Wouldn’t it be nice to get free money and do it legally? Of course! Growing up, we’ve learnt that you have to work hard to earn money, but this isn’t always true.
There are plenty of legitimate free money hacks you can try to give yourself a financial boost.
Hacks to get free money probably won’t replace your day job or make you rich, but it can provide you with some extra cash when you need it most.
Instead of picking up extra hours at work or getting a second job, consider trying a free money hack instead.
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Can You Really Hack Your Way to Free Money?
In short, yes. You can hack your way to free money with the right tools and strategy. To specify for this article, a ‘hack’ means a strategic method or easier way to do something that many people fail to recognize.
A hack can be completely ethical and even fun to try since it challenges you to do things differently.
When it comes to getting free money, these methods below do require some action or effort on your part, but not much.
In fact, you may be able to just set up something once and start earning passive income from your efforts over time.
As always, it’s important to diversify your income streams among both active and passive income opportunities. If you’re ready to start trying some of these free money hacks, keep reading.
20 Real Free Money Hacks to Make Money
If you have an internet connection and some creativity, you’ll be able to get free money in a variety of ways.
This includes earning sign-up bonuses for trying out new products and services, getting referrals, earning free cash back for your regular purchases, and more.
Here’s a breakdown of the best free money hacks to start trying out right now.
1. Get Free Money from Sign Up Bonuses
Sign up bonuses are when you earn money or a reward for simply signing up to use a new app or program. The extra cash is nice and can usually be redeemed right away.
There are some rules to earning a sign up bonus so be careful to read the fine print and be aware or any important deadlines or restrictions.
These generous bonuses are often just available to use one time as a new user. This means, you probably can’t cancel your account/subscription then sign up again a month later and still be offered that same bonus.
Related:
27 Apps That Pay You Real Money
a) Surveys With Signup Bonuses
Taking online surveys is one of the easiest ways to earn a sign up bonus early on. Online surveys allow you to earn extra money by sharing your opinion and experiences.
You usually earn points or cash after each survey you take. However, some survey companies will provide you with a sign up bonus so you can earn money right away.
Or, they’ll offer the bonus under the condition that you complete your profile. Completing your profile for the survey-taking site is important so they can have enough information to match you with relevant survey opportunities.
Here are some top survey companies that offer free sign up bonuses.
Inbox Dollars $5: Inbox Dollars is a rewards site that pays you to complete short tasks like taking surveys, reading emails, shopping online, and more. You’ll get an instant $5 bonus added to your account when you sign up.
Swagbucks $5 – $10: Swagbucks is a loyalty rewards site very similar to Inbox Dollars. You can earn points from taking surveys, watching videos, trying out offers and searching online.
When you sign up, Swagbucks will give you an instant bonus once you start participating in the short tasks. Usually, the bonus will be at least $5. Recently, Swagbucks has increased the sign up bonus to $10 so you’ll want to take advantage of the increased bonus.
MobileXpression $5: MobileXpression is not quite a survey site but rather a market research company that will pay you to passively collect your search data so brands can see how consumers are using the internet. You’ll earn a $5 bonus during the first week of signing up.
MyPoints $10: MyPoints allows you to earn points for taking surveys and shopping with their partners online. You can earn a $10 bonus once you sign up and spend at least $20 with any participating merchants within 30 days of signing up. Your $10 reward will be issued either as an Amazon or Visa gift card.
b) Bank Sign Up Bonuses
Did you know that certain banks will pay you to sign up as well? Mainly U.S. banks offer this benefit, but if you are looking to change your bank or are simply open to the idea of earning some extra money, this could be an option for you.
How it works is you’ll need to open a new bank account and either set up direct deposit or meet a certain minimum balance requirement to earn the cash.
The bank will usually verify your activity for up to 90 days before issuing the reward. This ensures that you don’t just open an account and close it shortly after receiving the reward.
You can earn anywhere from $100 to $400 or more with certain bank account bonuses. The offers to change often, but some of the best options are with banks like:
- Citi (Up to $1,500)
- Chase ($225)
- PNC ($200)
- Marcus Goldman Sachs ($100)
- Discover ($150 to $200)
2. Earn Free Cash Back
Other hacks to get free money involve earning cash back for your regular purchases. We all have to spend money each day on various items whether it’s food, clothes, housing items, etc.
Why not earn cash back on the money you were going to spend anyway. There are tons of free money apps that provide you with rebates on products you know and love from a variety of popular retailers.
Consider downloading some of the apps mentioned below so you can earn free money on the go with very little time or effort.
a) Rakuten: Rakuten is a coupons and cash back app that helps you earn money back on your online purchases. How it works is you can download the Google Chrome Extension to see which websites you visit are a partner with Rakuten.
