This is part two in my look back at my various efforts to make money online.
Amazon Affiliates – While this could have been a subset of blogging, I put it on its own. It was a miserable failure for me. I didn’t make one affiliate sale despite a handful of positive book reviews. But now, that doesn’t matter anyway.
Past Web Sites- I started my first website in high school. I will admit, it was a professional wrestling fan site. I just deleted it from Yahoo! GeoCities a few months ago actually. While a webmaster about ten years ago, I signed up for Yahoo’s pay per click advertising. I made about $5 from that one.
Selling Rap CDs – I am a professional Jewish rapper. I don’t mention that much on this site. Maybe if I did, I would sell more CDs. I have sold enough HWChet albums to pay for the costs, but those were all sold in person. I have never made an online sale, but I do have PayPal on the site if you are interested. A CD is just $5 plus shipping.
Paid Surveys- I used to try to fill out a lot of surveys online at Survey Savvy. Over several years and many, many rejections from the screening process, I have earned about $60 on Survey Savvy. If you are interested in signing up, please do so through my referral link. Or, contact me for a referral e-mail. I have referred two friends who have also been paid out for their surveys.
Honorable Mention – Swag Bucks
I have earned enough from Swagbucks to buy a season of one of my favorite shows on DVD for free. Swagbucks is a hybrid Google search engine that rewards you in Swagbucks for searching. For doing nothing more than I normally would, I have earned seven $5 gift cards for Amazon.com. There are thousands of prizes. You can also cash your bucks in for cash through PayPal. If you want to take advantage of this one, sign up through my link to give matching Swagbucks for your first 1000 bucks earned from search. I have had a friend sign up and she was thrilled with the site too.
Honorable Mentions – Free Stuff
I have earned lots of free stuff from e-Rewards. To join the site, you need a referral from one of the sponsoring companies. I got my invite through the Priority Club rewards program (Holiday Inn), though I have seen friends join up through the book store Borders as well. You can cash out for miles, hotel reward points, free magazines, and gift cards.
Ideas – Freelancing and eBook
In the future, I am planning to do a little online freelancing. I plan to do a combination of finance and writing projects. Sites like Elance show opportunity. I have also completed an eBook and I am in the final stages of editing and production. Expect to see it on the site in the near future.
Over the last eighteen months, you have read about my education many times. I have discussed student debt. I have discussed working while going to school at the same time. Well, my tone is about to change a bit. About 2o minutes ago, I finished my MBA program!
I was going to include the Amazon affiliate program with just a short blurb in my next post on how I make money online, but it is now in the list of how I don’t make money online in a big way. My account was closed along with every other affiliate in Colorado.
I know of many bloggers, such as Darren at ProBlogger, who make a lot of money from Amazon referrals. In my neck of the woods, that program is no more. Here is the letter from Amazon:
Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:
We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to “voluntarily” collect Colorado sales tax — a course we won’t take.
We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.
There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.
You may express your views of Colorado’s new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill.
Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.
We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.
Best Regards,
The Amazon Associates Team
To recap: “We don’t love you anymore because of something someone else did. Now fuck off.” My account has been closed. While Amazon was not a big money maker for me, it was an option. Now it is not.
I decided to join the “wolf pack” of the Yakezie Challenge. I was inspired while avoiding studying for finals. Well Heeled wrote a fun post on the challenge (see “wolf pack” link above.
The Yakezei Challenge is a group personal finance blogging effort started by the Finance Samurai to help personal finance bloggers join together in search of higher Alexa rankings.
For my first Yakezie post by giving away random links to other members with Alexa ranks lower than mine.
First on the list is Anastasia, who has a beautifully built blog on a platform notorious for ugly blogs that look the same.
The Stay at Home Mom CFO brings an opposite world view to my finance posts. I am a guy living alone in an apartment worried about myself. She has triplets!
Beating Broke is trying to, well, beat being broke. The site says that the borrower is slave to the lender. There is some truth to that wisdom.
The Rat is trying to end the rat race. It looks like the site has some great investing advice too.
I would keep linking all night, but I have yet again used blogging to avoid what I really should be doing right now: school work. On the bright side, I GRADUATE ON WEDNESDAY! If I can make it through my international finance final, I think everything will be okay. I will let you all know when you can call me Eric, MBA.
Like many of you, I have tried my best at finding opportunities to make money online. I have tried a handful of methods. Some have worked out really well. Some have not quite paid off. I hope to continue to expand my online income streams, so please give your best ideas in the comments below. The list is roughly in order from best to worst, but I did not use a scientific method to pick the order.
eHow Writer’s Compensation Program – eHow has been my biggest paying online money maker since I joined at the end of 2007. Over the roughly two years I have been a member, I have earned well over $1,000. Not a living by any means, but not too shabby either. After being accepted for the program, I wrote a total of about 35 articles over my two years. The best thing about eHow is that you make residual earnings on your articles. I make about $30 a month these days for not doing anything. For some reason, the earnings have fallen over time. You can see my articles under my user page: Eric1985 at eHow.
