Ways for Kids to Earn Money

I would not consider this site to be complete without a mention of ways for kids to earn money. It’s true that pre-teens and younger will find fewer opportunities, and when exploring ways for kids to earn money, I would recommend at least some level of parental supervision, but a bit of searching and creativity will uncover a few good opportunities.

Too often, this question conjures images of the immortal front yard lemonade stand, and this method can certainly be employed, with a bit of a technological face lift. Full color fliers can be printed and taken to your local church, or posted ‘round your neighborhood advertising the event, and if your church or neighborhood association has a web presence, an inquiry or two could get you some free advertising. Not only does this provide a good answer to the question, but it’s almost certain to be more successful than simply setting up the stand in the front yard with no advertising.

Similarly, let your kids manage your next yard sale for half the take! Less headaches for you, and valuable experience for your kids! That’s win-win!

If using this particular approach, there’s no reason that the two ideas above couldn’t be combined. Hold a nice yard sale and have something refreshing to drink!

Building further on this idea, organize your children to collect “yard sale donations,” a couple weeks before the event. Such an expedition through your neighborhood can yield surprising treasures and get your kids much more involved in the process, and often, you’ll find no shortage of willing donors, who have a few items, but not enough to hold a sale of their own, or who have a great many items they want to be rid of, but don’t want to be bothered with lugging it to a charity organization, or hosting their own yard sale.

Another major (and often overlooked) category of money making opportunities for kids (from the very young to teens) is in the area of arts and crafts. If your children already exhibit a knack for the artistic (and most kids do, though many of us seem to lose that gift in adulthood), then you’re already several steps to the good! At local craft shows, it’s quite common to see simple rocks painted with fanciful flowers or playfully rendered insects, and they sell like hotcakes! Rocks! Or bead craft. Anyone, of any age can quickly gain proficiency in bead craft, and with a bit of help and guidance, can begin making quite striking creations, which can put a tidy sum into kids’ pockets!

Depending on your means, you might add a bit of technology, and encourage your kids to experiment with digital photography or the like. In fact, depending on the maturity of your child and the level of supervision and support you can provide, there’s no reason that the majority of the ideas presented in other articles on this site couldn’t be used in some form or fashion…you don’t have to be an adult in order to make use of the information in the other articles! (specifically, see Earning Extra Money – Physical Goods & Services (locally), Earning Extra Money – How to Earn Money on the Internet, and even Establishing a Passive Income Business for additional ideas).

As a youngster, I was always quite interested in finding ways to earn a few extra bucks, but with no guidance or supervision, I really didn’t know where to start. You will find that children in general are keenly interested in the subject, not only from a practical standpoint, but also because finding ways for kids to earn money gives them a sense of independence they would not have otherwise had, and if the ideas above haven’t sparked any interest, then here are several more to consider:

Services – The old adage is true, “find out what people don’t like doing, and you’ll never have a shortage of work!” So…offer to run errands for harried adults. Or walk the dog(s). Or pet sit (a variant of babysitting that pays nearly as well, but while we’re on the subject, let’s go ahead and add babysitting to the list. It’s an old standby, but that doesn’t mean we ought not at least consider it!)

In this same basic category, we’ve got car washing and detailing…if the adults in your area are half as harried as they are here, then there will be a good many who’ll be relieved to have someone to do this kind of work for them. In the warm parts of the year, there’s always lawn and garden maintenance (from cutting, to trimming, edging, pruning, general pickup, leaf blowing and the like), and in the winter months there’s shoveling the walk! Around the house there’s general cleaning/vacuuming, laundry service, window washing, and the like.

In the “run errands” department, you could do anything from cater breakfasts to doing the grocery shopping! Then there’s more advanced stuff that you’d want to specifically use responsible teens for, such as afternoon elderly care and things like hostess duties for busy households. Not everyone will have the means to afford services like these, so tailor what you’re offering to the needs and desires of the people nearest you. There’s a market for just about anything you can dream up, it is just a matter of finding it!

Finally, and here’s something you may not have thought of…games.

Yes, games!

World of WarCraft, Second Life, and those types of games. There’s a HUGE market for premade, already powerful or established characters, so if you already have an account, it’s easy enough to create a character, level him up and give him loads of good equipment, then auction him off to the highest bidder. Check out http://www.buymmoaccounts.com/ for starters, and Google “buy mmo accounts” for additional sites catering to this demand. I’m not kidding, there’s money to be made here, and there are HUNDREDS of MMO’s on the ‘net today, catering to every genre out there. If you enjoy those kinds of games, why not make them pay!

Based on the above, I think you’ll agree that there are certainly no shortage of ways for kids to earn money, and while not every item on this list is new or innovative, my hope is that by taking this list and combining it with other things from the other articles here on the Extra Income Ideas site, you’ll be able to find just the right thing for your child, no matter how young or old!

Establishing a Passive Income Business

In previous articles, we have outlined income producing strategies in broad terms, either by selling goods and services locally (Earning Extra Money – Physical Goods & Services), or by exploring the various money making vehicles on the ‘net (Earning Extra Money – How to Earn Money on the Internet)but now it’s time to zero in further, and begin talking in specifics. This article will focus in on the specific actions and activities you need to be pursuing if your selected goal is to create and establish a viable passive income business.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, please note that “passive income” DOES NOT MEAN “no work required.” As I’ve said before, you get out of this business what you put into it, so if you’re interested in instantaneous, vast riches with no effort, then go chase after one of those “Pied Piper” IM “gurus,” buy every new product they recommend for a year, and after you’ve wasted a few thousand dollars, come back here and we’ll show you how to do it properly, and if you’re not sure this is for you, head back to the home page (Extra Income Online) and review.

Okay, first things first, let’s define what a “passive income business” actually is, so there are no misconceptions:

This sort of stay at home business is predicated on the notion that the greater bulk of the work is done on the front end. That means lots of long days creating content, doing signups and setups, publishing stuff and creating backlinks, and during the initial work phase, you can expect to see very little in the way of revenues. For this reason, most people give up before they ever get this kind of business off the ground, and that’s a pity, because if they’d just stuck with it, the profits would start rolling in, and the neat thing about this type of business model is that once you do the work…once you’ve laid all the necessary groundwork (and make no mistake, there’s a lot to be done!), the websites, and the profits they generate are pretty much on auto-pilot from there on.

I’ll caution you though. It takes a special kind of person to slog through all the prework and setup stuff necessary to succeed, and unless you can go 1-2 solid months with nothing to show for your Herculean efforts (and then, when the results do start appearing, they’re often fairly modest in the beginning), this is not for you. I should also add that you CAN do this and earn money part time, but of course, it will take correspondingly longer to get to whatever your desired income goals might be.

Don’t worry though. If you can survive the early days, this type of business is absolutely fantastic, and the work you do on the front end resonates down the chain and through the entire body of your work. There’s a compounding effect here, and what starts off as a modest income stream can be grown steadily to any income level you can dream, so as a home money making business opportunity goes, it’s pretty close to perfect. All it takes is…you guessed it. Persistent, focused action.

WHAT action though? If you’re new to the game, that’s the very first question that springs to your mind, and the answers to that question are the very thing that lots of gurus charge good money to answer. Unfortunately, most of them do a relatively poor job explaining it, but of course, you don’t find that out until after you’ve spent your money.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone who had already made all the newbie mistakes just came clean and mapped out a clear, simple strategy for how to learn what needs to be learned?

That’s exactly what I thought too, and one of the major reasons I made this blog.

