Making small amounts of money

[jeffrey]

What are some of your favorite ways to make small amounts of money on the side. How much does this usually net you over the course of a year?

[creditcardfree]

I made over $600 from Swagbucks this year. I also sell some of our used clothes, cds and dvds on Ebay or Craiglist, which is another couple hundred dollars each year. And last year credit card bonus rewards were lucrative for my husband and I...definitely topping $1K plus!

This year, I may sell an item I make online and locally for some side income.

[btctony]

I made over $600 from Swagbucks this year. I also sell some of our used clothes, cds and dvds on Ebay or Craiglist, which is another couple hundred dollars each year. And last year credit card bonus rewards were lucrative for my husband and I...definitely topping $1K plus!

This year, I may sell an item I make online and locally for some side income.

$600 dollars worth of giftcards or 600 swagbucks?

[disneysteve]

I'm a physician and get to do a lot of medical surveys, mostly online and occasionally by phone or in person. I've been averaging about $900/month doing those (see my blog).

Otherwise, a yard sale is always good for $200-300. I have sold items on ebay, craigslist, and half.com but it's inconsistent. I just sold a book this week for $25 that I got for "free" by doing a survey.

[btctony]

I made over $600 from Swagbucks this year. I also sell some of our used clothes, cds and dvds on Ebay or Craiglist, which is another couple hundred dollars each year. And last year credit card bonus rewards were lucrative for my husband and I...definitely topping $1K plus!

This year, I may sell an item I make online and locally for some side income.

One other question on SwagBucks. If you sign up for free trial offers, can you cancel this within the trial period, so that you are not charged, and still get the SwagBucks?

[lorraineb]

I paint/restore old furniture that I find left on the side of the road for free, then sell it. I make a few hundred dollars a year doing this and I consider it my "relax" time.

[disneysteve]

Credit card rewards. We make several hundred dollars per year and get multiple free hotel stays using our cards. We only use credit for things we'd be buying anyway. We never carry a balance. We do have one card that has an annual fee but we get one free hotel night in return so we actually still come out ahead as the fee is less than the cost of the hotel stay.

[btctony]

I made over $600 from Swagbucks this year.

Just wanted to say thanks for the tip on Swagbucks. Had never heard of it and started using it over the weekend. I already have $22 real dollars worth of Swagbucks and haven't had to purchase anything.

If you read the descriptions, you can tell which trial offers to stay away from. A lot of them specifically say that the Swagbucks will be revoked, if you cancel the service. There are some decent ones out there that won't cost you anything though.

[jdom07]

I go to garage and estate sales with my grandma to casually look for stuff to resell (hardly unique, I know). It's mostly bonding time for us, so if we happen to find something we can make a profit on - great! If we come up "empty", it's still a great morning.

We only do the ones that are convenient for us to go to. Last week we went to two. I bought a book at one of them for $2, sold it for $40 on ebay - $29 in profit after fees and shipping. I'm posting all my results from these sales in a thread called "One Slice of Cheddar". Have a couple more things I bought today and will be posting on soon.

Today my grandma bought around $100 worth of craft supplies that she'll probably be able to resell for a couple hundred bucks in profit. Over time, of course - but just today she listed an item she bought for $0.50 and sold it for $16.00. ($11.00 profit)

My girlfriend got the JACKPOT today and found a First Edition, First Printing of a really famous book... she stands to make a quick couple hundred bucks in just that one transaction.

We all work full time (well, Grandma is retired) so this really is just fun, leisure time that we happen to make a few bucks off of in the process. Small amounts add up to a LOT over time!!

[gradi]

Swagbucks and Fiverr

[aukxsona]

If there is a way to make money off of it legally...I probably thought about it

My entire income is scratched together...I haven't had a real job since I was 25. That's not to say I don't make a living.

I work as a Psychic Advisor. This is work, but it's contract work and it's considered being self employed. I get a 1099 at the end of the year if I make $600 a year. I can easily clear $600 in two months. I say this is a small amount of money because, by itself, it is not enough to live on. It has been 50% of my income in the past before. It currently is about 25% of my income.

I collected scrap metal. Usually this is by going out on the dirt roads and looking where nasty people dump trash. Offering to clean a persons yard for a very low fee if they let you haul away all the trash got me a good amount also. I made about $50 a day doing this, but it was long hours and you never knew if you were going to get a call to clean up someone's yard or not. Hit and miss.

Selling books on ebay was my bread an butter for a while. I made anywhere from $5 a week to $400 a week, my average was about $90 a week though. It took about 4 hours to list everything properly. I enjoy shopping for books anyway, so this wasn't "work" to me. I did this while I went to college full-time. Loved the job so much, but hated working with Ebay and paypal.

We have sold produce at the local farmers market. My daughter loves animals and gardening. She makes some awesome little plants that bloom like you wouldn't believe. Once she grew this HUGE squash. We brought it up to the Farmers to show and a lady offered $20 on the spot. Of course we sold it.

Additionally we had an egg route when we had a lot of chickens. We sold our eggs for $2 a dozen. We had regular customers that loved them. It usually paid enough for feed only though. We made about $10 a week. The kids went around the little neighborhood with their little red wagon loaded up with eggs and stopped at each door. Sometimes we made $20, but never more.

I sold Avon, but the profit on it was minuscule after this one customer gave me the run around on an order of 180$. I ended up folding because of that one customer. I went out 30 hours a week and at the end netted may be $50. It wasn't worth it.

