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There are all kinds of reasons why we may end up being cooped up in bed – illness, injury, recuperating and so on. While some of us welcome this opportunity and rest and sleep the whole time, others can get restless and bored with the soap operas and game shows on television.
So, for the restless spirits who feel they need to be doing “more” while bed-bound. Here are 15 ways to earn money while cooped up in bed — either from your smartphone or your laptop.
Table of Contents
1. Survey Apps
There’s a chance to make quite a bit of cash and gift cards in one day answering surveys in bed. Plus many of these sites offer sign up bonuses and friend referral bonuses.
Here are some of the top survey sites:
- Survey Junkie – There’s no sign-up bonus here, but you can make about $12 or more an hour
- Swagbucks – $10 Sign-up bonus, earn 10% of your referred friend’s earnings and make about $10 an hour
- PointClub – $5 for signing up, climb different earning levels, so at the highest level (Level 10) it’s possible to make about $14 to $15 an hour.
- Vindale Research – $2 sign-up bonus, $5 for referring friends, and make about $10 to $12 an hour
- InboxDollars – $5 for sign-up, bonus “spins” for more money after each survey, 10% of your friend’s earnings, and make about $5 to $10 an hour.
Both Swagbucks and InboxDollars are more than just surveys, they also offer earning opportunities for shopping, checking out offers, watching videos, and more.
Let’s say you only signed up for Vindale Research and worked 5 hours on their surveys and 2 of your friends accepted your invitations – you’ll have earned about $62, pretty good for laying in bed, isn’t it?
2. Shopping Apps
Ok, this won’t exactly “make” you money while you’re in bed, but it will save you money, time, and anxiety – especially if you’re a parent and worried about falling behind on errands.
Do your needed shopping online from bed and save money in the process. The most popular shopping apps are:
- Ibotta – Get a $10 bonus after you redeem your first receipt.
- Shopkick – Get a 250 point bonus for signing-up. Earn cash taking pictures of receipts, walking-in stores, canning barcodes, shopping online and much more.
- Drop – Earn cash back simply by linking your credit or debit card and making purchases at specific retailers. You get a $1 bonus when you link your credit or debit card.
Another great tip for shopping while in bed is to shop online at Walmart and use their “pickup” service. Not only will you save money by not being tempted by in-store displays and such, but you can see your running total of your tab as you add to the list.
After you’ve bought your groceries arrange with a spouse, neighbor or friend to go pick them up for you.
3. Amazon Mechanical Turk
This is part of Amazon and you do small online tasks to earn money. The tasks vary from website searching, transcription, image verification, data verification, and others.
Pay depends on the task and the length of work. Some pay 2¢ a task that’s done quickly to $1 or more for the longer ones. You can work on this all day, but mTurk sometimes limits how many tasks you can do in a time period.
It’s possible to earn about $10 to $20 or more in a single day.
4. Clickworker
Similar to Amazon mTurk, you do various tasks such as writing, translating, researching and collecting data, and more. The types of tasks that are available is based on your qualifications and these are determined by assessments given during the registration process and on previously completed work.
The pay per task depends on how fast you work but good workers and big tasks can earn an average of $9 an hour. Let’s say you did 4 hours of work in bed – you made about $36!
The only minor drawback is that you won’t get paid until a week after the task’s completion
5. Freelancing
This is a good opportunity for those cooped up in bed long term, but not compromised by illness or medications -you know the “brain fog” that messes us up.
You can work on all kinds of freelancing opportunities. Anything from writing articles and blog posts, virtual assisting, graphic designing, computer programing and coding, and so on.
The sweet thing about freelancing is that you can set your own rates and only choose which project you want to bid on.
A great site to work on is Upwork and other work from home job boards.
6. Website Tester
While you’re stuck in bed and bored of your usual social media surfing, why not become a website tester?
Surf the internet and get paid for it. Your task would be checking for how well a website can be used and grade them on its performance. WhatUsersDo pays about $8 per test and requires an updated computer, high-speed internet, and a microphone.
Let’s say you worked here for 6 hours in between doing other things, it’s possible to make $48 for just checking out different websites and giviing your opinion on them.
7. Rev
This is another task site, but a just a bit different. The jobs listed here are for transcribers, translators or captioners.
