How To Earn Extra Money

Getting Started Making Extra Money Online

One of the hardest parts about getting started making money either online or from home is just that: Getting started. Starting simple is often best, to get your feet wet, so to speak. The items listed below are extremely basic, introductory ways to earn some extra cash online, and should not in any way be looked at as full time jobs, but rather as basic, entry-level online supplementary income. My goal here is to present the absolute most basic online money making ideas, from companies that actually pay you cash for doing actual work.

It bears repeating that the number one rule for making money from any part-time gig: Never pay a fee to get a job. No exceptions.

Get Paid To Take Surveys

Online paid surveys are a huge arena filled with con artists wanting your cash. Don't give it to them. Stick only to survey companies that are direct contractors and pay you in cash, not prizes.

There are several companies that I've done paid survey work for, but this one is by far the best and most reputable. The company is called Survey Savvy and I've actually gotten physical checks in the mail from them. The key to them is to be very thorough when filling out your profile, because you want to come up for getting as many survey invitations as possible. They have a lot of sub-profile things you can fill out, and if you really want to get on as many panels as possible, it's worthwhile to fill them out.

Signup Link: Join Survey Savvy Here

Get Paid To Do Odd Jobs Online

There are a bazillion web sites online that will give you some sort of credit, be it towards prizes, merchandise, or even cash, to do things such as:

• post messages on various bulletin boards
• post ads on classified sites
• write reviews of products and web sites
• rate different services
• contribute original articles and other content
• transcribe audio into text

Sifting and sorting through all these different sites, not to mention registering with all of them and keeping up with them, is quite a pain in the neck. There are several web sites, however, that aggregate a lot of different activities like this under one roof, and pay you a little bit for doing a variety of odds and ends. Here are two of them:

1. Work From Home Cookbook - This site is fairly new, but growing in terms of the types of work available. The company recently came under new management, which has improved customer service and response rates considerably. They provide an end of month payout via PayPal, and this is their only payment option. Work available includes various types of Internet posting, voting, and simple writing work. Pay available is significantly better than most other options, but should still be considered supplementary income at best. As of this writing, the system had over 12,000 tasks waiting to be done.


2. Amazon Mechanical Turk - This is part of the Amazon.com family of services, and is sort of an odd offering from them, considering the rest of their business operations. Self-described as "artificial artificial intelligence", the service operates to connect workers with work that needs to be done that is mostly of a data processing nature, typically involving tasks that are either incredibly difficult to automate through computer programming, or just downright impossible. As of the time of this writing, the service had over 51,000 individual tasks waiting to be done by somebody, which is more than 4 times that of Work From Home Cookbook. In general, the pay per task is a bit lower, and you're likely to make less overall on a regular basis, but the payout is faster and there's a much wider variety and shear number of tasks available.

Hopefully these resources will provide you with a good start to making money online without having to worry about setting up your own web site or doing any of your own Internet markeintg. Do keep in mind that these should ONLY be considered extra cash, not full time employment.

If you're able to commit at least 20 hours per week to work and can provide a home office form which to work that is free from household noise (this means no disruptions by pets and children in particular), you might want to consider becoming a home-based telephone customer service representative.

The three top companies in this realm of work are:

Alpine Access - www.alpineaccess.com
VIPDesk - www.vipdesk.com
Willow CSN - www.willowcsn.com

Alpine Access is the only major company that hires direct employees to work from home. The rest will require you to operate as an independent contractor.

You will need a computer, high speed Internet, and a wired phone line to make this work. You also need to be a self-starter and genuinely be able to work independently from home. Most of these companies do not pay for training -- consider it an investment in yourself. The application and screening process are fairly long, so be patient with it.

Pay will usually be $8 to $15 per hour.

Best wishes!
-Jassen

I occasionally get an email asking me if I actually still participate in some of the various sorts of work that talk about on the job lists, such as data entry and transcription. It surprises people to learn that, even though I do many different things, with incredibly varying pay scales, the truth is that I still do quite a bit of typing and data entry work.

As an example, I did about 90 minutes of transcription a few days ago for an attorney.

Here's the really nice thing about transcription and data entry work, as compared to things like field inspecting, mystery shopping, blogging, surveys, etc., etc. When it comes down to having a stable BASE of income, it's hard to beat the things that look more and more like a regular job. Once you're established with a data entry or from-home customer service agency, for example, it can be a fairly stable base of income.

Having a base from which to grow, something more steady than a lot of the types of work out there, is a GOOD thing to have, believe me. It helps to eat up some of the ups and downs and seasonal nature of other types of work, in particular.

Take care!

Jassen Bowman