5 Ways To Make More Money

What's up you guys, it's Graham here! So I'm gonna share with you how to make an extra $50,000 a month working part-time from home and reveal these incredible wealth-building secrets that anyone can do with no experience necessary. Just kidding! There's way too many of those "learn how to make money" ads out there that are either just a total waste of time or you'll never actually do them, like volunteering for clinical drug testing, doing online surveys for 5 cents each, or selling your soul. It's just not really practical for most people.

However, I have some good news! If you actually want to make some more money right now, here are five real practical examples to make that happen. Most importantly, they actually work, and pretty much anyone can do them. This is what they are—enjoy!

The first way you can make more money pretty easily is a very simple one: If you already have a job, ask for a raise. I've done this several times in terms of getting a slightly higher commission split when working as a real estate agent or even just charging more for my own services, which is kind of like giving myself a raise, but you get the idea. It goes without saying: Sometimes the best way to make more money for very minimal effort is simply just by asking for it.

Here's how: The first thing is to know your value. It's very important to understand exactly how much your time is worth. You can do this by figuring out what your coworkers are making and then determining from there whether or not they're getting paid more than you for the exact same task. You can also figure out what similar jobs are paying at other companies so you could establish a baseline for exactly how much your skills should bring in.

Secondly, you need to calculate how much you're worth to the company. If you're bringing in additional business or retaining existing customers, it's pretty reasonable to expect that you get paid a little bit more as you become more indispensable to the company. For example, as a real estate agent, once I made a few large sales early on in my career, I printed out every single one of my transactions. I then calculated how much money I brought into the brokerage and took all that information into the office manager and asked for a 15% higher commission split. Sure enough, when I did all of that, I got the raise.

I did that over and over again, every single year! I have data to prove to the company that my sales volume is increasing every single year and I'm becoming more and more valuable to the company. I always ended up making more money from this with pretty much just 20 minutes worth of work—just by asking.

The third thing is to be reasonable with your expectations. Don't be working at McDonald's flipping french fries and then demand $250,000 a year because you clean the drink dispenser better than Larry does. If you've been with the company for a while and you know another similar company is willing to pay more, then asking for a 5% to 15% raise is pretty reasonable. It's really important that you don't come in with a number that's so overwhelming that they just automatically say no, but you also want to come in at a high enough number by knowing your worth so you don't shortchange yourself.

Now, the fourth thing is that I've read the best time to ask for a raise is on a Friday. It kind of makes sense that most people are in their best mood right before the weekend, so definitely keep this in mind and feel it out for your own situation. Maybe your boss hates Fridays because they're weird, so definitely play it by ear. But I think on average, overall, probably a Friday is the best time to ask.

Finally, the most important from all of this is that multiple studies have shown that you're 84% more likely to get a raise if you just smash that like button if you haven't done that already! That's because employers love to see that you're a team player, and you understand just how important the YouTube algorithm is, and you want to do your part to help the channel grow.

Now, the second way to make more money that a lot of people don't realize is by switching companies. There are multiple studies that have shown that people who switch jobs every two to three years make nearly 50% more than someone who stays with one company. Loyalty within a company is very rarely rewarded, and ultimately, job security really comes down to you watching out for yourself.

A business is, in essence, a business, and while they should be paying a fair price for a fair service, part of running a business is to generate a profit. This means that if they can pay less for the same service and get away with it, they usually will if that means they make more profit. According to Forbes, the reason why sticking with one company just doesn't work is that most companies will hire you from a base salary and then raise you based off a percentage of what you're already earning.

However, by moving to a new company altogether, you can typically start off this baseline at a much higher level from the very beginning. Companies that compete for talent will also pay significantly more for acquiring skilled employees, so they'll give them a lot of incentives to leave and then come join them.

Now, in addition to that, job hoppers are believed to have a higher learning curve, be higher performers, and also they tend to be a little bit more loyal. They're seen as taking charge of their own career, keeping their skills sharp, and adapting to a variety of tasks. Most importantly, they know how to get a job if they need one, and all of those are qualities that any employer would be happy to have.

However, employees who stay at their company for too long, especially if they feel underpaid, tend to produce poor results, feel less motivated, and are overall less satisfied with their work. So here's what I would recommend: If you're happy with your current job, then by all means, stick with it and there's nothing wrong with that. However, it doesn't hurt just to go and see what else is out there, and maybe you get an offer that you just can't pass up.

