5 Websites and Apps to Make Money For Free

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Among all the reasons people stay away from adopting passive income streams, fear of the need for financial investments upfront is arguably the most important. After all, investing in stocks, owning rental properties, or diving into peer-to-peer lending have long been seen as the most popular options for passive income – and each of them requires one to have certain funds available to invest in the first place.

Taking up a side hustle where one sells products or services typically doesn’t come cheap, either. Even if the hustler doesn’t need to rent appropriate premises or get themselves a reserve of supplies, they still might need to invest in website hosting and marketing. How else will the potential clients hear about them and form a great first impression?

Nevertheless, there certainly are options for making money for free – and money-making websites and apps offer an impressive selection. Even if they don’t typically have the potential to turn you into a millionaire, it’s still a great way to pad your wallet with some extra cash by not investing too much time or effort on a daily basis.

Survey Junkie

If you’re someone who always has an opinion on everything, you might enjoy filling out various surveys and questionnaires for money. Thousands of brands turn to market research companies in hopes of getting a better understanding of their target audience, and surveys are a great way to collect feedback straight from the users themselves. With Survey Monkey, you can earn money online by doing just that – providing constructive feedback on various products and services.

Survey Junkie is owned by DISQO – a customer experience platform that also owns the cross-device measurement company Verto Analytics and the research platform Feedback Loop. It prides itself on helping thousands of businesses make more informed decisions. You can earn money by becoming a part of this process! Moreover, Survey Junkie offers an opportunity to earn more by sharing your browsing data by opting in on the app or installing the SJ Pulse extension on your browser.

Honeygain

Out of all websites and apps that allow you to make money online, Honeygain might just be the most effortless choice: all you need to do is create an account, download and install the app, and leave it running on your computer, tablet, or smartphone. From this point on, the app does the remaining work for you, sharing your excess internet bandwidth and generating passive income that you can later cash out to your PayPal account or crypto wallet.

Sounds intriguing? The concept’s actually pretty simple: as millions of users around the world share their bandwidth with Honeygain, the company is able to operate a crowdsourced web intelligence network and rent access to it to verified businesses. Using the network, they can pursue brand protection and ad verification campaigns – just to name a few.

Honeygain has been on the market since 2019, and judging from its social media pages and user communities, it has a strong and loyal user following – which would be impossible for any online scam to achieve. As of 2022, it’s available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, and each user account can have up to 10 devices connected and actively sharing at the same time – however, they cannot use the same IP address. The app also includes a referral program and holds regular contests on social media, where you can win extra credits every week.

Swagbucks

Unlike more specialized apps like Survey Junkie and Honeygain, Swagbucks is full of various offers that include playing games, completing surveys, watching videos, and even collecting cash back on your qualifying purchases. However, depending on their location and other demographic factors, many users might not be able to access all of the offers. The pay isn’t too high, either – and yet, every penny matters in times of soaring inflation.

Swagbucks is arguably one of the oldest money-making applications around. It was initially launched in 2008 after its owners let go of their unsuccessful search engine project. Interestingly, Swagbucks does still include its own search engine among other earning options: you can use it to browse the web and generate a small reward by doing so. The earnings can be collected in either PayPal or gift cards for various online stores, such as Amazon or Marks&Spencer.

Field Agent

Mystery shoppers are extremely important in today’s retail and service industry. By having an authentic customer experience (and reporting it thoroughly later) at shopping stores, hotels, restaurants, and similar locations, they help companies catch and smooth out any hiccups, as well as focus their attention on the weak links.

Nevertheless, the work of a mystery shopper is rather tedious: not only do they have to notice and memorize a ton of tiny details, they also need to fill out extensive reports – and the pay is rarely high enough to bother. With apps like Field Agent, however, paid mystery shopping gets divided into small tasks that only take minutes – and are hence a lot easier to include in your daily routines.

A user might be asked to, for example, check the pricing of a specific item in their local store, or they might need to take a quick picture to show how a particular product is positioned on the shelf. Other tasks include completing simple surveys about your own shopping habits and the products you buy and use at home. Once the Quality Assurance team checks your submission, the reward is added to your balance – and on Monday, all the money you earn is transferred straight to your bank account.

Ibotta

Ibotta is one of the best-known cash back apps around. Some disagree with calling it a money-making app – but at the end of the day, it certainly helps you have some more money in your pocket, and isn’t that what it’s all about? If you’re about to make certain purchases anyway, it would be silly not to take a chance to collect a portion of the money you spend back – and with Ibotta’s partner list including more than 2,000 merchants (both offline and online), the opportunities are close to endless.

Shopping online, you will need to use Ibotta's specialized browser extension. If you prefer to get your goods offline, on the other hand, all you’ll need to do is snap a quick picture of your receipt using your Ibotta app (available on both Android and iOS). The exact rate of your cash back depends on the merchant: some offer as little as 1%, and some go as high as 10% or 15%.

Additional resource: UK free money offers

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So if you’re looking for a way to make some extra money on the side but don’t want to invest any of your own funds, there are plenty of options for you. Money-making websites and apps abound – all you have to do is find the right one (or more!) for you. And who knows? With a little effort, that app or website might turn into your very own passive income stream. Granted, completing surveys or sharing your internet bandwidth isn’t going to turn you into a millionaire – but every little bit helps!

Have you tried any of these methods to earn extra money before? Or maybe you’ve discovered some gems we haven’t highlighted in the article? Please let us know in the comments!