I will lay out the specific blueprint for you right here. What to do, and how to do it. Bear in mind though, that this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Internet Marketing and SEO are both simpler, and more complex than they first appear. You can learn the basics of SEO and backlinking techniques in five minutes (by reading below), but to truly master them will take months of real world practice, and preferably, some type of mentorship to speed things along and smooth out the bumps in the road you’ll invariably encounter, and that’s what I propose. I’ll lay out the basics for you in the paragraphs below. You can take this information and try to go it alone, and in this way, you will absolutely minimize your out of pocket expenses.

Of course, I’ll also tell you how you can spend just a bit of coin and radically shorten your learning curve. Up to you which you opt to take. Fair enough?

Passive Income Businesses generally revolve around two types of sites/pages. Adsense and/or Affiliate products. In my opinion, sites/pages that focus on both in tandem represent the best of all possible worlds.

The chief advantage to such sites is their passivity (hence the name). Once established, it’s basically a “hands off” business. You don’t have to worry about stocking a product, or customer interactions. All of these are handled by…well, you may not even know, exactly, and that’s quite alright, because it’s not your concern! You are merely the advertising vehicle, and for that, you get a commission per click or sale. That’s the sum total of your role, and that’s actually quite an attractive place to be! A secondary advantage is that it doesn’t require a PhD to do, and in fact, could be a viable business for your kids, if you didn’t see anything to your liking over in the article on Ways for Kids to Earn Money.

Here’s what you need to do in order to create a viable passive income business:

Step 1: Niche Research – See…a lot of people go astray right from the start. They figure what they’ll do is write some content about something they’re interested in, and then find a way to market it. This is, in fact, the most intuitive way to approach the business, and is exactly the wrong thing to do!!! I don’t have any numbers on it, but I’d imagine that this is the #1 reason most people fail at internet marketing. They’re doing it backwards. What niche research accomplishes is that it finds you a little corner of the ‘net that has profit potential. If there’s no profit potential in it, then there’s no point in writing about it, right? I mean, if your goal is to make money at it. Certainly, if you’re passionate about a hobby you have and you want to make a website, then by all means, don’t worry if it’s profitable or not! But that’s not why you’re here. That’s not why you’re reading this page, or for that matter, why you came looking for this information. You’re interested in making money on the internet, and in order to do that, the first thing you have to do is rid yourself of your “backwards thinking.” Don’t just write about what you’re interested in. Do the research. IF it is profitable, THEN start working on content, based around keywords that real humans are actually searching for! Now, in order for a niche to have profit potential, it needs two things: A decent CPC rate, and a decent number of monthly searches. Again, if you are new to this, then my statement raises more questions than it answers. WHAT is a CPC rate? HOW do you know if it’s good? HOW MANY searches is good? Where do you find this information out? And how, exactly, do you find a good niche?

All of these are completely fair and valid questions, and all of them will be answered below:

* Where to Find This Info:
The first, best (free) place to look for the information about niches is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

What you want to do is type in a broad idea for a keyword into the tool and let Google recommend others for you. Specifically, you are interested in search trends, global search volume (this is a monthly estimate), and CPC. You’re really only interested in “exact match” search terms, so whatever you type in, put the term in [this kind of bracket]. If you just type the word in, you’ll get a broad match, and if you use “quotation marks around the phrase” you’ll get phrase matching results, and this is too broad for our purposes. What we’re really after is an estimate on how many times each month are real human beings typing a given phrase into Google. That’s what’s important, and that’s what the tool above gives us a good estimate on.

* CPC:
CPC = “cost per click.” In simple terms, this is the rate that Google (or other ad networks) charge advertisers to post an ad so that it’s visible for a certain, specific keyword. Now obviously, if you build a website that targets a given keyword, you don’t “get” whatever amount the CPC is. A good rough estimate would be 20-25% of that number would go to you. So, if a given KW (keyword) has a CPC of $1.00, then your share of that would be in the range of $0.20 – $0.25. In other words, if you design a web page around the keyword “baby monitors,” and that KW has a CPC of $1.00 (I don’t know that this is accurate, I’m just making it up for this example), you can expect twenty to twenty-five cents per click. Obviously, the higher the CPC, the better for you, but bear in mind that a higher CPC also generally tends to mean greater competition, which in turn means greater difficulty in getting a page 1 ranking on Google, so there’s a bit of a tradeoff, and this should factor into your thinking. This kind of puzzle can be solved one of two ways. Either go it alone and experiment, or find yourself a mentor you trust and ask him/her. If you have six months to a year to experiment, you can certainly gain the experience on your own, and become quite adept at “reading” a niche, but you can cut the learning curve down dramatically by studying with someone, or even better, a group of people. I heartily recommend the group over at WordPress Goldmine, who took me under their collective wing. I learned more there in two weeks than I learned in all my time spent learning on my own, combined. I refer to them (the WPGM forums) as my own personal money making forums, and that’s not an exaggeration! They virtually created my current business by teaching me most of what I know today!

* Number of Searches Per Month:
Ask ten different IM people what range you should shoot for, and you’ll get ten different answers. Ideally, you want a phrase that’s getting at least 20-30 searches a day, bare minimum (so, figure an absolute floor of 500 searches per month), and of course, anything higher than this is gravy. Again, having a group to bounce ideas off of is extremely helpful, and for this reason, I offer another nod in the direction of my study group, WordPress Goldmine (note: I do not own WPGM. I am merely a grateful student who found a place with legitimate information and great people!)

* A decent site should start with no less than 5 keywords. If you find more that are related to your topic, great! Save them in a spreadsheet and you’ll have fodder to add to your site for later!

* If you think you’re done with the research at this stage, boy are you wrong! Now that you have some keywords, you need to assess them (and again, having study partners helps here!). How many other websites are already out there, competing on the very words you choose? How strong are they? There are all sorts of opinions and advice on the matter, and notably, there are a number of tools you can use to automate checking on this which greatly speed the process along. You can do it by hand, of course, and while free, this takes valuable time, so you must decide. Do you have more spare time, or money? If you’ve got lots of time, by all means, the learning experience will be good for you, so do it by hand! You may want to use the “by hand” approach for your first couple of sites to prove to yourself that I’m not yanking your chain anyway, but once you see that it works, you will most likely want to make the process more efficient by investing in tools to make your life easier, so I’ll describe both ways:

* The Free Method of Checking a KW:
For each keyword you’re thinking about using (not just the five or so you want to start with initially, but all the KW’s you have on your list), type into Google: allintitle:YOUR KEYWORD and allinurl:YOUR KEYWORD. Note how many websites each result returns, and study the sites on them. These guys are your likely competitors. They have done at least the basic on-page SEO work for the keyword you’re after. Study the sites on page one of Google for each keyword you have on your list, cos these are the people you’ll have to beat if you want a page one ranking. Lastly, of course, you’ll want to simply type in the keyword straight into Google (no quotes, brackets, or anything), as this will be what your potential viewers will be doing. You’re now looking at the playing field. The very expanse of search engine real estate you’re going to stake a partial claim to. You’ll no doubt see lots of “familiar faces” on this page (the guys from your “intitle” and “inurl” search, but possibly a few ringers as well—note that the outliers in this group will be the ones that will be relatively easier to dislodge). Next stop, to find out each player’s relative strengths.

To find out how “strong” they are, you’ll need a plugin that will show you the site’s page rank. Now, it is entirely possible that a PR0 (brand new site with no backlinks) can beat a PR5 site, but the odds are against it. Doesn’t mean it is impossible, but all else being equal, the site with the higher PR is going to get displayed first, if they are at all optimized for the keyword in question, so you’ll need to find out what PR your competitor sites are. Best way to find this out is to get a free membership at SEO Book and download their Firefox SEO plugins. When activated, they’ll display the page rank of each site that shows up on a google search. Again, you’ll need to do a search for each keyword you want to work with.

