$213.50 for three marbles. Who knew?!
I have been having fun selling on eBay over the past few weeks. I had bought a Goodwill vase full of antique marbles a few years ago, researched them using a library book and am only now getting around to listing them online. I had thought I needed to photograph them perfectly, but I finally decided that less than perfect was better than nothing at all. This may sound like pocket change, but this lot of three marbles alone sold for $213.50. Mostly, they’re selling for less, but it’s still going to be a rather profitable endeavor.
Although I have a day job as a labor and delivery nurse, I am always looking for ways to finesse some extra money. The way I think of it, my work money goes towards the expenses of daily life, and anything extra can guiltlessly be spent on saving for extras like travel or my kids being able to afford college some day. I clean rental houses for my mother, I blog, (although the amount I make from blogging is laughable. Despite thousands of daily readers, I made less than $35 last month!) I’m planning a garage sale for this weekend and I sell stuff on Craigslist every now and again.
But I would like to hear from you, the readers. What do you do to bring in extra money? Do you sell on Etsy? Do you participate in surveys? Do you play your guitar on street corners?
Please write your money making hacks in the comments section below. I look forward to hearing your stories and maybe even learning a trick or two.
I would love to get as many ideas as possible through this post, so please feel free to repost it on your blog or share it on your Twitter or Facebook. Hey, we could all use an extra buck or 213!
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”
{ 66 comments… read them below or add one }
I want ideas. I don’t have anything good to sell (used textbooks?) and though I knit, I’m not prolific enough to do it regularly. I’m in grad school, so something like an extra $30 here or there would go a long ways!
If you’re near a university with a psychology or a cognitive science department, the researchers there are often looking for people to participate in their experiments (usually advertised by posters or on their websites). I know that brings to mind images of mad scientists, but really they’re mostly just looking at pictures on computer screens and pressing buttons on a keyboard. The pay isn’t fabulous, but I participate in them from time to time to get an extra $15-20 and sometimes they’re actually kind of fun, too 🙂
Great idea! I remember participating in those experiments in college, although I remember only getting extra credit.
Katy
You end up with really great stories from doing those experiments as well. It trulyis a little adventurous and the times that I’ve done them there’s always been some crazy thing (the old ladies measuring the fat layer in my buttocks for the US Army, for instance). It’s entertainment as well as income.
I sell the bigger things on Craigslist. I have lots and lots of high end kids’ clothes that I resell, though I have buckets full that I need to get moving one of these days. I also buy things when I find ridiculously cheap sales and then I resell them on Craigslist for a profit.
My kids and I do pilot studies for grants at work. We participate in any studies that we qualify for.
I do online surveys, though, I’ve been slacking there. If you are diligent you can bring in a nice chunk of play money.
I stop through links like Shop At Home and get cash back for all my purchases. I order things for friends and family all the time (since I am the deal finder anyway) and then get those % cash back too!
Where online does one sign up for survey taking? Seems like there are plenty of phishing sites out there, and the last thing I need is to LOSE money when trying to MAKE some!
Lindean, I use Fusion Cash. There are daily survey options, as well as a lot of other ways to earn cash, which I think makes it easier than the straight survey sites. I could never really get into those, but I consistently get checks from Fusion Cash. They also pay for referrals, and if you’d like to throw me a bone you can click over to my blog and then click the Fusion Cash tab for my referral link 🙂
Besides that, I use Ebates for absolutely everything, and have made some decent money on Craigslist and Ebay. I’ve never purchased anything with the express intent to sell for a profit, but I’ve recouped a lot of money on stuff that I didn’t want anymore.
I’ve tried many online survey sites, and I have settled on Opinion Outpost, and stopped using the others I’ve tried. (Survey Spot: never made a dime. Cash Crate: too much spam even in a separate account to receive its emails. Inbox Dollars: too slow to accumulate enough money to cash out.) With Opinion Outpost, I make about $20-40 a month just doing the surveys I qualify for. Definitely fill in the personal questionnaires as part of your Opinion Outpost profile, because once I did that, they were able to send me more surveys that I qualified for. Good luck!
