. And your vacations could be much more than a staycation. You probably have plenty of ideas on how to spend an increased cash flow. Our goal here is to show you ways to earn $10,000 a month so that you can either quit your full-time job or at least supplement it.
In this article
Common ways to increase income
Doubling your income is a lofty goal. If you’re already working at a full-time job, then adding a second job can be difficult. There are only so many hours in a day.
Changing careers is one option. Some of the highest-paying careers are in pharmacy. Pharmacists earn an average of $112,800 annually, so if you’re a pharmacy technician earning the average of $35,800 per year for that job, then going to college to become a pharmacist will likely be easier than starting from scratch.
A cheaper alternative to college may be to take on some lucrative side hustles that can eventually become passive income streams. Once you set them up, they can almost run without much more work.
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9 ways to make $10,000 a month
To get to an annual income in the six figures, you may want to start by continuing to work full-time and subtracting your monthly salary from the $10,000 you want to earn. For the average American with about $4,500 in monthly income, that leaves a $5,500 gap to earn elsewhere.
A side hustle can start as a part-time job supplementing your full-time work and hopefully turns into a full-time gig earning you six figures annually.
Our focus is on making $10,000 per month through specific side jobs, so you should go in knowing that it can take awhile to earn that much from one side hustle. Here are nine such fields to consider:
Social media
Helping people through social media requires becoming a media influencer or at least an expert in a field people want to know about.
One way to earn $10,000 per month, according to social media expert Natalie Ellis on YouTube, is to turn followers into email subscribers who you can later sell your services. These include an online course and consulting to help a customer solve a problem they have. Ask your audience what keeps them up at night, Ellis suggests.
Podcasts are another way to attract subscribers, to who you can then market online courses on such sites as Skillshare. If things go well, you could someday need to hire a virtual assistant to help you.
Start a YouTube channel
Ellis and others have done this, starting a YouTube channel as another form of social media to reach their audience.
But to earn $10,000, you’ll need 5 million to 10 million views, depending on where the traffic is from. Views from the U.S. are worth a lot because the conversion rate is high, and viewers have higher incomes, according to a jobs website. If all your traffic is from the U.S., 5 million views can generate $10,000.
A good target should be 100,000 subscribers. By posting three videos per day, you should be able to make $10,000 or more in a month. Here’s how:
- One video should get more than 50,000 views.
- With three daily videos, that’s 150,000 views.
- Assuming old videos get 50,000 views daily, you’ll get 200,000 views daily.
- That equals 6 million views per month.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is another way to make money online. It’s where buyers click on affiliate marketing links on your website, and then if they purchase after clicking on the link, you earn a percentage of the sale.
A lot of affiliate marketing is done through Amazon, which makes it simple to add links to your website and start earning some extra money.
Being a blogger is the common first step to affiliate marketing. If you can write about a niche that many people are interested in, your website can grow in Google rankings, and you can add affiliate marketing links.
For example, if you have a blog about beauty care, you could write reviews of beauty products found on Amazon’s website that could lead to clicks from your site that could lead to purchases.
Freelance writing
Freelance writing requires finding and keeping high-paying clients who need your copywriting services often.
Freelance websites such as Upwork can help you find clients. You set up your profile, and can add certifications and an introduction video. Search for jobs with keywords, or clients may find you through your profile and send you an invitation for an interview.
Etsy
Instead of making online products, you can make something someone can hold in their hands. Etsy is one of the many places to do this, selling homemade items from clothing and toys to jewelry and home design items.
The most successful categories for entrepreneurs on Etsy are crafts and supplies, jewelry, and handmade items. If you have talents in any of those areas, you have more chance of earning a lot of money each month.
But you can only make a certain number of high-quality items daily, limiting your income. You can increase daily sales by making digital prints and downloadable products. Once they’re created, you’ll have a passive income.
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E-commerce
E-commerce is a broad category, but basically, it’s any way to make money electronically online. Etsy is an e-commerce site, and you can set up an online store there or at eBay or Amazon or create a website as an online store for your small business.
To make $10,000 in extra cash each month, a passive income stream is a good way to go because it can almost run by itself after you set it up. Dropshipping through a site such as Shopify allows you to sell everything from digital products, service appointments, and workshops to physical items you make yourself or others make and resell.
Shopify customers get templates for their online store, tools to sell products, payment processing, and SEO and marketing tools.
Dropshipping outsources manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping to a third-party seller. Your job is to market their products on your online store.
Real estate
Buying a home is an investment, but it’s much more than that. Since it’s where you live, you don’t want to use it as a bank and take out home equity loans or other types of loans with your home as collateral because if you default on the loan, you could lose the home to the lender.
