So, there’s always the joke that college students are broke and some days, it sure can be true. Having a job during the school year is rough, but it certainly helps! However, it never hurts to have some extra cash in the bank!
I spent months this summer trying to find some ways to make a little extra cash here and there, and although there are plenty of apps and websites you can use, these are all the ones I found that work the best! Oh, and none of them require selling your stuff!
There’s going to be two ratings for each of the websites/apps, time and difficulty!
Disclaimer: I swear I’m not trying to advertise the apps or getting anything for doing this, I just know sometimes it’s tough to save, but these can all help you get back or earn some easy money! I personally use all of them myself! If you do sign up through my link on some of them, you and I will both earn! Also, you will need a Paypal for most of these to receive the money!
Ibotta is an app where you can receive rebates on your shopping trips! Grocery, department, and online stores are available for rebates! Very useful for college students when grocery shopping, but you can’t always be brand loyal, as their rebates are usually on specific items under specific brands. It’s certainly worth it though, I’ve gotten back over $100 in the past year! Add offers before you shop so you know what will qualify when you buy, go shopping, and then redeem your offers by taking a photo of your receipt! Earn toward Venmo, Paypal, or giftcards! Use my referral code, ycxlibi, and you can get a $10 welcome bonus.
Time: 5-10 minutes before and after shopping! Difficulty: 2 out of 5
Receipt Hog is an app that will actually pay you for uploading pictures of receipts from anywhere! Depending on the kind of receipt, you will get different rewards. Grocery stores will give you coins (which you exchange in the end for money), while department stores will give you spins on the ‘Hog Slots,’ where you can earn more coins or actual cash, then restaurants will earn you an entry into their monthly drawings for a giveaway! You can also take surveys on some of your purchases that will give you more coins! I’ve earned $10 for doing next to nothing in work. Paypal or Amazon giftcards!
Time: 2 minutes tops for each receipt!
Difficulty: 1 out of 5
Shopkick is a points app (or kicks, as they call them) that will connect with your location, so as soon as you enter certain stores, you will receive kicks! You can also receive them for scanning certain items’ bar codes and purchasing certain items and uploading a picture of your receipt! They also recently added online stores as well where you can earn kicks. You can be rewarded for as little as 500 kicks, earning you a $2 gift card! This one is honestly all about remembering to open the app, because it is really easy to build up points. They also have a variety of gift cards you can earn towards (I’m currently heading for a $25 Target one)! If you use code COOL827238 we’ll both receive 250 kicks!
Time: 30 minutes to 1 hour because you can use while shopping as well as after!
Difficulty: 3 out of 5
Swagbucks is a website where you can sign up to earn points for shopping, watching videos, searching the web, answering surveys, and visiting websites. The points are called SB and it is actually connected to a TON of other websites. Shop on Amazon? Get SBs. Search something in the search bar? Get SBs. I’ll always turn on the videos to play in the background on my computer when I’m working on homework. Once you have enough SBs, you can redeem the points for gift cards or cash through PayPal! Sign up with my referral link and we can both earn 300 SBs!
Time: Honestly, this one does take a while, it took me about a month to cash out for $25.
Difficulty: 5 out of 5
Dosh is my most recent one to start using, but I’ve already gotten back $10. You link your credit/debt card to the app as well as turn on your location. The app will show you different places near you where there are available rebates! Most of the physical locations are restaurants, but there are also online stores where you can receive cash back. And you don’t have to upload receipts for it, as soon as the charge appears on your card, the app will add the rebate money back onto your Dosh account toward PayPal!
Time: 5 minutes to add your credit card and find the restaurant/store!
Difficulty: 1 out of 5
Feature Points is probably one of my favorites! It’s a website you open on your phone. You sign up and it will give you a list of apps. Download each app and play on it for at least two minutes and you will win points! You can also win points for connecting your social medias, answering surveys, and you can also get points from your inviting your friends. 1,800 points is the equivalent of a $3 credit to PayPal. That might seem like a lot, but I hit it within a week when I first started. You don’t have to keep the apps after you win the coins, but you can if you like! I found my favorite game through this! The number of apps decreases the longer you stay on, but there’s always a few up. They have a wide variety of gift cards or you could turn them into coins for other apps, such as Pokemon Go!
Time: Three minutes to download and play with each app
Difficulty: 3 out of 5
Do one or do all! Hopefully you’ll manage a little extra cash into your pocket!