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Money Making Methods

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Hi,

I'm currently unemployed and was thinking about trying to earn some money on my own while job hunting.

I used to do a fair bit of mystery shopping and am going back to that, what other alternatives are there for making money?

My career was in IT so I will be offering my services as web-designer/programmer as well but this is a very competitive area so don't expect to get much interest.

Thanks for any advice.

I won't be claiming any allowances while doing this just in case anyone is wondering.
Make £2018 in 2018 Challenge - Total to date £2,108
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Comments

  • cally6008
    cally6008 Posts: 7,629 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Survey info here, plus couple of other sites but these are just pocket money sites - http://surveysites.proboards.com/index.cgi
  • cally6008
    cally6008 Posts: 7,629 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    I just googled Inboxpounds - they do not guarantee emails to non-US members (US members get 2-3 emails a day. Payment is made when you reach £20 and looks to be by cheque. Requests are processed 30 days after you make it, and then paid on the next payment run.
  • AdamKels
    AdamKels Posts: 61 Forumite
    It takes a certain amount of dedication, effort and a little start-up money, but check out the matched betting forum. Basically you take advantage of the free bets that bookies offer to new customers. I made £150 in two weeks, a guy called DongleMouse made £50k in 5 years..
    Debts:
    Car:
    [STRIKE]£4844.34[/STRIKE] £0!
    Wedding: [STRIKE]£2500[/STRIKE] £1000

    Deadline - June 2013 (Immigration to USA)
  • scaredofdebt
    scaredofdebt Posts: 1,663 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    I have dabbled with arbs before but could never find any with a big enough margin to bother but I will have a look, thanks for the reminder.

    Funnily enough I made a few quid on a flutter I had on Alonso to win last weekend at 50/1 wish I'd put more than £2 on him now lol

    I am going to be concentrating on mystery shopping with a couple of other sidelines and am thinking about blogging about my exploits, whether I fail or succeed.

    I make about £50 a month from various websites I have and I think that I can improve on that a fair bit if I am not distracted with a day job, wish me luck!
    Make £2018 in 2018 Challenge - Total to date £2,108
  • scaredofdebt
    scaredofdebt Posts: 1,663 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    My aim is to have a diverse income stream so if one dries up I've got others to fall back on.

    The problem with webdesign is it will take a while for me to get enough interest for that alone to support me, the mystery shopping will be my mainstay for the first couple of months and having signed up to half a dozen or so sites I can see there's enough work for me to earn around £70-£100 daily for a couple of weeks at least. I expect more work will come through as time progresses so this is hopefully sustainable for at least a few months.

    I had the idea of leaflet dropping when I was walking down my road, there's a lot of small business owners with their own vans with telephone numbers on but no websites, for less than a £100 getting online might be tempting.

    I do photographic work for insurance companies that should see me able to earn around £2-300 a month and then my website income is around £150 monthly currently.

    I need to earn a minimum of £1,000 a month to pay the bills, put food on the table and run a car (necessary for the mystery shopping) but that would mean living a hand to mouth existence, £1,500 gives me some comfort and £1,800 would see me having the same standard of living that I had when working full-time but with the benefits of being my own boss, no paid holidays though!

    Other ideas:

    domain name trading, small risks but good possible gains, time consuming though!

    consultancy work - I've got some success and good knowledge of SEO, website optimisation etc, could make that pay, not sure how best to approach that one yet.

    writing articles - I've got quite a good writing style, or so I've been told, might be marketable

    blogging - my old blog, that I had to stop working on, was earning around £50 a month, I've got some ideas for a couple of new ones.

    I'm going to give it a few weeks and see how it goes, if I fail, then it's back to the job hunting, wish me luck!

    Advice and comments welcome.
    Make £2018 in 2018 Challenge - Total to date £2,108
  • AdamKels
    AdamKels Posts: 61 Forumite
    My aim is to have a diverse income stream so if one dries up I've got others to fall back on.

    The problem with webdesign is it will take a while for me to get enough interest for that alone to support me, the mystery shopping will be my mainstay for the first couple of months and having signed up to half a dozen or so sites I can see there's enough work for me to earn around £70-£100 daily for a couple of weeks at least. I expect more work will come through as time progresses so this is hopefully sustainable for at least a few months.

    I had the idea of leaflet dropping when I was walking down my road, there's a lot of small business owners with their own vans with telephone numbers on but no websites, for less than a £100 getting online might be tempting.

    I do photographic work for insurance companies that should see me able to earn around £2-300 a month and then my website income is around £150 monthly currently.

    I need to earn a minimum of £1,000 a month to pay the bills, put food on the table and run a car (necessary for the mystery shopping) but that would mean living a hand to mouth existence, £1,500 gives me some comfort and £1,800 would see me having the same standard of living that I had when working full-time but with the benefits of being my own boss, no paid holidays though!