Just out of curiosity, couldn’t you actually make more money just working an extra shift? I’m just wondering how the pay for, say, cleaning you mom’s rentals compares to your day job . . . You have to spend time away from your family from both of them, right?
I can understand the selling stuff on Ebay – just something to do right from home to pull in the extra $$!
Yes, I would make more money working overtime, but that would require me to be away from home. Everything I do I fit in between getting the kids off to school, running a household, writing a blog and planning and cooking meals.
The house cleaning is done while the kids are at school.
Also, my key to not getting burned out in my job over the 16 years that I’ve held it, is to not work endless hours.
Katy
I do lots of focus groups and mystery shopping. Some months I can make and extra $1000 and some months nothing…just depends on what is out there and what I qualify for. I have also begun petsitting once in awhile and that brings in a little bit of cash too.
How do you find these, Renee?
The most reliable way i have found to have extra cash is not to spend it. I try not to keep cash on me because it is too easy to buy magazines, snacks, etc. If its not there i cant spend it, and it stays in my bank account. 🙂
Same here. Its hard but that is what I do as well
Like you, I sell things on eBay and at times, have done quite well with that. I used to have a flea market booth that did fairly well, but we moved and decided it was no longer worth the drive to maintain it. I sell some things on craigslist, but I’d say I actually give away more than I sell there. It’s good karma and it always seems to come back to me somehow.
I do mystery shopping from time to time. Some of the shops don’t pay much, but some can be quite lucrative for the time spent. I’ve been known to open bank accounts just for the bonus cash they’ll put in at a later date. I’ve done a product sampling/demo a couple of times.
I use Swagbucks and I anticipate having enough amazon.com credits to fully fund our Christmas gifts this year (for us, that amounts to about $250).
Yes, I’m interested as well…how do you get to be a mystery shopper?
Get Rich Slowly recently had a column about mystery shopping:
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/04/15/money-making-hobbies-mystery-shopping-and-belly-dancing/
Katy
I just did an internet search for “mystery shopping” or “secret shopping”. I suppose there are some scams out there, but I’ve never encountered any companies that weren’t legitimate. Just keep in mind that you should NEVER have to pay to sign up for any mystery shopping company. They pay you, not the other way around.
how do you get into mystery shopping?
i just started doing a couple online surveys…but so far, i’m not sure if it’s worth the money.
Holy smokes! I can’t believe you sold three marbles for $213! What makes them so special? Just curious.
Beauty and scarcity I guess.
Katy
I actually worked a second job on the weekends and pocketed at least 3/4 of that money for a trip that I had planned for my 50th birthday. It was direct deposited right into my account, so I never actually saw cash and was able to watch the bank account increase. Now I’ve cut back working the 7 days a week (yes I was working all of that until my trip) I miss watching the bank account increase. So, yes, I will be putting in a few hours here and there so that I have some spending money for my future trips.
If I do get hold of cash, I stash $5.00 away in a jar right away. And to my surprise when I opened the jar this week after not opening it for a few months cause I forgot about it, there was money already in there. Yeah!
I save all my loose change (my husband has more of that than me, because I try not to carry cash) and periodically roll it. Recently I got $25 that way!
yea, we also have a change jar! it’s an old half gallon milk jar. i cash it every december and it’s between 100-200$
i have a jar next to the washing machine to put change from pockets in, then occasionally add that to the big one in our bedroom. i find change all over the place when cleaning: in pockets, in the car, under sofa cushions, etc.
I’ve started teaching small classes sometimes to bring in a bit of extra money. I’ve discovered that some of the things I taught myself to do for entertainment (sewing quilts, cooking, writing fiction, gardening) are things that other people will pay me to teach them!
I sell on Etsy (shameless plug! http://www.etsy.com/shop/crazymegg?ref=pr_shop_more)
I also housesit when I can, though this isn’t as common as it has been in the past, sadly. Before I started working fulltime I also babysat. Sometimes I sell extraneous stuff we have on craigslist too. I haven’t ventured into Ebay yet though! It kinda overwhelms me to be honest!