When you’re shopping or browsing the internet, a notification from Rakuten will pop up in the upper right hand corner of your screen.
It lets you know how much cash back you can earn if you were to make a purchase on the site. All you need to do is click ‘Activate’ to activate the offer. Then, do you shopping as you normally would.
Afterward, Rakuten will update your account with the amount of cash back you earn. You can also earn money by referring others to Rakuten. Referral bonuses start at around $25 per user.
Rakuten pays your cash back balance each quarter. You can select a paper check or a PayPal transfer.
Related:
Rakuten Review 2022: Is Rakuten Legit or a Scam?
20 Best Cashback Sites That Pay You to Shop Online
b) Ibotta: Ibotta helps you earn cash back on your groceries and household items. Once you download the free app, you can start browsing offers at your favorite local stores.
Click on the offer you’d like to redeem in order to activate it. Then, just do your shopping as you normally would but scan your receipt in to the app to confirm your purchases.
Once Ibotta validates your receipt, your account will be credited with cash back. Ibotta partners with more than 2,000 retailers and also offers cash back for online shopping too.
Related: Ibotta Review 2022: Is Ibotta Legitimate?
c) Fetch Rewards: Fetch Rewards is very similar to Ibotta in that you earn rewards for your purchases at different stores. These rewards can be redeemed for gift cards but you must submit your receipts by scanning them into the app.
Unlike Ibotta, you can earn rewards by submitting your receipts from any store or even any restaurant.
With cash back apps and websites, it’s best to have a strategy that prevents you from overspending just to earn rewards. Factor in your budget and regular spending plans as you use this app.
This means, you shouldn’t have to shop for groceries or make a purchase if you don’t need to just to earn cash back. In the end, you’ll be spending more money (perhaps unnecessarily) to earn a smaller rewards.
To truly earn free money, stick to only using these apps when you need to make a purchase and would buy something regardless.
Related: 20 Best Cashback Sites That Pay You to Shop Online
3. Watch Videos (in the Background) to Earn Money
Everyone is watching videos these days. There’s video content on social media, and tons of people that watch YouTube videos daily. Luckily, there are plenty of apps that will pay you to watch videos as well.
This includes watching news, cooking, entertainment videos, and more. Unlike with paid surveys, you may not really even need to pay much attention to the videos and you can have them playing in the background while you do housework or another task. Here are some of the best sites that will give you free money just to play videos.
Swagbucks: Swagbucks is already on this list for paid surveys, but you can also earn money on this site by watching videos. Swagbucks provides videos covering many different genres.
You’ll earn points for each video or bundle of videos that you watch. These points can be redeemed for gift cards and cash via PayPal. Consider jumping on Swagbucks each day to earn points easily by letting videos play in the background while you complete a few light tasks.
Related: Swagbucks Review 2022: Is It Legit or a Scam?
Kashkick: Kashkick is another short task website that helps you earn money by completing short tasks. You can get paid to watch a variety of videos on this app as well during your spare time.
Kashkick offers some of the lowest payment thresholds so you can redeem your earnings once you reach a balance of $10. In addition to watching videos, you can also make money by taking surveys, finding deals, and surfing the web.
iRazoo: iRazoo is a website that pays you to watch short films, new advertisements, cooking tutorials, movie reviews, and more. For each type fo content you watch, you’ll earn points.
Redeem these points for gift cards or cash via Paypal. iRazoo has over 50 channels so new content is uploaded daily. You can collect 100 free points just for signing up.
4. Negotiate Your Bills on Autopilot
Other free money hacks you can try involve negotiating your bills to save money. Ideally, you have to maintain certain bills for services like electricity and utilities, cable and internet, and more.
This doesn’t mean you should overspend on these bills, though. If you can lower your bills, this will add free money back into your pocket to use for another purchase.
If you’re not sure to start or don’t think you’ll be able to negotiate with bill companies, you can get someone to do this for you for free. Below are three of the top bill negotiation companies to help you save more money.
The best part is that you don’t need to make any phone calls or life a finger to free up more money in your budget this way.
Truebill: Truebill is an app that works as a concierge service to find unwanted subscriptions that you can cancel to save money. It’s hard to keep track of subscriptions these days and you may be paying money for someone you no longer want or need.
Truebill finds and consolidates all your subscriptions to one list so you’ll always know what you’re paying for each month.
If you need help canceling your subscriptions, Truebill can help with this. Also, this app helps you stay on top of all your other regular bills as well so you can avoid paying late fees. Since the app launched, they’ve been able to help cancel over 1 million unused subscriptions for members.
When it comes to bill negotiation. Truebill can negotiate your cell phone bill, help you find better rates for insurance, and request refunds on late and overdraft fees.