Buying another home and becoming a landlord may be just as unappealing. It requires a lot of cash to buy property without a mortgage, and if you do have a mortgage, you’ll be paying interest on the home loan. That can make reaching your income goals a little harder.
You could buy a home as a short-term investment by house flipping, but you may need skills in renovating and other areas to make it cost-effective. But the hard work can be done by someone else, too.
Real estate investment can be made through crowdfunding sites such as Fundrise, starting investments as low as $500. Commercial real estate is usually bought, yielding higher returns than residential property. It can take years to realize a return, so consider real estate a long-term investment.
The housing market has around a 10% annual return and should be considered an active investment. This means buying, fixing, and selling properties yourself. Rental property can provide a steady income.
Stock market
A 10% annual return is also the average for the stock market, though you may want to try to beat that by trading often on investment websites that make it easy to buy stocks and other securities online.
For example, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor offers premium services that offer two new stock picks per month so that you don’t have to do much research. However, the Motley Fool and other sites make it clear that their services are best suited for long-term investors and not day traders.
Can you make $10,000 per month as a day trader? Probably not. It’s doubtful you’ll beat the average market return of 10%, though an annual 10% return of $10,000 requires investing $100,000 and could give you a good profit at the end of the year.
Cryptocurrency
Here are two crazy figures that may get you excited about cryptocurrency and the potential to make $10,000 per month from it:
- Bitcoin has an average annual return of 1,576% as of June 2022.
- From 2010 to 2021, Bitcoin had a total return of 18,912%.
Those are crazy returns. As the professionals say, “Past performance is not indicative of future results.”
If cryptocurrency is already part of your personal finance portfolio, then you’re probably already used to its ups and downs. After hitting a five-year high on Nov. 12, 2021, of $64,400 for one share of Bitcoin, it was as low as $19,224 on July 1, 2022. In early September 2022, it was trading at $21,403.
The point is that losses can accrue just as quickly as gains can, and cryptocurrency can be one of the most volatile things you’ll ever see traded in your lifetime. Of course, Bitcoin isn’t the only form of crypto, so you can choose your investment options from an alphabet of choices.
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Costs
Online setup
Let’s assume you already own a computer. Your costs for setting up a blog, YouTube channel, or other online business should then be pretty low.
Starting a blog costs $50 to $200, and then the monthly costs to run it are $20 to $60.
You can use your phone or computer to take videos. As a startup, podcasts are inexpensive for as little as $200 through your computer. However, if you want higher-end podcast equipment, you’ll need $2,000 or more in startup costs.
E-commerce site fees start fairly low. Shopify’s services start at $9 per month, going up to $29 and $2,000 monthly, depending on your small business needs.
Real estate
Real estate investing has many costs. If you’re buying a property to fix up and sell soon or planning to rent it out, you may need to get a home loan. Interest rates on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage average are 6.9%.
Other costs include maintenance and repairs, which are recommended yearly at 1% of your home’s value. For a $360,000 house, this is $3,600 per year, or $300 each month. Property taxes are another expense, which averages 1.07% nationally.
Investing through the crowdfunding site Fundrise carries an annual management fee of 0.85%, which is $8.50 for every $1,000 you have invested. A 0.15% servicing fee is charged each year.
Stock market
Stock picking websites such as The Motley Fool Stock Advisor charge $199 per year. You can also do much legwork to free yourself, which can be half the fun of investing. Many online brokers offer free stock trades, though online options trading can have some fees.
Cryptocurrency
Most cryptocurrency exchanges charge between 0% and 1.5% per trade. On average, investing $1,000 in crypto could range from nothing to $15.
Pros and cons
Pros
- A passive income may be the best way to earn $10,000 monthly.
- Many opportunities are available online, allowing you to start your side hustle at a low cost and in your spare time.
- Almost any skill can be turned into a part-time gig to earn extra cash.
Cons
- Cryptocurrency, the stock market, and other investments can be risky, and you could lose your investment.
- Starting a passive income stream can be lengthy and require a lot of work before the business is profitable and able to run without much work.
- Startup costs are low for most online businesses, but your costs can rise quickly if you don’t find your niche or audience.
The bottom line
Of all the chances you’ve taken in life, probably the best ones are when you’ve taken a chance on yourself and invested in yourself.
Your financial freedom is the same thing. Your great idea for a business earning $10,000 a month isn’t more than an idea until you do something about it. Search online for step-by-step instructions on how to start the side hustle you know the world needs, and your know-how could turn into enough extra cash to $10,000 or more in monthly income.
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Writer
Aaron Crowe is a freelance journalist who specializes in personal finance writing and editing. He has worked at newspapers, where he won a Pulitzer Prize, and has written for numerous online publications. These include AOL, US News & World Report, WiseBread, Bankrate, AARP, and many websites focusing on housing, credit and insurance. He lives in California with his wife and daughter.
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