Dear Lifehacker,I usually spend a decent amount of hours sitting in front of my PC when I have time off, doing pointless, non-productive things. Then it hit me: I could be using this time to earn a little extra spending money. Got any suggestions? [jump]

Thanks,Bored and Looking to Make a Few More Bucks

Dear Bored,Many of us have more free time than we have money, so why not turn that extra, wasted time into cash? Unfortunately, practically everyone would like to make money in their spare time, so this topic is rife with online scams. (You’ve seen the ads: “Make money from home right now! Click here to order...”). Still, there are a few legitimate ways you can get paid for what you know or can do with nothing but your computer or smartphone and an internet connection. Which path you choose depends on your skills, interests, and how much effort you want to put into this.

For Occasional Cash Boosts: Easy Online Tasks Everyone Can Do

We’ve previously mentioned several types of simple online tasks you can do—and the services that pay you to do them—to earn some pocket money. These include things like taking surveys (e.g., for Lightspeed Consumer Panel), quick odd jobs (e.g., for Amazon’s Mechanical Turk), testing websites (e.g., UserTesting.com), and answering tech support answers (e.g., FixYa). Photo by Janis Neilands

For most of these tasks, you have to wait for the right opportunity to arise and fit specific criteria. They’re not recurring jobs, so you can’t really count on this as a major source of income. They could pay off big, though, if the gig is a good fit for you. For example, participating in Harvard Business School Computer Lab’s Experimental Research studies or a 20|20 Panel could earn you over $100 in less than an hour. See our previous guide for more tasks like these.

Mobile Gigs and Online Rewards Programs

You can also earn some beer money with your mobile phone by doing simple gigs while you’re out and about. Previously mentioned Gigwalk is one example, paying from $3 to $90 for tasks, such as mystery shopping, taking photos of parking lots, testing mobile apps, and so on. You just need an iPhone or an Android device. If you can’t find any gigs on Gigwalk, there are several other options in this “mobile taskforce” marketplace, such as Field Agent or Easy Shift (both only iPhone only right now).

If you don’t mind being paid in rewards like gift cards, you can try previously mentioned CheckPoints or similar Shopkick mobile rewards programs (both on iOS and Android). Bing Rewards is an easy way to get stuff like gift cards and Xbox Live credits. All you have to do is search with Bing.

This post on Reddit’s beermoney subreddit offers a list of rewards programs you can join that require only about 5 to 10 minutes of your time per task. They seem to pay only about a few bucks or in rewards credits.

Microjobs

The “microjobs” marketplace—for short, one-off tasks—is booming now. In addition to Gigwalk and the mobile gigs above, there are many other microjobs you can do online. Fiverr, for example, pays you $5 for doing any kind of simple online task that someone will pay for. You can list your own services or reply to service requests. I’ve used Fiverr to get audio files transcribed on the cheap; you could sell (or outsource) other small jobs such as proofreading a one page document, customizing a Wordpress template, or even impersonating a famous character in a custom video message. Gigbucks and TaskRabbit (which includes offline jobs as well) are two alternatives where you can pick up miscellaneous jobs. These microjobs pay from $5 to about $50 and typically take less than an hour to do.

For More Recurring Part-Time Cash: Sell Your Skills or Start a Low-Maintenance Side Business

Microjob services can net you some pocket money, but they don’t tend to offer regular, recurring deposits into your bank account (although some people do microjobs as their only source of income). For more regular side pay, you’ll need to get more entrepreneurial.

Freelance from Home

What are your marketable skills? You can use them to take on home-based work. If you enjoy writing, for example, you can become a freelance blogger or writer; typical blogging jobs pay you to post regularly but on your own schedule. ProBlogger and Freelance Writing Jobs are great resources for writers or would-be ones.