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18 Clever But Easy Ways to Make Extra Money For Christmas

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ways to make extra money for christmas

The holidays can be expensive. To cover this without wiping out your savings account, you may be looking for ways to make extra money for Christmas. If an extra $100 (or five) would help you out this holiday season, keep reading.

Invest With Stockpile

Stockpile can help you earn extra cash and it also makes for a great, low-cost Christmas gift. You can start with as little as $5. Stockpile helps you invest in big-name companies like Tesla, Nike, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. With this app, you can buy $50 of Amazon and instantly get 0.05 shares. Your money starts working for you almost instantly.

Become a Seasonal Customer Service Rep

During the Christmas season, retailers are busier than normal. Places like HSN, Groupon, Amazon, and high-traffic stores and websites need additional customer service help. These are typically seasonal (lasting until just after the new year) and can be worked from home. A part-time gig as a seasonal customer service rep will make you anywhere between $200 and $375 a week.

ways to make extra money for christmas

Spend Some Time With Furry Friends

Of all the ways to make extra money for Christmas, this is my favorite! Recently apps like Wag! and Rover have become popular among pet owners. If you’re headed out of town or will be away for the day, you can schedule a walker to visit with your furry friend, take them on a walk, and make sure they are fed and hydrated. Both services can help you pair your animal with overnight boarding locally as well.

Get Amazon Credit

Amazon gives out credit when you’re willing to trade in old items. If you have old books or things laying around the house, submit them to Amazon for consideration. Once you get the appraisal, you can accept. Then, send your items into Amazon and get a gift card in return. Depending on what you’re getting rid of, you can pay for your entire Christmas this way.

Driver With Uber or Lyft

Uber and Lyft have become full-time jobs for some people in the U.S., but it can also make a great part-time gig or seasonal job. Lyft drivers make around $17.50 an hour, on average. That is around $2 more than the average Uber hourly rate. However, drivers are more likely to make more in highly populated areas. For instance, Uber drivers in New York City are estimated to make around $25 an hour.

List Your Spare Room on Airbnb

Many people have begun to rent our spare rooms as a way of earning extra money. Airbnb made it possible for almost anyone to do so. Tidy up your guest bedroom and bath and post it to Airbnb. Be sure to take a look at other local listings before posting to be sure your price is competitive. If enough people express interest in your listing, you could make a few hundred or even a few thousand extra dollars before Christmas.

ways to make extra money for christmas

Get a Job as a Saucey Delivery Driver

Have you heard of Saucey? This delivery service will bring alcohol to your door in less than one hour. During the holiday season, more people will be having get-togethers and will be in need of this service. You can cash in by becoming a delivery driver for the company. Couriers get paid $5 per delivery, plus $0.50 per item. They also collect a tip. This often ends up equating to about $10 per hour. Delivery drivers can also sign up for specific shift hours so you can sign on for busier times to ensure you make more.

Make Money Writing

Freelance writing can be difficult to get into for a one-time gig. However, some individuals may be looking for single pieces of writing at this time of year. Some writers have been able to earn extra money for Christmas by writing witty, personalized jingles for Christmas cards or personalized storybooks for kids. Share on social media your willingness to do this and discuss pricing with your customer base one-on-one. You can make as much as $10 for a single card Jingle.

Earn More Cash Back

Many banks and credit cards up their cash back game around the holidays. You can earn 5x the usual amount of cash back through Ebates this holiday season. If you have a credit card with cash back rewards, you’ll want to read the fine print about what purchases and stores are included. Plan to shop at stores with higher cash back incentives and you’ll be able to restore some of your Christmas cash to your bank account.

Flip Your Stuff

Flipping things for extra money is no new concept. People have been doing it for quite some time. When it comes to flipping things for cash, many people think “cars,” but it doesn’t necessarily need to be a big-ticket item like that. Consider your skills and what you’d be able to do in a cost-effective manner. For instance, if you’re skilled at refinishing furniture, you could re-finished tables at little-to-no-cost to you. You can also repurpose old, broken items into new, reusable tools or decorations. Depending on how much you’re able to do, you could make hundreds before Christmas.

