Post by havingfunnow on Dec 9, 2009 9:10:27 GMT -5
I believe that the best ways are doing what you really enjoy doing; which makes it a matter of personal choice. For me personally, qualifying for and participating in studies has resulted in the highest return of cash/gift certificate for time spent. However, studies I qualify for don't come along as often as I'd like. Many people I know do a combination of things, which I think is good because then all their eggs are not in one basket.
I have been researching work-at-home opportunities that are free or have little start up costs. I have been promising that I would post some of the results of my research. However, I never seem to get around to it. In the list I am posting below, one must be extremely wary of scams asking you to pay to work, phishing sites asking for personal/banking information, companies asking you to purchase materials, and opportunities that seem to good to be true.
1.) Telecommute job opportunities: Very hard to find, but a stable source of income if you find one.
2.) Selling product(s) or service(s) through your own website (lots of different options): Need to find a niche to fill, deal with competition, finding ways to attract buyers to your site. Many more sites fail than succeed, but some do succeed. It depends on the aforementioned factors.
3. ) Affiliate Marketing: If you have a website with a fair amount of visitors, then ads can be posted, with links to websites of companies that will award you $0.xx per visitor to their site coming from yours.
4.) Selling items on Ebay: IMHO - Ebay has become too greedy. They bought out PayPal and charge fees for selling/buying on Ebay and charge fees for using PayPal, which is their preferred method of payment. Seller have to take these fees into account, and pass them on to the consumer, reducing the appeal of using Ebay. Heard of Craigslist anyone? (Did I say that? )
5.) Selling items on Craigslist: You need to be in a localized area that has a Craiglists, then you need to ensure that the item is priced correctly, take a good photo of the item, and meet person-to-person in a public place (women, take a companion to the meeting), and accept only cash.
6.) Paid to Blog: Joining a free advertising program like commission junction, bidvertiser or adsense. Copy and paste the code they provide on your blogging site. The code will display ads and you get paid for having these ads on your blog either on a cpm (cost per 1000 impressions or times displayed) or pay per click basis. This is a variant of Affiliate Marketing mentioned above.
7.) Participating in Studies: Hard to find and qualify for, but the best return on time I have found.
8.) Online Surveys: Join many companies and weed out the ones that have surveys you consistently don't qualify for. Some people take the surveys that they feel are worth their time (the highest paying ones go fast), and ignore the little ones. The risk they take is that many of the Product Tests (PTs) are hidden at the end of a low paying survey, and sometimes the PT pays as well as a study or you can keep the item.
9.) Referrals: Similar to Affiliate Marketing, but you get credit when someone uses a link you provide to join a website. Referral links do not have to be posted on a website, and can be emailed.
10.) Paid To Read (PTR): Open and read emails from an advertising company. Takes a long time to reach the cash out point, but some companies also offer surveys which help you reach the cash out point quicker.
11.) Paid To Click (PTC): Click on ads and get paid to visit websites. I have heard that it takes a long time to reach the cash out point.
12.) Paid To Sign Up (PTSU ): Get paid to sign up for offers. Fair amount of risk involved, as you must remember to cancel at the end of the trial period or you will be billed. There is also the fact that you will be using your credit card(s), and giving that information to companies.
13.) Writing Subject Matter Articles/eBooks: Get paid to write articles in areas you are knowledgeable on. This can also be a way to direct traffic to your website, if you have one pertaining to the subject.
Some people buy items wholesale, and turn around and sell them, but it requires more resources than I would advise for a beginner. I can think of a well-known company you can join that will take care of the majority problems of storage, shipping, billing, and even the website - BUT you will pay for these services. There is also the more important fact that there is a huge amount of distributors that compete against each other in the same market.
Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM) is another avenue that one should be wary of, and I am definitely NOT saying that all MLMs are bad - just the majority. However, many the claims made are from the start of the venture, before thousands of others have bought the package and saturated the Internet with websites. So the claims are true, but they are no longer possible to achieve. The late-comers end up trying to get others to purchase the package like they did, just to recoup what they have invested. This is the reason the the Internet gurus are constantly shifting focus, starting up new ventures, and making money from other buying into the venture (downline) to a certain level. They can not go past a certain level, because then the venture will be called a pyramid scheme - these are just mini-pyramids.