Now, if all that sounds tedious and dull, that’s because it is! And, there’s a better way to go about finding the information you’re after. You can simply purchase Micro Niche Finder and automate the entire process. MNF is set to default to exact match searches, and displays, and at the touch of a button will analyze the competition and give you a color coded and numeric response with a drill-down feature so you can dig more deeply into what factors most contribute to the strength of the competition’s rankings. Red = Strong, Yellow = Moderate, and Green = Minimal. Obviously, if you’re just starting out, you’ll want to gravitate to those keywords with minimal competition. Get some victories under your belt, and then you can consider tackling some of the more difficult keywords. Unlike many tools of this type, Micro Niche Finder is a straight up, one-time fee, rather than a monthly subscription, and that’s one of the many reasons I recommend it!

* Finally, sign up for ClickBank or Commission Junction and look to see what products are available to promote that relate to your niche. I ALWAYS recommend trying these out and reviewing them on your site. You don’t have to do this straight off (you can start with just Adsense), but you need to at least be thinking in terms of what you might eventually promote.

If you can’t find any particular product, then consider Amazon or Ebay affiliate partner networks as a good way to boost site revenues. Again, these need not be placed on-site immediately, but there’s little reason not to.

As for finding good niches: Browse through DMOZ, EZA (Ezine Articles), look thru magazines, watch TV, go outside, look at the products around your house, join Oprah’s mailing list…any or all of these are completely valid.

Step 2: The Mechanical Stuff – Buy a domain. Install and configure WordPress. This is probably the easiest part of the whole smash, and should take you less than an hour, total. If you don’t already have hosting someplace, I recommend Go Daddy. I use them, and their unlimited hosting plans are pretty cheap. Also important, I’ve never had even the slightest trouble with any of my sites, and their customer service department rocks! (When I was just starting out, I didn’t have a clue what to do or how to configure stuff…Brandon in customer service patiently walked me through everything I needed to know…WELL above and beyond the call of duty!). Anyway, I consider them the total package. Good stuff. When you choose a domain, use one of your better (if not the outright best) keywords from your list, and make sure that keyword is in the URL Whenever possible, buy a .com domain (even if you have to add a word or two to the URL to get a .com).

Installing WordPress. If you use Go Daddy for hosting, they’ve got an auto install right there on the site. Just use that. Should be set up and ready to go in less than 20 minutes, tho I have had it take an hour or so. I guess it depends on the demands currently being placed on their servers. Anyway, tell it to install, go get some pizza and something to drink, and wait.

Configure WordPress to your liking. There are all sorts of directions you can go here, and this is another one of those areas where you’re better off to study with a private mentor or a group to get a good plan of action. Again, feel free to experiment with what works best on your own, but you may find that you’d just rather have a group to bounce ideas off of or learn what that group’s best practices are.

Step 3: Content Creation – This is either dreadful or great fun, depending on how much you enjoy researching and writing. You want to start with one post per keyword (one of the things you’ll learn as part of a study group, and eventually on your own, is how to start feathering multiple keywords into the mix, but when you’re just starting out, keep it simple!), and each post should be on the order of a thousand words. If you’re feeling wordy (like I am with most of these posts), then knock yourself out.

From your content pages, you’re going to re-write bits of these pages to form the basis of articles. If your content post covers five salient points, then you can probably get at least five articles from that, with each article covering one of the five points.

Content and some articles at the ready, and you’re ready for the next step…the dreaded “M” Word!

Step 4: Marketing – This is not a “one and done” kind of step, but rather, a bit of an ongoing process. The very first thing you want to do is take your existing stable of articles and post them to EZA (Ezine Articles). This will get you lots of exposure and initial traffic while you’re waiting to be indexed (and EZA gets new content all the time, which means Google crawls it all the time, which means that publishing an article here will get you indexed fairly quickly…see?! No need to pay that “guru” fifty bucks to “submit your site to hundreds of search engines!”

As soon as you’re indexed, activate Adsense and place one ad block (336×280) in the upper left hand corner of your site. Word wrap or not, at your discretion. This is statistically the best place to put ads…another one of those “trust me, just do it” things. Once you start making money, play around with this, but if you want to make at least a little jingle quickly, just listen to me, ‘k?

While you’re waiting for your articles to be approved, you can take them and begin “spinning them.” That is to say, tweaking them to create unique variants of them for submission to other places.

The idea here is that you don’t want to spit out thousands of carbon copies of your articles and have these all over the web. No, at present, Google doesn’t levy a penalty on you for doing this, but IMO, it is only a matter of time before they do, and you’ll protect yourself from an eventual slap if you plan for it now, so spin out some variants.

There are all sorts of ways of doing this. Andy Black has a free tool here, that will get you started, but for the money, you’re going to be hard pressed to beat the software combination of Magic Article Rewriter and Submitter. Not only will this allow you to create variants on your articles, but it’ll also give you access to more than seven hundred article directories AND allow you to schedule the publication of your articles so they don’t all hit at once (which could make Google angry with you and your new site). As of this writing, the software duo was only eighty bucks, and a steal at that price.

Yes, you can find some free article submission software out there, and yes, it works, but it doesn’t have NEARLY the firepower that this one has (the best free software I’ve found is Article Submission Helper, which submits to ~175 directories vs. more than 700 with MAS). There are programs that can generate more backlinks for you, but these all cost a monthly fee, and until you’re already making good money, I would not recommend them.

You CAN add Free Traffic System to your backlink building mix, however, as they have a free option. It’s more limited than their pay option, but still generates those much needed backlinks (and Magic Article Rewriter will auto format your stuff in FTS format!).

And that, in a nutshell, is how you play the game. One of the best home computer jobs you could ask for!

Summary – “Big Secrets Revealed”

• Print this page and use it as your site building blueprint

Software Referenced on this Page (Free Stuff Listed First!)
All items listed here should pretty much be considered must-haves at some point, in your Money-Making Internet Business Tool Kit

Adwords Keyword Tool

SEO Book Plugin Collection (for Firefox)

Andy Black’s Easy Article Rewriter

Article Submission Helper

Free Traffic System (has both a free and pay option…start with the free!)

Software Options that Cost Money and What They Do

WordPress GoldMine (not software, but a study guide and dedicated forum, run by Mark Thompson…come study with us!)

Micro Niche Finder (helps identify niches, keywords, and the strength of competition within any given niche).

Go Daddy (Web Hosting)

Magic Article Rewriter/Magic Article Submitter Combo Pack (spins then submits articles to more than 700 directories – comes with a scheduler!)

Full Disclosure: I use regularly, and am an affiliate for Go Daddy, WordPress GoldMine, Micro Niche Finder, and Magic Article Submitter/Magic Article Rewriter

Earning Extra Money – How to Earn Money on the Internet

Lots of people talk about it, but lots of people also fail when attempting to discover how to earn money on the internet, and there are a number of reasons for this high rate of failure.

Often, people lack a sense of scale and proportion. As with anything else that has the potential of earning you extra cash, you get out what you put into it, but most folks don’t want to hear that. They come into the game with stars in their eyes, completely enraptured by the people shouting that they can “make $50,000 by next weekend with no work! A system so simple, your cat could do it for you!”

Uh huh.

Look, if that’s the kind of program you’re looking for, then you’re in the wrong place. I told you on the home page of this site (article entitled “Extra Income Ideas“), that’s not how we do things around here. You get the unvarnished truth, even when maybe it’s not what you were hoping to hear.

So there it is. If you want to make money working at home (either on the internet or on something else), it’s going to take work, and anybody who tells you any different is 100% certain to be either lying or trying to sell you something.

Do you know how much I made during my first month online?

Wait for it….

Twenty-four cents.

And let me tell you, NOTHING tasted sweeter than that twenty-four freakin’ cents. I called my wife in to the computer just so she could see the little numbers sitting there on my Adsense earnings page.

