Extra Money

Investing your money in stocks that pay dividends is another way to earn extra money.  Dividends are payments that a corporation makes to its shareholders.  For example, if you bought 1 share of a $100 stock with a yield of 5% you would receive $5 in dividend payments in a year. Most U.S. companies pay dividends quarterly but other arrangements are possible, such as annually or monthly.

When you invest in a stock that pays dividends you are taking a risk that value of the shares you buy could go down.  There is also a chance that the value of the stock could go up.  Even if the stock price remains stable you will still be making money from the dividends.

This is a very basic explanation of dividends.  The subject is too broad to be completely covered in one blog post.  I will post further information about dividends at a later date.

I wrote yesterday about how you can make extra money with cash back from online shopping portals.  One of the shopping portals I mentioned was Live.com.  They are a little different from the other portals and deserve a post of their own.

In order to take advantage of this deal you need to go to Live.com and sign up for an account. Once you have an account search for cash back deals.  There are many merchants taking part in these deals and there are discounts available ranging up to 50% off or more.  There are much larger discounts available through this portal than through other cash back portals.  In fact many people are actually making money by buying items at eBay with the cash back discount and then turning around and selling them for a profit.  I haven’t tried to make a profit with Live.com but I have received some very good discounts from them.  You can get more information at the Live.com web site.  If you want advice on how to best use these deal search the threads at SlickDeals and FatWallet.

You can make extra money when you shop online by shopping through online cash back shopping portals.  A few examples of online shopping portals that offer cash back are Big Crumbs, Ebates, Fat Wallet and Live.com.  The way theses usually work is you sign up at the shopping portal’s web site and then when you’re ready to shop you click through to the retailer you want to shop at from the shopping portal.  You will then earn back a percentage of the money you spend at the retailer.  For example, if you shop at Target going through the Ebates portal you would receive 7% cash back.  Therefore you would get back $7 for every $100 you spent.

It is important to note that you are not making extra money if you  buy stuff you don’t need just to get the cash back.  Also note that sometimes the shopping portals have bonuses of $5-$10 when you sign up and you can make a little more money that way.

You can also make passive income with the sites that have referral programs.  If you refer people to a site the  site will pay you a percentage of what your referrals spend. And some sites will even pay you for what the referrals of your referrals spend.  You aren’t likely to get rich from these sites but you can easily make a few extra dollars a month with them. Click on the following if you would like to sign up for some of these cash back sites .

I am taking today off to relax and enjoy Thanksgiving with my friends and family.  It is nice to make extra money but you also need to take a day off now and again so you can recharge your batteries.  After a day off you can come back and have even more focus on making extra money and avoid getting burned out.

The nice thing is that if you have passive income you will make some money even when you take a day off.  For example I will earn interest on my CD and savings acccounts.  I will also earn some money from Adsense and if I am lucky I might even make some affilliate commissions today.  These likely will not add up to much but it is still great to make money when you are not even working.  Eventually I plan to have all these passive income sources built up to the point where I do not need to do any further work if I do not want to.  Whatever your goal remember to occassionally take a day off and relax.  I will be back tomorrow with more advice on how to make extra money.

I already wrote about mystery shopping as a way to make extra money.  I mentioned Volition.com as a resource to find out more information about mystery shopping companies.  Another great resource for finding mystery shopping jobs that I forgot to mention is JobSlinger.com .

JobSlinger combines the job listings from several different mystery shopping companies into one job board.  This makes it easy to see all the different mystery shopping jobs that are available in your area.  There is a search function that allows you to see all the jobs available within a certain distance from your zip code.  You can change the distance depending on how far you are willing to travel to mystery shop.  You do need to register before you can use the search function but it is a free service.  I have used it to find a mystery shopping job and it worked well for me.

If you are reading this blog than this way of making extra money has probably already occurred to you.  This site is written on Today.com which pays you for a post every day.  There are other sites that will pay you to blog but they have different revenue sharing models.  They mostly will pay you some percentage of their revenue but you will not be paid anything per post and there is no guarantee that you will make anything.  That is the great thing about blogging on Today; you receive a guaranteed payment for your daily post plus you get to share in the revenue produced by your post.

