Did you know that you can make use of “spare time” (does anyone actually have any of that, really?!!!) and earn a little extra money, or some gift cards, to help stretch your budget further towards those dreams of yours? And though I am certainly not promising that these apps will make you a millionaire overnight, you can increase your pocketbook by skillfully combining many small amounts into a larger payout, if you are consistent in doing these many little tasks every day. “Do not despise the day of small beginnings,” says the Good Book (Zech. 4:9-10, NLT), and neither should you turn up your nose at many small payments. Smile.
These options I am listing here for you are just the beginning, and you must choose the ones that work the best for you, or you will just get frustrated, but if you put some thought into maximizing these to fit your schedule, you could start that savings account or put a little aside for that Christmas gift or charity project that is close to your heart. Happy earning!!!!
(By the way, I hate scams, and I would never list one of these if I hadn’t used it personally.)
My Favorite Apps for Earning Money:
AppRedeem
This app is very easy to use, as long as you have a good (hopefully unlimited!!) data plan and internet speed on your phone. Basically, you download it onto your phone and set up an account (careful, you must already have a Paypal account in place, and be sure that you type your Paypal address into the app correctly, so that you can cash out your points!!)
After you confirm your phone number and email, you can begin to earn points by watching videos on the app. If you don’t want the video to be too invasive, you can turn the volume on your phone down and simply set the phone to one side as you work, etc. Occasionally, you will need to click on the “X” to close out an advertisement, or click on “yes” when it asks you, “Are you still watching?” (In other words, you can’t just leave this unattended and expect it to earn you points all day.)
At first, it will give you 7 points per video, but after you cycle through all of the videos, it may award you only 5 points or 4 points or 3 points per video. After you get 500 points, you can instantly cash out your points for $.50 into your paypal account. (Once, it told me that my 540 points were worth only $.43, so I waited until the next day, when the points again said they would be worth $.54 and I just chalked it up to a glitch or a lapse in internet signal.)
Now, this may not seem like much, but if you do it everyday (and I can fairly easily earn $1 per day doing this), it will add up after a while. You know, there are 365 days in a year, and that is about $365 that you will be in the black! Surely it could earn you a few tanks of gasoline at the very least. The good thing about this app is that you can cash out and receive your rewards instantly, whereas some of the other apps require a certain dollar threshold before you can cash out, and possibly also require a waiting period before you receive your payment.
SlicethePie
This app is only for you if you enjoy writing (that is to say, using the tiny buttons on your phone to write with!!) and critiquing musical performances. Since I can easily do both, it is a good choice for me, although some people probably wouldn’t enjoy it.
Also, you need to be aware that the time of day when you use this app will determine the kind of content that you will be working with. If you open it in the morning on a workday, at about nine am, you will have the best chance of getting good material to work with. What I really like to critique are the fashion photos, because they are usually less obnoxious than some of the more vulgar music recordings. (I don’t recommend using this app late at night.)
Basically, you open the app, create an account, making sure to type your Paypal email address in correctly, so that you will actually receive the cash for your work, and validate your email. Then you can sign in, click on the type of things that you want to critique, and start earning. Be very careful not to swipe yourself out of the screen that you are in while you are working on your critique, because if you do, you will lose all of your painstakingly typed words!!
With this app, you gradually increase your rating as a reviewer, until you get paid more. If you spell correctly and write in a professional tone of voice, your rating will increase. Also, if you know something about music and can intelligently discuss the performance, your rating will increase. You also have to understand that it is a computer that is judging your writing voice, so don’t get frustrated if it tells you, “hold on, your review isn’t specific enough.” Just delete a couple sentences and tweak your writing until the computer accepts it.
While this is definitely not a “get-rich-quick” scheme, it is a good way to make use of some time and earn some extra money. You have to reach $10 in earnings before you can cash out with this app, and then they typically send payouts about five days after you request the cash (every Tuesday and Friday.)
I use this app on my iphone, but the site says that the android app is coming soon. (If you have access to do this on a computer, that is preferable; I can type much faster on the computer, and it gives me much more peace of mind to know that I won’t accidentally close the window in which I am working.)
If you would like to try slicethepie, click on the link below (or use the referral code I’ve provided) to get started:
referral code: U5470392
Amazon Mechanical Turk
This is another option that does not fall into the “get-rich-quick” category, but if you know how to choose the HITS that you work on, you can make a little extra money. You must watch out for scams or tasks that are way too involved for the meagre penny that they offer in exchange for your grueling efforts.
For example, if you are supposed to be transcribing audio, and the audio is simply unclear, forget it. Or if you think that the requester (in many cases it will be a computer) won’t approve your work, don’t risk lowering your approval rating for a measly ten cents. I was angry with a certain requester once when I was doing medical transcription typing work (which took me a long time because the handwriting was very illegible), because it refused my work for seemingly no reason, and I had taken a long time looking up the correct spelling and purpose of every drug in the dozen or so prescriptions that I was assigned to type.
So, when you choose your HITS, look for a requester that you trust, who will offer a simple, straightforward, easily completed task, with a fair compensation. One requester that I enjoy working for is an archival photo review requester where I type twenty keywords for a 15-second video from the 1950s or 60s. The requester always approves my work, it doesn’t take me long, and I improve my score while I work. It’s a win-win.
Some people like to consult the Reddit feed, HITSworthturkingfor, but you have to sift through quite a few items there, too, so you can be the judge of whether that is worth your time or no!
It is always best to do this one on a computer, although a very few HITs will say, “iphone only.” But you don’t want to risk being unable to complete or submit a task simply because you are not using the correct device.
