Smartphones have revolutionized the landscape of odd jobs, and there is no doubt about that. Without apps and smartphones, there would be no “gig economy,” a term that turned up in recent years to describe the flood of apps aimed at connecting people who need small tasks done and workers eager to fill that need.
I have compiled a list of the best apps for you if you are looking for odd jobs that you can sign up for from the comfort of your home while on your smartphone. Many of these odd job apps, are great jobs for teenagers.
1. Upshift
Upshift is an app that allows you to pick up shift work from local companies. The app is easy to use, and there are legitimate jobs available. Most of them are in the service and consumer services industries. You do not have to have a resume; employers use your listed skills and previous reviews to make hiring decisions.
According to Indeed, the average hourly pay for upshift servers is $18.70 an hour.
They operate out of local offices, and the reviews vary based on the management of the local office. It is less Gig economy than you might expect, requiring you to attend an onboarding meeting and watch a boring instructional video at their local office. The fact that they operate local offices is strange for the gig economy.
2. Gig Walk
Gigwalk is a mystery shopping app. It allows companies to list tasks that verify that their brand image is being properly conveyed in the real world.
There are currently three gigs available at $12 each in my area. The task is to go to the business and get a photo of their price sheet. They are about a 15-minute drive from one gig to the other, so it would likely take an hour to drive to all of them. It may take another 15 minutes to get that business’s price sheet. The total would be $36 for about 2 hours or $18 for an hour.
This odd job would be good to pair with another job. For instance, if you were going to be driving around town for a food delivery or Uber, then stopping by one of these locations when you are already in that neighborhood for delivery would increase the earnings per hour.
3. Task Rabbit
Task Rabbit is a gig-based app offering money to perform tasks for others. These tasks include:
- Assembling Ikea furniture
- Cleaning
- Car washing
- Computer help
- Cooking
- Home repairs
- Delivery
- Errands
- Painting
- Waiting in line
The categories of tasks are extensive. In Boston, for instance, the average pay to taskers for simply waiting in line is $24 an hour. On the other hand, the rate for Cleaning in Boston is $44 an hour. In Columbus, Ohio, the average rate for cleaning is $27 an hour.
This makes the app a good choice if you want to do various odd jobs and make a little money fast.
3. KashKick
KashKick is an app that pays you to take surveys, play games, watch videos, and complete tasks. It is similar to Swagbucks and Survey Junkie, but offers more of a variety in the tasks you can complete for money. For more on KashKick, check out my comprehensive KashKick Review.
4. Amazon Mechanical Turk
Amazon Mechanical Turk allows you to complete microtasks and get paid for them. The tasks usually verify things that are hard for amazon to verify pragmatically. The per-hour pay is relatively low, but some people find that microtasks are fun to do for a quick dopamine burst.
5. Rover
If you love animals, then dog walking and pet sitting from rover can be an excellent option for you. Looking at my area, the average person charges $15 per dog walk, $35 per night to house sit, $15 per drop-in visit.
While this is a small amount of money, it can be a fun way to earn a little extra cash while doing something fun.
6. Survey Junkie
Want to get paid to fill out surveys? Survey Junkie is the best app for this. There is a huge library of surveys you can take at any time. It can actually be pretty fun filling out the surveys and letting marketers know your thoughts on various topics.
While you will not qualify for every single survey on the app, don’t let that discourage you, there are tons fo surveys to complete. If you compute the hourly pay on this app it is low, but also. It is probably one of the only “jobs” you could do while sitting on the toilet. So it is a viable way to make some extra cash.
When it is time to get paid, they offer transfers to your PayPal account, bank account, or gift cards.
7. Swagbucks
Swagbucks is an app that is available on both ios and android. Swagbucks pays you to complete tasks like surveys. They will pay directly to your PayPal account. Besides surveys, you can receive rewards for playing games.
8. Doordash
Doordash can be a great time to earn money in your spare time. It is a delivery service Doordash pays you to deliver meals to people. They tell you where to pick them up when they are ready, and you then deliver them.
Doordash works best part-time, as it pays the best during the mealtime rush of lunch and dinner. Doordash also offers a gas rewards program. The gas rewards program can dramatically cut your overall costs on gas.
9. Fiverr
Fiverr is an at-home job app you can use from the comfort of your home. It requires you to build a personal brand more than some other apps, where you create listings to do specific projects.
While Fiverr started as a platform for people to make extra money by selling their services for $5 each, it has now branched out. It allows its freelancers to charge any amount they set.
10. Fancy hands
Fancy hands is an odd jobs app where you will be a virtual assistant on a gig basis. To make money, you have to complete individual virtual assistant tasks. These could range from calling a restaurant to make or change a reservation to canceling someone’s cable account on their behalf.
If you love clearing items off a to-do list, this can be a good way to make money.
The pay is $3 to $7 per task. Fancy Hands is an excellent way to make extra cash, but turning it into a full-time hustle is likely challenging. The work can come in sporadically, and managing the schedule for when you have to complete each task gets more complex the more you add into the mix.
11. Jobble
Jobble is a marketplace for temp work, like Upshift. In addition, there are usually jobs for concerts, festivals, and sporting events.
The main complaint is that there need to be more shifts on Jobble to make it viable for full-time work. There are also advertisements for other jobs and apps posing as legitimate jobs that sneak through occasionally.
12. Bellhop
Bellhop is a service where you assist people in moving furniture.
You can pick jobs that fit your schedule. You can sign up for a role of a mover or a driver with bellhop.
According to their website, they are compensated .25/mile for mileage from your home, the initial location, the secondary location, and back home after the first 30 miles. The Bellhop website also states that movers earn up to $20 an hour.
13. Dolly
Dolly focuses on moving furniture and apartments and helping people move items to and from storage units. Unlike bellhop, loading and unloading large box trucks, you could use a pickup truck, cargo van, or trailer and register as a driver.
Being a driver will require you to change your insurance to a commercial policy to be adequately covered. The Dolly website says the average driver makes $50/hr, which would be $400 for a full day.
One Reviewer from Phoenix, AZ said, ” The only BIG con I can say is that jobs fluctuate a great amount from payouts, available jobs, and time it takes to complete them. The best thing is some payouts can be high for simple labor jobs. I.E. (60+ dollars and possible tips for 2 hours of labor).” (Indeed)
14. Lugg
Lugg is another moving side hustle app. The app has a more limited number of markets available than the other two services mentioned above.
Lugg also offers junk removal, an interesting option compared to other odd jobs online.
Realistically, suppose you were interested in moving furniture and want to make as much money as possible. In that case, you are best off trying out a few platforms and piecing together the gigs that fit your schedule.
15. Care.com
Care.com is one of the best places to look for housekeeping, babysitting, and pet care. It is also one of the best apps to pick up part-time work in one of those fields.
According to Indeed, where it ranks 4.2 out of 5 stars, the average childcare role is $21/hour.
“I love caring for children through care.com. You set your schedule and pay rate and usually end up caring for very wonderful children. There can be difficult parents who ask for very much for very little pay but compared to a regular nine to five job this is AMAZING!” said one anonymous reviewer on indeed.
Most of the jobs on care.com are less flexible with hours than some other odd job apps. Usually, they are families looking for childcare while the parents are working. Due to the growth of remote work, this means that not all jobs are 40 hours a week.
Bottom Line: Apps Have Revolutionized Part-Time Jobs
If you want to make extra money completing odd jobs, apps have made this task much easier. There is now a marketplace for finding gig work that was hard to access or only existed from word of mouth or classified listings before these marketplaces.
This article originally appeared on Hello Sensible.
