I know I usually write about the best way to make money passively online, but while making money is great and all, one should also remember that money doesn't make you happy. Everyone I know complains about their job for one big reason: how much of their time it eats up, not allowing them to do other things. Yes, there's also the big "my boss sucks" and "I'm just sick of being there," but beyond all that, people miss their time.
Some people wait until they're retired to finally chase their dreams, be it building a boat and sailing the seas, or writing that autobiography they've always been planning. I don't think that's right - I think it's great they're chasing what they want, as it seems a lot of people forget their original dreams, but I think they're doing it too late in life. Life is not meant to be working 9-5 until you're too tired to go on anymore, THEN have a bit of enjoyment in your life. No, not one bit.
I believe that everyone has a passion for a reason - and that forgetting it to follow the world's common belief that you need a job from ages 18-67 is denying yourself the happiness you deserve.
I'm not saying you should up and quit your job and live life without any income by any means - I'm saying that people need to work to achieve more than just an early retirement - they need to work to free their time. I thoroughly believe that anyone can set up enough passive income sources to be able to quit within 5 years if they're tight with their budget, and that's without becoming a "15 megabytes of fame" internet hit.
What's more, I believe that the vast majority, if not all, of peoples desires can be profitable. An artist can sell their work, a videographer can post things online on sites that will pay him to, such as Revver.com, which pays you a percent of the advertisements profit. Someone who enjoys photoshopping things can create images and put them on websites that allow people to pay to use your work. There are so many options out there for everyone, and while it may not be easiest, anyone and everyone can start doing what they love *today* and eventually make profit from it.
It may not make you rich quick, but it can make you rich eventually. So please, follow your passion and be happy. Be proud of what you do, and work to finally free yourself from the daily chore of going to work.
Showing posts with label online money making. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online money making. Show all posts
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Zazzle and Cafepress
I'm writing today about another way of making money online that I actually like. While this has not been the most profitable online venture of mine, it does create a good amount of passive income without me having to do much, and I'm always a fan of that.
Zazzle and Cafepress are two websites that allow you to create upload designs and sell them on T-shirts. You get a percent of the total price whenever your design sells. Usually this is only about 10%, but on Zazzle you're able to increase that amount; this also increases the price, however, so I don't really suggest going much higher. I'm not sure if Cafepress let's you do the same, as I am not a member of Cafepress at the moment. I have, however, been a member of Zazzle for quite some time.
Both of these websites work with no inventory. Every time someone orders a shirt, it gets printed on the spot, and shipped automatically. You don't have to do a thing, and there's no giant warehouse somewhere that you have to empty of your products.
Creating content is incredibly easy as well, as both sites walk you through it rather nicely, and you basically just pick and image or type some text, center it how you want, and hit OK.
Your designs do have to be original though - for instance, you can't put Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin on a shirt without it getting removed.
If you're not the best at creating content, you can also do associate advertising - when people go to Zazzle with your associate advertising link, anything they buy within the next 45 days gets you a small portion of money for bringing them there. Again, I'm uncertain if CafePress has a similar system in place, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do. Some day I'll join there and update the information in this post.
Are they going to make you rich overnight? Probably not.
Are they worth it? Definitely. It's nice to put a few designs up there every now and then, leave it, and come back a month or two later and see you can withdraw money.
Unfortunately, Zazzle will only let you withdraw when you reach $25, but if you get enough good looking designs up, this wont take too long to hit.
Good luck out there everyone, hope you make some profit.
-Bill
Zazzle and Cafepress are two websites that allow you to create upload designs and sell them on T-shirts. You get a percent of the total price whenever your design sells. Usually this is only about 10%, but on Zazzle you're able to increase that amount; this also increases the price, however, so I don't really suggest going much higher. I'm not sure if Cafepress let's you do the same, as I am not a member of Cafepress at the moment. I have, however, been a member of Zazzle for quite some time.
Both of these websites work with no inventory. Every time someone orders a shirt, it gets printed on the spot, and shipped automatically. You don't have to do a thing, and there's no giant warehouse somewhere that you have to empty of your products.
Creating content is incredibly easy as well, as both sites walk you through it rather nicely, and you basically just pick and image or type some text, center it how you want, and hit OK.
Your designs do have to be original though - for instance, you can't put Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin on a shirt without it getting removed.
If you're not the best at creating content, you can also do associate advertising - when people go to Zazzle with your associate advertising link, anything they buy within the next 45 days gets you a small portion of money for bringing them there. Again, I'm uncertain if CafePress has a similar system in place, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do. Some day I'll join there and update the information in this post.
