My Points @ MyPoints

The postman delivered an envelope from MyPoints today – inside was a $10 gift card for Bath and Body Works. A couple of weeks ago, I had redeemed 1400 points for this gift card, and I must say that it has arrived sooner than I expected. And it comes at a good time too – I have a coupon from B&BW for a free $12 product with any purchase of $10 or more that expires in another week. So I’ll be out shopping for some fragrant goodies come this Saturday. I briefly considered redeeming a Wal-Mart gift card because groceries and food is where I could use a few more dollars, but I figured that I’d cherish some my MyPoints pillow mist or body lotion more than some MyPoints tomatoes or eggplants. And it’ll last longer too.

I am quite excited about online surveys and rewards programs. Since the beginning of June I have received $64.60 in checks and gift cards from my participation in them. Long live the internet!!!

P.S. Should I snowflake my $10 earnings from MyPoints? Since I received a gift card that cannot be redeemed for cash, I will have to use it and spend the $10. Since I was not planning on actually making any purchases, I am not really technically “saving” any money that I can snowflake either. Hmm… What do you think? Should I snowflake this amount or not?

New Source of Income Confirmed

I talked in the last post about the possibility of generating some income as an English speaking partner for an international student. I met with her - she is sweet. We've agreed to meet 2hr/day 4x/week @ $7/hr. That's $56/week. Isn't that nice? More money towards savings and debt-reduction!

Money, Money and....

I feel that I should start labeling my posts “More Money 1”, “More Money 2” and so on. Since I started getting serious about my savings and debt-repayment, I have kept an eye open for new avenues of generating income. I would love to take a secondary job and generate some regular income. However, since I am a graduate student working hard on qualifiers prep and my dissertation proposal at the moment, I don’t have too much time to spare to work any decently paying second hand job. So I look around here and there for small scraps of work that I can do without too much effort or travel. And I have been incredibly lucky in finding a bit of money here and there. Here are a few sources of income that are either coming in soon or that I am considering right now.

1. My friend whose dog I pet-sat last month is going out of town again with her family and asked me if I would pet-sit again Thu-Sat. Yay! That’s another $25 coming in.
2. I saw a note in one of the university buildings for an English speaking partner for an international student. Two hrs/wk @ $7.00/hr. I called, and she and I have agreed to meet today and see if this is something that we would like to do.
3. An additional 5 hrs of research assistantship/wk in the Fall semester.
4. I found a new tenant for my landlady for the room next-door. According to an agreement that I had with my landlady, she will now give me $200 off the next month’s rent.
5. Selling more stuff on Craigslist and Amazon.
6. Any other ideas???

That’s all that I have right now. Most of them are very small income generators. I do keep an eye out, but money is hard to come by – especially in a small college town, and especially in the summer. I would appreciate any other ideas about what to do and where to go to look for more money!

P.S. Yesterday, I participated in the simulation research study. They are going to pay me $120 that will be added to my payroll. I won’t get it at the end of this month – too late for that. Also, they will probably take part of it out in taxes, but I think I shall still count it as a whole $120 this month towards my monthly snowflake challenge.

No Secret

I was, and probably still am very skeptical about the “Law of Attraction”. I think it’s an over-exaggeration to say that if you are always positive, you can make anything you want come hurtling through the universe to you. However, I do concede that having a positive frame of mind and a positive approach to things leaves your mind open to new ideas and prevents inertia or hopelessness to take over. For the past few months I have been very focused on money – making more, saving more, and spending less. The latter two are more easily accomplished than the first – making more money. However, I have seen that once I start looking for money, it seems to just come to me.

I got an email from one of the advisory staff about joining a simulation study that they do each year. It’s a whole day’s work, and they’d pay me $120/-. Needless to say, I signed myself up. So on Tuesday, I will receive $120 more to add towards my snowflaking efforts. YAY!

P.S. I just met my second monthly challenge - and with this simulation study and a few more things, I think I might just be able to even double it!

Random Thought: Online Surveys

Although I was initially skeptical about them, I find that the online surveys are quite an interesting and easy way to make some extra money. At first I thought it was too much work for too little money, but I have discovered that you just need to find the right survey companies. In the past two months I have made $43.40. Of this, I have $17.50 are locked in as points at GlobalTestMarket since you have to have a minimum of $50 with them in order to be able to cash out. But I still did get checks for the other $25.90.

Online Survey Cash

I got paid for taking online surveys. I never thought I'd actually get to
cash out, but today I received two checks - $10 from Opinion Outpost, and $3 from Pinecone Research. $13 more dollars to go towards my first Monthly Challenge. I find that I spend a lot more time trying to qualify for online surveys that actually taking ones I qualify for. However, getting paid is wonderful. I probably spent way too much time for a $13 compensation, but getting this money was wonderfully sweet! In addition to the ones I already mentioned, other online survey sites that I recommend are: MyPoints and Global Test Market. I haven't tried too many others, but I believe that there are some really good options out there. I love making money like this - if only I got paid all the time for my opinions!

