So you lose your job. Or you own a small business and lose a major client. Maybe your health insurance premiums shot up, or gas and energy prices are squeezing an already tight budget.
Would $100, $200, $500 a month make a difference? Sure. So you consider getting a second job. Or, if you have small kids at home, a stay-at-home parent has to go out and find work. Perhaps you’re retired, or disabled, and need extra money as well.
If you do get that job, after gas or transportation costs, and maybe child care (if you have kids that young), your take-home is peanuts. So how can a frugal person or family add some income, however modest?
More below the fold.
Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues. Sarahnity is taking a break and I’m filling in.
You’ve seen the ads for jobs on the Internet and assumed they’re all scams. You’re overwhelmed with the political campaigns, with the economy tanking, and with everything going on worldwide. You wonder if it’s true that you can make money working from home.
Well, you WON’T make thousands each week working 8-10 hours a week using these Internet advertisements’ ideas. You don’t need to spend $29 or buy a subscription on some Internet business site to find out about work-at-home opportunities, either. You’d be wasting your money. Trust me—as a business writer I’ve actually worked as a ghostwriter for some of those sites, and they are all scams. You don't have to pay money to learn about Internet work opportunities.
What I want to introduce you to today is a series of very real ways to make small income streams on the Internet using existing programs. If you are reading this, then you have access to a computer, an Internet connection, and you can read. Assuming you also comment in diaries here and there and can write a cohesive sentence, you likely can try ALL of the ideas listed here, and might be able to generate some money for yourself, to get through a rough patch.
This isn’t a diary about finding a full-time job, or even a part-time job. It’s about ways that anyone in the U.S. (yes, anyone) 18 and over can make a little money using certain websites. You don’t have to spend a penny—just some time—and these are real programs and companies that pay real money (usually via PayPal, so you’ll need a PayPal account in most cases).
Small income streams like these can make a big difference if your budget isn't just tight--it is so tight it's cut off blood supply to your bank account, which is desperately choking for air. Most important--these are programs that provide payment within 1-5 weeks, depending on the program.
I’ve written about many of these programs in my blog, How Not to Work At Home, so in the interest of full disclosure please know this. Also please know that I do not benefit in any way from the links posted here, and I am not an employee for any of the companies I discuss.
I have also actually DONE these programs as a user—so I’ve made money (in some cases, still am making money) working from home, on my own schedule, and earning whatever I earn depending on the time invested.
So here are some ideas to help anyone struggling to earn some dollars and stretch a tight budget:
Now this is an interesting business model.
You, as a writer, write an article on a topic of your choosing. It must contain 400 words or more. Preferably, it has 3% to 5% keyword density, which means that 3% to 5% of the total number of words in the piece is the keyword--or target word or term--for your article topic.
You then go through an article upload process, and submit the article for review. The company offers you an upfront fee of anywhere from $3 to $12—or they reject your article (my acceptance rate is around 90%). You accept their offer or reject it. Within days, the article is published on their site, and you receive a PayPal payment for the agreed-upon amount.
If one were to write 1 article per day, at an average of $5 each, that's $150 per month, plus page view bonuses. I've written articles about my hybrid car, about my kids, or reviewed products. You don't have to be a professional writer to get your start at Associated Content.
LetterRep.com is a site where buyers buy, well, letters. Need to write a job reference letter for someone? Buy one for a fee. Need a letter explaining your poor credit? Buy one. Need a letter requesting an import/export agreement between your company and one owned by the Sultan of Brunei? You got it--for a fee.
As odd as it sounds, in this day and age of the Internet, you can hire just about anyone to do just about anything--even write a break up letter for you. I'm not joking. Pay for someone to write a "Dear John" letter. Check it out at LetterRep.com.
So what's in it for freelancers and people who want to earn money from home? LetterRep.com needs writers. Letter writers. And they pay you $10 every time someone buys your letter.