Wow, I thought. I did it.

And it was a pretty huge accomplishment when you consider that the greater bulk of people who attempt to make money online never make a dime.

Heck, I made two dimes and change, and that was only my first attempt!

That figure seems laughably small, and let’s face it, it is, but it was a major milestone for me, and since that time, I haven’t looked back.

That twenty-four cents was my talisman. Proof that the concepts I was pursuing were valid and viable. All I needed to do from there was scale it up.

In the real world, “scaling it up” usually means multiply the number of hours you apply to a given project, but thankfully, on the internet, things work a bit differently, and once you’ve identified a profitable niche and set everything up, you can leave it in what I call “maintenance mode” and it just sits there, idling, generating regular income for you for months on end without you having to touch it. Of course, periodically, you’ll still want to check in and give it a bit of a tune up, but that’s nothing that takes any amount of time really, and in future articles, I’ll be showing you ways to minimize the time it takes.

Seriously, once you get a system in place that works for you, it’s just a matter of repetition. Some might even say it’s a little on the dull side. Certainly some of the mechanics of making money on being online are, well…less than glamorous, but others are downright fascinating, so you take the good with the bad. To be honest, even if it was flat out mind numbingly boring (which it isn’t), there’s still nothing I’d rather be doing.

I enjoy the freedom that the knowledge of how to earn money at home provides, and it is my pleasure to share it with you.

You might still be skeptical of that, and I don’t blame you.

If you’ve spent any time at all searching for “the next big internet money making idea,” then you know how many hucksters and charlatans are out there, and you don’t know me from Adam. I might have some dark and nefarious plot in mind to take your money while you’re not looking, and to convince you otherwise will take time.

I understand that.

You should know that one of the hallmarks of people who want to sell you something is that sooner or later, they’re going to ask you for your email address.

You will note that nowhere on this site, is there an opt in box asking for such information from you.

And there never will be, because that’s not what this site is about. (NOTE: you can have this site’s RSS feed directed to your e-mail, but at no time will that be used for anything other than a matter of convenience for you).

Anyway, enough on that topic. Let’s get to the meat of this lesson.

Ways to Earn Extra Income at Home

If you want to make money working at home, then more likely than not, the internet is going to figure into your plans. Even if you focus on business ideas that are better suited to a local approach (see the article entitled, “Earning Extra Money – Physical Goods & Services”), sooner or later you’ll find yourself making use of the ‘net to boost your earnings.

The first thing we’ll do is broadly define the various approaches you can take to earning money online, and then drill down further into each of them to discuss their viability, pros and cons. And here we go:

The following are the most common methodologies for earning extra money via the internet (note that some of these might also be considered options for your kids, if you didn’t find anything to suit your fancy over in the article on Ways For Kids to Earn Money):

• PTC Advertising Sites

• PTS Sites

• Survey Sites

• Hybrid Sites

• Freelance Sites

• Augmentation Strategies

• Internet Marketing/Advertising

I have listed these in what I consider to be their order of effectiveness, and the rest of this article will be spent discussing each of these items in greater detail.

PTC Advertising Sites – In my opinion, you’d have to be pretty desperate to attempt to make money using this methodology, but there have been some who’ve tried it and found it to be worth doing. I tried it and found it awful, but your mileage may vary, so I’m including it here for discussion.

PTC stand for “pay to click,” and the gimmick here is that you sign up with a company. That company displays advertisements to you, which you have to view for a minimum allotment of time (i.e., “ you must look at each ad for at least thirty seconds). Then, if you click the ad for more information, you make a few cents.

And there’s the rub. Yes, you can earn money quick using this system, but you’ll be earning pennies for a full day’s “work.” Add to that the fact that it’s just soul crushingly boring to sit there for hours at a time clicking on ads and…well, you get the idea.

There’s a secondary gimmick with this type of site, also. They almost universally come with an affiliate program attached. This means that if you convince someone else to do this, you’ll get a small boost to your account for ads they view too. Theoretically, with a sufficient number of people signed up under you looking at advertising all day long, you could make some decent money at it.

Sadly, theory doesn’t align very well with reality in this case. Your “bleed rate” (the rate at which you lose those under you) is very high, again, because this is frankly mind numbingly dull work, and most people who’ve tried it won’t stay with it for long. So you’ll have to continually ratchet up your marketing campaign to entice ever more people to do it for you in order to do much more than tread water. Again, if you have no other options and need a specific amount of money, maybe give this a go. Otherwise, there are more appealing and effective ways to earn extra income at home. Also note, most of these have minimum payout thresholds (i.e., “you don’t get paid till you have at least thirty dollars in your account), so while you can EARN money quickly, you might not get paid that money for a while.

PTS Sites – There used to be tons of these (Pay to Surf Sites) floating around the ‘net, and there’s a reason there aren’t any more. The business model sucks and doesn’t work very well. The only survivor that’s worth noting here is a company called Cash Fiesta, and more on them in a minute.

The gimmick here is that when you sign up with one of these companies, they install a toolbar on your computer. While you’re surfing, the toolbar is busily flashing various ads at you. You don’t have to click the ads or do anything in particular, and you get paid for the amount of time you’re surfing. Again, there’s an affiliate program involved, and if you can get people to sign up under you, you get a little bonus money for the time they spend surfing.

Once more though, we’re talking pennies per hour here. The only exception is the company I mentioned earlier, Cash Fiesta, and they’ve got a few interesting gimmicks that have ensured their survival when many of their contemporaries went belly up.

First, their toolbar is unique in that it ensures you’re paying attention to it. There’s a little icon running along in the toolbar. Periodically, he stops running, and when he does, you stop earning money until you click him (which starts him running again). Because of this, they can charge better rates for ads, since companies know you’re actively looking at the bar.

They’ve also got a program where you can complete a variety of free (or mostly free) offers made by advertisers associated with the company. The more offers you complete in a month, they more per hour they pay you to surf (up to a dollar or so an hour, if you complete at least 6 offers a month).

If you choose to do this, you will NEED to stay organized. You’ll need a spreadsheet with the offers you’ve completed so you can keep track of when to cancel them—because invariably the free trial comes with a stipulation of automatic billing after the trial period, unless you cancel), and probably an e-mail box dedicated to the task, so your main e-mail doesn’t get flooded with spam.

If you’re going to be online a good bit of the day anyway, you might as well get paid for it, but make no mistake, this will NEVER make you rich. Again, if you want to earn money quick, and your needs are relatively small, you can be set up with something like this in under five minutes. Still, keep your expectations in check. This will never make your car payment, and probably never pay your cable bill (tho if you market heavily for affiliates, you could realistically make in the neighborhood of a hundred bucks a month at it…more trouble than it’s worth, IMO, and while I signed up to be an affiliate for them, I’m not going to even bother to post my affiliate link). I turn it on now and then when I remember, which is honestly, not very often, though when I was hungry for ANY money I could make on the ‘net, I did use them for a few months. It’s legit, just not terribly effective. Again, there are usually minimum payout thresholds involved here, so the money might not be as quick in coming to you as you’d like.

Survey Sites – There are programs out there where people charge $27 – $47 for their “secrets” of survey site success.

I suspect that if those people find this site, they will not be very pleased with me, because I’m about to divulge everything you need to know about making money with survey sites.

First, it’s possible. There’s a market for it, and you can make money filling out surveys online. If they’re not free to join, don’t bother with them. Second, you will need an e-mail account dedicated to the task, because it will get FLOODED with spam. Get used to it. It’s one of the costs associated with doing this type of work. Third, you will need RoboForm. Taking surveys is neither glamorous or fun. In fact, it’s only a few steps better than looking at PTC ads all day, but the money’s better. RoboForm is free, and makes your life easier. Get it. Install it. Use it. You’ll thank me later.

