The gig economy sometimes seems like a giant free-for-all, and in many ways it is. So, let us try to help you make sense of it, especially as it relates to spotting the best gig economy apps.
- Gig Economy Mac App Installer
- Auto Gigs App
- Gig Economy Mac App Download
- Apps For Gigs
- Apps For Gig Work
- Gig Economy Mac Apps
To give you a quick big-picture overview, the gig economy has grown by leaps and bounds over the last ten years since Uber was first founded. Back then there were a handful of online gigs people could work with although most people had never heard of the gig economy and had no idea what gig work was.
Today, not only does it seem like everybody knows what it is, it seems everybody and their friends are working a gig or two!
Other Gig Economy Apps. If you wanted more ways to search for gig economy opportunities, here are some highly rated gig economy websites and apps that didn’t make the cut (we’ll call them honorable mentions). Survey Junkie is a favorite gig economy app for many people and has over 3 million users. Sign-up for free, it. List of Gig Economy Platforms & Jobs If you want to make that switch immediately, but cannot afford to lose your day job – pick a gig economy and start making some money tomorrow.Okay, Uber is not all there is.Have you ever baked a cake and then took a piece and gave it to your neighbor?
Today, there are gig economy jobs in more industries than there used to be gig companies. We estimate there are now a couple hundred app-based gig companies that have a decent shot at making it. And there are probably several hundred more that no one has ever heard of and probably never will.
But, whether or not they have a chance at making it, the perceived success of Uber has brought on a slew of wannabe imitators. So, we’ll help you weed through it all to get to the best money-making gig economy apps.
How to utilize gig economy apps to your advantage
Getting the most use out of gig economy apps is more than just putting in long hours of hard work with the app you’ve chosen, it is choosing the right app(s) in the first place.
When gig work comes to mind, most people think of Uber and Lyft. That’s natural because Uber and Lyft were the first companies to make it big and really bring gig work to national attention.
Need more freelance jobs?
Enter your work email below and we'll send you 10 fresh freelance job leads from the last 48 hours along with some of our best content to help you get the jobs you deserve.
In the early days, 7-10 years ago, they were the most widely-recognized gig companies. So, it’s natural that they would come to mind, first, when most people think of gig work. But now, research shows the gig economy has completely exploded with more opportunity than ever before.
But today, gig work has literally exploded in a thousand different directions. Today, there are so many gig jobs to choose from that there is no reason anyone should feel like they have to choose an app that doesn’t fit their skill levels and interests. There are even gigs for doctors now!
Today, just to name a few, there are gigs for:
- Web developers
- Contractors
- Software coders
- Babysitters
- Dog sitters
- Homeowners and apartment dwellers
That’s just for starters and it should give you an idea about what all is available today as far as opportunities in the gig economy. You can find gigs that are well-suited to your skills and interests, so don’t think gig work means being tied to a $7-an-hour menial job anymore. It doesn’t.
Because of this great diversity you can now employ interesting strategies to get the most out of any gig work you may choose to do.
It’s true that a lot of gigs are low-end, low-paying jobs, but they do make it easy for people with no experience or specialized training to start working. How can i get my spotify for free with att. And you can use your time in between gigs to get free or low-cost training to up your skill level so you can improve your situation over time.
The four best tips I can give you for using gig apps to your advantage are:
- Find gigs you already have some inherent interest in.
- The best apps for making money are those where your reputation follows you. The better your reputation becomes over time, the more work you’ll get and the more it will pay. However, this doesn’t happen overnight. Patience and persistence pay off.
- Gigs that require higher skill levels generally pay more.
- Gigs that allow you to set your own prices pay more than twice as much as gigs where the company sets your price.
With that said, let’s take a look at various gigs to get a better sense of what will best help you make some extra cash in 2019.
Top 10 gig economy apps for boosting your income
1. Airbnb
Without a doubt, this is the number one money-making gig app out there. And we say that for three main reasons. First, Airbnb lets you set your own prices. You will almost always make more with the companies that let you set your own price.