Writers can earn money in two different ways. First, you can upload your own, existing professional letters. Of course, the letters need to be modified. For instance, using substitution brackets in key places, such as "Dear [hiring manager]," is important. If you already write professional letters, or have a handful sitting around, it might be worth going over them and uploading the documents to LetterRep.com. Every time a buyer purchases one, you make $10.
The second way to earn money with LetterRep.com is to write on request. Buyers can list specific requests, such as "letter declining a job" or "letter explaining my derogatory credit history" or "letter to my ex-husband's girlfriend asking her to do a police background check." The writer then looks at the request and either suggests existing letters on LetterRep.com, or writes a new letter tailored for the client.
Most of the LetterRep.com specific requests are seemingly ordinary. For anyone who has worked in a secretarial or administrative position, writing such letters may be second nature. But what takes one person ten minutes to write may take another person hours. If you write a lot of letters on political issues, then writing for LetterRep may be a great opportunity for you. Hence the birth of this service. If you, as a writer, are skilled with letter writing, this may be a great opportunity to earn some money using your skills.
In addition, many of the requests have a legal slant to them. Paralegals, lawyers, of business consultants have an edge with this service. Many of the more technical or legal requests go unanswered. A niche is waiting for the right person.
Signing up for a free account with LetterRep is easy. The process takes two to three minutes. Writing on request is exceptionally simple as well; you click on the request and a text box appears. Type your professional letter in the box, fill in the additional requested info (i.e. bullet points explaining the letter), and hit submit.
The letters are reviewed by LetterRep.com staff within six to twelve hours. If there is an editorial problem, the letter is moved into "My Problem Works" on your account, where you have a chance to fix any problems and resubmit. If the letter is clean, LetterRep.comconsiders it "live" and ready for viewing by prospective buyers.
Today.com is hiring, and the pay is not so great: $1 per 100+ word post for your first 30 days as a blogger, plus $2 per 1,000 page views.
Now, to be fair, most writers can write 100 words and post them on a blog in about 3-4 minutes. But Today.com limits bloggers to 1 post per day, and makes no guarantees about earnings beyond the first 30 days.
A number of freelancers/write-from-home folks have taken the plunge, because Today.com lets you pick your topic, and off you go--like Associated Content, but with guaranteed pay for 30 days. And who knows where it will go--if you can streamline your time, research, topics, and promotion, it could lead to passive income, like Associated Content.
So imagine a freelance site where you can make anywhere from $.01 (yes, one penny) to $8 for anywhere from 3 seconds of work to about an hour.
Amazon Mechanical Turk does this. Register using an existing Amazon.com account (or create a new one). Sign up for Amazon Payments (they walk you through it). And then go to Amazon Mechanical Turk and find, oh, 15,000 possible "freelance" jobs. Labeled "Human Intelligence Tasks" or HITs, these are bite-sized jobs that you do, and you earn real money doing them. In one case, I was paid $.04 to look at a website store’s item and write a question related to the item—I got into a groove and did 200 of these per hour, for an hour pay of $8. In another instance, a series of 30+ pictures were shown and I had to click on every picture associated with a certain word—earning $.10 per series of pictures.
You can choose to take payment as an Amazon.com gift certificate or as a cash payment via Amazon Payments.
You won't get rich doing this. Really. But $3 a day of HITs gives you $90 at the end of the month.
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In addition to these four Internet programs that you can start using—right now!—to generate cash while working from home, there are websites and forums where you can learn about these opportunities. WAHM.com has some of the best message boards for learning about opportunities, while FatWallet.com is another great resource. The Volition.com boards have loads of tips for finding small income streams while working online as well.
I know a number of folks who easily generate a few hundreds dollars a month with these programs and others. Don’t forget that if you earn more than $600 with any one program, they will request your tax information to send a 1099 form at the end of the tax year.
This economy is hard on nearly everyone; I hope these ideas can be put to use and be of benefit to someone.