The third way to make more money pretty quickly, without a significant amount of effort, is to take advantage of promotional offers. As many of you know, for me, this is like my guilty pleasure, and I've been doing this for years now with really amazing results. Here’s how you can do it too!

Now, the first one is something I've talked about multiple times until I'm blue in the face, but here it is once more: This would be credit card churning. This is basically the practice of opening up new credit cards, getting the sign-up bonus, meeting the minimum spending requirements, then getting all the free points and free travel and free stuff, and then just going and repeating the process over and over again.

I've been doing this several years now, and I pretty much travel everywhere for free! I would guess that I probably make between $3,000 and maybe $5,000 a year in free travel just through opening up credit cards. Here's a few very quick examples of things that you can do right now.

The Chase Sapphire Reserve offers 60,000 points when you sign up and meet the minimum spending requirement, and that's worth $750 in free travel! Or you can do the Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Card; they'll give you $150 back when you sign up and spend $500 in the first three months. Again, that's $150 for maybe twenty minutes' worth of work, and there are hundreds of other offers out there that you could take advantage of if you want free cash, want free travel, free hotel—pretty much anything.

If you take advantage of these offers, I usually open up between two and four credit cards every year when I see a really large sign-up bonus, then go and rack up all the points and get the free travel. Just collect them! It's a weird hobby, and I basically repeat the process over and over again.

Secondly, you can also do this with bank accounts. Basically, banks will give you a bonus just for opening an account with them. Usually, this will range anywhere from $100 to $500, depending on the offer and the bank. All you need to do is open up an account using their promotional offer, move the money in there, keep it in for the required amount of time, get the bonus, and then you can go and do that again.

And know that doing something like this does not impact your credit score, so that's safe! You can do this as many times as you want without impacting what your credit score is.

Really quick, here are two simple examples that you can do with this: You can get $300 when you open up a PNC Bank account and follow their requirements, or you can get $100 when you open up an account with Bank of America. There are hundreds of these that you can pick and choose from, and it's a pretty easy way that you could probably make an extra $100 to $300 a month just by going through the list and taking advantage of each free offer. For anyone that's interested, I will link all the resources for doing this down below in the description.

Finally, a third fun option is to take advantage of free stocks through Webull and also Robinhood. I'll link to it in the description, but basically, if you use a referral link on Webull, you end up getting a free stock when you just sign up, and then you get another free stock when you deposit $100. Each free stock that you get is going to be valued anywhere from $3 to $300! So potentially, you can make up to $600 if you get super lucky, doing almost absolutely nothing. My friend's wife did this, and she got a $200 Apple stock just by signing up—which is super lucky!

What's up, Cana, if you're watching this? But anyway, some of these promotional offers can be pretty fun; they take very little effort, and every now and then, you just get lucky with them and get a really good stock. Another option when doing this is with Robinhood. They'll give you a free stock anytime you sign up using a referral link—which, shameless plug, is in the description. But anyway, Robinhood is another free stock trading program that does something very similar, and they'll give you a free stock valued anywhere from $3 all the way up to $150 for signing up.

Overall, if you want to make some extra money with pretty minimal effort, taking advantage of promotional offers really works well. It's going to be pretty easy to utilize a few of these that I just mentioned and make about $1,000 over the next 30 to 45 days, depending on which you take advantage of. So I highly recommend you just go and do this! Again, this is something that I do myself on the side as well—it's pretty easy, it's pretty fun, I love getting free stuff, and I just really like getting free stuff.

Okay, now the fourth way to make some extra money that's pretty easy is to check for unclaimed funds. Now, this one is actually pretty interesting, and a lot of people don't know how this works or that it even exists. So here's what it is: Let's just say a business or a company owes you some money. Sometimes you overpay for something, sometimes you're given a refund that you didn't know about, sometimes there's a rebate that occurs, and the check just gets lost in the mail and isn't cashed.

So what happens with that money? Well, it just goes to the unclaimed funds database, and it quite literally just sits there for you to go and claim it. I actually had this happen to me recently. I was contacted by someone whose job it is to go and search for people that are owed money, so they can then reach out to them, find their information, contact them to let them know about this.