Another reason Airbnb is our top choice is because most people can work as a host without incurring many additional expenses. Whatever small expenses you do incur are so incidental that they can be almost entirely overlooked.
And the other reason we love Airbnb is because if you don’t have a traditional full-time job, you’ll have plenty of spare time in between guests to work other gigs. Once a guest checks in they will rarely take any of your time, leaving you free to earn money from other gig jobs.
The main drawback to home sharing is that it is coming under growing scrutiny and regulation by local governments. Some jurisdictions have made it completely illegal. Other jurisdictions have come up with a variety of schemes.
The most common scheme allows people to host short-term guests as long as they live in the home at the time Airbnb guests are there. This effectively outlaws whole-home rentals, where you might buy a second home or lease an apartment that you’re not going to live in for the sole purpose of using it for Airbnb.
The other drawback is that there are few, if any tax advantages. Federal tax law doesn’t allow you to deduct any portion of the price of your home or apartment when you use it for the business of short-term rentals.
Gig Economy Mac App Installer
However, if you live in a home with at least one spare bedroom, then Airbnb is legal in most places. If you have two spare bedrooms, you can rent them out separately and double your short-term rental income. You should check out Airbnb’s site and see what hosts are earning per night in your area.
2. Fiverr
This was one of the original gigs. They’ve been around a long time. In the beginning they really did sell gigs for $5 a pop. Writers would agree to pen 500-word articles for $5.
Well, no one is going to write a decent article for $5 so any legitimate writer would either exclude themselves entirely from the platform or end up working basically for free. The good news is that has now all changed.Today, professional gig workers can actually charge something close to a reasonable price and sites like Fiverr work as a solid client-referral system for them.
Plenty of freelancers are making good money on Fiverr. Jobs like the one pictured here literally used to go for $5. Now, talented people can earn what they’re worth.
3. TaskRabbit
TaskRabbit was recently purchased by Ikea because Taskers (as they call them) were in such demand for tasks such as putting Ikea furniture together. Like the name implies, TaskRabbit sends people out to perform a variety of tasks.
Tasks can be anything from assembling furniture to hanging pictures, moving boxes to running errands, or waiting in line for people who don’t have time to wait in lines themselves!The upside for workers is that TaskRabbit allows each tasker to set his or her own prices.
Because of that, TaskRabbit is one gig app that we highly recommend because people using it make way above average for gig work. Plus, there is so much flexibility and variety that if you have a decent mind for business, you should be able to find in-demand niches that are perfectly suited to your skills.
People who have done that and built up a good reputation with TaskRabbit customers can actually make a very decent living with it.
4. Upwork
This gig app used to be very low-end. However, over the last couple of years, they have begun to up their game. Upwork has attracted a following of customers who produce a high demand for people with strong creative and/or computer-related skills.
Some of the top skills on Upwork are web developers, mobile app developers, graphic designers and writers.In their early days they accepted all workers. No one needed to show any proven abilities to do the jobs they were presenting themselves as capable of doing.
That was great for people who really had no skills but it was terrible for people who did. High-end graphic designers who could earn up to $50 an hour in the old economy suddenly found themselves working for $5 an hour.
Today however, Upwork has put into place some pretty strict standards so now people who have actual skills can earn something closer to what they’re worth. So, if you have any of these skills, Upwork is an app you should take a look at. Especially if you’ve had success on other sites like Upwork.
One downside to Upwork, as well as several other apps, is that they charge you to bid. In other words, when you get a request from a potential client, you’ll have to pay a fee in order to respond. And you have to pay the fee whether you get the job or not.
5. Freelancer
Auto Gigs App
Freelancer is very similar to Upwork. They too specialize in creative and computer-related skills. If you’re a creative type, you might enjoy the fact that a lot of demand they have for computer work leans toward the creative side. Typical jobs include social media manager, audio and video editing, as well as web design.