You can use your payments from Amazon Mechanical Turk for your Amazon Payments account, or you can get them to validate your bank account and deposit them into your bank. (I had trouble with this, for some unexplainable reason, so I opted for the Amazon Payments.)
Bing
One of my favorite things to do is read good books, and one of my favorite ways to get good books for free is to earn points every day on Bing (Microsoft Rewards) and cash them in for Amazon gift cards. With this easy to use rewards system, I earn about $20 in Amazon gift cards every month, if I maximize my Bing point earning power every day.
It so easy to do this, that everyone should have a chance. Simply sign up for a free microsoft account on microsoft.com, and then go to Bing.com to sign in and begin earning points. You can earn a maximum of 150 PC search points per day, and a maximum of 100 mobile search points per day, and occasionally, Bing sponsors a double points day, or a quiz where you may earn extra points. I will tell you that I have not always liked their quiz material, though, so I don’t take every quiz. It isn’t necessary, either, to know the answers, because you can search for the answers while you take the quiz.
Basically, in order to earn the gift cards, you simply perform fifteen searches on your PC, and ten searches on your phone, to get your points. Sometimes I click into my search history and click on yesterday’s searches if I’ve been pressed for time and didn’t have the time to type out fifteen searches. However, I do enjoy using Bing to search for vocabulary definitions that I need to look up when I read all of the lovely books that I buy with my gift cards. Smile.
Qmee
This one has not been a huge earner for me, but if you know how to do it correctly, you can earn a few cents per day at the same time as you are earning your daily points on Bing. Basically, what you must do is create an account on Qmee and then activate it on your computer, leaving it open while you search, and it will bring up a sidebar with green text at the left hand side of your screen when you happen to search for a word that it rewards.
If the little sidebar shows a tiny circle with a blue “five cents” or “fourteen cents” or whatever, then you must act quickly and click on that icon. It will then take you to the page that the advertiser wants you to see, you should scroll down to the bottom, and then quickly click the “back” arrow on your browser to see if you can go back to the rewards page and earn another few cents from another offer. I have earned two or three rewards in a row doing this, and granted, it wasn’t going to immediately make me a millionaire (smile), but the good thing about doing this is that you can instantly cash these rewards out to Paypal.
The words that will most likely garner you rewards are the names of large department store websites, such as J.C. Penneys, Bloomingdale’s, Kohl’s, etc. (you get the idea.)
To get started, simply click on this link:
PaidViewpoint
This is one of the only survey apps that I really think is worthwhile. Many of the others have wasted my time, requiring me to fill out pages’ worth of questions, only to inform me that “we no longer need participants for this study!!” This site, however, actually promises to only offer you survey questions that are guaranteed to pay out. It has not been much, in my experience, nor too often (although some of these are first-come, first-serve, so you need to immediately open your app or email when you receive them and answer the questions.)
I like doing these, because I know they are not going to waste my time, and even though the progress may be a little slow at first toward the $15 you need to cash out, the questions are straightforward, and they don’t take long at all to answer. It’s a good deal.
The way to increase your earnings with PaidViewpoint is to BE HONEST EVERY TIME, because they will purposefully ask you the same question two weeks in a row to see if you give the same answer. The more honest and consistent you are, the better your reward will be for each question.
To create an account, just click on the link below and make sure to type your email address correctly when prompted, so that you can cash out with paypal:
http://paidviewpoint.com/?r=Godislove
Swagbucks
Some people love using this site, but I am not a fan of taking surveys, so I don’t use it as much as some other sites. (I hate spending ten minutes filling out survey questions only to be told, “sorry, you don’t qualify for this survey!!”) However, if you know how to use this site wisely, you can earn some money here. You can watch videos for credit (if you have a good internet plan and good signal, and lots of patience), or you can go to the “discover” tab on the side and click on “free offers” to earn a few points. You do have to watch out for scams on this one, though, particularly the ones involving signing up for a service that you have to cancel within thirty days, or the “free credit report” scams.
You can earn points on this site for doing your internet searches, but the points are randomly assigned in value and frequency. I usually use this site after I have maxed out my search points on Bing for the day (see the Bing section above.)
The problem with Swagbucks is that you have to have $25 before you cash out, and it can take a fairly long time for the payout to arrive in your email. (Well, in all fairness, there are other gift card reward options than the $25 Paypal card that I chose, but you have to figure in how many points your reward will take, and which reward will yield the most dollar for your points.)
If you’d like to sign up for Swagbucks, simply click on this link:
http://www.swagbucks.com/p/register?rb=18639730
Yaarlo
This is one of my favorite apps, even though it takes $50 accumulation of rewards before you can cash out (that is, if you actually want cash, with the Paypal option, instead of a gift card to a store)–it is my favorite because you can submit any and all of your receipts into this app and receive cashback for them!!
I like this app because it is a simple and reliable way to supplement your pocketbook with very little effort. And, just today I received an email from them informing me that the payouts are now a little higher and simpler; any retail store receipt pays .25 % and any non-retail store receipt pays .10 % which, at first glance may not seem like much, but it is so straightforward that it can garner you some easy cash!
All you do is download the app onto your phone, open it, create an account, and then start taking pictures of your receipts and submitting them. They do have to be within 14 days old, and you can’t take multiple photos of the same receipt (in other words, you may have to fold long receipts so that only the top and bottom are visible in your photo.) You just have to be sure the store name, date, and total amount are visible.
Just go to this link and use the code JEANNA315 to earn more:
___________________________________________________________________________________________
These apps are by no means an exhaustive list, however, they will give you a starting place. Look for more ideas soon on my blog, GraceLivingstonHillGirl.com, and let me know if you have any other sites that bring you lots of rewards.