I Joined PayPerPost !!!

My Blog just got approved for payperpost. I am very excited. PayPerPost (PPP) is an exciting service that offers bloggers money to blog. I first heard about it through some of the blogs I frequent. I also watched testimonial videos on YouTube about how wonderful PPP is. I was skeptical at first about it – “Yeah right! You just get paid money to do what you like – there must be a catch”. Shady and cynical thoughts along those lines raced through my mind. But everyone seemed to be raving about it, and I decided to do some additional research. I read testimonials on several other blogs, looked through the various blog forums and communities and so on. I was astonished to see that everyone without exception seemed to really like PPP. So, I decided to join it – and am happy about this decision. So from now on, I shall periodically be featuring paid reviews on my blog!

Here is how PPP works – It’s simple beyond measure. If you’re a blogger, you sign up for PPP, they approve your blog, you avail of advertising opportunities listed on PPP and review or write about products etc., your post is approved, and then, just like that, YOU GET PAID! But beyond just getting paid, I have found PPP extremely useful in a variety of different ways. I also discovered several exciting and new blogs through the PPP site. PPP’s website is very functional and easy to navigate. And what’s most exciting to me are the forums. The PPP forums are full of bloggers – it’s a great place to meet other bloggers and discuss almost anything under the sun with them. The participants of the forums are wonderful – welcoming, helpful and always ready to help or advice. There is also a great sense of camaraderie and community on the PPP forums. And this has been my experience of only a few days – I look forward eagerly to all the PPP delights I haven’t discovered yet. Having fun and earning lots of money to help eliminate my debt and start saving – what else could be as perfect??

Rent Reduction Update

Update from my previous post Reduce Your Rent. I had a meeting with my landlady today about what needs to be done around the yard and garden of the building I stay in. I have to weed, prune, get rid of winter’s rubbish, prop up garden gnomes that topple in the wind, put out the trash each week, rake leaves and other such stuff. It seems like it would be more work in the beginning, but that once the preliminary weeding and pruning is done, it won’t be as much work. And I get $50 off my rent in order to do that. The second part of the contract is showing my neighbor’s apartment to prospective tenants for a bonus of $200. Over the summer months, I estimate that this way, I’ll get a total reduction of about $450 in my rent until winter begins. Not bad, aye?

It’s all settled and I am looking forward to it – especially the bit that has to do with gardening. I love gardening! And guess what I found today as I was scoping out the weeds and voluntary plants? I found a whole patch of garlic chives that I initially thought was grass. That will spice up my food – an added bonus. And I think I’ll put mint in the ground and let it run riot! It will get the place smelling beautiful, and also I’ll put it in oodles of my food! Yummy!

P.S. Since I can now save an additional $50/month at least for a few months, I am increasing my "Monthly Challenge" amount to $150.

Guru - Online Freelancing

Today was a no-spend day. Yay! I also sold a book on Amazon and now have $21.75 to add to my monthly challenge fund! It has been a good day.

Like I have talked about before, once you start looking for money, it seems to appear all over the place. Well, maybe not the money itself, but the opportunities to make money certainly do. And that gives me hope that if I keep looking, I eventually will be able to make some extra money. I came across a website: Guru.com. This is a freelance website – people can offer their freelance services to others in a variety of different areas: legal, design, marketing etc. I signed up for it yesterday, and here’s my impression of it so far:

How it works:
You sign up and make a profile that indicates what sort of freelance service you are offering. You can create more than one profile, and can search for projects that fit your profile (employers post projects that require specific skills etc.) Guru will also email you when a new project that fits your skills is posted. Once you review the project and think that you can do it, you submit a proposal and place a bid stating how much you would charge for the project. Once the bidding closes, the employer picks a bid and if your bid gets chosen, then you get notified and can start communicating with the employer to discuss the details. Guru uses SafePay Escrow and you get paid once the project gets completed. They take 5% of the payment as a commission, and 10% if you are a non-paying member. As a paying member you get to place as many as 100 bids/month and as a non-paying member you get 10 bids/month.

Now the cons:
The membership is expensive - $74.95 (Quarterly) and $149.95 (Annual). This is more expensive if you are a vendor. If you aren’t a paying member, the percentage of projects you can bid on is miniscule. That’s all the cons I have experienced in two days.

And the pros:
This website offers work to people all over the world. Since most of the communication is done over the internet (and maybe the phone in a few instances), the freelancer does not need to be located in the US, and can still get paid. There are several thousands of projects available that you can bid on. Guru emails you when a matching project is found, and the website is easy to navigate.

