photo credit: joshuaheller
Earlier this week I asked what you would like to read about and one of the topics you wanted to read more about is alternative income. Thursdays will now be dedicated to the topic of alternative income. I have a category for alternative income but haven’t written much on it lately since I haven’t developed any new sources of alternative income. Therefore I will just update you on how I am doing with my current sources of alternative income. Perhaps I will start breaking out passive income from my alternative income as well. Since I don’t have a job all of my income could be considered alternative income depending on how you define the term “alternative income.” To start things off I am going to do something every day next month to increase my alternative income. There will be weekly updates and I will share any new sources of alternative income I discover.
Alternative Income
Search and Win Gift Card with Swag Bucks
Swag Bucks is an online portal dedicated to helping you earn digital dollars called “Swag Bucks”, which can be redeemed for exclusive swagbucks.com merchandise. There is a variety of merchandise but gift cards are what I’m most likely to use my Swag Bucks for. You can get a $5 Amazon.com gift card for 45 Swag Bucks which seems to be one of the better deals. It takes a different number of Swag Bucks to earn a same denomination gift card depending on the retailer.
This is somewhat similar to the Moola.com search and win that I used to participate in before they ended it. The Moola deal was good while it lasted and I’ve made a couple bucks this month from my referrals participating in the deals they still have. I’ve just started Swag Bucks and I’m hoping it will work at least as well as Moola for me. It does have the recommendation of other bloggers I read.
The best way to benefit from a program like this is to have referrals because you also earn points when your referrals earn points. If you would like to give this a try just sign up using my Swag Bucks referral link.
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November Income Challenge
I decided not to work while I’m in school this semester. The idea was I’d increase my side income to make up some of the loss of job income. I have managed to increase my side income some but I should be doing much better. The combination of laziness and procrastination has led me to not dedicate nearly enough of my spare time to making money.
In order to reverse that trend I’ve created a November Income Challenge for myself. I’m going to do something to make money every day of the month. Blogging won’t count. It has to be something that will definitely make money. Some examples are surveys, mystery shopping, writing for Associated Content, and bank bonuses.
I’ll post a roundup once a week or so of what I’ve done to make money. For Thanksgiving and other days where I know I’ll be too busy to do any money-making activities I’ll do an extra money maker the day before or after. I’ve had mixed success with challenging myself recently but I think I can meet this challenge. If anyone else wants to do their own income challenge let me know and I’ll link to your results.
Alternative Income: Peer-to-Peer Lending
Peer-to-Peer lending (P2P) also known as social lending is a way for people to borrow or lend money without going through a bank. The main P2P site is Prosper.com. Another P2P site, Loanio, just recently launched. Lending Club is another P2P site but it is not currently accepting new lender registrations or loan committments and its future is uncertain. To get a good idea of how these sites work read the faqs and overview articles on their sites.
These sites can be a good way to make extra money and have worked out well for me. I have nine loans with Lending Club and two with Prosper and haven’t had any late payments or defaults yet. The average interest rate on the loans is over 11% which compares very favorably with the negative return of my stock investments. Some people view these loans as risky but I don’t think they’re overly risk for the return on investment. If you just want to keep your money safe you can put it in an ING Direct or FNBO Direct savings account. You’ll only recieve 2.75% APY or 3.50%APY though which doesn’t compare well with the over 11% returns available from P2P lending.
I haven’t invested much in P2P loans yet because I wanted to see how they would perform. It has only been ten months since I started making loans but I’m pleased with the results so far. I’ve seen other bloggers who’ve had bad results. I made loans mostly to people with high credit grades and relatively low debt to income ratios which seems to have helped reduce my risk. Or maybe I’ve just been lucky.
I plan to invest more in P2P loans once I start making extra money. The monthly payments would work out very nicely if manage to retire early.
The $25 referral bonuses the P2P sites give is also a nice source of income. I’ve already made more in bonuses than I’ve invested in loans so I’m kina freerolling now. If you’d like a referral for a $25 bonus send me an email or leave a comment.
Alternative Income- Cash Back
This isn’t really an alternative income source since you have to spend money to get it. If you only purchase things you would spend money on anyway though this provides a little extra money. There are two main ways that I get cash back.
The first way is through online cash back shopping portals. The ones I most commonly use include Ebates ($10 signup bonus), Big Crumbs, and My Points. There are many more out there but these are the ones I’ve used and know.
I’ve mainly used Ebates for online shopping. Their cash back is good but they only let you cash out four times a year and you have to earn a minimum of $5.01 not counting referral bonuses to cash out. This is a problem for me since don’t shop online(or offline) that much.
I’ve just started using Big Crumbs but I think it is going to be my main cash back site now. They pay on a monthly schedule. One of their big draws is that they allow you earn cash back on Ebay purchases. The other thing I most like about them is they allow you to earn money on your referral’s shopping activity. If you have a lot of referral this could be a decent amount of passive income.
MyPoints I don’t actually do any shopping through. I just get paid to read their emails and occasionally do a survey. I joined them earlier this year and it looks like I’ll make about $20 a year in gift cards from them. If I were more active I could increase that amount.
The other big way to get cash back is through the use of cash back credit cards. My personal favorite is the Chase Freedom(SM) Credit Card. I earn 3% back on my top three categories and 1% on the rest. If you wait until you have $200 cash back accumulated you will get a bonus $50 which effectively turns your cash back rate to 3.75%. I should have $200 accumulated by early next year and I’m waiting to cash out until then.
The other cash back card I use is the Discover® More(SM) Card. The trick to getting the most out of this card is to focus your purchases on their bonus 5% cash back categories. They switch these four times a year giving you a variety of categories to save money on. They currently have 5% cash back on gas which I’ve already earned my maximum amount of $20 on. I’ll now set the card aside until I can use it for the next 5% cash back promotion.
You can view some more cash back cards here.
Remember if you buy something you don’t need just to get the cash back you’re not saving any money.