We use Craigslist and garage sales to unload our junk… uh, *unused items*.
My daughter also participates in Psychology experiments at the local University (the pays not great but as far as my daughter is concerned its as good as going to the park and they usually send her away with a free book to boot).
Very recently I’ve started doing piecework for a textbook publisher and we’re looking into selling photo prints online.
As a college student in a small, mostly elderly town, I’m the first person many people think of for housesitting jobs. It can be a pain to split myself between two homes, buy I usually tell the people I sit for to “pay me whatever they think is fair” and I almost always get more than I expect. Or, if it’s a good friend, I’ll do it for the small fee of a stocked fridge 🙂 Either way it saves me some money!
I’m a high school art teacher. I end up teaching private lessons, or working as a contractor at summer programs during the summer, and sell my own artwork here and there which all adds to my income.
I’ll do some work as a pet sitter and dog walker, especially during the summer months. I collect and sell a lot of older video game systems via ebay and Ed McKays. I’ll also pick up some odd jobs, fixing a car here, helping a coworker move, fixing my grandparent’s friend’s computer. Those extra $20 here and there add up.
I just blogged about this the other week. The inspiration: reading about your marble sales on Twitter!
We have a part share in season hockey tickets and flip most of them. My husband gets to go to a few games for free and then we make some extra from playoffs. Most of the extra income I have made in the last year has been from selling our stuff as we de-clutter. Got some ideas from comments on my blog post on the subject and there are some good ones here too. My son is very young (18 months) so I need things I can do from home that don’t require hours of single tasking work.
I do freelance work when I can (I’m an editor) but have recently been overloaded with that, so I’ll be scaling back on it. I also do market research, mainly online (plus the occasional focus group) and sell things on eBay.
I one time threw a “pedicure” party for all my friends & co-workers. A friend wanted to host and provide the food, I went to the dollar store and bought all the supplies for like 15 bucks and everyone who came paid me like 15-20 bucks to do their toes!! I had a great time & they did too. I never claimed to be a professional but it is nice to relax and have pretty nails 🙂
Also every year I buy deals for all the beer fest tokens…usually 2 radio stations has 50% off tokens for one day..I buy at least 3 or 4 of them..go have fun at beerfest and then sell all my 50% off tokens to everyone just coming in the door for a tiny discount from what the vendor is selling it for. I have always had a great time at beerfest and end up making money.
I cat sit even though my husband and I are both allergic. We make good money doing this occasionally ( all that money goes to our vacation fund) and just take some OTC meds in order to make do. We also dog sit, or trade dog sitting with friends. That way we know that whenever we go somewhere our friends will take our dogs as we have done it for them. We have never had to pay someone to stay with them. I recently bought an antique Singer Sewing Machine at Goodwill for $20. I am going to try to sell it on Craigslist. I have one myself that is valued at $500. So I saw it at Goodwill and snatched it up. In the past I have sold textbooks on Amazon and even books I had no interest in keeping. My grandmother always gave me books whether I was interested in reading them or not, so I began selling them.
I board my 2 horses at a barn and for years I cleaned stalls in exchange for their board. If you are near a boarding stable, check it out. It is a very labor intensive venture, and you can usually find some work. There are many kids who work for part of their board or for free or reduced lessons. The younger people will also clean saddles for a fee.
I sell all the kids clothes in consignment sales which also gets me a chance to “preshop” the sales beforehand. I usually come out ahead after I get the next size up for my kids. I also LOVE craigslist for bigger items!!
I sell on eBay (over 2900 positive feedback!) and Craigslist. I get the items I sell (mostly books and Barbies) at garage sales, thrift stores, auctions, storage facility auctions, and library book sales. I also do a lot of mystery shopping. I throw an occasional garage sale (mostly the stuff that didn’t sell on either eBay or Craigslist, plus some of my own de-cluttered items). And now I am starting to sell AeroGrow hydroponics kits. I am always on the lookout for a new way to make money though!
