Extra Money

I did not give much detail in my last post on freebie trading so I wanted to revisit the topic and give a little more information.  Freebie Trading is a phrase used to describe transactions in which people complete offers in exchange for cash or prizes. A lot of these offers are free or very inexpensive trial offers.

There are three different ways to make money in Freebie Trading.  The first method is to get paid to complete offers.  The second method is to get paid directly by the freebie sites.  And the third method is to get free prizes which you resell or keep for your own personal use.  You will probably use a mixture of these three methods and will eventually discover what works best for you.  More details will follow as I try this method of making extra money out.

A new to make extra money is freebie trading.  I had never heard of it until last week but I have been reading up on it since then.

The basic way freebie trading works is that you get paid to complete free trial offers.  The complete process is somewhat complex but I’ll attempt a brief explanation.  There are lots of sites out there that will give you free prizes for signing up for offers. They can do this because they get paid by the advertisers of the offers.  It may seem like they are giving away more than they can afford but the fact is most people don’t complete enough offers to qualify for the free prizes. If you are going to do this you need to study the terms very carefully.  A good place to learn more is this Squidoo page.

I haven’t tried this myself yet but I intend to do so when I have time and I will report my results after I have tried this.  

A unique way to make a little extra money is by house sitting.  This usually does involve some work so I classify it as alternative income.  In addition you only make money when you are sitting the house so it is not passive income.

House sitting sounds like an ideal way to make extra money because you get to live somwhere rent-free plus make money.  In reality though house sitting is not that easy of a way to make money.  For one thing many people expect you to house sit for free, figuring that you’re living there free is compensation enough.  If you are lucky enough to get paid for house sitting it will oftern involve taking care of a pet.  That amounts to pet sitting which is a different way to make extra money.

There are many websites that offer house sitting jobs but many of them are just out to take your money.  I have not tried any of them so I can’t recommend which ones are legitimate.  In summary I would say that if you are lucky enough to find a house sitting job take advantage of it but I would not put too much time and effort into finding a house sitting job.

This is a followup post on how to make extra money collecting and selling scrap metal.  Refer to the previous post for the basics.  This post will give more details on how to make extra money collecting and selling scrap metal.

A great way to make more money selling scrap metal is to be paid to pick it up.  Many people do not want to wait for bulk item pickup to get rid of their stuff or they may not have bulk item pickup available where you live.  In this case you offer to pick up their items (metal items of course) for a small fee.  This will allow you to make money picking up the item in addition to the money you make selling the item for scrap metal.

You might also inquire of your local small engine repairs shops, used appliance dealers, etc.  if they need items picked up.  This could provide you with a source of collection income along with a steady source of scrap metal items to sell.

As you gain more experience you will learn which items are more valuable and then you can concentrate your efforts more on collecting the valuable items.  You will also learn how to seperate the metals in your scrap metal items to gain more profit.  Therefore, the more experience you accumulate in collecting and selling scrap metal the more reward you should receive for your efforts.

With metal prices climbing over the past year more people are becoming interested in making extra money by collecting and selling scrap metal.  Unfortunately, a lot of people who are trying to make money in scrap metal get their scrap metal by stealing it.  They have been so brazen as to steal air conditioners off roofs or even stealing copper wire from power lines.  Obviously I do not advocate that and this post will tell you how to legitimately collect and sell scrap metal.

If you’re going to collect scrap metal you are going to need a pickup to haul it in.  Although the prices of scrap metal have risen dramatically it still takes quite a bit of it to add up to significant money.   To get scrap metal just cruise your local neighborhoods when they have bulk item pickup.  You’ll likely find scrapped hot water heaters, air conditioners, washers, dryers, lawn mowers, etc.  all of which can be sold as scrap metal.

Once you have accumulated a load of scrap metal you need to sell it.  If you don’t already know of a scrap metal dealer than all you need to do to find one is look in the phone book.  Most metropolitan areas will have several.  You’ll probably want to sell your metal at several places until you figure out who will give you the best deal.

Once you have done this a few times you will figure out ways to make even more money.  This is alternative income since you definitely have to work to earn this money and there are no recurring payments.  This isn’t something I currently do but I do believe it is a viable way to make extra money for those who are interested in it.

I previously wrote about how you can make extra money with paid search with SwagBucks.  Since then I have discovered another paid to search site called Scour.  At this site you can earn points for every search you do and also earn points with votes and comments on your searches.  Once you receive 6500 points you can redeem them for a $25 gift card.

