How to Make Money with Your Car
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Your car might be the most expensive thing you own, so it makes sense to put it to work. While there are many ways to make money with your car, some methods are more passive, meaning they don’t require any extra work from you, but others are more active, such as using your car to make deliveries. In general, the more active the task, the more dough you’re likely to pocket.
- How to make passive income with your car
- How to make active income with your car
- How to use someone else’s car to make money
- The bottom line on how to make money with your car
How to make passive income with your car
These methods don’t require that you spend hours a day working in order to make money with your car. Rather they allow you to use your car how you normally would and make your car work for you.
Rent your car as advertising space
$50+ a month
You might get businesses to pay you for advertising on your car. The amount you could make depends on where, when and how long you drive and how big of an advertisement space the company could use.
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Potential companies: FreeCarMedia, Wrapify, Carvertise, Sticker Ride, CarWraps.
Rent your car to other people
$300+ a month
For most of its life, your car sits in a driveway or parking lot. Instead, you could rent it out to other people. For example, if you live near a major airport, large city or national park, you could let tourists use your car to get around and see the sights while you’re at work or home. You could also rent your car to Uber or Lyft drivers without having to do the actual driving yourself.
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Potential companies: Turo, GetAround, Hyre Car, RelayRides.
Make your car a movie star
Unknown earning potential
If you have a classic or specialty car, you could list your car on a vehicle casting site. Movie makers often need extra cars to fill a set and provide the right type of background.
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Potential companies: Movie Time Cars, Movie Vehicles, Specialty Car Locators
Earn safe driver discounts
$100 a year
If you don’t get in an accident that is deemed your fault, some insurance companies will reward you with safe driver bonus checks or safe driver discounts. Note that the availability of the safe driver discount can vary by state and auto insurance company.
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Potential companies: Allstate, State Farm, Progressive
How to make active income with your car
If you want to put your car and yourself to work, be prepared: it will take up your time and take a toll on your car.
You’ll need to buy more gas, do more car maintenance and perhaps cover repairs sooner than you otherwise would. You’ll need a good GPS or good amount of knowledge about your community. Like some of the passive income strategies above, you and your car will most likely need to be approved but some, such as the U.S. Postal Service, may have more stringent requirements.
Deliver food
$10+ an hour
Delivery isn’t just for pizza anymore. You could deliver anything from a full set of groceries that you ran around the store for and collected yourself, to chef-made, gourmet meals.
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Potential companies: local restaurants, Postmates, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, Shipt, Burpy, Caviar, Tapingo, EatStreet, Instacart.
Deliver drinks
$10+ an hour
If you get tired of delivering food, consider delivering drinks of the alcoholic variety.
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Potential companies: Saucey, Minibar Delivery, Drizly.
Deliver stuff
$15+ an hour
If you don’t want your car to smell like spaghetti, you could deliver stuff rather than food. There is currently a huge demand for local delivery drivers due in part to the popularity of Amazon.
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You could potentially deliver:
- Packages from businesses to consumers for: AmazonFlex, Roadie, Deliv, Favor, Burro, GoShare, Doorman
- Packages from consumer to consumer for: CitizenShipper
- Official mail for: U.S. Post Office (rural carriers)
- Furniture for people on: TaskRabbit, GoShare and Buddytruk
Deliver people
$15+ an hour
Not in a religious sense, but in the vein of a taxi service, you might be able to make some cash delivering people to their destinations. Yes, we’re thinking of Uber and Lyft, but another way to make some extra money doing this might be to allow a company to advertise in your car to your passengers. It was reported in 2015 that rideshare drivers can make $3 an hour more by allowing companies like Vugo to advertise to their passengers. The company has more recently predicted that rideshare will eventually be free, the cost offset by advertising to passengers.
Besides acting as a taxi, you might also be able to get paid by select city governments for being a commuting carpool driver. The metropolitan areas around Washington D.C., Birmingham, Ala., San Mateo, Calif., Denver and Colorado Springs, Colo. all offer some compensation. You could also set up your own carpool and split gas.
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Depending on who you want to drive, potential companies you could drive for are below:
- Anyone: Uber, Lyft, Wingz
- Kids: HopSkipDrive, Care.com
- Aging: RideInSight.org
- Women drivers and passengers only: Safr
- Carpools: Waze Carpool, select city governments
Start your own company
Unknown earning potential
Rather than sign up to work for someone else, you could start your own company and make money with your car. Here are a few ideas. This may be as simple as advertising your services to your neighbors or more complicated such as applying for a taxicab or chauffeur’s license.
Driving people | Moving things | Providing a mobile service |
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Of course, starting your own business has a completely different set of pros and cons that you should consider carefully. But the rewards might make it worth the risk.
How to use someone else’s car to make money
Instead of using your car, you might be able to use someone else’s vehicle make money.
Be a dealership mystery shopper
$50+ per dealership
Rather than drive your own car around, you might be able to take a dealership’s brand new cars on test drives as a mystery shopper.
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Potential companies: BestMark, Pied Piper
Be a mobile mechanic
$40+ an hour
If you not only possess your own car but are handy with them too, you could hire out your services as a traveling mechanic.
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Potential companies: YourMechanic, a local business, your own business.
The bottom line on how to make money with your car
There are a ton of ways to earn income with your vehicle (or someone else’s vehicle). Depending on where you live, what you drive and the hours you want to work, you could make money driving for someone else’s business or your own. However you decide to earn cash, drive safely.