I have a confession to make... ...I come from a long line of roadside antiquers on my mother's side of the family. Truth be told, I used to be mortified as a kid when we would be driving along and my Mom would suddenly pull over to inspect something interesting at the curb on bulk pick-up day. Now I understand why she always insisted on driving a station wagon! She's found big wheels, strollers and other items that she cleaned up and gave away. And her recipients were happy to receive these "gently used" items. There was one time when I was a teenager that she made me help to carry a dresser from the neighbor's curb down the street into her house. That dresser is still being used today, over 20 years later. Seeing that dresser when I visited my [+]
If you live in the Northeast as I do, you know what a long, cold, precipitous winter we've had. Today, it's sunny and cold, and the spring flowers are starting to pop up through the ground. Which means that spring is just around the corner- yippee! So now that Mother Nature has given us a hint that warmer weather is coming soon, it's time to go through that closet you've been ignoring all winter and clean it out. Find the clothes and items that you didn't wear or use last season. Dust them off and sell them! C'mon, be honest and ruthless in your assessments and just let them go. You know that you are not going to wear them, so give somebody else a chance. It will free up your storage space and help increase your positive cash flow too. As [+]
1- Make your sale a value-added proposition by throwing in something extra for “free”. Gift wrap, gift cards, a gift box, you name it! The perception of getting something for free can loosen the purse strings! 2- Speaking of free, follow the leaders and offer free or discounted shipping options just for today. If it lifts sales, consider free shipping every day. 3- Since a picture is worth a thousand words, include as many pictures as you can in your listings. This will give shoppers the best views of the item and minimize questions about your listing. 4- Take advantage of the deals that online websites are offering, including eBay’s 100 free insertion fees. You only pay if your item sells. 5- Consider offering what matters most to consumers who shop late in the season… expedited shipping options. 6- Vary the shipping option choices so [+]
Need extra cash around the holidays? Take a look around your house as if you are attending a tag sale! Viewing your possessions as if they belong to somebody else will give you the objectivity you need to determine what is most likely to sell. (And you will be minimizing the clutter that accumulates so easily the longer you have lived in your current home.) Here are five starting points for you: 1- Open your kitchen cabinets to survey exactly how many of your “good” dishes, glasses, pots and pans you actually use on a regular basis. Most of us gravitate toward using the same things over and over because they are up front after emptying the dishwasher. So clean out those cabinets! There is a terrific online market for utensils, plates and other kitchen items. And if you have antique [+]
Alright, my brother Eric told me about a new site that he is using to make a few extra dollars a month. Now let me preface this post by saying you are not going to get rich on Amazon's Mechanical Turk site, however, you can make some extra cash. My plan is to make about $50 a month and then use that to make extra payments on my home mortgage. So what is this funny sounding Mechanical Turk website? The actual site is http://www.mturk.com and it is run by Amazon. Mechanical turk allows you to sign up as a worker and perform HITS - "Human Intelligence Tasks." These tasks range from answering surveys to classifying job descriptions to writing short product reviews. I would recommend signing up for a free email [+]
eBay is a huge worldwide marketplace. There are lots of buyers and also lots of sellers on the site. Whereas Craigslist is perfect for selling larger items to your local marketplace, eBay is better suited to selling items that are easier (and cheaper) to ship and perhaps of more value. Unlike Craigslist, it will cost you money to both list your product for sale and then when you sell you item there will be a final value fee. In addition, eBay really pushes their PayPal payment option which will also cost you a small percentage of the total take, but will allow a person buying your item to pay by credit card. You will have to complete a relatively simple registration for a user account for eBay and for PayPal. I recommend setting up a [+]
So we cleaned up our space and got organized. Today we are going to discuss selling some of the stuff that we are no longer using, need, want, etc. This will help us in our pursuit of extra income and also help us to think clearer. Remember a cluttered environment can be a huge contributor to procrastination! One of the best online marketplaces is Craigslist.com. The site gets an impressive amount of visitor traffic, it is fairly well organized into categories and most important it is FREE to list items for sale! Craigslist allows you to target your local marketplace so it is really great for selling larger items that would be problematic to ship. (Example - This week I am putting a 30 gallon fish tank and an antique Singer Sewing machine [+]
As we begin our journey into making extra money online, I am starting to think about things that get in the way of dedicating time to building an after-hours business. One of the biggest impediments to starting and running a home business is not being well organized. Organization as they say is key - I suggest using a product like Microsoft's OneNote - it allows you to group your ideas. For example - you will need to group your business ideas, your accounts - web, etc, receipts for tax purposes, to-do lists, etc. In addition, a clean well-organized space to run your business will facilitate clear thinking, allow easy access to what you are looking for and it also just makes you feel good. So clean out the space around your computer. If you haven't touched something in that area for [+]
Money goes all too quickly these days. Everyday living is just getting more and more expensive. The purpose of this blog is to explore how we can make money say Hello! (Hopefully hang out and stay awhile too!) We will primarily explore ways to make extra money. Most of us are still employed. However, a lot of us are worried if that will still be the case tomorrow. Wouldn't it be great to generate another ADDITIONAL income? You could use it to pay down debt, to take a family vacation or just to save and start to build the security your family deserves. The internet provides abundant opportunities for the motivated to generate some extra cash. In the coming days, weeks and months, we will explore Affiliate Marketing and discuss what works and what does not work. We will review affiliate marketing [+]
