My little quest to earn a few extra £££ on top of the day job had a good start in January.
Selling
I sold a few unwanted DVDs to MusicMagpie and made £5.22, and it also helped with my decluttering efforts around the house. On top of this, I made £132.21 profit after fees and tax by selling more clutter and a couple of unwanted Christmas gifts on eBay. I did the eBay photos and listings fairly quickly on the same day in one short sharp shock, and think I’ll do the same this February too, otherwise it’s a bit too time consuming.
Website
As previously mentioned, I’ve started using Skimlinks again, but am not considering actively joining any affiliate schemes as I’m worried that might compromise editorial credibility. It cleared £12.63 this month, which I’m probably going to end up putting towards site running costs.
Cashback
My cashback of £17.36 all came from TopCashBack, and I’m really pleased. It’s money for nothing!
Surveys
The survey payout was a resoundingly huge zero. Turns out that surveys don’t tend to pay very much, some take up to a month to be counted, and most sites have high payout thresholds for the amount you’re likely to earn. In addition to this it can take up to three weeks for payments/vouchers to be made to you – including instant ones like PayPal. I’ve allegedly got two payouts coming, £3 PayPal and £15 Amazon Vouchers, but am not holding my breath.
Of all of these ‘earners’ I like the surveys the least – they often expire before you can get to them to fill them in, and I’m not giving up work hours to do them since the opportunity-cost is so bad. However, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that one or two focus groups turn up over the next few months, as these can pay you some quite generous ‘expenses’. In the meantime, I’m not recommending a single survey company unless I’ve received a payout from them. Some look legit, but one or two might be a bit fly by night. We’ll see.
If you want to keep up with the tally, it’s in the Features section of the site.
Know any nice little earners yourself?
Tags: earn money doing market research, earn more money, make money from surveys, make money selling on eBay, make money using cashback
I’ve fou d the only survey company worth sticking with is Pinecone Research. They pay £4 per survey and it’s usually in PayPal within a couple of days.
The only catches they don’t open up for new members very often and you have to catch them quickly! Otherwise, they’re great and on occasion do surveys with product samples too.
Thanks Stacey, I’ll check them out and see what they’re like. That’s a higher rate than most, and I’m not so keen on the sites where they put you into their prize draw at the end of the month but don’t pay you
I did the music magpie thing and am just waiting for my big fat cheque.
Hiya LofRede – I only did a small box of old DVDs, but still made £5.22. Suspect that works out better than eBaying them too, and also saves on a lot of fuss. Well done on profiting from your declutter. Makes it a happier experience, doesn’t it?
I use valued opinions and I’ve had a pretty good success right, have earned £30 of vouchers since last year and always get the amazon vouchers as soon as I request them so I like them! I think perhaps I’m a target market for various companies…I keep forgetting to use cashback schemes which is so silly!
Hey Tamsin, I’ve signed up with Valued Opinions too so let’s see how it all works out.