It turns out that for me, an escrow company overpaid my property taxes in 2016, and by the time all this was found out and adjusted, they mailed the check back. But by then, the property had been rented out, the check was lost, it was never cashed, and then poof! That money was gone and sitting in this database that I had no idea about. That means that for almost three years, I had a $2,700 check that was just sitting there that I had no clue about and had no idea even existed.

So when this person contacted me to let me know I had $2,700 available that I could just go and get, I was ecstatic! He went ahead, I filled out the paperwork, and I claimed it. About 45 to 60 days later, I got my money back! And chances are a lot of you are owed money as well that you just have no idea about.

I recommend you try unclaimed.org or also you can do missingmoney.com and check your name in the database to see what comes up. Just for fun, if you go and do this after the video and find that money is owed to you, comment down below and just mention it because I think that would be pretty cool to see. I would guess that probably one out of six of you over the age of 25 is probably owed some money. If it's not you, check your parents or check your relatives or anything like this. Chances are, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to find some extra money!

And all of this, by the way, is 100% legitimate. I've helped my parents get some money back, and I've got some money back from this that I had no idea about! So chances are, it's not just us—it’s probably a lot of you as well. So go and check that out, and that's a very easy way that you can make some extra money that you just didn't know was owed to you.

Finally, number five—this is my favorite, and I really believe I saved the best one for last. The best way to make more money is by negotiating your current expenses and then saving the difference. I'm a very firm believer that a penny saved is really more like a penny and a half earned, depending on your tax rate! Always! Pretty much no matter what, the ROI on saving more money is worth more than the ROI on making more money—just think about that for a second!

So I recommend you go through all of your expenses and either cancel what you don't need anymore or try to negotiate for a lower price. For example, I shopped around my car insurance, and I saved 15% by smashing that like button if you haven't done that the first time! But no, for real though, I shopped around my car insurance and found that Mercury Auto Insurance was $40 per month cheaper than Geico for even more coverage.

So for me, saving an extra $40 a month is kind of like me making an extra $80 per month before taxes. Here's another slightly more advanced example: With my duplex, I had a 4.5% interest rate on the mortgage. But since mortgage interest rates have gone down, I was able to do a cash-out refinance on that loan and take it down to a 3.75% interest rate and take out $85,000 in cash completely tax-free.

This actually meant that my mortgage payment went down by about $50 a month, and I was able to take out an extra $85,000 that I can now go and reinvest elsewhere to make even more money! So in that example, I basically got paid to save more money, which is why I love real estate! You can do this with pretty much anything out there—from car insurance and health insurance to switching to a different phone plan, a different internet company, or just trying to negotiate something. Anything! The limit!

You can also do this by sometimes pre-paying your bills in advance, and this works with insurance companies. Remember, you can often prepay with the credit card, which means you can get the sign-up bonus on a credit card while simultaneously also saving money. Again, that's a win-win on both fronts—why wouldn't you do that? You can also bundle services together to save even more money, like putting your car insurance with your house insurance or getting a renter's insurance policy with your car insurance.

There are so many different ways to bundle and save money because of that. From everything I've said here, besides switching jobs or asking for a raise, I really believe that cutting back on your expenses and then saving the difference will have the biggest, longest-lasting impact in terms of making more money at the end of the day.

So anyway, there you have it! Those are five strategies that you can utilize to make some extra money, and I really hope this helps. As always, if you made it to the very end and you haven't already subscribed, make sure to gently destroy the subscribe button! And if you're already subscribed but you haven't hit the notification bell, just go ahead and demolish the notification bell if you haven't already.

Comment down below for the YouTube algorithm! Oh, also add me on Instagram; I post pretty much daily, so if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there. Oh, and also one more thing! Before you click out, for those that don't know, I do have a second channel—it's called the Graham Stephan Show! So go ahead, I'll link to that in the description. Go ahead and subscribe to that.

I've just started posting on there, and I have some really, really, really cool plans with the Graham Stephan Show and what I want to do with that second channel. I'm probably going to be investing like $15,000 to $20,000 into the second channel—I'm just gonna leave it as a surprise! Just a surprise!

But I'm gonna be pouring a lot of money into doing this, and I have a vision—that's all I'm gonna say! I have a vision, and I think this would do really well! So go ahead and subscribe! You won't regret it, and you'll see what I have in store for that in the next probably few weeks—about a month. Thank you again for watching, and until next time!