I placed two bids totaling $110. That is $99 after Guru’s commission. I’m not sure if I will get picked, but I certainly hope so. If I find enough freelance work here, I might upgrade my membership and become a paying member. We’ll see. And even if it turns out that I am not paid, it feels really good to know that there is such stuff out there, and it motivates me to keep looking.

Reduce Your Rent

I said in a recent post that money is easy to come by when you look around for it. That has been proved true - again! I called my landlady and asked her if she would agree to knock some money off my rent in exchange for yard-work, trimming bushes and other general maintenance around the building. My neighbor is moving out in August and I also offered to help with the cleaning after he leaves. I was hoping that she'd knock off about $30-$35 per month over the summer. This would be a godsend because I don't get paid my regular salary over the four summer months, and any reduced bills are very welcome. Anyway, she said she'd think about it. That was a few days ago. She called me back today. And she offered to knock $50 off my rent per month for yard-work! And she said if I'd show prospective tenants my neighbor's apartment and got someone to sign on, she would give me $200!!! Now isn't that wonderful? All that money will go towards paying off my dreadful Chase Visa debt.

P.S. I came out of my vacation spending less than $150 (excluding airfare). And that's definitely an achievement for me. :-)

Get Paid for Online Surveys

I think online surveys are a brilliant idea. I am a student psychologist - and I know how important self-reported surveys can be in psychological research. I imagine that this is even more so the case with market research. When I collect data, I would gladly offer people money to take the survey if I had the funding for it, but unfortunately I don't. But the huge companies do - and they pay good money to people who will tell them how to make their product better and more marketable. Yesterday I signed on at four different online survey websites:

* American Consumer Opinion
* Global Test Market
* MySurvey, and
* Opinion Outpost

So far, I've been offered two surveys. I finished one, but while taking the other, I hit the back browser button and messed the survey up and so was unable to finish it. But the one survey has earned me $10. It took me about a quarter of an hour to complete. If only I got paid at work at such a rate!! I also have a few random points on the websites for taking profile surveys. Technically, on most sites I can cash out once I earn $5. However, I think I will wait till the end of the month - $10 in a day. I wonder how many I'll get this month. Four sounds like a good number. I hope I earn at least $40/-.

I'm going on vacation for a week. Not sure how this will affect my budget, money-tracking or money-making, but hopefully it will all turn out to be okay.

Money All Around

Once you start looking around for money, it seems to be remarkably easy to come by. Since yesterday, I have made $202.87!!! Amazon is wonderful – I love it. I sold 4 books and 3 DVDs in one day! And these are books that I don’t read anymore, and DVDs that I don’t watch anymore. That totaled $147.87. I’ll have spend money to mail the stuff out, but it’ll all be media mail and so not very expensive anyway. I have more listings on Amazon – so hopefully I’ll sell more. Amazon has high commissions – but the speed and the consumer base is stupendous. Also, unlike eBay and PayPal transactions, you can cash-out free of charge.

This is finals week at my school and graduate students often have to proctor exams for undergraduates. Now, a friend of mine who was scheduled to invigilate had some studying of her own to do and I subbed for her. She gave me $30 for an hour and a half. I also cashed out my $25 sign-in bonus on Revolution Money Exchange. (You can sign on too and get $25 free just for signing on – check the link on the right sidebar). And all that is a total of $202.87. Not bad for one day! Now why didn't I think of doing this before???

Selling Stuff Online

I began making a list of items to sell online today. Books mainly - I have a lot of them. It's the academic books that people usually buy at high prices - I have fewer of these that I want to sell off than my fiction books which are much harder to move. Most people when raising money sell on eBay. I thought of that, but I've had bad experiences both selling and buying on eBay and am a bit eBay-shy. However, I am in the process of trying to conquer that fear in order to raise money. I began by listing ten books on amazon.com. Amazon has wonderful guidelines and standards and I have always had good experiences with it. So I will start there for now. I also have a lot of other unwanted junk that I believe people online are eager to buy.

At some point this summer I also plan on having a garage sale. Hopefully I will raise some money through that as well. But again, I don’t think I have the sort of stuff that sells at high prices – it’s the kid’s clothes and toys that sell for good money. I also listed a charcoal grill on Craigslist. I listed it at $15.00, all of which will be a profit since the grill was handed down to me by the previous renter of my apartment. No bites yet. I’m hoping and praying that people will soon want to take some stuff off my hands and lighten their wallets a little in my favor.

Update - 2 hrs later: That was fast! I sold one book already on Amazon - $31.39 after estimated shipping costs and Amazon commission. This is wonderful. I also listed 5 DVDs. I hope lots of people buy stuff from me. :-)