I do not consider Mystery Shopping as work-at-home, but I been certified as silver ($15 MSPA) and done some Mystery Shopping. A lot of the opportunities are in the larger cities, but there are still opportunities in smaller communities.
The first two items I posted are huge areas in themselves, and I apologize for just glossing over them - but I am not going to do all the work for you. People pay big bucks for what I have posted above. If you want to help out a starving service-connected disabled veteran, then send me a PM with your address and I will gladly send you a bill! Just kidding, I win at sweepstakes! Ooooops...
14.) Enter sweepstakes: Sign-up for sweepstakes, paying close attention to the rules of how often they may be entered. This a no risk opportunity of winning some small and great prizes (If you win a great prize, figure 28% for taxes). A lot of people say that entering sweepstakes is a waste of time, but like everything else, common sense helps. Enter sweepstakes that have lots of chances to enter and lot of prizes. Since December, I have won a Nintendo Wii, a DVD, CD Sound Track, Cleaning Supplies Pack x 2, a years worth of Candy, 3 x Cookbooks, $20 Visa gift card, and about $30 in wins on InstantCashSweepstakes.com (see the Easy Fun Extra Money forum for the thread for it). I don't spend hours and hours each day entering sweepstakes, like I saw on an episode of of Trading Spouses. I enter them when the whim strikes me.
I will reiterate with what I started out with and I believe that the best ways are doing what you really enjoy doing. The above items are just some things to think about, and you will need to do some soul searching and research to decide what you could see yourself doing from home, in place of a traditional job.
* What do you enjoy doing? (see the reoccurring theme here?)
* What are you good at? (Do you limit every time you go fishing, because of a family secret lure?)
* Is there a need for your product(s) or service(s)?
* How would you start up your business?
* Do you need start up funds?
* How would you attract customers?
I don't claim that my lists are complete, and are just the results of what I have found in my research. I invite other members to post any opportunities that I may have missed. Especially to post what works for them.
Louis
* This is a reprint from an answer to a post a few months ago, and I have had a few questions about, so I decided to repost it.
I have been researching work-at-home opportunities that are free or have little start up costs. I have been promising that I would post some of the results of my research. However, I never seem to get around to it. In the list I am posting below, one must be extremely wary of scams asking you to pay to work, phishing sites asking for personal/banking information, companies asking you to purchase materials, and opportunities that seem to good to be true.
1.) Telecommute job opportunities: Very hard to find, but a stable source of income if you find one.
2.) Selling product(s) or service(s) through your own website (lots of different options): Need to find a niche to fill, deal with competition, finding ways to attract buyers to your site. Many more sites fail than succeed, but some do succeed. It depends on the aforementioned factors.
3. ) Affiliate Marketing: If you have a website with a fair amount of visitors, then ads can be posted, with links to websites of companies that will award you $0.xx per visitor to their site coming from yours.
4.) Selling items on Ebay: IMHO - Ebay has become too greedy. They bought out PayPal and charge fees for selling/buying on Ebay and charge fees for using PayPal, which is their preferred method of payment. Seller have to take these fees into account, and pass them on to the consumer, reducing the appeal of using Ebay. Heard of Craigslist anyone? (Did I say that? )
5.) Selling items on Craigslist: You need to be in a localized area that has a Craiglists, then you need to ensure that the item is priced correctly, take a good photo of the item, and meet person-to-person in a public place (women, take a companion to the meeting), and accept only cash.
6.) Paid to Blog: Joining a free advertising program like commission junction, bidvertiser or adsense. Copy and paste the code they provide on your blogging site. The code will display ads and you get paid for having these ads on your blog either on a cpm (cost per 1000 impressions or times displayed) or pay per click basis. This is a variant of Affiliate Marketing mentioned above.
7.) Participating in Studies: Hard to find and qualify for, but the best return on time I have found.
