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The best way to make pretty easy money fast is to do fMRIs at a research hospital. The usual rate is $50-100 a shot and it's pretty easy (as long as you aren't claustrophic lying in a tube for an hour). Last time I was unemployed, I was in high demand, until the closed space feeling finally got the best of me.
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One of the things I'm doing this year to make an extra $10k is looking into consulting gigs. I'm trying to find a few side jobs where I can sell the skills I've learned in almost 20 years in the workforce. I'm starting to get some interest, and I'll fill you all in if/when I get a breakthrough.
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re: ways to make $100 more a month: I'm a geek in the network operations center of a gov. agency. I needed to make some extra money, and wanted to leverage my pc and network skills. I was interested in getting into home/small business IT consulting on the side. However, I didn't have the time or inclination to try to chase down customers.
Then I made a fortuitous discovery: Lots of people are spending lots of money to wire up new and retrofit homes with high-end network infrastructure, but they have no idea how to actually hook up computers, network printers, routers, wireless, etc. My neighbor was having his house gutted and rebuilt inside, and had the whole house wired for network connectivity. I got in touch with the home theater/inside wiring company he was working with, and offered my services.
Now they bid me on their contracts as \"IT Consulting.\" They bring me in during design phase to determine requirements, then they do the work, then they call me when it's all done and tested, and I hook up PCs, printers, configure routers & wireless, and train the customer. I can even sell the customer new gear, without any hassles of sales tax/merchant licenses, because the company I'm working with takes care of all of that. The place where I really earn my $$$ (and differentiate myself from low-end Geek-squad types) is for customers who have complex hardware VPN/VoIP connections into their offices. I've done a number of these setups, mostly for one big law firm here in town, and now their in-house IT department give my name out to employees who need someone to do the in-home integration.
It's a win/win. The company gets to offer a more full-service product, and I get $100/hr with 2-hr minimum for every trip I make. I do about one a week after work, and am pulling down about $500/month.