Make $500/Year Passively With No Investment
Sell your ads and unused bandwidth
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*Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links. [Article updated Feb. 1, 2021.]
I’m a huge fan of side hustles. It never hurts to have multiple streams of income in case something happens. Most side hustles take a lot of time and work to get up and running, like writing on Medium.
I wanted to find some services that didn’t require much background work to generate income. That said, I don’t want to sell my privacy, so I don’t spring for browser extensions or apps that analyze your personal data. Facebook does enough of that, already.
Here are three resources I’ve found so far that have good privacy policies and provide income.
- UpVoice
- Honeygains
- PacketStream
UpVoice — $75/year + $100 max in referrals
Update: As of 10/1, Facebook is suing UpVoice for scraping user data. Personally, I trust UpVoice’s explanation more than I trust Facebook, so when Chrome re-allows UpVoice, I’ll be re-downloading it.
UpVoice is a browser extension that monitors ads you are shown on popular websites, including YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If it detects one ad, you meet your quota for the day and earn points. Seeing one ad vs. fifty per day doesn’t make a difference.
With perfect usage, you make $75/year. However, you can make up to $175/year if you refer people. In order for someone to count as a successful referral, they need to install the browser using your code and earn 100 tokens (10 days perfect usage), not counting their bonus referral tokens.
The minimum payout is $10, but by using a referral code you start with $5, and you can earn another $5 in 30 days or via referrals. Each person you successfully refer receives $5, and you get $5, with a maximum of 20 people referred. Here’s my code.
I occasionally get UpVoice ads on my Facebook. I always leave a comment with my referral invite when I see them. Thus far I’ve gotten 12 referrals from doing so, with 3 of them being ‘successful’. That’s $15.00 for scrolling on Facebook. I recommend doing so yourself.