There are tons of survey sites out there, and most of them are interconnected (they link to each other), so once you find a few, you’ll easily find a ton more. Start with SurveySpot, Vindale Research, and Opinion Outpost. Those are all good outfits, though Vindale is the best of the bunch and the most professional, in my opinion.

Survey sites come in three “flavors.” Paid surveys (you get money), Points surveys (you get points, which can be traded in for various things), or Sweepstakes Surveys. Obviously, cash is best. Take survey. Make money. Another instance of a quick paying internet work from home gig, but be aware that most survey companies have monetary thresholds (i.e., “you don’t get paid till you’ve got at least $30 in your account), so be aware of this. Points can be as good as cash, depending on what they offer. A $50 Target gift card is as good as a fifty dollar bill, provided you need what Target carries, so don’t automatically shy away from these. DO stay away from sweepstakes surveys though. Waste of time. Follow the money.

The key to success with surveys is mass. Don’t sign up with one or two companies, but twenty or thirty (start with the ones above and they will lead you to the rest in short order). The more you take, the more you make. Some have affiliate programs associated with them, and there’s something to be said for a bit of marketing here…give away information on surveys and provide (affiliate) links for others to click on. Then you get a little cut for your trouble. I’m not going to do that here, because that’s not the purpose of this site, but it strikes me as workable.

Anyway, the bottom line is that survey sites are a viable way of making regular income, and if you leave here and sign up for a few, you can start making money within the hour, though again, most have a minimum payout threshold, so don’t plan on spending that cash today. It’s repetitive and a bit dull, but you can easily keep the lights on and the internet running with the income you make. As an extra income opportunity, it’s certainly viable, but I am deeply sorry if you’ve spent any money at all to find out more about it. The things people will make you pay for! Sheesh.

Hybrid Sites– Sites like these combine the best features of several types of “internet, work from home” programs, and are generally stronger and more effective because of it. Sites like SendEarnings and Inbox Dollars (two that I have used in the past, when I was just starting out) combine offer completion, surveys, games, and paid e-mails (you get paid for receiving and reading advertising e-mails) into a means of making a small but serviceable income for yourself.

As with most programs of this type, there’s usually an affiliate gimmick involved, and you make a little something by convincing others to sign up (while I am still technically an affiliate at a few of these, I’m not going to place my links here…again, that’s against the purpose and main thrust of this site), and they come with a minimum payout threshold, so no immediately spendable cash, though you can start earning in a matter of just a few minutes. Combined with surveys and the aforementioned Cash Fiesta, I found that I could earn money part time at the computer, and it was the rough equivalent of a 20 hour per week job, in both time spent and monthly gain. Not a bad haul, but again, also not something that you could plan your retirement around.

Still, they’re easy to use, and they make it easy to track your earnings. Just remember: Dedicated e-mail account and stay organized!

Freelance Sites – Now we’re getting into the good stuff. The various sites, packages, and programs mentioned above are all essentially designed to make someone else rich. Sure, you get a humble slice of the pie, but at the end of the day, the guy who owns the company is the one making the big bucks, and deep down, you knew that.

Freelance stuff is different though. Now you’re more in control. If you have a skill you can market (editing, writing, coding, web design, etc), you can sign up and create a profile at elance.com, odesk.com, or other such sites, and sell your services.

You can start today, and begin making money as soon as your first assignment rolls in.

You can also join sites like eHow and do articles for them. There’s no way to predict how much you can earn from doing freelance stuff, but the upper limit is bound only by your time and what skills you’re offering (obviously, someone with twenty years coding experience and mastery of several programming languages will make more than a guy cranking out 300-400 word articles), but you get the idea.

Market yourself. Market your skills. Make money. With these kinds of sites, it really is that simple. And people said there was no such thing as a way to make money easy online? (I know, I know, this is probably not what the marketer was hawking when he used the phrase, but still!)

Augmentation Strategies – If you’ve an existing local business and want to expand, you can certainly use the web to do so. A perfect example of this: My wife makes jewelry. She sells some locally and does craft shows and the like, but recently, she expanded her operation by opening a shop on etsy.com (Creativisms, click to see!). Now, instead of selling to the city of Conway and surrounding towns, her creations are visible to a global audience, and THAT is quite a boost in exposure!

Internet Marketing/Advertising – And this, in my opinion, is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yes, it is true that you can make money working at home via any of the options mentioned above, but if you want to earn a second income and then hold out the possibility of quitting your day job and working your online business full time, then this is where you want to be.

We’ll devote the entire next article to this subject in particular (Establishing a Passive Income Business), but let me briefly go over the way this works.

Internet Marketing/Advertising is essentially about three things:

• Selling your site’s traffic to advertisers

• Marketing products with affiliate programs

• Selling physical goods via drop shippers, Ebay, and the like

In the first case, what you’re doing is building content sites for ad networks like Adsense. The idea is that you identify a low-competition niche (and more on how to do that in the next article, where we’ll cover this in much greater depth), make a site that caters to that niche, get traffic to your site, and start displaying ads.

Some portion of your traffic will click your ads, and you make a spot of money.

A good Adsense site can make you $5-10 a day in clicks, and even an average site can pull in a buck a day. Now, I know what you’re thinking…that’s not really all that impressive, but consider this:

Once you learn to do it, you can easily generate 5-10 such sites a month.

Even if your sites are all average (assuming you’ve done your niche homework correctly), and they only net you a dollar a day, look at what happens:

Month 1: 5 Sites @ 30/month = $150/mo
Month 2: 10 Sites @ 30/month = $300/mo
Month 3: 15 Sites @ 30/month = $450/mo
…
Month 6: 30 Sites @30/month = $900/mo
…
Month 12: 60 Sites @30/month = $1800/mo

And so forth. Once built, these sites continue to earn money month after month with very little input from you, creating a passive income business that will grow as big as you care to make it.

Now, mind you, it takes a fair bit of work, and it will probably be a few months before you’re good enough and efficient enough to crank out five of these sites a month, and the truth is that you may find a really good niche that’s worth devoting all your time and attention to for several months to really build and market it (in which case, that one site can earn you a substantial sum, all by itself).

Even so, the business market of a pure Adsense marketer is a little wonky, when you think about it.

I mean, at the end of the day, you’re designing a site with the HOPE that people will leave it (i.e., click an ad…you get paid, but they go away from your site).

So…you’re building all this content, hoping that they choose an ad over your content? Meh. Something just seems off kilter about that.

I’ll admit it. When I first started studying Internet Marketing, that was my goal. To make 100% of my income from Adsense, but here’s the thing.

Let’s say that the average Adsense click pays $0.50 (it varies wildly, by niche and loads of other factors, so don’t use this as gospel!)…but for the sake of example, let’s just say you get fifty cents a click. It takes the same amount of work to build the site for Adsense as it does to market an affiliate product though, and if you get a 50% commission on whatever product you’re selling (quite common to get that, or more), then each affiliate sale is going to be worth a LOT more than fifty cents.

What I’m saying is…Adsense is good, and I have it on all my sites, but why not also incorporate affiliate products? Same amount of work, potentially huge gain, and you still don’t have to worry about customer service, returns, and the like. Affiliate sales are every bit as “hands off” as Adsense is, so why not make use of it? They really work beautifully together and form a cohesive strategy. That is to say, you win either way.

On the one hand, if someone comes to your site looking for information and you have it, they’re likely to buy the affiliate product. If you don’t have exactly what they’re looking for, they’re likely to click an ad and keep looking. Either way, your cash register rings, and that’s a good thing.