6. YouTube
Yes, you heard me right! YouTube is a gig too. If you love producing video content, you may be able to make a few dollars on it by uploading it to YouTube and signing up to be a content creator. The requirements for making money directly from YouTube are pretty strict and not easy to meet for newcomers.
You have to have at least 1,000 subscribers and your videos must have been watched for a total of at least 4,000 hours in the last year. After you meet these requirements, YouTube will review your channel and if everything looks good they’ll approve you for monetization.
Best pixel art app mac. But don’t jump up and down just yet!Those are pretty difficult hurdles to meet for a beginner. And even if you do meet them, the pay isn’t all that great. It’s not possible to say exactly how much any one person might make, but estimates range from about $2 to $4 per thousand views.
So, if you get 10,000 views, you’ll likely make around $20.However, there are other ways to make money without having to rely on YouTube for your paycheck. For instance, if you have another marketable skill, you can make videos that teach people about it.
You could then lead them to your website where they can buy things from you. They could buy something you make, a service you provide, or they could buy video classes that would go deeper into your subject matter. Just be aware that all this takes a long time and a lot of effort to get off the ground.
7. Thumbtack
This gig app has a couple of things in common with TaskRabbit that make it a desirable company to work with as well. Like TaskRabbit, they let workers set their own prices. And they have a wide variety of tasks their workers can do as well.
The main difference is Thumbtack workers are on a more professional level. Many of them are licensed tradespeople like plumbers and electricians. The downside is that Thumbtack, like Upwork, charges their workers to respond to inquiries. And sometimes they have to pay a lot.
One plumber told me it costs him up to $150 per response. And he has to pay that whether he gets the job or not! But, then he added, it’s worth it.
So, he earns enough, despite paying sky-high rates to answer inquiries that don’t convert into jobs, that it not only covers that expense but there’s enough left over at the end of the month that he feels it’s worth it.
8. Roadie
Now, we move into the gig apps that require the use of a vehicle. Roadie is basically a delivery company, and like most gig companies today, they’re pretty free and loose with what it is they deliver!
Spotify app wont show song count. Deliveries can be anything from a grocery or drugstore pickup for a customer to moving a piece of furniture across town. They also do long-distance moves, so if you have a large truck, something like a U-Haul van, you can take those jobs.
One of our forum members told me recently that he loves working for Roadie. He mostly does local jobs. But recently he travelled from his home in California to visit family in Ohio.
His travel dates were flexible (of course, because he does gig work)! So, he waited until a good long-distance job came up with Roadie and he ended up getting paid for three quarters of the distance he travelled.
Another interesting feature about working for Roadie is that once you’ve signed up, you can work for them anywhere in the country. You’re not stuck to just your local area like ride-hail drivers are.
9. Instacart
This app is fairly typical of the delivery apps genre. Instacart works in conjunction with grocery stores while others may work with restaurants such as DoorDash and Uber Eats.
When an Instacart worker receives an order he or she will head to the designated supermarket where they will shop the order and then deliver it to the customer’s designation location.Instacart generally pays about $5-$9 per order, plus tips, so it’s a little difficult to understand how anyone can make very much money from this kind of gig.
It could easily take half an hour or more for an Instacart worker to get to the store, shop the list and get out of the store. Then you have to account for the time it takes them to get from the store to the customer’s location. So, it’s hard to imagine how they could do more than one job an hour.
Instacart will pair them up with two jobs if they happen to come in at the same time and are in the same direction. But for the most part this seems like a less-than-minimum-wage gig.It doesn’t help that Instacart was caught stealing workers’ tips a few months ago.
When Instacart sends an order to a driver they’ll tell the driver how much Instacart itself will pay for the job. Workers were finding that when customers left tips through the app that they weren’t getting the total of Instacart’s base pay plus the tip. Safest site for free mac software. Instacart later admitted to this.
Basically, they were using the tip to fund the portion they were supposed to pay regardless of whether or not there was any tip. So, if Instacart agreed to pay $5 and a customer left a $5 tip, the driver would just get $5 instead of $10.