I don’t have any creative money-making ideas to add, but I just have to say, Katy, that you are so creative and smart to even recognize what an antique marble is! Good for you. (I would have probably just thought they were extra-pretty, and then let my kids play with and eventually lose them somewhere in the house.)
When I moved 3,000 miles away from a job I loved (& they loved me) I arranged to be able to continue to work for them as a contracted employee. Since I had some specialized knowledge and they liked me they agreed. And it brings in an extra $1,000 a month for our family.
I also do online surveys (mostly just Pinecone) and mystery shopping. Mystery shopping mainly just allows us to go out to eat for free (or mostly free since I only do the shops that let me bring the whole family and they often don’t reimburse that much). Or do other fun activities. This last weekend we went on a ferry ride that alone cost over $100 and we’d really been wanting to do it anyway. Plus it paid me $100 and got 2 free meals.
WOW! I know my mom has old marbles somewhere. I need to send her this post.
A couple of years ago, a local jewelry store ran a full page ad in our paper offering to buy gold jewelry/pieces. I cleaned out my jewelry box, because I knew I had gold jewelry that was either broken or I would never wear again…a la early 90’s. I walked out of the store with $150. That stuff would have sat in my jewelry box for another 20 years had I not read that ad.
We save change too. My husband never spends change, and in Canada we have $1 & $2 coins, so it adds up really quickly. We usually roll about $400-$500 a year that way. Now I’m saving up for a new sofa.
I also Mystery Shop a bit, but I found a lot of the jobs paid too little to justify the bus fare. I did make $85 getting my eyes tested though!
I manage the local Certified Farmers Market during the Summer and Fall ($100 for the day). I sell watermelon fresh from the field during July and August and pumpkins in the Fall (by the truck load). I don’t grow the melons or the pumpkins…my husband and son grow crops for hybrid seed. The females are harvested for the seed and the males are left in the field, usually to be plowed up. I sell the males. I sell them for $1.00 ea. I average $100 a truck load and usually sell 10-20 loads a day 4 days a week…it’s pretty good money. My grandkids have a produce and egg stand in front of the house and make about $100. a day during the summer. Pretty good for 2 eight year olds and a 10 year old.
That is awesome!
Katy
I agree, that is awesome!!! Sounds like a blast, even if it is hard work!
I occasionally sell the things I find in the dumpster that it turns out I don’t need, I take part in psychology studies, or I put on my street musician hat for a couple of hours on sunny days.
Lots of good ideas here, and I do many of them myself, so I won’t repeat them. The only other thing I do, that I didn’t see mentioned here, is credit card points. I’m okay shopping with credit cards because I don’t spend beyond my means, and I always pay off my balance every month, in full, faithfully. (I would never pay those absurd fees.)
Chase Freedom and Discover are my favorite cards. They both offer schedules of 5% back in certain categories, for example, 5% back on all grocery purchases for the month of June. Chase is a bit more generous because they will let you earn 5% back on up to $1,500, while Discover caps it at $200. I watch the schedules and then I buy gift cards during the promotion period, and spend down the gift cards slowly, over time. For example, I could never spend $1,500 on groceries in 1-2 months. So I buy $1,500 in gift cards at my grocery store, get the 5% back, then take many months to use up the gift cards. (Course, this assumes you can afford to front the cash.) It works great. I just hope the credit card companies don’t change the rules and say that gift cards don’t qualify towards the extra cash back.
Another place I will buy a gift card for is Home Depot, during the month that gives you 5% back at home improvement stores. My husband is always going there for one thing or another.
I also shop via www,ebates.com and http://www.mrrebates.com when I’m buying gifts, for extra cash back on purchases I would make anyway. A good place to get deals, if you like to get magazine subscriptions, is http://www.magazines.com , combined with the discount at ebates or mrrebates, where they often give back as much as 25% or 50%. I often get subscriptions for $5-10.