Get Paid to Get Healthy

Apps like DietBet and HealthyWage will pay you to be active, eat right, and get healthy. Christmas is a hard time on everyone’s diet and exercise routine. However, with DietBet and HealthyWage, you can bet on yourself and stay healthy through the holiday season. Not to mention, in the end, you’ll be able to win 1.5 to 2 times the amount you initially invested in the program.

Download the Dosh App

Like Ebates, Dosh offers cash back for certain purchases. At Walmart, for instance, you can get 3% cash back. On other purchases at other retailers, restaurants, or stores, you can receive as much as 10% cash back. You also get paid $5 every time you refer a friend when they sign up using your link. Some folks on Facebook have gotten as much as $300 in cash back and referrals almost instantly.

ways to make extra money for christmas

Deliver Groceries

Services like Instacart have been growing in popularity and with the holidays coming many people will need help getting groceries. Instacart delivery drivers can make between $7 and $20 an hour, depending on your travel time and tips. Most make around $11 an hour. However, there is no hourly guarantee with the company. The key to earning cash with Instacart is making yourself available for deliveries.

If delivering groceries isn’t your cup of tea, consider delivering other types of food. You can become a pizza delivery person or a driver for companies like DoorDash, UberEats, or Postmates.

House-Sit While Your Neighbors Are Away

Offer to house-sit when your neighbors head out of town for the holidays. Establish a price and any expectations they may have. You can also score house-sitting jobs by searching sites like Care.com, HouseSitter.com, or Craigslist. Typically, house-sitting pays between $25 and $35 a day. If it requires an overnight stay, prices may rise to $50 a day.

Find One-Time Gigs

Apps like Moonlighting make it easy to find and land one-time gigs like painting a bathroom or bedroom locally. In the app, you can sort through available jobs based on things you’re able to do. Tasks range from painting to yard work to website design. Pay varies by task. You can also sort jobs by the amount of the payment (just in case you have a specific number in mind).

Become an Amazon FBA Seller

Around 16.7% of Amazon sellers make over $1 million a year. Isn’t that crazy? And practically anyone can start their own Amazon FBA business. If you just need some extra cash for the holidays, you can start your own Amazon FBA store and let it sell throughout the year. Stash the extra cash away for Christmas and, who knows, maybe your business will really take off, and you can quit your day job!

Answer Surveys

There are a plethora of survey sites out there, but a few are worth a mention. Survey Junkie, Swagbucks, and InboxDollars pay between $0.50 and $5 per survey usually. If you’re dedicated to using the site and earning extra cash, you can make as much as $500 in one month. Though it will take some effort, you can do all of it from the comfort of your own home.

Babysit For Extra Cash

Care.com was mentioned above as a great place to find housesitting or pet-sitting opportunities. More often than not, it is used to match nannies to families. Whether you are needed for one night or you’re needed on a regular basis, you can earn between $20 and $25 as a babysitter. You can also solicit your babysitting services locally to neighbors and friends with kids. After all, parents need a bit of time alone to buy and wrap presents without the kids being home.

These are just a few ways to make extra money for Christmas. Do you have anything you’d add to the list?

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How to Make Money on Tumblr

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How to Make Money on Tumblr
Making money online is no longer a new concept but many people are always looking for new ways to earn some extra cash from the comfort of their own home. Many people make money through Facebook and Twitter accounts. Others earn income through WordPress blogs. If you have been looking for a new way to make money online you may want to find out how to make money on Tumblr.

Tumblr, for those who don’t know, is a website that allows users to create their own blogs and share their ideas and interests with other like-minded individuals. Many people use it to share photography or write short stories. However, you can use Tumblr to make money.