When this all came to light Instacart agreed to stop doing it. But now that they’ve showed that side of themselves it’s a little harder to have much faith in them to do the right thing by workers.
10. Uber
The one you’ve been waiting for! While Uber is known for its contentious relations with drivers, it still remains the biggest gig opportunities out there. Uber has more than two million drivers and is still the company most people think of first when they flirt with the idea of dipping their toes into the gig economy.
If you have access to an insured car, a driver’s license and a clean driving record, that’s pretty much all you need to start driving with Uber.
A lot of people like driving for Uber because they really can work whenever they like. Although, there are certain times that are more profitable than other times.
While it is easy to get started with Uber, studies have shown that more than half of all drivers in the United States earn less than $10 per hour after all driving expenses are taken into consideration.
For that reason, we can’t say Uber is one of the best gig economy apps out there. But if you just need a few extra bucks in your pocket, and you need them fast, it’s not a bad way to get them.
Getting the most from todays gig economy apps
The best gig economy apps are those that let you set your own prices and require something more than menial skills. The more skills a gig job requires, the more you’ll make.
The fewer people who share your higher-level skills, the better positioned you’ll be to make some decent dough from an app-based gig.
Some of the companies, like the ones at the top of our list, offer the magic combination of allowing you to set your own prices and work at a higher-skill level, making it possible to maximize your income and get the most out of some of the best gig economy apps available.
Keep the conversation going..
Over 5,000 of us are having daily conversations over in our free Facebook group and we'd love to see you there. Join us!
The term “gig economy” made headlines all over in January when economists Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger revoked their 2015 thesis on the topic.
Although two economists making an incorrect assumption should never be surprising, the story caught the media’s attention and resurfaced ideas circulating about the state of this “gig economy.” In the economists’ defense, it is difficult to make predictions about the gig economy without a clear definition of what it entails. However, it is safe to say that the gig economy has become an important part of today’s workforce and will continue to be significant in upcoming years.
The History of the Gig Economy
The only new aspect of the gig economy is its name. Before the 20th century, people typically worked multiple jobs to piece together an income. The one-career lifestyle is relatively novel.
The “Uber Pool” of the 18th Century
Source: The Conversation.
Source: The Conversation.
The first major “gig provider,” craigslist, was established in 1995 and was followed by similar companies like Elance (1998) and oDesk(2004). Access to the Internet and to mobile technology accelerated the use of gig work and continues to do so.
Cell phones are an important technological advancement that has facilitated the rise of a new wave of gig workers across many fields. With almost every American now owning a cell phone with internet, accessing gig work opportunities is much easier in the United States than ever before.
Now, 25 years after craigslist, apps like TaskRabbit, Lyft, Uber, Postmates, Airbnb, and others allow people to earn an income solely from the work. However, apps that facilitate task-like gig work are only considered a small segment of the gig economy and not solely used for replacing a 9-5 job.
Defining the Present Gig Economy: Who Is Part of It?
The difficulties in understanding the gig economy come from the challenge of defining what “gig work” is and who can be defined as a “gig worker.” While some people earn their income solely from gig work, others use it as supplemental income. Some freelance jobs involve highly technically skilled work and pay well, while others require nothing but a phone and pay minimally. Many workers choose to pursue this work, while others do it out of necessity. Openvpn client for mac os x download.
Demographics
McKinsey broke down independent work into four categories: Free Agents, Casual Earners, Reluctants, and Financially Strapped. These categories outline how diverse the lifestyles and motives are for these types of workers.
Source: McKinsey
Difficulty Defining Exact Numbers
Although it is simple to categorize the motives and lifestyles of “gig workers”, determining what jobs are included in the gig economy is not agreed upon. Plenty of research has surfaced with conclusions on gig economy, but not all of them agree. This is because there are different definitions for who should be included in the research, making it difficult to come to any conclusions.
