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!

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

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)