How to Make the Most of Tumblr

If you’re not already on Tumblr you may be missing out on an easy way to make some extra cash, especially if you are talented with social media. Before you try to monetize your Tumblr account, however, you should be sure that you are using your account to its fullest potential. Here are a few tips to make the most of your Tumblr account:

Establish a Voice

To be successful on Tumblr, whether you are trying to make money from it or not, you must establish a voice and an audience. This is the first step to making money on Tumblr. For instance, if you are trying to use Tumblr to drive traffic to your YouTube channel you will want to follow pages similar to yours, get follows back and make your YouTube channel known through your Tumblr page.

Stay Active

The next key to success with making money on Tumblr is to be consistent and stay active. Like any blog, Tumblr can be a lot of work to keep up with. Focus on staying active. You may want to set weekly posting goals for yourself or schedule days that you will work on promotions through Tumblr. For example, there are some people who have short stories on their Tumblr pages. Their followers know when they post because they have a posting schedule. They know that on Monday, Wednesday and Friday there is a new posting picking up where the last one left off. This will help drive traffic to your Tumblr page.

Use Keywords and Tags

Keywords and tags are important for Tumblr users as well as bloggers on any other site. If you use keywords and tags correctly you will pick up more search traffic. If your Tumblr page is about photography, for example, you would want to tag “photography” in every posting. This way if someone is searching for photography on Tumblr your page will come up.

How to Make Money on Tumblr

Making money online has become relatively easy. Tumblr is a place that not many people have looked to to grow their businesses though. As the website becomes increasingly popular more people will be looking to monetize their Tumblr pages. Here’s how you can do it:

Monetize With Ads

Like other websites and blogs you can monetize Tumblr with advertisements. You can do this with Google Adsense, Infolinks and Yahoo Bing Contextual Ads. Other companies may also provide advertisements for your Tumblr page depending on your following and the topic your page covers. Most of the ads that you will get to be placed on your Tumblr account are pay-per-click advertisements so it will pay off to already have your engaged audience established on the blogging site.

Affiliate Links and Sponsored Postings

Outside of graphic advertisements you can also have in-text links that provide revenue for your Tumblr blog. You can apply for affiliate accounts and solicit people for sponsored postings. What are affiliate links and sponsored postings you ask?

An affiliate link is a link provided by a company that you place within the text of your Tumblr blog. For every click through or purchase the company receives from your page, you will get paid. For example, Amazon affiliate links provide revenue for websites who place their links and website visitors click through and purchase something as a result.

Sponsored postings work in a similar way. A company, website or professional will send you a posting to use on your website. It will generally contain an external link to their website or business. They pay a flat fee for this posting.

Link to Your Business

If you are using Tumblr to promote another website be sure to link to your business, YouTube channel or blog as often as you can. For example, many Tumblr users use the site to promote their online store. They take photos of their products and post them to Tumblr with direct links to their store. This works in a similar way with YouTube and blogs. With a YouTube channel you will want to embed the YouTube video on Tumblr and with a blog you will want to provide a photo and a blurb about your blog posting that you are sharing.

Sell Your Knowledge

Lastly, another great way to make money on Tumblr is to sell your knowledge. If you have a great deal of knowledge about a specific topic you can make a great deal of money through Tumblr by linking to your website or offering paid virtual teaching sessions. You can do this with a variety of topics. For instance, some people have earned money teaching others how to make money on Tumblr. By marketing your expertise correctly, you can make a pretty penny simply by teaching others what you know.

Tumblr has been growing in popularity in recent years and it is no secret that many people love the medium as a way to communicate and share ideas with others. Why not capitalize on that and learn how to make money on Tumblr?

Have you use Tumblr to make some extra cash? How did you do it?

Photo: Flickr: Esther Vargas

Small Changes That Will Make a Big Difference to Your Wallet

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Small Changes to Save Big
You have probably heard about people making small changes that changed their entire lives. Whether it be cutting your grocery bill down by switching to a cheaper store or getting rid of cable and saving the cash every month, there are a lot of little habits you can change to make a difference in your financial life.