You can work as much or as little as you want and pick your own projects. The pay range for translators is 5¢ to 7¢ per word. For transcribers, it’s.40¢ to 65¢ per audio minute, and for closed captioners, it’s 40¢ to 75¢ per audio minute.
If you picked an hour-long transcription job – translating Spanish to English. That’s about $24 to $39 earned in an hour.
8. FixYa
Instead of doing tasks on FixYa, you earn money by giving advice through chat, phone or by answering questions that have been posted online. Questions relating to cars and trucks, cell phones, appliances, clothing, art and media, social media, and pretty much anything people want to know.
You work your way up several “levels” and earn points as well and your advice has to be “liked” in order to get paid. Pay is between $2 and $10 depending on the mode through which the questions are answered.
You may not get paid right away because of the wait time for “likes” and approval, but if you’re the knowledgeable type and love sharing with people, this is a good job while cooped up.
9. Online Juror
Work as an online juror for sites such as eJury & Online Verdict. If you live in a large city and county, you may find work easily here than if you were in a smaller area.
eJury pays about $10 a case and only takes about 30 minutes for a 6-page case. Online Verdict pays about $20 to $60 per case that lasts about 20 minutes to an hour.
Working 4 cases (2 hours) on eJury will make you about $40 and working 4 cases on Online Juror will make you anywhere from $80 up to $240.
10. Play Video Games
Now, who wouldn’t love to do this all day in bed?
On YouTubeGaming, gamers get the opportunity to live-stream their video-gaming experiences and people pay a subscription to your account and sign in to watch those videos and you live-streaming games as you play.
It was hard to pinpoint how much you can really make doing this, but one highly popular gamer working full-time makes around $140,000 to $1.4 million dollars a month from ad revenues. A little unrealistic for a casual gamer in bed, but still not a bad job to have.
11. Write eBooks
Why not write an eBook while you’re stuck in bed? You can write eBooks on pretty much any topic out there to sell on Amazon Kindle Publishing. You can set your book price (minus site fees) and sell your eBooks over and over again for passive income.
Other ideas to foster sales is to share your eBook on your social media connections or give one for someone to review on their site or create coupons to share with your family and friends.
This job won’t make money right away, but is a great way to get a passive income started from bed.
12. Phone Tutor
If you know another language (or more), you can work from your bed as an online tutor.
If you like chatting online or on the phone consider joining iTalki and teach others how to speak a new language. You can set your own schedule and rate.
You’ll need native or advanced proficiency in a language to apply, then choose the length of lessons (30, 45, 60 minutes, set a rate for each lesson type and wait.
Now, iTalki mainly works by video chats but there is an option to do phone-only work.
13. Make Crafts
If your hobby doesn’t require much such as knitting, crochet, needlework or other similar projects that can be done comfortably from your bed, then make a bunch of crafts with the intent to sell later.
Craft as many as you can, pack them individually and store them. When you’re no longer cooped up you then can photograph each one and put online to sell.
Take advantage of several sites such as Etsy, eBay, and on Amazon Handmade. Again, this option won’t make you money right away but does take advantage of all the downtime you have.
14. Consult
If you’re a professional on medical leave, why not share your expertise with others as a consultant? Advise other professionals how to improve their business skills, their trade, or any specialty you want to focus on.
A business consultant can potentially make about $40 an hour, depending on the area and type of business.
15. Sell your Ideas
After you’re done staring at the ceiling letting your imagination go wild. Turn around and sell your ideas on Namestation or ThinkGeek and a variety of other places online.
Namestation is where you can list your ideas for website domains, a company or a product to name a few. You earn “points” for names and contests and more. After earning 1,000 points you will get $100 sent to your PayPal account. The site claims their top contributors only work a few hours every week and earn over $300 a month.
I really hope you don’t need to work while stuck in bed and use the time to recuperate instead, but I also know how important it is to stay on top of our bills. That’s why these jobs that were non-strenuous and simple to do.
By the way, if you want to be comfortable while working in bed, you’ll need a nice and easy desk to work on.
What else would you suggest to do while cooped up in bed? Let us know in the comments, please. We appreciate hearing from our readers!
