How to Make Money With Your Phone

In 2021, Statista estimates that there are around 3.8 billion smartphone users worldwide, with the average US user spending around 4 hours a day looking at their phone.

The question is, of those 3.8 billion users, how many are using their cell phones to make money?

Probably very few.

Most people either don't know it's possible to make money with mobile apps, or they don't know how to get started.

No worries!

In this guide, we'll break down the top five ways to make money on your phone -- some of which you could start today.

Top 5 Ways to Make Money With Your Phone

1. Take Surveys

If you've looked up "how to make money on your phone" before, or you've searched the app store for "money-making apps," you've probably come across paid survey apps.

These apps promise to pay you cash for your opinion, and while most of them deliver on this promise, it's almost always a disappointing experience. You sign up with hopes of getting paid for sharing your opinion, only to be faced with frequent disqualifications, bugs, and low pay rates.

At Eureka, we're hoping to change that. By partnering directly with companies who are looking for consumer insights about their brands, products, and services, we're hoping to bring more short, fun, and high-paying surveys to the market -- all while lowering disqualification rates.

You still won't earn a fortune with our surveys, but you can expect an enjoyable experience and some easy cash!

2. Do Odd Jobs

Odd job apps are great because they offer a variety of different money-making opportunities -- all of which you can do from your phone.

Some examples of jobs you might find include:

Mystery shoppingBabysittingTutoringFurniture assemblyPaintingOrganization and cleaningMoving helpProduct testingAnd much more!

The pay rate for these opportunities will vary depending on the skill required for the task and the app you're tasking on. But just to give you an idea, some taskers doing more intensive work (moving help, cleaning, handyman tasks) are earning $40-$60/hour or more.

For those types of rates, you'll want to sign up for TaskRabbit. It's one of the largest mobile apps for odd jobs. After signing up, you get to pick the services you want to provide, set your own hourly rates, and TaskRabbit will help you find customers and get paid.

For smaller jobs that don't require as much experience and don't require you to meet directly with clients, try Field Agent. It's an app that helps you find small tasks around your city involving mystery shopping, store audits, and product testing. The long-term earning potential here is lower than with TaskRabbit, but the jobs can be fun and they still pay a decent amount.

3. Download Apps

It may sound too good to be true, but there really are apps that will pay you just to keep them installed on your phone. The catch is that you'll need to be willing to share some of your data in order to participate.

While this may sound sketchy at first, if you're already sharing a lot of your info online for free, why not get paid for some of it?

You won't be sharing super sensitive information either. Rather than spy on your texts, there are reputable apps out there that will pay you to let them see things like:how often you use your phone, which apps you use, which websites you visit, things like that. They then anonymize and aggregate this data and sell it to companies to help them improve their products and services.

It's still a bit intrusive, but this is one of the easiest (and only) ways to make money on your phone almost entirely passively.

If you're interested and want to learn more, check out the Smart App and Nielsen Mobile Panel. Both apps will pay you around $5/month to keep them installed.

Another similar opportunity for mobile passive income is to share your internet. Businesses are willing to pay you to essentially access the internet from your phone as it allows them to do location-based research that they couldn't otherwise do.

To learn more, check out Honeygain. They're the most well-known and trusted in the space.

4. Create Content

Social media is often used as an escape from the grind, but it can also be one of the most lucrative mobile money-makers. There's really no limit on how much money you can make as a content creator!

That said, this is also probably one of the most difficult ways to make money with your phone, and it can take a while to start seeing results.

Sure, you could get lucky and have your video of a deep fried turkey blow up and make you half a million dollars, but let's be honest:the chances of that happening are pretty slim.

To create a long-term sustainable business as a social media content creator, you need not only creativity, but a lot of consistency. Social media is extremely fast paced so if you want to grow -- and continue growing -- you'll need to be active.

You'll also need to understand your target audience:who exactly are you speaking to with your content? What do they want to see? Nailing these questions down will help you figure out a sense of direction.

To start, I'd recommend thinking of a specific niche. Your niche could be pets, bullet journalling, finance, DIY, drawing, there are tons of different ways you could go. The reason this step is important is because it'll be easier to grow a niche account targeting a specific audience, than a general "lifestyle" account with no specific audience in mind. To learn more, here's a good guide to picking a niche.

So, how will this make you any money? Multiple ways:

Ad revenue - TikTok and Snapchat Spotlight both offer ways for creators to earn for their views. Upload viral content and you could be looking at a big paycheck. Spotlight pays out $1 million/day to creators while the TikTok creator fund has reported earnings of 2-4 cents per 1,000 views.Donations - Livestreaming on TikTok requires a minimum of 1,000 followers and gives your viewers the option to send you virtual gifts which can be exchanged for real money.Selling merchandise - Whether you already have a product or you have a plan to create one, social media is a great place to promote. Just take this peanut butter company as an example -- it grew to over $500k/month in sales in under two years with the help of TikTok.Paid promotions - Influencer marketing is huge right now and companies are paying big bucks for popular influencers to endorse their products. Again, the peanut butter story above is a great example of successful influencer marketing.Affiliate marketing - This is when you promote a product with a unique link and get paid a commission based on any sales or sign-ups that come from that link. For example, Amazon has an affiliate program that allows affiliates to link out to Amazon products and earn a commission for any sales that come from their clicks. This is a bit more difficult to do on social media, but it can work.

5. Play Games

Ending off with something that most of us do on our phones already (but for free), yes, there are legit ways to make money playing games on your phone.

How this works is simple:you'll typically have to download an app and play it until you reach a certain level or accomplish a specific set of goals. If you manage to succeed in the required time frame, you'll earn a cash reward ranging from $1 all the way up to $40 or more.

Keep in mind, some of the apps require you to play for quite a while, so this isn't exactly fast money. Still, if you're someone who likes grinding app games anyway, this is a fun way to discover new games and get paid at the same time.

To get started, sign up for GPT sites like Swagbucks, Prizerebel, and GG2U, then browse over to their paid games sections. Be sure to read the instructions carefully for each game before getting started!

Now that you have some ideas on how to make money with your phone, what are you waiting for? Quit reading and start earning! Good luck!