The final thing to make note of here is the selling of physical products online, and this can take any number of forms, from drop shipping a staggering assortment of products (do a google search on “drop shipper directories” and you’ll see what I mean!), to selling stuff on Ebay (tangential story, on a dare, I bought something from the local dollar store, to prove I could sell almost anything on Ebay at a profit…it sold for $4.95 plus shipping!…Cake!), to more homespun online stores like Etsy.com, and a gazillion others. In every case, you’re taking either something you already own, or have made, or can buy at a discount (wholesale), putting it up for sale, and pocketing a commission on each. That’s where your money is, and this type of selling can be hugely profitable. In my opinion, it comes with some drawbacks not found with Adsense/Affiliate selling, but by no means can I call this a “weak” or inferior option. It all comes down to what you prefer and what you’re comfortable with.

In any case, both of these types of sites will be covered in much greater detail in coming articles, as there’s far more to be said on the subject, but I’ve kept you long enough for this session.

Whew! Okay, I know we’ve covered LOADS of material in this section, and I’m sorry it took so long, but the fact is, there are TONS of internet moneymaking ideas, and I wanted to give you a thorough and complete overview before we continued (and even this doesn’t cover the whole spectrum: There are money making forums where you get paid to post, and a host of other things besides…the internet is a dynamic beast, and people are constantly finding new ways to monetize it, so don’t consider this list to be all inclusive, by any means!)

Summary – “Big Secrets Revealed”

• There really ARE tons of ways to make money working at home

• There are a few ways to use the internet to earn money quick, but most of these come with strings and don’t pay all that much

• You get out of it what you put in. Anyone who tells you there’s no work involved is either lying or trying to sell you something. Keep your wallet closed! If someone tells you that by next Tuesday, using his newfangled $97 system, he can have your income on par with the GDP of Bolivia, put him/her on ignore and move along. If you pay him, he’ll get richer, you’ll get disappointed, and I’ll get to say I told you so. Save us both time and don’t go there.

• As always, the best money making opportunities online are the ones where you remain firmly in control. Freelance stuff is very viable. Augmentation strategies can pay off big time, and Adsense/Affiliate marketing in combination is wonderfully effective.

Freebies reference in this Section

None

Earning Extra Money – Physical Goods & Services

When it comes to earning extra money, most folks are interested in finding ways to earn extra income at home. Chances are, you’ve got a job already. Someplace you have to get up every morning, get dressed and fight traffic to get to, and you’re not looking for something else like that.

Now, maybe you don’t mind dealing with the general public, as long as you can do it on your own terms, or perhaps you’d rather find something where you can “work” while sitting at home in your bath robe and Rocky-n-Bullwinkle slippers. Either way, this section’s got you covered. Also, you may be able to find ways to make some/many of these ideas viable for your children if you didn’t find anything that suited you or them in the article on ways for kids to earn money.

What you’ll find here are all manner of ideas you can use to churn out physical goods at a profit to sell to people, either on a strictly local basis, or on the ‘net, or both, and when you’re ready to market to the masses via the internet, check out the article entitled “Earning Extra Money – How to Earn Money on the Internet” as a starting point). You’ll also find information on in-demand services you can offer to do, in exchange for money.

Selling goods and services is one of the fastest ways to get yourself set up and making money. In each of the ideas presented below, I’ll provide you with a basic materials list. These are the bare minimum bits of equipment you’ll need in order to get started with the particular idea presented. Some of them cost money, and some don’t. The rule of thumb that I use here is “about the cost of an iPod.” Whenever possible, the ideas for earning extra money presented here, when they cost anything at all for startup, are roughly the same as you’d spend on a new iPod.

Of course, all of the ideas have certain requirements in common. If you mean to operate a full time business, then at some point, you’re going to have to address the issue of getting a business license. Requirements vary state by state, and often, city by city, and it is far beyond the scope of this site to guide you through the particular requirements of your city or state. The good news is that you can test, experiment, and practice, and actually find yourself making a fair amount of money before you make it official and go file all the necessary paperwork. Take advantage of that! Also, you’re going to need a computer, and an internet connection would be helpful, even if you don’t intend to use the ‘net for marketing. As you are reading these words, we’ll assume you’ve got that covered. Finally, you’ll need some basic software to keep yourself organized and/or to help you produce marketing materials. Reference the article Extra Income Ideas for all the software you’ll need to get started (none of it costs any money).

One last item to note. Please don’t treat this list as an exhaustive, all inclusive menu of money making ideas…it is not! I could write for a thousand years, solid, and still barely scratch the surface of the various ways you could run a stay at home business, and it would be folly to even attempt such a thing. If you find something you like on this list, that’s awesome! Run with it! But if you don’t, then my hope is that the list provided here will get your mind turning on things you DO like/enjoy, and from there, you’ll come up with a list of your own.

Now…who’s ready to make some money!?

#1 Simple Movie Making
Cost: $0

An exceedingly simple concept, even if you know next to nothing about computers. It’s one of those things that people, a) don’t want to take the time to do, and b) can’t be bothered learning how to do. There’s a lot of money to be made in doing things that fall into these two categories, so take the time to learn. If you’re even a little computer savvy, you’ll probably be able to crank these babies out with less than an hour’s worth of playing with the software. The idea here is to take photos from vacations or family events, put them to music and create simple movies via Windows Movie Maker. Most computers today come with a DVD burner, and Windows Movie Maker already installed, so the only investment needed is the (minimal) time required to master the application and DVD’s which you probably already have lying around the house. If you want to earn extra money at home with an absolute minimum of investment, you could do a lot worse than this!

You can enhance/refine this idea by adding a LightScribe DVD Burner for less than the cost of an iPod, and personalize your offering by incorporating one of the family photos onto the surface of the disk! (These can be found for anywhere from $50-$100 for the drive itself, plus the price of discs).

#2 – Digitizing Family Photo Albums
Cost: A decent scanner can be had for ~$100

Next on the list of ways to make money working at home, is digitizing. Anybody who has one or more of those old school, dusty old photo albums lying about their houses are your potential clients, and there are TONS of them! The idea here is that you make your service known, take pictures from your clients, scan them and clean them up (if needed), and either put them on a digital photo album (which the client would pay for, of course!) or onto a disk/jump drive for viewing/safekeeping. Again, a LightScribe burner could be added to enhance the value of your offering. If photo editing is needed, there’s no need to buy software, as you can get a perfectly good free program on the ‘net (see the article entitled Extra Income Ideas for details). Again, the addition of a LightScribe burner will set you back less than a hundred dollars, even with the purchase of an additional supply of discs.

#3 – Remixing
Cost: $0

If you’re a music lover, take advantage of the fact that many of your fellow audiophiles are technologically challenged. If you ask around, you’ll be amazed at the number of people who don’t know the first thing about ripping and burning CD’s, and are too intimidated to learn! Most of these same people would jump at the chance to have someone do it for them, and again, most modern computers come with everything you need to do this already preloaded. Just invest about forty-five minutes learning how, and you’re all set! This is actually such an easy way to put money in your pocket that you might start feeling guilty about it…don’t! Once more, a LightScribe burner will lend an air of professionalism to your work, not only enabling you to charge more, but also helping to set yourself as a cut above anybody else who might see what you’re doing and think about joining the party!

#4 – LP to Digital Conversion
Cost:~$170

Vinyl albums are an old technology, but still in abundant supply, and there are a growing body of collectors seeking to preserve their treasured collections. You can help with that. The next-gen turntables come with software to guide you through making a digital copy of the albums you play on the turntable, and in short order, you can complete the conversion process and hand your client a CD with his treasured album preserved on it. Not only is this an excellent addition to the list of ways you can be earning extra money quickly (both in terms of demand for the service and profitability), but it also gives you a bit of exposure to a technology you might not have seen for a while (or depending on your age, this technology might even predate you!)

