Looking for extra cash? Check out these top 5 'side hustles'

Savings expert shares best ways to make extra cash

(GMG)(WKMG) -- Who couldn't use some extra cash? It's that time of year: We're all scrounging for every cent to pick out the perfect gifts.

But as it turns out, with a little planning, there are some gigs you can take advantage of to earn as much as $10,000 extra each year. We're talking about the top five side hustles.

"There are many, many side gigs out there," said Justin Cupler, a savings expert from The Penny Hoarder. "We have our favorite five that we picked (for) some of the highest-earning ones out there."

Up first is Airbnb.

"The average Airbnb host makes $924 every single month," Cupler said. "They can do that just by renting out their home, a spare room -- they can even rent out a camper if they want. We actually did a story on one person who made almost $1,400 a month renting out a tent in their backyard."

Next is Task Rabbit.

"What they do is hire freelancers, they're called Taskers, and these freelancers are on-demand people," Cupler said. "They do all sorts of things. They can fix your pipes, they can come mow your grass, they can even stand in line for you, if you like. The average Tasker makes $380 a month."

Then comes Lyft, a service where you can get paid to drive.

"They come in third, with an average of $377 per month," he said. "Lyft, again, you get their app, you can pick up people, you take them to work, take them on a date, pick up from the park, wherever they need to go. Riding right behind that is Uber, their competitor. They're one of our partners. Uber is at $354 per month on average. But the cool thing with Uber is you don't have to always drive people. You can also deliver items and deliver food with UberEats. So you can kind of spread yourself out. If you want to only drive people, you can just drive people. If you just want to deliver, you can just deliver -- or maximize by doing a combination of the two."

Finally, coming in at No. 5 is Door Dash.

"This is on-demand delivery of food," Cupler said. "You can do this and earn about $229 a month. The cool thing about this is, you do get tipped and you get to keep 100 percent of those tips."

If working from home is more your style, Cupler said there are options for making cash from your couch.

"Amazon.com often offers work-from-home positions," he said. "They usually require a quiet space because they are customer service positions. So you hook up your phone line, you have your internet connection, and you take customer calls, inbound calls, typically for customer service issues, if they have a shipping issue or ordering issue or something like that. Those are something to look out for."

There are other opportunities to do things such as help companies that hire search-engine evaluators.

Basically, you'd get to judge search-engine results for quality -- and getting results you can actually use based on the topic. The Penny Hoarder officials said these jobs typically pay between $12 and $15 an hour, though there may not always be steady work available. They recommend Leapforce, Lionbridge and Appen Butler Hill as places to look for these jobs.

If a real job with a specific commitment isn't your deal and you prefer the opportunity to make some side cash as you go, there are still even more ways to get money.

"At SwagBucks, all you do is log on (and) take various surveys," Cupler said. "Some of them involve watching videos, some of them involve checking out another website and giving feedback on it, and they'll pay you for doing it."

You can even get cash back for online purchases. You get points that you can then redeem for gift cards.

Dosh is another site with which to get cash back. You connect your debit or credit card, and every time you use it at participating hotels, restaurants or stores, you get cash back into your Dosh account. You even get bonuses for signing up and for booking and completing your first hotel stay.

For groceries and household items, you can use the Ibotta app. You check out which items have cash-back opportunities, mark them off and then scan your receipt into the app to build up a balance. Once you get to a certain point, you can transfer that cash straight into your PayPal or Venmo account, or choose gift cards, if you prefer. Shopmium, Checkout 51 and SavingStar are other similar apps you can check out.

If you have Gmail, Yahoo or Microsoft email and get a lot of receipts sent to your email, Earny could be another app for you to get some free money. It basically scans your email archives, and if you have any receipts from participating retailers, it will check for price drops. If there are any, it will get the difference back from the retailer or your credit card company.

For more tips and resources, visit The Penny Hoarder.