Saving money can be extremely hard, however, if you are having difficulty, you can take a few steps to make it a little easier on yourself. Some of the ways to save more money is to simply cut your bad habits.

Stop Wasting Time

If you get into the habit of simply doing something when you say you are going to do it, it can really help with your financial goals. If you keep saying that you want to stop buying groceries from the more expensive (but more convenient) supermarket, why keep putting it off? If you say that you want to stay in more and spend less, why put it off any longer? When you continually put these things you’ve been wanting to do off, you can really put a harmful dent in your long-term financial goals.

Spend Time Not Spending

Instead of spending time doing things that will make you spend more money, why not spend your time doing things that cost no money at all (or help you save money). There are plenty of free days at national parks, you can go to the public library or even look up cheap arts and crafts on Pinterest to pass the time. Of course, no one wants to sit at home and do nothing, but you don’t have to spend a ton of money.

Cut Down Your Activities

Sometimes you like doing an activity for fun. However, that activity is not always a great way to save money. Everyone has something they like to do, but when you stop to think about it, if you participate in the activities you really like all the time, they become less special. Many of these activities also hold very little long term value, so you aren’t getting much from it. If you are participating in something that you enjoy, maybe just dial it down (or cut it out if it is something you can really do without). It can help you save a ton of money.

Find Ways to Make Extra Money

This is another way to change the way you spend your time. If you spend some of your extra time working a second job, blogging for cash or even babysitting, you can earn some extra money. During the time that you are earning extra income, you won’t be out spending money. This is like a win-win for your wallet and your savings goals.

Small Changes Make a Big Difference

Even the smallest of changes, like the ones mentioned can have a huge impact on your life (and especially your wallet). It will take some time to form new habits, but it will be well worth it in the end. Saving money can be hard, but once you get into the swing of things, it can really change your life.

Photo: Flickr: 401(K) 2012

Ways to Make Extra Money Every Month (up to $1,000)

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Extra Money Each Month

People are often looking for ways to make a little extra money. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be rolling in the dough, however, it can really provide some financial stability or even a better way to save. When you are looking to make extra money, you can look at it a few different ways. However, the main focus is usually how much extra money you would like to make. The following ways to make extra money guarantee an extra $500 to $1,000 each month.

Cleaning Houses

You can make a decent amount of money cleaning houses and you don’t necessarily need to be a full-time maid to do that. Many people in more wealthy areas look to hire individual maids instead of hiring maids through companies. Then, by word of mouth, people will begin recommending you to friends, etc. You can make between $12 and $20 an hour cleaning houses usually.

Blogging

Blogging for income isn’t a really new concept. People have been doing it for quite some time. Many moms do it for extra money when they are staying at home with their kids. Blogging is also something that you can pick up and stop when you want to, so it is a great thing to do if you are making extra money for a short-term savings goal. Obviously, blogging can take time. However, some websites are willing to pay writers nicely for their time and efforts for a piece. You can also start your own blog and create a following. You can use some affiliate programs to make money with your own website.

Virtual Assistant

Blogging is a great way to make extra money, but so is being a virtual assistant! Bloggers, website owners and even business owners don’t always have the time they need to get everything they need done. Being a virtual assistant, you would help the website or business with whatever they need help with. This can vary from creating content to managing social media accounts to simple administrative assistance. You can do this from home so, that’s a plus too.

Babysitting

Babysitting is a relatively easy way to make extra money too. If you can market your services well and babysit a couple times a week, you can make some decent extra money. Many babysitters charge up to $15 per hour so the extra cash stacks up quickly and, like cleaning houses, if you are good at what you do, people will recommend you to their friends.

Mowing Lawns

This is another word-of-mouth job that you can get more clients the better your work is. Of course, mowing lawns is not a ton of fun, but it can pay nicely. You can charge about $50 per yard. If you’ve got five yards to mow each week, you can get an extra $250 per week and $1,000 per month. This takes a little bit of time and some physical effort, but could be worth the additional pay out.