#5 – VHS to Digital conversion
Cost:~$60
Another hidden gem of an idea, and a fantastic way to make money working at home. There’s all sorts of demand for this type of service, and is very easy and inexpensive to get into. A great many people still have copies of commercially purchased videos they’d love to convert to a modern (digital) format, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of VHS home movie tapes out there, crying out for conversion. This is a huge market, and will be for some time to come!

#6 – Digital Photography
Cost: Varies, but you can get a camera more than good enough to get you started for about the same price as an iPod.

Unlike the other ideas presented thus far, this entry on the list takes you away from the computer and outside. With a bit of marketing, you can easily sell your photo-documentation services and take pictures at a wide variety of parties and celebrations, and the beauty of it is, this idea can easily be combined with the first idea on the list (simple movie making) to create even more options for yourself.

Expanding your thinking a bit, there’s no reason you couldn’t combine two or more of these ideas into a suite of services to offer your clients. In no time at all, and with very little money out of pocket, you could put together a full service multi-media menu of offerings for your clients. Remember, the more types of services you offer, the more business you are likely to attract! Just be careful what you wish for, because you might soon find yourself with more business than you can handle!

Pros: The major advantage of the ideas presented above is the fact that none of them are very expensive to get off the ground, and in fact, they all lend themselves rather well to being combined in various ways to expand the products and services you offer. This, of course, lends itself to greater profitability, as the more services you are offering, the greater the likelihood that any given individual will have a need you can fill.

Cons: Maybe this wasn’t what you were looking for. In that case, don’t give up! If you like the idea of offering physical goods or services, but just didn’t happen to like anything listed here, keep reading! There are tons of other ideas on this site, and perhaps you’ll see something that will spark some ideas of your own! Or, perhaps you’re just not all that into the idea of selling a physical product. Again, no fears! You’ll find plenty of information on other types of businesses. Check out “Establishing a Passive Income Business,” next, to see if there’s something there that interests you!

The only other potential downside here is that there is a bit of a learning curve involved, if you’ve never messed with any of the technology mentioned above. Still, all told, you could be functional on every single piece of software you’d need to do all six of these ideas inside a single day, and I daresay that’s a faster learning curve than you’ll find in most any other business!

More “Big Secrets” Revealed

Okay, so now that your head is swimming with ideas of what’s possible, I get to hit you with the bad news.

Get this straight before we go any further on our journey together: I can’t make you rich.

No one can make you rich.

No one but you.

These ideas can, have, and will continue to make money for those who use and apply them. You can do this stuff part time, after your “regular” job and pick up money to take your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever out to dinner, or put gas in your car, or anything else you’d like to do with the cash.

You can scale these ideas up as they begin earning you more money and reach just about any income level you’d like to, and the information on this site can show you how, but at the end of the day, that’s all it can do.

I can show you.

You have to do the hard part and actually take action.

What happens a lot of times is that people get a thing called “Analysis Paralysis.” There are so many damned options to choose from…so many possible directions to take these kinds of things in that people get lost in the process of evaluating and deciding, and they never quite get around to the DOING part.

Don’t let yourself fall into that trap.

Also, remember this important detail: You don’t have to know everything in order to be the “smartest guy (or gal) in the room!” You just have to know more than the folks you’re with.

Think about that, and what it means for you in whatever venture you’re attempting.

You don’t have to know everything!

Isn’t that liberating?

You can forge ahead without having all (or even most of) the answers. Without really knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing. If you’re following a pattern or program laid down by someone else, don’t worry about how or why all the pieces fit together. You’ll learn that and get a handle on the “big picture” as you DO whatever it is you’re doing. Just follow the steps provided and don’t over think things. When you get to the end, study your result and compare it to the result you thought you’d get. If you’re happy, build on it. If you’re not, that’s the point at which you sit down with your thinking cap on and map out what you’ll do differently next time. And there WILL BE a next time, right? If you try something and it doesn’t work out quite like you’d hoped or expected, you’re not just going to give up at the first indication that things might get a little tough, are you?
I don’t think you’d be here reading this if you were a quitter. I think you know intuitively that answering the question of how to earn extra income is going to require work and effort on your part, and that there’s a learning curve involved. And because of that, I think you’ll relish the challenges that lie ahead, rather than shrink away from them the first time something doesn’t work out.

So that’s the end of today’s lesson. Hopefully, it has given you loads to think about, and again, even if you didn’t find anything in the list above, there are plenty more ideas where those came from, right here on this site, so keep reading!

For the moment though, take a break and ponder the points above. We’ll still be here when you get back, and if you’ve found something you like here, then you’ll probably have questions. Lots of questions!
That’s okay though, odds are, you can find the answers here!

Summary – Big Secrets Revealed

• No one can make you rich but you. Reading and studying a thing isn’t where the magic is…the magic is in the ACTION you take, using what you have learned. Don’t fall prey to Analysis Paralysis! Avoid this by choosing to act. Even if you do the wrong thing, you will learn from it, and do better next time!

• You don’t have to know all the answers (or even a majority of them) to start a profitable business. Don’t think, DO. Take action based on what you know and what your vision of the desired outcome is. Analyze after, not before. “After”, you have a result you can compare to your vision. “Before”, you just have thoughts that don’t amount to anything tangible.

Free Stuff Referenced On This Page

Nothing that shouldn’t already be on your computer, but we’ll outline them anyway:

Windows Movie Maker

Windows Media Player

You can also do a Google search for “free windows movie maker” and “free cd/dvd ripper” and come up with all sorts of third party products that won’t cost you a dime. In fact, I would heartily recommend this, if for no other reason than to better understand what’s available.

Extra Income Ideas

If you came to the ‘net in search extra income ideas you can use to put more money in your pocket, then you came to the right place! The information and ideas you find within can be applied by nearly anyone, of nearly any age and background, so don’t worry that you might not “have what it takes.” You found this site, didn’t you? That shows a certain aptitude for both technology and research, and it displays a determination to make your life better. Armed with those things, we can really go places, and as to the particulars, you’ll learn what you need as you go, depending on which of the many routes you decide to pursue.

Whether you’re interested in working primarily online or off, I will show you, in the pages and articles that follow, how you can build your own business (to whatever size you’re comfortable with) and reap the rewards of sustainable, long term profitability. (If you already know you’re most interested in working offline, then make your next stop the article entitled “Earning Extra Money – Physical Goods & Services“, and if your preference runs more to the online world, check out “Earning Extra Money – How to Earn Money on the Internet” next).

We’ll look at a number of approaches, and within those, there are a near-infinite number of ways they can be implemented (it’s very true that every business is different, each bearing the unique stamp of its creator), so whatever you take away from this site, it will be quite easy to make it fully and completely your own.

This site was built on two guiding principles. The principle of complete truth, and the principle of full disclosure.

In a nutshell, what this means is that I’m not going to leave you hanging. When I explain something to you, be it a top level business concept or a specific strategy, I’m going to tell you all the ins and outs of it. All the pros and cons of using it. Full disclosure means that I’m not going to try to trick you. I’m not going to nag you for your e-mail address so I can bombard you weekly with e-mails that try to pressure you into buying something, and IF I recommend a product, it’s because I use it myself and know it’s good. Oftentimes, products have affiliate programs associated with them (that means, if I recommend it and you buy it, I get a cut). A common strategy that a lot of marketers use is to give you some decent information, recommend a product and conveniently forget to mention that they’re an affiliate for that product. That’s not the way we do things here. In ALL CASES, if I’m an affiliate for a product I’m recommending, you’re going to know about it. We expect that sort of behavior from the financial gurus who write for MSN and the like (note the “full disclosure” statements at the end of their articles when they recommend certain stocks and the like), and we should expect no less from people offering business and related information.