Are they going to make you rich overnight? Probably not.
Are they worth it? Definitely. It's nice to put a few designs up there every now and then, leave it, and come back a month or two later and see you can withdraw money.
Unfortunately, Zazzle will only let you withdraw when you reach $25, but if you get enough good looking designs up, this wont take too long to hit.
Good luck out there everyone, hope you make some profit.
-Bill
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Incentivized Freebie Programs
What is an "Incentivized Freebie Program?"
Well, have you ever seen those ads that say "Fill out our survey and get a free (Unbelievable prize, like an Xbox 360, PS3, Laptop, etc)"
Well, those are real. They are NOT completely truthful, though, as there is a LOT more than filling out a survey.
So how does it work?
Well, you fill out the survey, which, is usually there to get your email address - the less honest companies can sell this even if you don't keep going through the remaining steps, so they still profit from your visit.
Next, the important part, you have to sign up for certain offers. Depending on the website, there should be a "credit" system in place, and you need so many credits to reach your prize. Offers that cost money can be worth a full credit or more, but free ones are often only worth a quarter or half a credit.
Then, you have to get a certain amount of people to join, and ALSO fill out enough offers for them to get a prize. This is known as "Going Green" - because many of the sites show your status as green when you've successfully done enough offers.
Now, by itself, there's no easy to make money from this. However, many different groups have cropped up involving a bit of clever teamwork to make this a profitable setup.
Simply put, rather than pestering your friends to join as well, you post on one of the forums, such as (www.freelunchroom.com) that you need, say, 3 people to go green for you.
If the prize you're going for is cash, you usually give a portion of the money to them for going green for you, or do a trade where you go green for them as well on one of their sites.
So in the end, if your prize was say, $100, you could walk away with $50-$75 as profit.
But, alas, it's not as simple as that. (Simple? O_o;;)
Most of the offers you need to sign up for are free trials. This means unless you want to incur actual fees, you have to keep *very* careful records, and be sure to cancel such things before they come to the point of charging you money.
Which is a practice that's frowned upon by the advertisers.
BREAKDOWN
Steps:
1: Find a website with a prize you like, and think is reasonable. Sign up, preferably under someone else so you can get paid by them just for "going green" for them.
2: Complete enough offers to get the credits you need for your prize. (On some sites, you only have to do this once, then you can continuously just get other people to go green for you)
2.5: Cancel any offers before the trials are up, if any, if you choose not to keep the service. Some are actually really good deals worth keeping.
3: Get enough people to go green for you so that you can collect your prize.
4: Collect your prize, and, on sites that permit it, repeat from step 3.
Pros:
-Really does make money, and some people manage to make a rather impressive amount of profit per month.
-Can help you meet some really interesting people online.
-Forums involving this tend to be friendly, and have plenty of tips for avoiding scams.
-You can end up with some rather neat freebies (Just make sure the shipping and handling charges aren't blown up to ridiculous proportions!)
Cons:
-Some risk, as if you're paying someone to go green, they could scam you by taking your money, and then the company rejecting their green. (Which happens if they sign up with fake information) This can be avoided by waiting for "Verified Green" - which sometimes requires you to message the administrators of the website, or implementing a 3Day waiting period until you pay those who work for you.
-Can incur some hefty fees if you forget to cancel any trial offers.
-Rather time consuming, certainly not a passive income by any means.
-Requires lots of book keeping to ensure you get profits.
In the end I did personally profit from this, but only barely. I nearly didn't, as one offer I did never told what the S&H charges were, then charged me over $30 dollars for shipping. Upon complaining, however, they refunded my S&H in full.
At another point, a "Piggyback" offer (Which is an offer that you get signed up for WITH another offer, which isn't always easy to see when this is happening) charged me over $50 unexpectedly, causing overdrawn charges on my account when a few checks I had written elsewhere went through.
All fees were undone, including the overdrawn charge, so again, things worked out, but there's a bit of stress involved.
This was also an important lesson in keeping my business and personal accounts separate ^_^;; Something I think all of us online money makers are bound to learn eventually.
Good luck out there everyone ^_^
Well, have you ever seen those ads that say "Fill out our survey and get a free (Unbelievable prize, like an Xbox 360, PS3, Laptop, etc)"
Well, those are real. They are NOT completely truthful, though, as there is a LOT more than filling out a survey.
So how does it work?
Well, you fill out the survey, which, is usually there to get your email address - the less honest companies can sell this even if you don't keep going through the remaining steps, so they still profit from your visit.