There are also plenty of companies that will pay you to put a post on your blog promoting a product or service.  These can be an easy way to make money but there are several drawbacks.  One drawback is that if you don’t have an established blog it can be difficult to get any paid post opportunities.  Another drawback is that you risk losing your readership if your post start looking like ads.  One more drawback is that you will only get paid one time for these posts.

If you are going to do any paid blogging you want the ability to earn passive income.  Once you have published your post you need to be able to continue to make money off the revenue the post generates.  If the company you are considering blogging for doesn’t offer this than I would recommend choosing another company.

Online surveys are another way that you can make extra money. They don’t pay much but they are easy to do in your spare time.

The only company I do surveys for is Pinecone Research. They pay $3 per survey (used to be $5) which take about 10-15 minutes to complete. I usually only get a couple surveys a month. They only accept signups at certain times so you have to be on the lookout for when they are accepting new members. I’ve never had any problems getting paid by Pinecone. They send out checks quickly or you can have the money deposited in your PayPal account. This isn’t much money but it is easy to make and every little bit helps.

Other companies that I haven’t used but I’ve seen recommended by other  bloggers are SurveySavvy and Greenfield Online. I know that there are other survey sites out there but I do not want to recommend any I have not personally tried.  Joining these sites is free. Do not pay for a list of survey sites, they are easy to find on your own.

Mystery shopping is an interesting way to make extra money.  I consider it alternative income because you can choose whether or not you want to apply for a particular mystery shopping job.  This gives you much greater flexibility than you would with a regular job.  Once you apply and are accepted for a job though you usually do have a certain time or time period in which to perform the mystery shop.  You also have to follow the guidelines of the mystery shopping company.  Making money by mystery shopping is much less restrictive than holding a regular job but it does not give you the same amount of freedom as other ways of making extra money.

Be suspicious of any ads for mystery shopping that claim you can make lots of money or get tons of free clothes and merchandise by mystery shopping.  These are usually a scam where they will charge you an exorbitant amount for a list of mystery shopping companies.  There is no need to pay anything to find mystery shopping companies or to apply to be a mystery shopper.  A great free resource on mystery shopping is they mystery shopping forum at Volition.com.  There you can find plenty of different companies to apply to plus find tips and tricks to help you be a more successful mystery shopper.

I do not do much mystery shopping.  I usually only do it when it involves doing something I would like to do anyway.  These jobs don’t usually pay much but if you’re getting paid to do something you would normally do for recreation-such as eat at a restaurant or watch a movie-than this can be a pretty good deal.

You can earn interest on your money by depositing it at a bank or credit union in an interest-bearing instrument such as a CD or savings account.  This is one of the easier ways to earn money.  If you deposit $100 in a CD paying 3% you’ll have $103 at the end of the year depending on how the interest is compounded.  This isn’t much but since the investment is insured and guaranteed there is no risk.  In general an investment that has low risk is also going to have a low return.

You can also invest in bonds which usually pay a higher interest rate than bank instruments.  Of course, this higher return comes with a greater risk of loss.  Another factor to consider when putting money into any type of interest-bearing account is whether you could receive a higher rate of return elsewhere.

The cash I keep in interest-bearing accounts is mostly part of my emergency fund.  I keep most of it in online savings accounts  and a little bit in a CD.  If you’re going to put any money into a savings account or CD I highly recommend checking rates on the Internet first.  This will allow you to find the highest paying accounts that will work for you.

Unless you have a lot of money you’re not going to be able to live off interest but it is a good way of making extra money on your cash that you keep for emergencies or cash that is waiting to be invested elsewhere.

There are many different definitions of passive income.  My definition of passive income is income that you do not have to do any additional work to receive.  Thus dividends and interest would count as passive income.  I had to work to earn the money I invested that is now paying dividends or interest but I don’t have to do any more work to continue earning the dividends or interest.

Sometimes it can be unclear whether income is passive or not.  A good example is blogging.  I definitely have to work to make money from my blogs which makes the income earned from them not passive income.  On the other hand if I stopped blogging today my blogs would still earn ad revenue for quite a while just at a diminished rate.  This makes blogging income a mixture of active and passive income.

I’d prefer to make all of my income from passive income but I’m a long way from that goal.  For now I won’t be worrying about whether income is active or passive I’ll just be focusing on ways to make extra money.

Now that I have clarified my definitions of passive income and alternative income I will start posting tomorrow with ways to make extra money.