Structurally, each article on this site is put together in three “parts.” The information section (what you’re reading now). Beneath that, a summary of bullet points, highlighting the most important concepts on the page, and lastly (if applicable), a list of important resources to keep in mind. I’ve tried to lay this material out like a self paced study course, so you can find exactly the information you’re looking for, exactly when you need it.

What’s in it for you?

Look, enough of the background, let’s cut to the chase. You’re here because you’re looking for extra income ideas to put money in your pocket, and I’m here to point the way to sustainable profits. In order to get the most out of this site, there are a few things you need to understand, and these are important.

• DON’T ever pay for a tool if you don’t need to! Even if I recommend a product that costs money, I’ll show you one or more free versions that accomplish the same basic goal. In most cases, the major difference between the free and paid versions is a matter of scale and efficiency (i.e., a free widget might help you market your product to 75 places at a time, while the paid version has ten times the marketing “firepower”). Still, before you shell out your hard earned money, use the free stuff to prove to yourself that it works! Once you’ve made a bit of money, then and only then should you consider scaling up to something bigger and better. The idea is to make money, remember? And I don’t want you spending a dime on anything you see here until you’re convinced that it’s exactly what you need.

• DO take a scientific approach. Try one thing at a time, and give it an honest effort. Test, and see if it works. If it does, then keep doing more stuff like that. If you can’t make it work, don’t lose any sleep over it, just move on to something else. Repetition in the key to success! This is your first “big secret.” The best baseball players in the league barely break a batting average of .300. That means that when they step up to the plate, they manage a hit about thirty percent of the time. Or, to put another way, they miss about seventy percent of the time. What’s that got to do with you? Only this: Don’t get discouraged if you don’t hit a “home run” your very first time up to bat. Most people don’t. Anybody who tells you different is trying to sell you something. Keep that in mind as you work through the ideas of interest to you on this site, and keep trying! You’ll find an idea that “clicks” for you, and when you do, you’ll know. Believe me, you’ll know!

• DON’T get distracted! Internet Marketers are especially good at the art of distracting you. Here’s how it works (this is “Big Secret #2) on this page, so I hope you’re taking notes! IM guys (“Internet Marketing” guys), will tell you that focus and sustained action are needed in order to succeed in this business. Many (but not all…definitely not all!) will fill your head with visions of what you can accomplish if only you’ll give them a bit of your money, and when you do…when you sign up for whatever it is they’re selling (which almost always includes giving them your e-mail address), do you know what happens?

With a mind numbing frequency, you get an e-mail from these self-styled gurus hawking “the next new thing.” The next shiny object. So while they’re telling you to stay focused, they’re forever shoving a new product in your face, trying to distract you into buying it too. If you’re not careful, you can wind up blowing a few thousand bucks and be sitting on a veritable mountain of products (some with good information in it, and some not), and still, you won’t have accomplished your goal. Worse, you won’t even have gotten started! Here you’ll be armed to the teeth with several dozen perfectly viable extra income ideas, and you won’t have done anything with them. Distraction kills! Never forget that.

• DO remember that saving money is every bit as good as making it! Money not spent for a thing is still money in your pocket, and here we come with Big Secret #3 on this page. No matter which of the extra income ideas you settle in on, you’re going to need some basic supplies. At a minimum (even if you’re dealing in the world of physical products), you’ll need a decent spreadsheet, word processor, graphics program, and probably something to make a PDF with, if you want to create instructional documents, information products, or the like. Now, you could go out and buy MS Office (I found it on sale just now for $125), Photoshop ($128), and Adobe Distiller (makes PDF’s) ($78), and you’d have the basic tools you’ll need to get started (since you’re reading this, we know you’ve already got a computer and an internet connection, and I can’t imagine running a business of any sort these days without those two things!). And if you spent money on the above, you just shelled out more than three hundred bucks you didn’t need to spend.

For word processing, a spreadsheet and PDF creation, you can use Open Office. It’s a free, open source program with the same basic functionality of MS Office, and a few extra goodies (like the PDF thing) besides! For graphics work, use GIMP (links to both of these found below). Another fantastic, free, open source program, and look at you go! Your first visit here and you’ve already saved more than three hundred bucks! Go you!

Alright, I’ve hit you with a good bit of information so far, so let’s pause for a moment. Read the summary below, go grab your free software, and then come back here and we’ll dive into the meat of it, and start making you some money!

Overview – Basic Ways of Making Money

Below, are the basic (very broad) notions of the various extra income ideas we’ll be exploring in the other articles on this site. There’s a lot of material to be covered under each section, and (understandably, given the title of this website), this is where the real meat will be found, but just to get us started, and to get your mind turning around the topic of what you might like to do, here are the basic ways we’ll be exploring to earn you some extra income!

• Selling (your own) physical goods and services – This can be done either locally or scaled up on the ‘net (or both), and is probably one of the fastest ways to get set up and making a bit of cash quickly. To get some solid ideas about things you can do in this area, check out the article entitled “Earning Extra Money – Physical Goods and Services.”

• Selling someone else’s stuff – Lots of room to explore here. From wholesaling and drop shipping to Ebay, to affiliate marketing, this is a huge area, with almost limitless possibilities.

• Selling information – This option, at least the way we’ll be approaching it, is almost exclusively an online one. It is possible to do this offline, but it’s tricky (for a number of reasons), and not something I’d recommend to a newcomer to the business. Selling information online, however, is easier than you might think!

• Participating in various “online money making programs” – This section will be covered for those of you who are a little gun shy about owning and operating your own business. There are some valid, genuine money making opportunities out there that don’t involve “selling anything,” and I know from direct experience that this is a bit of a turnoff for some people, so we’ll go over some things for you to consider in future articles. There are a variety of “programs” or “systems” for generating profits on the ‘net. Some good, some not so good. For an overview of these, please refer to the article on “Earning Extra Money – How to Make Money on the Internet”

• Adsense Content Sites – This one is fun, and probably my favorite. In this case, you’re focused exclusively online, and you’re not selling anything per se (well, technically, you’re selling the traffic that your site generates, but that’s not quite the same as “traditional selling” to the minds of most folks). The basic idea is…you make a site on a topic that people are searching for, and sell ad space to Google (or other ad networks), who in turn, sell advertising to big companies. People come to your site, click an ad, and you make a little money! Loads of ground to cover on this topic, and if this is your thing, you’ll want to check out the article entitled “Establishing a Passive Income Business.”

We’ll also cover these topics with some thought given to age groupings. For example, a lot of people have expressed an interest in finding ways for kids to earn money, and while those methods fall into the same broad categories you’ll find above, we’ll give them a separate, and somewhat different treatment, so…lots to read and lots to learn!

Summary – “Big Secrets Revealed”
* If you notice a bit of irony here, you’re not wrong. I decided to use this tongue-in-cheek phrase because the “secrets” below aren’t really secrets at all, and yet, this is the kind of stuff you’ll wind up paying for if you invest in some “guru programs.”

• Repetition in the Key to Success! Focused, sustained action will lead you to your desired result!

• Don’t allow yourself to get distracted! Be scientific. Try one thing (change one variable) at a time. If it works for you (and remember that what works for me may not work for you, which is why the testing is necessary), scale it up. If it doesn’t work for you, ditch it and move on. Thankfully, the internet makes testing a VERY fast process! No need to spend months and months trying an idea that doesn’t work.

• Saving money is just as good as making it! Whenever possible, use free stuff!

Free Stuff Referenced on this page

• Open Office (MS Office type functionality, Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and PDF maker)

• GIMP (Photoshop type functionality, used for graphics work)