Trim: Trim helps you save money automatically by lowering your monthly bills for free. The average Trim user saves $260. When you sign up and connect your accounts to Trim, the system will search for your bills and see which ones it can help lover.
Trim negotiates cable, internet, phone, and medical bills, cancels old subscriptions, and even medical bills
If they are able to save you money, they’ll take a percentage of your annual savings. For example, let’s say Trim takes 15% of your savings and is able to help cut your cable bill by $50 per month. That adds up to $600 per year and 15% of that would go to Trim. So, they’d get $90 while you’d still save $150.
Billshark: Billshark works very similar to Trim where you can get your bills negotiated for free minus a fee on the savings they help you generate.
This service is perfect to use if you don’t have time or prefer not to call bill companies and ask them for a lower price. Billshark boasts a 90% success rate and has been able to help customers save thousands.
Billshark currently charges $9 per subscription cancellation and a 40% fee for the annual savings they help you generate per successful bill negotiation.
To get started, you just need to upload your bill info then they will start searching for savings with no upfront costs. Sometimes, Billshark will even send you rewards like gift cards for submitting some of your bills.
5. Get Paid to Walk
It might sound too good to be true but yes, you can get paid to walk. Walking is something all of us do – oftentimes without even thinking about it. It’s nice to get paid to do something that takes no extra effort or time on your part.
Plus, walking is one of the best ways to get and stay healthy. Here are apps and websites that provide hacks to get free money by walking and moving your body.
Sweatcoin: Sweatcoin is an app that promotes health and wellness by paying users to walk daily. When you walk and do certain activities, you’ll earn digital ‘coins’. These coins can be exchanged for goods, services, and experiences with Sweatcoin partners. Some of these partners include Apple, Audible, or even local shops or yoga studios in your area.
You can also donate your coins to charities to support environmental, humanitarian and animal preservation causes. Sweatcoin does not sell your personal data and they use the latest technology and encryption to protect it.
Evidation (Formerly Achievement): Evidation is an activity app that used to be called Achievement. It allows you to connect different devices and programs that track your activity so you can earn extra cash.
You’ll earn for doing things like meditating, logging meals, walking, and completing other healthy activities.
Once you earn a balance of 10,000 points, this will allow you to redeem a $10 reward. Rewards include gift cards to popular retailers or cash via PayPal.
Rover: Rover is a dog walking and pet sitting app that will help you earn money and stay active during the day. You can set up your own profile on Rover to offer your services for dog walking or pet sitting.
Set your own prices based on your skills and demand in your area. Then, you’ll be able to communicate with potential clients through the website and find paying work.
Rover handles the payments from clients to make it easy and provides you with a professional platform and tons of prospects to explore working with.
On average, you can expect to earn anywhere from a few hundred per month to $1,000 from walking a few dogs each week. Rover does take around 20% in booking fees once you get hired.
But the trade-off is all the benefits they provide in helping you get connected with paying clients in the first place.
Related: How to Become a Dog Sitter on Rover
6. Rent Out Your Stuff for Extra Cash
Get free money by renting out the stuff you already have lying around your home. You may not realize how valuable some of your possessions are.
While you could sell the items you’re not using, you could possibly make money by renting things out so you can continue to get paid again and again.
You can rent out everything from tools and baby gear to your car or even a spare room. Below are some of the best apps and websites to help you rent out your stuff.
Fat Llama: Fat Llama is a website that helps you rent things you own to people in your area. Once you create a profile, it’s very easy to start listing items. You just need to upload picture and a description of the item.
Also, you’re able to set you own pricing. Then, just respond to messages and requests and arrange a time to hand over the item to the borrower.
Fat Llama provides up to $30,000 of insurance on the items you rent out. You’ll see the earnings in your account 24 hours after the rental starts.
Airbnb: If you have spare space in your home whether it’s an extra room or basement, consider renting it out on Airbnb.
Anyone can list their home on Airbnb and provide lodging and hospitality for travelers. You can earn hundreds or thousands per month depending on your market and local attractions.
Once you create your listing and set your prices, you can determine the availability of your space and even set up automatic booking so people can book without your direct involvement. The key to being successful with Airbnb is to have some great reviews and go above and beyond people’s expectations.
Related: How to Make Money With Airbnb
Getaround: Getaround is an app that helps you share your car by renting it out to others. Most cars spend the majority of the time parked in the driveway. So if you have an extra vehicle or don’t use your primary car as often, Getaround can be an excellent option for extra money.
Make Money App Hacks Work
With so many easy ways to make free money, you should consider trying one or more of these options. These free money hacks actually work and include things you can do long-term to earn some consistent cash on the side.
One of the easiest ways to get started is by using a sign-up bonus or watching videos. However, if you have something you can rent out, try your luck in this area as well. Make it into a fun challenge by seeing how much free money you can earn each month.