Demand Studios – Demand Studios is a subsidiary of Demand Media. Demand Media is the owner of eHow, so this overlaps a little bit. At Demand Studios, I am paid a fixed rate (I only take $15) or a residual for writing articles for eHow or a list of other affiliated sites. Something nice about Demand Studios, which requires a professional application, resume, and writing samples, is that the work is always there. I could potentially earn a full time income from the site if I put in the time. If has been my best success lately.
Blogging – Blogging is not something I do for big profits by any means, but it does produce a small income stream. I have made the $100 AdSense cutoff one time before, but it takes a long time to earn anything there. I have also earned income from sponsored posts and direct advertising sales. However, hosting and domain registration across my several domains makes blogging just a bit more than a wash. The hourly rate is dismal. I do it because I enjoy doing it. If you want to “pay me” for what I do here, the best way today is to sign up for one of my affiliate sites. I only choose affiliates that I really use in real life. You can sign up for Lending Club and get a $25 bonus or high interest checking and/or savings at ING Direct and I get a little something.
I got a lovely letter in the mail from Citi this week. Starting April 1st, if you spend less than $2,400 per year, you get a $60 fee for your Citi credit card.
I have verified this at a few other sites around the web. It is not just me. It is a lot of us. Click on the image below to read the entire letter.
This is not my first credit card to start charging an annual fee. I do like that Citi gives me a chance to get out of it, so I am not sure if I am going to close this card. It might be worth giving up the annual fee from my Charles Schwab card on $2,400 of purchases, $48 in rewards, to keep my credit score from being lowered. As we all know, average age of credit is an important part of your credit score.
What do you think? It is worth $48 today to keep my credit score up? Please give me your opinions in the comments.
No More Car Loan! That’s right. It is paid in full. The title came in the mail last week. I own my car outright. I now plan to pay $500 every month to my car loan.
I also received a bonus at work in February. I have set up a payment for this week for the amount of my bonus to my student loan.
I hope to pay down the student loans in far less than the 10 years I am given. If I put my tax return, bonus, and $500 per month, I should be all paid off in two to three years.
We have all heard of social media, social networking websites, and budgeting software website. One company took those ideas and created an interesting mash-up called Blippy.
Blippy allows you to link up your credit card or online profiles at sites like iTunes, Amazon.com, or Netflix to create a purchase feed. The feed shows the community or your friends what you have been spending your money on.
What I Like:
The site gives you community support and a little external pressure to follow your spending goals. If you are trying to cut back, and tell your friends, they can catch you red handed buying DVDs or wasting money at the mall.
The feed function can be a useful supplement to using sites like Mint.com or Thrive.
What I Don’t Like:
If you like your privacy, this is not for you. If you make a stop at Victoria’s Secret to buy a present for your wife/girlfriend, they might be able to see it ahead of time.
If it sounds like something you would like, visit Blippy to sign up for free. You can sign up easily using Facebook Connect or the Twitter API in just a few clicks if you want to connect your accounts.
This year I had an unexpected and pleasant surprise at work. I was awarded stock options for 700 shares pricing in March. The options vest 33.3% per year over the next three years.
It is exciting to be awarded options. This ties my compensation to the company’s performance over the next three years. From the company perspective, it is better to have employee compensation tied to company performance, as employees may work harder to ensure the company is successful.
Here is how employee stock options work, using my situation as an example:
First, I am notified that I will receive options. I was given the number of shares and the pricing date for the options.
On the pricing date in March, my options are given a fixed value per share. This is tied to the market price on that date. The price is called a strike price.
Every year for the next three years, a portion of those options become vested, or available for use.
If the market value of my company stock is higher than the strike price on any date past the vesting date, I have the option to buy shares of the company stock at the strike price. If the price is higher than the strike price, I can sell immediately for the market price and keep the profit. If it is below the strike price, the option is “out of the money” and I will not exercise the option.
As you can see, the mechanics of options depend on the market price compared to the strike price. No one would ever exercise options “out of the money,” because they would have to pay for the stock at a price higher than the market price.
While employee options have similar mechanics to buying and selling options on the market, there are many differences. Do not use this as a guide to buy and sell options.
I have been watching a few stocks lately that could be good investment opportunities. Some people think buying a stock means you believe in what the company do. Others follow the idea that “someone is going to make money, it might as well be me.”
The epitome of these stocks are represented by the Sin Fund, which invests exclusively in booze, gambling, tobacco, and weapons companies.
Would you buy a company that you don’t believe in? Please give your thoughts in the comments.
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