With milk and petrol seemingly costing more per litre than champagne, few
people can afford to turn away easy money. The good news is that there are
plenty of undemanding ways to supplement your salary online.
From filling out short surveys to being a virtual PA or writing brief articles
for online encyclopedias, you could soon be bringing in hundreds of pounds
per month. However, before you book that Seychelles trip or a Mercedes-Benz
SLK test drive remember to put some of your new-found riches aside for when
the taxman cometh.
CASH FOR QUESTIONS
Sign up with a reputable market research company and you will be rewarded for
completing short web-based surveys. Most take five minutes, so you could
pack a few into your lunch break.
Some of these companies “pay” you with free entry to a legitimate prize draw.
Others such as www.surveys.com – which
is run by GfK, the analyst – entice you with vouchers redeemable against a
range of items.
Best of all are firms that cough up hard cash. YouGov (www.yougov.com/uk/panel),
the pollster, pays 50p-£1 for every survey. Once you accumulate £50 of
credit, YouGov sends you a cheque.
Ciao!, the shopping advice portal, pays £1-£5 for each questionnaire (tinyurl.com/
5dbl6s) and payments are made by bank transfer after £5 has been earned.
If you are a Ciao! member, you can write reviews of products or services you
have bought. You will receive payments (of up to 2p) every time a fellow
member rates one of your reviews as useful. It won’t generate a salary to
match AA Gill’s, but every little helps.
The web is festooned with sites that promise the moon on a stick if you
complete surveys or browse a website. Many are legitimate but some are not.
The Market Research Society – the trade body for UK market research
companies – enables you to check whether a firm conforms to its code of
practice at www.rbg.org.uk. If you
don’t want to restrict yourself to UK firms, the pan-European equivalent is
Esomar (directory.esomar.org). To
check a US-based market researcher visit www.casro.org.
RECLAIM MONEY
One of the easiest ways to earn from the internet is to reclaim money that’s
yours. Close to £1 billion is in dormant bank, building society or National
Savings accounts that people have forgotten about or omitted from a will,
according to the new MyLostAccount service ( www.mylostaccount.org.uk).
This site aims to reunite these accounts with their owners. Fill out the
online form and the 100-plus banks and building societies in the scheme will
search their records for accounts in your or a relative’s name.
And what about those premium bonds that were bought for your eighth birthday
that you recently found in a drawer? Head to www.nsandi.com
to find out whether Ernie has made you a secret millionaire.
Determined to reclaim excessive bank or credit-card charges? The crusading
MoneySavingExpert.com has a regularly updated guide at tinyurl.com/2d8zs5.
The site provides a sample letter to send to your bank and (in a delightful
piece of schadenfreude) an interest calculator.
One of the biggest financial ruses is banks overcharging for mortgage
protection insurance. Due to a recent Competition Commission ruling,
consumers can claw back chunks of cash, plus interest – up to £24,000 says a
recent Times Online feature ( tinyurl.com/5fembh).
If you are fed up with delays on your daily rail commute but can’t be bothered
with the tedious compensation forms, TrainDelays ( www.traindelays.co.uk)
will do it for you. Register details of your journey and season ticket and
it will automatically apply for compensation whenever a delay occurs on your
line. This enables you potentially to claim back rail vouchers worth
hundreds of pounds a year.
MOONLIGHTING
Fancy a little extra income in the evenings or while the children are at
school? The smartly designed Elance ( www.elance.com)
enables you to pitch your skills for various freelance gigs. These range
from producing architectural drawings to being a virtual PA. Workers and
employers are both rated on the site. Some Elancers have earned hundreds of
thousands of pounds.
For something less formal, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk ( www.mturk.com)
will pay all-comers to take on tasks that computers can’t handle. These
include writing descriptions of videos or pointing out potholes in sat nav
photos. Rates of pay can hover from modest to derisory, so pick projects
carefully. Your expertise may be better rewarded by About.com ( beaguide.about.com),
which pays people hundreds of pounds a month to become “guides” on their
specialist subjects. The site is seeking experts on topics as diverse as
Moroccan food and houseplants, but contributors must post regular articles.
Part-time expert geeks or moonlighting mechanics who want to let prospective
customers check availability or reserve appointments online should flit over
to www.mybookingcalendar.com.
The setup is a little baffling, but there’s a tutorial video and a 30-day
free trial.