    Other ideas:

    domain name trading, small risks but good possible gains, time consuming though!

    consultancy work - I've got some success and good knowledge of SEO, website optimisation etc, could make that pay, not sure how best to approach that one yet.

    writing articles - I've got quite a good writing style, or so I've been told, might be marketable

    blogging - my old blog, that I had to stop working on, was earning around £50 a month, I've got some ideas for a couple of new ones.

    I'm going to give it a few weeks and see how it goes, if I fail, then it's back to the job hunting, wish me luck!

    Advice and comments welcome.

    It seems like you have a lot on! Have you started the mystery shopping? I've been tempted to start but i always assumed the market was flooded and there were no positions available!

    The leaflet dropping is a good idea. Some business owners (at their own demise) are technologically challenged! It's best to approach them and offer a small charge to set up a basic website. Who knows, they may keep you on to run it for them!
    Debts:
    Car:
    [STRIKE]£4844.34[/STRIKE] £0!
    Wedding: [STRIKE]£2500[/STRIKE] £1000

    Deadline - June 2013 (Immigration to USA)
  • scaredofdebt
    scaredofdebt Posts: 1,663 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    edited 28 March 2012 at 4:29PM
    Thanks.

    I first started mystery shopping over 10 years ago and the market certainly isn't saturated, I've signed up for a few companies and a quick look last night showed plenty of work although the biggest payments are only around the £15 mark, they used to be a bit more generous. Still it's possible to earn a reasonable amount if you can combine several visits in a small area, that's the real trick or you risk spending too much on travel and wasting time to make it really pay.

    Regards the websites, my plan is to offer a special deal initially for £99 all in for a website with domain name and hosting, that's not much more than it would cost someone to host their own website for a year so I hope it's fairly attractive, or enough to get me 2 or 3 customers per week. With my costs taken into account I'd make around £80 profit per site and it shouldn't take me more than a day to put a basic site up, I know there's a lot of "make your own website" type sites out there but a lot of business people don't have the time. Well, that's my thinking anyway, anyone got any comments?

    I've got a fairly good grasp of SEO and can write compliant code, which is more than most big companies, so we shall see. Plan would be to then charge £49 per year for domain renewal, hosting and some technical support and minor site changes.

    If I don't get any interest I've not lost anything and if I get too much then I can increase my prices a bit!
    Make £2018 in 2018 Challenge - Total to date £2,108
  • anfieldred
    anfieldred Posts: 267 Forumite
    Hi

    If you've got time/patience and a willingness to learn along the way; have you thought about trying to get a site (or sites) that earn money through adsense/advertising?

    If you can find a niche you can make decent money from it. Suggestions: pick a trade such as building/plumbing/plastering, something along those lines, or a specific qualification needed for a job, or visa applications etc.

    If you can provide good, quality, relevant and true information on that, put some adsense ads on the page and you can start making a few quid a day - you need to build links to the site to get it ranking higher, but if you find the right area/trade to target, there shouldnt be too much competition. Say you make £3 a day, its still £90 a month, if you have 5 sites going doing that, it becomes £450 a month.

    Sorry if you're already well up on this btw. Have a read up on setting up your own wordpress site; hosting costs around £3 a month from the likes of tigertech, its just time consuming to read up on the info, present it in a decent manner and build links to the site.

    You can pay others to write the content for you on the freelancing sites (or off here if there's any good cheap writers :) ) and concentrate on getting the site up and running and looking how you want it to, there's good money to be made.
  • Marteebies
    Marteebies Posts: 296 Forumite
    Hi


    I did the following:

    Created an ebay account
    Attended car boot sales regularly
    Bought some domain names

    Took part in online paid surveys:

    https://www.panelopinion.co.uk - this is my favourite survey website, it is simple but effective and I have won a lot of money on here...You can withdraw your money when you get to £10 and it doesn't take that long to build up a good amount.

    https://www.valuedopinion.co.uk - this website is good because they frequently have new surveys, which means you can qualify for them more often.

    https://www.toluna.com - same as valuedopinion

    https://www.surveyfriends.co.uk - this website rewards you with vouchers and prizes, which seem VERY easy to win lol. During 2012 I have already won a £50 amazon voucher and a £10 ticketmaster voucher and my friend won a 40" HD TV just before xmas. I am recommending this website based on our recent and previous success

    I have joined numerous other survey sites but have had the most success with the ones above.

    Remember: Never pay to join any survey site - its often a scam

    Good Luck :):D:)
    :eek: 2014: £20 voucher from SurveyFriends, £10 cash payout from Panel Opinion too and working towards more from Valued Opinions currently.
    2013: £35 and £50 vouchers from SurveyFriends! More than £15 made from other paid surveys sites (Yougov, Panel Opinion, Valued Opinions, Pinecone, etc.) Happy so far!
  • scaredofdebt
    scaredofdebt Posts: 1,663 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Here's an update.

    I've got my website up for the webdesign company, but no interest so far even after advertising on LinkedIn. I've just setup a campaign with Google Adwords, see if that's any better.

    Mystery shopping has netted me around £1,000 since 10th April, but I've not been paid most of that yet so I am having some issues with cash flow!
    Make £2018 in 2018 Challenge - Total to date £2,108
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