I make a substantial amount of money tutoring kids. I have a teaching background. I wouldn’t want to, but I could build up a full time tutoring business and bring in more than my regular job.
I do a bit of reselling of vintage items on Etsy, and I do focus groups now and then.
Online surveys and focus groups for me too…not much money, but enough extra change for a movie here and there or a $10 check for lunch out once in a while. Be careful, though…choose only those that are legit. I find focus groups on craigslist under Etc or sometimes domestic. I sew and quilt baby quits by hand and have sold some on etsy and craigslist.
And, Katy, I want to find some marbles like that to sell!
I’ve been following Katy’s posts about the marbles. I have a quart-size jar full of marbles I collected as a kid, many of them given to me by aunts and uncles, and some that I dug out of the dirt in the garden at the 1905 house we lived in. Some are clear amber colored, some clear red or green, many swirled. Now I’m intrigued, Katy!
I’ve been collecting unemployment since my copy editor job at a daily Detroit newspaper was cut 17 months ago, and I’ve considered re-selling items I find at rummage sales and thrift stores (my husband works full-time). I’d have to prepare first: buy a postal scale so I can weigh the stuff and price the shipping properly, research items’ worth, and above all, SELL and not hoard stuff in the basement!
eBay takes a bit of dedication, and I’ve preferred to use my spare time reading a book rather than photographing, downloading, and shipping items, but if I continue to be jobless, I just may set time aside. The items I’ve sold on eBay have generally been clothing and household items I’d actually used, not ones I bought to resell, although a few years ago, I did buy a set of three Fire King polka-dot pattern bowls for $2 at a garage sale and sell them for $60 on eBay.
I passed up a tulip-pattern Fire King bowl for $7 at a thrift store the other day, and a few days later, a gorgeous, three-section mirror with beveled edges, flowers etched into the glass, and a blue mirrored crest at the top. It looked like it might have been from the ’30s or ’40s. They wanted $35 for it but the next day was the store’s weekly half-off day. These are the sorts of items I could probably make a few bucks off, nothing to live on, but some extra spending money. Maybe I’d donate my profits to the animal shelter where I volunteer.
I agree with some of the other comments’ sentiment that a good way to save is to just not spend. Since I quit buying retail a couple of years ago, I find that if I don’t peruse catalogs or go to retail stores, I don’t miss the stuff I used to buy on impulse!
Back in the late 60’s – early 70’s earning money outside your regular job was called “patchwork economics”, now it’s referred to as “multiple streams of income”, in any case, ever since college, in the mid 60s, I’ve found whatever I can to earn more.
It includes selling homemade yeast breads, selling plant starts, yard sales twice yearly and using Craigslist to sell off more expensive items.
The money earned is used for specific purposes – a battery powered mower bought 2nd hand that eliminated our need for commercial lawn care (paid for itself in 4 months); bed & bedding for a guest room; paying off a credit card from an emergency overnight stay for a medical event.
I have to say, those are some beautiful marbles. I’ve never even played marbles, and I’d have a hard time parting with them.
eBay, mystery shopping, babysitting (in my home) None of it adds up to much, but it pays a bill here and there, puts gas in the car or allows us an extra night out to eat!
My husband and I are starting our de-cluttering by selling books on Amazon. Most of the books we are selling are from college and we haven’t touched them since so we won’t miss them. Sometimes they aren’t worth anything (if there is a new edition out or if many other people are selling the same books), but we made about $150.00 last month and now have more room on our bookshelf! 🙂
I moved to a more socialist province which gives more money to families with children. In 18 years our taxes will be much higher though 🙂
I have done some selling on Amazon and eBay in the last several months. Mostly stuff we had, but also a few things I purchased with the intention of re-selling.
I also do credit card rewards. One year both my jusband and I were offered American Express cards with no annual fee the first year. On top of that they offered 50,000 for a small amoun of use ($500 if I remmebr correctly). We were able to score two $500 Home Depot gift cards as a result.
