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Grinding out a few extra bucks

One of the great things about the internet is it's provided a multitude of new opportunities for making money. If you're like me then you've come across plenty of blogs and articles describing "side hustles" or  ways to earn "side income". Unfortunately, I imagine many people have a glamorized view of how lucrative these ventures can be. Usually, I've also found that many of these sources have contributed to this glamorization- they simply want to drive traffic to their website, and if they make it sound easy and/or lucrative then people are much more likely to look into it.

I'm hoping to take a slightly different approach. While I'd be lying if I said I'm not at least partially motivated by getting a few referrals from this post, I hope I can also present a more realistic view of what to expect. I also hope to help inform you about what might work best in your situation by talking about the good & the bad from my personal experience. Any time I link to a site, I will be providing both standard links and referral links (if available) and that way you can choose how you want to sign up. I'm modeling this linking method after the /r/beermoney subreddit. That subreddit has been an extremely helpful resource for me in the last month or so as I've looked into new ways to make extra cash. And without further adeiu, onto the sites.

Shortly after college I began taking online surveys. The good news here is that there are almost endless opportunities with many market research companies willing to pay for your opinion. The downside is that these take an incredibly long amount of time. And it's not unlikely you may fill out screening questions only to find you don't qualify for a survey. This is not based on any calculations but it also seems like the payouts have been scaled back recently as more competitors have entered the arena. For those curious, I would estimate that I made about $10/month back in the day. However, since I no longer have the time to sit and fill out surveys and am not current on which sites are the best, I am not going to be recommending any survey-specific sites here.

For a few months I've been using Bing Rewards (referral / non-referral) to earn points for performing internet searches. I would estimate it took me about 3 months to earn my first $5 Amazon gift card so it's clearly not a cash cow but it's a fairly well known site which may attract some people.

Moving on to a cash back site, Shop At Home (non-ref) credits you for a portion of purchases you make using their links. Now obviously this is more similar to a credit card rewards program in that you have to spend money to make money, but I have found that there is a wide variety of sites I already use to shop online anyway. I've made about $25/year for the past couple years with this site.

I've recently learned of sites and apps that will pay you to "watch" videos. One such place is Perk (ref / non-ref). At one point, it was apparently quite popular to buy a bunch of cheap phones and create a "phone farm" by leaving all those devices running the Perk videos all day long. But from what I gather and by my own personal experience, earnings potential has fallen off greatly in the last couple months.

Lately I've also been starting to utilize "Get Paid To" or GPT sites. These sites encompass many of the rewards opportunities mentioned above: search, cash back, videos, and surveys. The most popular of these websites is probably SwagBucks (ref / non-ref). SwagBucks has been especially good to me as I recently won the /r/beermoney Referral Contest, so again, a shout out to that subreddit. Swagbucks is a relatively user friendly compared to many of the other sites and offers a diverse pool of opportunities, so I would put it near the top of my list of recommendations.

Just about a week ago I also downloaded the shopping app Ibotta (ref / non-ref). What you do is unlock cash back deals which are applicable to a wide variety of stores. I found it worthwhile as I was able to get cash back on milk, eggs, and bananas. Since you get $10 just for unlocking and redeeming your first offer, and $5 for each friend you refer, I've already earned over $15 dollars. The cashout minimum is $20 so this really is an easy option in my opinion. The app and website also have a very clean interface.

Alright, on to more of the bad. InstaGC is a GPT site that I'd seen mentioned fairly often but it's quite possible they've gone downhill. The interface is not very appealing and the earnings potential seems small as well. Next up is Earnhoney. It's predominately a video site that is only for desktop and while I'd seen a few people talk it up, I've found the return to be quite small.

I think I'll stop here for now. There are many more sites out there than this but these are some of the most well known. As things change, or I hear about good opportunities elsewhere, I will try and do another post. The goal is to continually weed out low-return or spam-like sites and find the best ways to earn extra cash in as little effort possible.

Comments

  1. Cool article, have you tried inbox dollars? They are located in the twin cities also. I know them quite well through work, but have never used them personally. Curious what your thoughts are on them.

    - jkords

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey jkords- Thanks for stopping by. I have actually. Cashed out $30 from them about a month ago. Their minimum cashout of $30 is pretty high for these kinds of sites though, so I think there are better options.

      Delete

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