MAKE YOUR PASSION PAY
If you run an amateur website (or blog) on, say, local town history or beauty
treatments why not turn this passion into cash? If you have always hankered
to write about a specific subject, you can set up a swish-looking blog in
minutes at Typepad ( www.typepad.com)
from £2.50 a month. WordPress ( wordpress.com),
its rival, is slightly more complex but free.
You can earn from your readers by placing adverts on the site or signing up
for “affiliate” deals where you receive a commission from, say, Amazon if
people buy anything via your recommendations. Your blog provider should
provide instructions on setup – see Typepad’s step-by-step video at tinyurl.com/63g6h4.
If you blog about products readers may want to buy, Pricerunner, the price
comparison engine, can show the cost of these items on your site. If a
visitor clicks through to a Pricerunner advertiser, it will pay you 10p-33p
a pop ( tinyurl.com/yfgdkv). An
alternative here is Kelkoo’s TradeDoubler ( tinyurl.com/5ldztu).
If you write about a sport you can have a flutter on, send your readers to
Betfair and it will pony up at least 25% of the value of any bets placed ( tinyurl.com/5oaabo).
Unsure what ads to display? Join Google’s AdSense ( tinyurl.com/5ghlcd)
and it will search your webpages and show relevant test-based ads alongside,
say, your paean to vintage toasters. If the readers click, you get paid.
If you can swallow your pride, Blogsvertise ( www.blogsvertise.com)
will slip you up to £12 for each favourable 100-word mention of one of its
clients. Tempted?
SET UP SHOP
Many hobbies such as jewellery-making or photography can become a lucrative
sideline. The obvious destination for sales is eBay but serious sellers
should separate themselves from the throng by creating an eBay shop using
the free tools at tinyurl.com/5snaxz.
Setting up your own online store is easier than you think and often looks more
professional than selling via existing web stores such as eBay. The Mr Site
Takeaway Website ( www.mrsite.com)
provides everything you need – a .com web address, simple design software
and a secure payments service – in one box. It costs £35 for 12 months, then
£2.90 a month. The Pro version has a bigger upfront cost (£100) but adds
features such as boosting your site’s visibility on search engines.
Many website hosting services such as 1&1 (www.1and1.co.uk)
provide free tools for quickly designing a classy web store – and then you
can even link it to eBay.
There are so many ways that you can make money online, but be careful. I have lost 1000's in the past ,but you soon aware who you can trust . My advice would be to get advice either contacting the company /website and try and talk to them never take it that every thing you read on a site is 100%
Mark, Nottingham, England
If you like writing travel reviews, I have found a great website that will pay you a slice of the months website advertising revenue when you submit and have a holiday review published. Take a look - http://www.bufforduff.com
Tim Redman, Chester,
i like the comments. there is a site you maybe havent heard about www.imskint.com it tells you lots of useful ways to make money and quickly
adam, stone, england
600,000 people in the UK own a holiday home. Most only use them for personal use, but more and more are using their holiday homes to make money. Many sites help you advertise your home, but I have only found one service that helps you build your own holiday site - http://www.holidaysitebuilder.com
David, London, UK
The make money following your passion is a good system that actually has worked for me. [http://www.affiliatemarketingintro.com is one great example]
You find a topic you are passionate about, build a site about it and monetize it using google adsense program and affiliate links.
Ami, Leicester, United Kingdom
Some of the online surveys are quite frustrating. Having nearly completed a few, they told me i wasn't the person they were looking for and promptly took me back to the home page!
Shaun, Toxteth, UK
The fallacy of making money from carrying advertising or doing market research is that, in the end, it merely pushes up the prices of the advertised goods in the shops, since that's the only play the marketing budget can come from. And you're likely only to advertise goods YOU wanted to buy....
Ian Kemmish, Biggleswade, UK
What with identity theft prevalent on the world wide web, i was slightly concerned that i was giving away ALL my personal details when completing some of the surveys. I think some people might be put off by this
Michael, Leamington Spa,
nice guide, didn't know there was an actual website for lost accounts. I think you have other monetary motives for this article rather than good will ;)
chris, brighton, uk
I recommend Contrexx® the new powerful Open Source Web Content.Management-System to build your own website.
http://www.contrexx.com/
Ivan, Thun, Switzerland
It's not easy to make income by blogging and sticking in some Google ads and affiliate links. There are millions of blogs, you have to build up links, do search engine optimisation, spend a lot of time researching and writing posts. Google will penailise paid links such Blogsvertise.
Karen Bryan, Berwick upon Tweed, UK