I haven’t tried Scour since I am quite happy with Swagbucks but it looks like it could be a worthwhile site.  One advantage it does have over Swagbucks is that it allows users from several different countries to redeem points for money while Swagbucks only allows users from the U.S., Canada, and U.K.  to redeem points for money.  This is alternative income since you have to take action to earn the points that you redeem for money.  They do have a referral program which would allow you to add a passive income element since you earn points for your referral searches.  Unfortunately you can’t add referral links on your Today.com blog but if you have other blogs you might have some luck promoting the service there.  If anyone has experience using Scour I would be interested in hearing how it worked for you.

Yesterday I introduced the idea of making extra money with the “Build a Niche Site ” or BANS program.  This is a program that allows you to make money with the eBay affiliate sales program.  I have not discussed the idea of making money through affiliate sales yet.  This is a good way to make money and I will discuss it more in the future.  For now I will discuss it only in the context that it applies to the BANS program.

The BANS program allows you to build a website which you use to sell products that are listed on eBay.  You earn an affiliate commission on the sales your website generates from eBay.  The products you are selling on your website are not yours but other people’s products that they are selling on eBay.  This means that you do not have to bother with stocking products and you will never run out of products to sell.  You just have to find a profitable niche for your website and drive traffic to it to generate sales.

The BANS website has plenty of testimonials from people who are making good money using the program.  I’ve seen testimonials at impartial websites as well so I believe this is a legitimate product.  That being said it does cost $97 and it requires quite a bit of work to implement.  This is definitely alternative income although it can have somewhat of a passive income element once you have your site established.  Check out the product thoroughly and be sure you are committed to putting in the necessary work before purchasing the product.

So far in this series we have covered how to make extra money by selling stuff on eBay, Amazon, and Craigslist.  The focus so far has been on selling stuff you already own to make extra money on these websites.  That of course can only make you so much money.  Eventually you will run out of stuff to sell.

That is why today we will focus on selling other people’s stuff to make extra money.  There are many different ways to do this.  The way we will focus on today is making extra money by selling stuff with “Build a Niche Store” or BANS as it is commonly called.  This is a program that is set up to make affilliate income through eBay.  This program takes a bit of effort but it is making people money.  You can click through the link above, which is not an affilliate link, to get more information.  Or you can come back tomorrow to read more about this opportunity to make some alternative income.

This is the third part of the series on how to make extra money by selling stuff.  In the second part of the series I discussed how to make extra money by selling stuff on eBay.  Today we will discuss finding alternatives to eBay for selling your stuff.

The biggest and best online marketplace alternative to eBay is Amazon in my opinion.  They don’t have as big a marketplace as eBay but it is still plenty big and their fees are lower.  I haven’t sold much stuff on Amazon but their setup for selling is different from eBay.  You might try selling stuff on both sites and determining which one works best for you.

Another alternative is Craigslist.  This site is huge and covers communities all over the world. However, you will most likely be selling your item locally.  The big benefit to using Craigslist is that you can sell most items for free on Craigslist.  The main drawback is you usually have to meet in person with a stranger to complete the transaction.  You have to decide if you are comfortable with this and whether it is worth it to you for the selling fees you save.

This is only the beginning of ways to sell stuff.  I’ll revisit this topic later.

There are many ways to make extra money by selling stuff.  In this part of the series on selling stuff we will concentrate on making extra money by selling stuff on eBay.

There is a good chance you have already sold stuff on eBay before because it is the largest online marketplace of its kind.  It has made it possible to sell all kinds of stuff that would have been difficult to find a market for before.  In this post I’ll give you a brief overview of how to get started selling on eBay.  Perhaps later I will write a separate series on making extra money by selling on eBay.  There is a lot to be written on this subject.

To get started you should open an eBay and PayPal account if you haven’t already.  This is very easy to do.  Then you need to make an inventory of what you have around the house you can sell.  Then research what those items sell for on eBay.  It is helpful to look at the completed auctions listing to get a good idea of what your items are worth.

Then create a listing for your product and put it up for auction.  Make sure you give a detailed listing and include a picture.  During your research you should have noted what similar products that sold for a higher than average price included in their description and how it was listed.  Now you can use that information in your listing.  Don’t copy from another listing but just use it as a guide.

If you’ve done your research you shouldn’t have any problems selling your items.  Receiving payment and shipping items is simple and you shouldn’t have any difficulty with doing that.  Now all you have to do is keep listing your items until they are sold.

Of course there are some drawbacks to listing on eBay such as the high fees.  In the next part of this series we will look at some alternatives to eBay for selling stuff.