Pet Sitting

Just like babysitting, pet sitting can be minimal effort and people will recommend you if you are good at it. Many people will pay up to $50 a day for someone to watch out for their beloved pets. This usually only takes an hour or two a day while the person is away on vacation and it can be a good way to make a little extra cash (up to $1,000 a month if demand is high).

Offer Up A Service

If you can offer a service that is need in your area, offer it! People will usually need it and, in tight knit communities, people will think of you first. You can offer things such as elderly care, grocery delivery, baker, consignment sale, arts & crafts and even hair cuts to your community. These can all be great ways to make a little extra cash.

Photo: Flickr: Pictures of Money

Is Teespring Legit or Is Teespring a Scam?

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There are a lot of people who are looking to make money online, but there are so many money making scams out there that most look at any opportunity which appears it may be legit with some amount of skepticism. This isn’t a bad thing. Being skeptical can save you from wasting time and money. This skepticism is especially strong when there is a claim of what initially appears to be too good to be true, such as no upfront costs needed to begin the business. Teespring is one of these companies that almost seems too good to be true.

Is Teespring Legit?

The first question is whether or not Teespring is legit. The company has been around for a few years now, and has even produced a number of millionaires and hundreds of people making six figures according to Forbes. In order to ascertain if Teespring is legit, it’s important to understand how they make money.

How Teespring Works

Teespring is rather ingenious by making it a win-win situation for all. Instead of creating a design, paying a T Shirt company to create the T Shirts and then hoping you can sell all of them to make a profit, Teespring has you create a T Shirt and set a goal of how many T Shirts you will sell. The more you think you will sell, the more money you’ll make if you reach the goal. If you don’t reach the stated goal, then the T Shirts are never produced and no money ever changes hands.

This is how Teespring is able to not charge an upfront fee. If you don’t hit the stated sales goal, they don’t have to produce the shirts so they don’t lose money. If you do reach the stated sales goal, a profit for you and the company have already been factored in so they produce the shirts and are guaranteed a profit.

Is Teespring Safe?

There is no real financial risk to using Teespring, therefore making the company safe. Since you don’t need to give any upfront money when using Teespring, you aren’t risking losing your hard-earned money. The real investment is your time. If you create campaigns that don’t reach their sales goals, you don’t earn anything.

What are Teespring Risks?

The biggest risk is costs you may incur when creating and trying to sell the T shirts. If you pay someone to design a logo or other image (you don’t have to, you can do this on your own), you may lose these costs if you don’t ultimately sell the T shirts you have set as a goal. The same can be true if you spend money to try and promote the T shirts. This money is gone and you don’t get anything for your investment in the advertising if you don’t reach the T shirt sales goal.

You also have a slight risk with the number of T shirts you think you can sell. The more you place as your goal, the more you will make for each shirt sold. The problem is that if you don’t reach the goal, then you get nothing. For example, if you set a goal of 50 shirts and sell only 49, the shirts are never produced and you get nothing. If, however, your set the goal at 10 T shirts and sell 49, you would get paid a commision for all the sales since you met the goal, but that commision would be less than if you had said you could sell 40 T shirts. Attempting to accurately estimate how many T shirts you can sell without overestimating is important to get the most money for your efforts.

Is Teespring a Scam?

Teespring is definitely not a scam. It’s a legit business. There are some risks, so it’s important to understand how the company works so you know what you’re getting into, but it’s a legit opportunity to make money without having to pay any upfront costs. If you think you are creative enough to come up with some T shirt designs which you could sell to others, you may want to check out Teespring as a possible way to make some extra money in your spare time.

For how to make a success of selling this business as well as other side businesses check out these articles.

Building Facebook Pages for T-Shirts Sales
How to Mix Investing and Small-Business Ownership
Side Jobs to Grow Your Bank Account

(Image courtesy of Teespring)