The Federal Reserve’s 2017 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking estimated that 31 percent of adults in the United States engaged in some form of gig work in the previous month. It is important to note, however, that these “gigs” included offline and possibly off-the-books activities like babysitting and housecleaning.
Many people don’t consider tasks like babysitting or housecleaning to be gig work. Others don’t consider freelance engineering to be gig work either. Yet, plenty of surveys consider gig work to be any work outside of a 9-to-5 job.
For example, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a 2015 paper on contingent workers that is often cited in gig work analyses, but their definition of this work stated:
“No clear consensus exists among labor experts as to whether contingent workers should include independent contractors, self-employed workers and standard part-time workers, since many of these workers may have long-term employment stability. There is more agreement that workers who lack job security and those with work schedules that are variable, unpredictable or both—such as agency temps, direct-hire temps, on-call workers and day laborers—should be included.”
By this definition, the data leaves out the group of “Free Agents” defined by McKinsey.
Due to these different understandings and definitions of gig work, obtaining consistent data about the breakdown of the gig economy can be extremely difficult.
If It Isn’t Growing, Is It Shrinking?
Before Katz and Krueger revoked their 2015 thesis, they asserted that the gig economy had grown over 10 percent in the last 10 years. But if their statement was untrue, and gig work isn’t making massive strides, is it just a fad that will eventually fade away?
The Overhype
No. As it turns out, the gig economy holds a strong place in the overall economy. Gig work was simply overhyped by the media after Katz and Krueger revoked their thesis. Once one media outlet started talking about how gigs could change the future of work, the topic spread like wildfire. Headlines from major news outlets read:
- Wall Street Journal: As the Gig Economy Changes Work, So Should Rules
- The Guardian: The ‘Gig Economy’ Is Coming. What Will It Mean for Work?
- New York Times: Growth in the ‘Gig Economy’ Fuels Work Force Anxieties
Gig Economy Mac App Download
In actuality, people were not quitting their full-time jobs to pursue this type of work.
“Even more people held regular jobs. At the time, Michael R. Strain, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute told the Times, ‘I think everybody’s narrative got blown up.’” Source: Fortune
The Present, However You Define It
The gig economy is here to stay. Has it “revolutionized the way we work”? If freelance work is considered to be part of the gig economy, then the answer might be yes, as freelancing is becoming much more popular. More people are making the leap to do full-time freelance work than ever before. But if babysitting and housecleaning are considered to be part of the gig economy, then not much has changed in that segment.
If you decide to look only at the “task” economy, including work on gig marketplace platforms, then the answer is that gig work has not fundamentally changed the way that we work to date, but it still could. Right now, more companies are providing opportunities for people to do this type of work, so there is growth in opportunity. However, people are not yet leaving their careers to live off of these opportunities; rather, they’re using these jobs for supplemental income.
The Future of Gigs
The demographics and motives of the task-oriented gig economy suggest that gig work is here to stay. There will always be people who want or need supplemental income due to short-term circumstances, such as the recent government shutdown, or to long-term issues, such as income instability or disabilities that interfere with working a 9-to-5 job. Even older generations are participating in gig work to keep themselves busy after retirement.
Apps For Gigs
By understanding the motives and lives of people completing gigs, it is easier to understand that there is a place in the economy for gigs to stay. With new companies providing gig work opportunities, as well as existing companies creating a space for this type of work, the widespread adoption and growth may not be far off. Still, it is important to understand that this does not mean massive groups of people will be quitting their 9-5 jobs.
There will always be freelancers, casual earners, and people that are financially strapped that benefit from the gig economy; therefore, there will always be companies providing these gigs.
Apps For Gig Work
Observa’s Role and Our Observers
Gig Economy Mac Apps
Out of curiosity, we polled our Observers to ask them why they use our app and, potentially, other similar apps. It is clear that a majority of Observers use these types of apps as supplemental income. Only 15.5 percent of Observers use these types of apps to pay for their entire rent or living expenses.