Extra Income

I talk about extra income a lot. From my Extra Income series, read:

To read my posts about extra income, click here.

Below are my extra income updates:

howtostartablog

Starting a Blog

I finally made a post of this, to read the full post, read How To Start A Blog – Tips for a Beginner. If you are on Blogger and would like to switch to WordPress, which I highly recommend, then read Blogger or WordPress – Tips on How to Move.

The first step is to get your domain. For the loooongest time ever, my blog was known as senseofcents.blogspot.com. I finally bought www.makingsenseofcents.com through Go Daddy and haven’t looked back since. I don’t think anyone has ever said “I regret buying my domain and looking more professional.” I believe right now you can get your own domain through Go Daddy for around $10. Sign up now! Just sign up using my link, and the steps are extremely easy.

The second step is to get your web hosting. There are a lot of hosting companies out there, and Bluehost seems to be one of the best. Hosting starts at around $5 a month. It’ll most likely cost you around $70 a year, which is really good deal! You can pay for just one month at a time also, which lessens the burden.

There is also HostGator which gets rave reviews also for their web hosting. Hosting on HostGator starts at only $3.96 per month and if you use the coupon code “MAKINGSENSEOFCENTS” then you will get an additional 25% or $9.94 off. The coupon code can be used at signup to give you a discount off the package price.

And once you have your domain and hosting, also make sure to start an e-mail list. AWeber is great and very easy to use. Not having an e-mail list for so long is something that I definitely regret, but I am glad that I’m finally starting with this.

Becoming a Virtual Assistant

This is something that I recently started doing. It doesn’t comprise a LARGE percentage of my extra income, but it is there. I like to be diversified just in case anything does happen to one of my other extra income streams (yes I realize that I am not fully diversified because a lot of my extra income is earned online – just in different ways).

There are many things that you can do as a virtual assistant. You can manage the social media of a business, website, etc. (Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and everything else), handle the newsletter, work on the website, proofread and edit, do market research, handle emails, and so on. The list is really endless.

Are you interested in becoming a virtual assistant? Don’t forget to also read about what exactly a virtual assistant does.

Freelance Writing

A lot of you seem very interested in this. For the sake of this post, a staff writer = freelance writer, just to make this all easy. I made a post titled So You Want to Be a Freelance Writer?, so please check it out. Below is a snippet of it.

Before September, I never thought I would be staff writing, and I never even thought about it. But once I began, I really started to enjoy it. I really love to write (yes, I do realize that I’m not the best and I probably should proofread more, but I do like to talk), and writing for different blogs was fun for me.

How are people supposed to know that you are looking for a freelance writing position? Over the summer, I was asked to be a staff writer for a blog. The e-mail came out of nowhere, but after I received it, I started looking into staff writing further. Having a blog (as talked about before), helped people find me and consider me for their staff writing positions.

After that initial e-mail, I then posted on Yakezie (a personal finance community with a great forum) and stated that I was searching for a staff writing position. After I made the post on the forum, I received a couple of e-mails and this is what launched my staff writing career. The power of throwing yourself out there and just asking was definitely helpful for me.

Also, there are the ProBlogger job boards, and there are a lot of staff writing positions on there. I know of a couple of people who have found their positions through that website.

If you do have a blog (see below for further information), then make sure you have a “Hire Me” tab if you are available. This will then let others know that you are looking, and also what you are available for.

Many blog owners might also be looking around, or they might make blog posts directly stating that they need staff writers. Keep an eye out for this. It doesn’t hurt to just e-mail the websites directly. If you truly want to write for them, try sending them a quick e-mail, and attach some writing samples, and/or link to your blog as well.

Renting out an extra room

We have four bedrooms in our house and we only use one. So when my sister needed a place to live, we of course invited her to live with us. It’s been working out greatly. She’s been living with us since May of 2012 and pays around $325 per month. She is hardly home so we haven’t really noticed an increase in any of our bills also.

Now, I don’t think we’ll be adding any more roommates. My sister is great (and we all get along very well), but we have definitely had our share of roommate disasters. Someone also lived with us over the summer for a total of two days before we had to kick him out. That was a mistake that I don’t even want to think about again.

A couple of other bloggers rent out their spare bedrooms as well (it honestly isn’t that bad sharing space, I promise!), such as Crystal at Budgeting in The Fun Stuff. She talked about her roommate situation the other day, go check it out! I do think that if you have room and don’t mind the extra money, then you might want to try renting out your spare rooms. The money for me is easy, so why not?

Mystery Shopping

I’ve talked about BestMark in a lot of my posts so far. It’s easy money and I do secret shops for restaurants, Best Buy, and so on.
Click here to read my post about mystery shopping.
If you do join, please say I referred you! My ID is MO4999

Mr. Rebates

Whenever you are about to buy something online, check to see if the company is listed on Mr. Rebates. If it is, then when you buy something, you will get a rebate (can be anywhere from 1% to 40% back).
Click here to go to the website.

Swagbucks

Swagbucks is a search engine (like Google or Yahoo) that offers you the chance to earn “swagbucks” for different things. I mainly just do my normal internet searches through Swagbucks. Then when you accumulate enough, you can go to the prize store and get anything from toys, electronics, and gift cards. Most people buy Amazon gift cards.
So far I have made over $200 in Amazon gift cards. It’s super easy to use, so sign up NOW!

Ebates

With Ebates you just shop like you normally would online. Go to ebates first and then search for the store you are wanting. They have many stores and most likely the store you are wanting to buy your item(s) from will be listed.
Then you just click to your online retailer of choice through ebates, and then ebates will give you your percent back! Sometimes you can get 10% to 15% back on your purchase. It’s easy money!
This is a free service, click here to sign up.
This is a quote from their website: “People often ask: “This sounds too good to be true, how are you able to do it?” It really is quite simple. Just like almost every other online shopping center, we get a commission from the stores when you make a purchase. Instead of keeping that money – like almost all other sites do – we share it with you!”