8.) Online Surveys: Join many companies and weed out the ones that have surveys you consistently don't qualify for. Some people take the surveys that they feel are worth their time (the highest paying ones go fast), and ignore the little ones. The risk they take is that many of the Product Tests (PTs) are hidden at the end of a low paying survey, and sometimes the PT pays as well as a study or you can keep the item.
9.) Referrals: Similar to Affiliate Marketing, but you get credit when someone uses a link you provide to join a website. Referral links do not have to be posted on a website, and can be emailed.
10.) Paid To Read (PTR): Open and read emails from an advertising company. Takes a long time to reach the cash out point, but some companies also offer surveys which help you reach the cash out point quicker.
11.) Paid To Click (PTC): Click on ads and get paid to visit websites. I have heard that it takes a long time to reach the cash out point.
12.) Paid To Sign Up (PTSU ): Get paid to sign up for offers. Fair amount of risk involved, as you must remember to cancel at the end of the trial period or you will be billed. There is also the fact that you will be using your credit card(s), and giving that information to companies.
13.) Writing Subject Matter Articles/eBooks: Get paid to write articles in areas you are knowledgeable on. This can also be a way to direct traffic to your website, if you have one pertaining to the subject.
Some people buy items wholesale, and turn around and sell them, but it requires more resources than I would advise for a beginner. I can think of a well-known company you can join that will take care of the majority problems of storage, shipping, billing, and even the website - BUT you will pay for these services. There is also the more important fact that there is a huge amount of distributors that compete against each other in the same market.
Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM) is another avenue that one should be wary of, and I am definitely NOT saying that all MLMs are bad - just the majority. However, many the claims made are from the start of the venture, before thousands of others have bought the package and saturated the Internet with websites. So the claims are true, but they are no longer possible to achieve. The late-comers end up trying to get others to purchase the package like they did, just to recoup what they have invested. This is the reason the the Internet gurus are constantly shifting focus, starting up new ventures, and making money from other buying into the venture (downline) to a certain level. They can not go past a certain level, because then the venture will be called a pyramid scheme - these are just mini-pyramids.
I do not consider Mystery Shopping as work-at-home, but I been certified as silver ($15 MSPA) and done some Mystery Shopping. A lot of the opportunities are in the larger cities, but there are still opportunities in smaller communities.
The first two items I posted are huge areas in themselves, and I apologize for just glossing over them - but I am not going to do all the work for you. People pay big bucks for what I have posted above. If you want to help out a starving service-connected disabled veteran, then send me a PM with your address and I will gladly send you a bill! Just kidding, I win at sweepstakes! Ooooops...
14.) Enter sweepstakes: Sign-up for sweepstakes, paying close attention to the rules of how often they may be entered. This a no risk opportunity of winning some small and great prizes (If you win a great prize, figure 28% for taxes). A lot of people say that entering sweepstakes is a waste of time, but like everything else, common sense helps. Enter sweepstakes that have lots of chances to enter and lot of prizes. Since December, I have won a Nintendo Wii, a DVD, CD Sound Track, Cleaning Supplies Pack x 2, a years worth of Candy, 3 x Cookbooks, $20 Visa gift card, and about $30 in wins on InstantCashSweepstakes.com (see the Easy Fun Extra Money forum for the thread for it). I don't spend hours and hours each day entering sweepstakes, like I saw on an episode of of Trading Spouses. I enter them when the whim strikes me.
I will reiterate with what I started out with and I believe that the best ways are doing what you really enjoy doing. The above items are just some things to think about, and you will need to do some soul searching and research to decide what you could see yourself doing from home, in place of a traditional job.
* What do you enjoy doing? (see the reoccurring theme here?)
* What are you good at? (Do you limit every time you go fishing, because of a family secret lure?)
* Is there a need for your product(s) or service(s)?
* How would you start up your business?
* Do you need start up funds?
* How would you attract customers?
I don't claim that my lists are complete, and are just the results of what I have found in my research. I invite other members to post any opportunities that I may have missed. Especially to post what works for them.
Louis
* This is a reprint from an answer to a post a few months ago, and I have had a few questions about, so I decided to repost it.