Next, the important part, you have to sign up for certain offers. Depending on the website, there should be a "credit" system in place, and you need so many credits to reach your prize. Offers that cost money can be worth a full credit or more, but free ones are often only worth a quarter or half a credit.
Then, you have to get a certain amount of people to join, and ALSO fill out enough offers for them to get a prize. This is known as "Going Green" - because many of the sites show your status as green when you've successfully done enough offers.
Now, by itself, there's no easy to make money from this. However, many different groups have cropped up involving a bit of clever teamwork to make this a profitable setup.
Simply put, rather than pestering your friends to join as well, you post on one of the forums, such as (www.freelunchroom.com) that you need, say, 3 people to go green for you.
If the prize you're going for is cash, you usually give a portion of the money to them for going green for you, or do a trade where you go green for them as well on one of their sites.
So in the end, if your prize was say, $100, you could walk away with $50-$75 as profit.
But, alas, it's not as simple as that. (Simple? O_o;;)
Most of the offers you need to sign up for are free trials. This means unless you want to incur actual fees, you have to keep *very* careful records, and be sure to cancel such things before they come to the point of charging you money.
Which is a practice that's frowned upon by the advertisers.
BREAKDOWN
Steps:
1: Find a website with a prize you like, and think is reasonable. Sign up, preferably under someone else so you can get paid by them just for "going green" for them.
2: Complete enough offers to get the credits you need for your prize. (On some sites, you only have to do this once, then you can continuously just get other people to go green for you)
2.5: Cancel any offers before the trials are up, if any, if you choose not to keep the service. Some are actually really good deals worth keeping.
3: Get enough people to go green for you so that you can collect your prize.
4: Collect your prize, and, on sites that permit it, repeat from step 3.
Pros:
-Really does make money, and some people manage to make a rather impressive amount of profit per month.
-Can help you meet some really interesting people online.
-Forums involving this tend to be friendly, and have plenty of tips for avoiding scams.
-You can end up with some rather neat freebies (Just make sure the shipping and handling charges aren't blown up to ridiculous proportions!)
Cons:
-Some risk, as if you're paying someone to go green, they could scam you by taking your money, and then the company rejecting their green. (Which happens if they sign up with fake information) This can be avoided by waiting for "Verified Green" - which sometimes requires you to message the administrators of the website, or implementing a 3Day waiting period until you pay those who work for you.
-Can incur some hefty fees if you forget to cancel any trial offers.
-Rather time consuming, certainly not a passive income by any means.
-Requires lots of book keeping to ensure you get profits.
In the end I did personally profit from this, but only barely. I nearly didn't, as one offer I did never told what the S&H charges were, then charged me over $30 dollars for shipping. Upon complaining, however, they refunded my S&H in full.
At another point, a "Piggyback" offer (Which is an offer that you get signed up for WITH another offer, which isn't always easy to see when this is happening) charged me over $50 unexpectedly, causing overdrawn charges on my account when a few checks I had written elsewhere went through.
All fees were undone, including the overdrawn charge, so again, things worked out, but there's a bit of stress involved.
This was also an important lesson in keeping my business and personal accounts separate ^_^;; Something I think all of us online money makers are bound to learn eventually.
Good luck out there everyone ^_^
Mandatory Introduction!
Hello, and welcome to the Highly Mandatory Introduction to "That Extra Buck," my new blog involving money, and more importantly, how to make some.
More specific than that, however, this blog will be about me trying various methods found in various locations. I've already tried plenty, and will be trying more as this blog progresses.
I'm specifically hoping to be able to help other people online find ways to make money for themselves, and achieve financial freedom.
I'll be touching on many methods, from affiliate advertising, to surveys, to... well, anything I stumble upon, and anything that's suggested to me.
So, as our reader base grows I should hopefully get some online money making 'scams' to play with.
For the time being, however, I'd prefer not to have any that have a large initial investment, and will try to post on ones that cost nothing to start for my first few posts.
All right? Then off I go to get this blog started ;-)
See ya at the next post!
More specific than that, however, this blog will be about me trying various methods found in various locations. I've already tried plenty, and will be trying more as this blog progresses.
I'm specifically hoping to be able to help other people online find ways to make money for themselves, and achieve financial freedom.
I'll be touching on many methods, from affiliate advertising, to surveys, to... well, anything I stumble upon, and anything that's suggested to me.
So, as our reader base grows I should hopefully get some online money making 'scams' to play with.
For the time being, however, I'd prefer not to have any that have a large initial investment, and will try to post on ones that cost nothing to start for my first few posts.
All right? Then off I go to get this blog started ;-)
See ya at the next post!
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