There are a thousand or more ways to make money, but they can be roughly classified into three categories. These are fast ways to make money, basic ways to pay the bills and long-term wealth-creation strategies involving building a business. Lets take a quick look at the three, based on the assumption that you are starting from a desperate position with no money. If that is not the case, you can skip ahead to the "paying the bills or "wealth creation" part.

The instant-cash ways to make money can be further divided into three categories: turning assets into cash, borrowing, and making money. The first is about selling whatever you have. Almost everyone has something that isn’t really needed and can be converted into cash. This might be a CD collection, a bunch of tools that are never used, an office full of books or something else. You have eBay, pawn shops and friends as potential markets, although the latter two are easier and faster.

Borrowing can also be done at a pawn shop, in which case even things you don’t need can be converted temporarily into money. You might also have a car you can borrow against, a home that can be used for a second mortgage loan, or credit cards that you can use for a cash-advance. None of these are ideal ways to raise money, but provided you have a plan for repayment they are better than nothing. You might also borrow from family and friends.

The third instant-cash method is finding jobs or businesses that pay quickly. For example, if it is winter and it just snowed, you might borrow a shovel and make $100 cleaning a few driveways today. Friends or acquaintances may need yard work done, or other work they’ll pay cash for. You could go out and cut a dozen small trees and carve them into walking sticks by this afternoon, wholesaling them to a gift shop for $8.50 each to make a cool $100.

Once you solve your immediate cash shortage you can move on to paying the bills. That means getting a job or starting a small business. If that snow shoveling worked out you can do that until the landscaping season starts. Otherwise you can move building to building asking if they are hiring (seriously, this works--do it day after day and you won’t go a month without a job).

Long term ways to make money are all about real business. A solid business is not a job where you happen to be the boss of yourself--that can be as bad as working for other people. A good business allows you to eventually run the business itself rather than do all the work within the business. This is why you have to charge $30 per hour for trimming trees, for example--so you can eventually pay an employee $15 per hour and still make a profit. If you want to avoid having money problems in the years to come, this is a worthy goal. The instant-cash ways to make money and the ways that just pay the bills are just steps on the ladder of financial success.