I illustrated a coloring book for children with lulu.com. They put it up for sale worldwide. I sell a little bit here and there. Most of my sales are in the UK interestingly enough. Apparently, I spell odd. I enjoy drawing and putting together books for children, so this was perfect for me.

I wrote a little guide about buying, using, storing, and finding food for people that are on their own for the first time. I have sold about 10 books so far. Of course, I haven't made very much off of it, but it comes in to my bank account every so often. It's a little pocket change occasionally. I would like to write hundreds of guides like this if there were a market for it.

When I was a child, I would catch crabs from the ocean, dump them in a bucket and sell them right on the beach. This was at Virginia Beach. People often offered me top dollar so they could have fresh caught, still moving, crabs, but you had to convince every passer by to buy one. I preferred to just catch the crabs. One man offered to employ me piece meal. He paid me 50 cents for every single one I caught, if I couldn't find my own buyers. I made about 30 dollars a day in 1989 doing that. It was my family's only income for about a month while we lived in a run down motel room about a block from the beach. I was only 9 at the time. I remember handing my mom the money and her asking where I got it so shocked. I told her how I had a job catching crabs from the ocean. She kissed me and walked a block to the grocery store to buy me some cereal to eat, since I got up at dawn to work and was usually done by 10 am or noon.

I have worked as an English tutor for recent immigrants. I worked with people who spoke Spanish and Chinese. They paid about $10 and hour, but I only ever had one or two students at a time in this area.

I wrote for a blog and made about $30 a month. I was the writer for today.com. My expertise was "Frugal Moms". For a while it was a pretty nice gig, then they sold the company to another Today.com. I lost my gig with them.

I have bought things off the internet for people without net capabilities, since we are so rural. I made about $2 off of every transaction.

I made money recording deeds to houses for a local man. I got $1 a deed and made about $140 total.

I wrote poetry and had it published in the last issue of Gen X magazine. They paid me $5. It was cool to be published. Getting poetry published is a feat worth being proud of, trust me. That $5 paid for all the stamps I used only to be rejected.

While in college, I submitted my college term papers to sites. I was paid per time my paper sold. I made about $160 before the site shut down. You had to submit what level you wrote it at, the grade, what style, etc... I noticed B papers would sell faster than A papers. Apparently, they didn't want people to believe they bought the term paper, so a lower grade would be more believable. People left reviews of each paper and told what their teacher graded the exact same paper with their name on top as. High school teachers were very generous to me with my college term papers. One of my papers sold ten times in a week, I was ecstatic. The limit was 10 sells per term paper.

I typed up people's papers in college if they didn't have a computer or didn't know how to type. I charged $2 a page. Most term papers were 4-6 pages long. I usually made about $30 a semester doing this.

I donated plasma before. I only did it a few times when I was really desperate (I hate needles). I did it when I couldn't find work that day at the local temp office and needed grocery money ASAP. I made like $10. In total, I made about $70 doing this over my lifetime.

I collected aluminum cans when I was 16 and a new mother. I had no income and we didn't have WIC yet after I moved to live with my aunt. I thought we would be taken care of and in the end it was a bad idea. So I collected aluminum cans from dawn till dusk to pay for formula, came home and washed, slept, and woke up to do it again. I rarely even ate myself then. I remember I ate once every three days because that is all the food I could afford. I had a 25 cent JoJo and that's it for one of the days. I made barely enough to get her the formula she needed to eat each day. Every single child after that was breastfed. I made about $90 a month doing this until WIC helped us.

I also collected broken things and fixed them while I hunted for aluminum cans. That's kinda how I met my husband. I was digging in a dumpster for stuff and found a baby cradle. This became my daughters bed after I washed it up and fixed the leg. His cousin saw me in the dumpster and asked me over to her house for a bite to eat. After a bit she introduced us and we really hit it off. Been married for quite a while yet. Anyway, I sold all sorts of things after I fixed them at impromptu yard sales on the side of the highway. I made a good bit over the years this way. The last time I did anything like this, I got about 3 play pens, a bike, a VCR, and a couple computers out of the trash. We (the husband and I before we married) made about $400 from that one haul. Now with the internet, I bet I could make 3 times as much if I still did this.

[hamchan]

My favorite way to bring in small amounts of money is by participating in clinical trials. I make 50-75$ per visit, and average about 8 visits per trial. Most trials last around three months, though one I did went on for over a year. I am not doing any new ones now, because my husband needs a new kidney and I am going to be evaluated as a donor when the time comes. I don't want anything like that hurting my chances.

[EmzieAtInfinity]

Just started a little free mobile marketing type thing on my Android Phone, netted $20 the first day between me and my brother, so I think if I keep using it, and getting my referrals on it, I will be able to net a few thousand easily from my phone.

[97guns]

i just sold a 10% off coupon for target on ebay for $51, also sold a lowes 10% off but it only fetched $6, a free $50 bill

i also just rec'd my $100 bonus from my capital one quicksilver card

just put a new tenant in and am getting a $200/mo. rent increase

[LendingWire]

I like trying to do odd jobs on craigslist whenever I can, though it can be hard to find the legitimate ones past the creepy ones. I don't know how much money I net over the year with it, but I can usually make $50 every week or two. I like to shop for gems in thrift stores too, which I can flip on ebay and get some pretty good money from. I wish it was easier to find odd jobs to though, all the good ones on craigslist get snatched up fast unless I'm lucky.