I learned how to read astrology charts many many years ago.I also have a good dollop of intuition and include a reading of the tarot cards. Over the years I offer readings at way less than the “psychics to the stars”– I charge $60 and have a few clients per month. Years ago i did this as a full time living (ANOTHER STORY,wait, no, a BOOK!) At this time of my life I don’t want to work that hard.But the extra money and the feeling of being of good service ,doing it part time, are great!
I volunteer for extra hours when they are available, which is easy since I telecommute.
I’ve sold things on Ebay, though I haven’t done that in quite some time. It can be really time consuming.
In a few years, once our large garden is in full swing, I plan on having a produce stand at the gate of our property by the road. I’ll probably have it open at set hours a few times a week and plan to focus on some basic crops, such as tomatoes, green beans, salad greens, onions & garlic. I’m really looking forward to that!
I love seeing everyone’s methods for `patchwork’ income!
Extra money is hard to come by lately, but I’ve rustled some business using Etsy, like many of my crafty associates. My hubby and I just moved to Sydney, Australia from Portland at the beginning of the year to attend grad school and bask in the sunshine (highly SPFed of course!). Being grad students and not working means we are living off our savings and trying to be frugal. I found my artistic skills could actually be profitable by using my wacky ink style to create commissioned portraits. I sell this service through Etsy and finish them in my free time.
Side-note: Thanks for the great blog! It’s made me miss Portland even more than I already do, but it has also inspired me to be more frugal. Something needed at this moment! Gosh I wish we had Goodwill here…
I recently started selling on Etsy http://www.etsy.com/shop/KnitNicoleKnit
I’ve only sold a few things, but it’s paid for a few small purchases, and the rest is sitting in my paypal account, waiting for my other income sources to bump the balance up to $150 so I can withdraw.
I list gigs on Fiverr http://www.fiverr.com/users/knitnicoleknit
You basically state random little things you’ll do for $5. When you do them, you make $4, and the company keeps $1. I’ve made over $50 this way with really easy little gigs!
I do surveys through Opinion Outpost http://OpinionOutpost.com/join/5784994
I’ve made nearly $100 on this since 2008. It takes a few minutes of my time a couple times a week, and I get a deposit into my Amazon account. I then use that to buy gifts I otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford.
There are other ways, but these ones are the major ones right now.
Thanks for the marble pricing guide information. That’s super helpful as I’m currently selling off a variety of crazy childhood collections so I can afford to do my Semester Abroad… 20 years after graduating college… this fall.
What do I normally do to make extra money? Not spend it on things that aren’t memorable. Seriously, I could have a Starbucks coffee today or I could have an espresso in Italy. Which one will I enjoy more?
“I could have a Starbucks coffee today or I could have an espresso in Italy. Which one will I enjoy more?”
That is a great way of thinking about it. Thanks!
Katy
I resell my used clothes and shoes to Buffalo Exchange, and books to Powell’s (I’m in Portland), whatever they don’t take I drop off at Goodwill. I just brought books to Powell’s the other day and got $39 cash, which went to my vacation fund. I also average $40/mo. doing surveys at Opinion Outpost, also to pad our vacation fund. My husband and I both work and we don’t need this extra money, but I’m “genetically” frugal (ha!) and it feels good to make these little deposits. Way to go on the $213 marbles! That’s awesome! 🙂
Hi all
I work for Opinion Outpost and wanted to tell Bobbi and Nicole thanks for talking about Opinion Outpost in the comments above.
if anyone has any questions about survey research come check us out at http://www.opinionoutpost.com.
Find a unique and/or useful product that you can sell for under $10.00 and still make a very good profit and sell in at a flea market.
I think that one of the best ways to make money online are paid surveys.I know that most of them are scams, but there can be found legit surveys.Here are several links to trusted survey directories:
http://www.elitesurveysites.com/
http://free-paid-surveys.info/
http://www.getpaidsurveys.com/
All you have to do is find your favorite survey and join them.Don’t join if you have been asked to pay.Most legit surveys are free.
How did you get them back? It just happened to me tooMicrosoft Visio