Money Making

Sell Your Photos to Stock Photo Sites and Earn Extra Income (About $100 Per Month)

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy here.

by Cassie on April 30, 2013

istockphoto-homepage

Homepage of iStockphoto

If you are a beginning hobby “just for the fun of it” photographer or full-time professional photographer and everything in between, have you ever considered increasing your photography skills and earnings by making money selling your photos online?

What are we talking about?  Well, there are several sites that sell what is called “stock” photos. Stock photo sites provide a database of photos that magazines, websites, marketing agencies and many, many more companies and individuals use to create ads, webpages, and so much more!

In fact, the images you see all over our site we have purchased for a few dollars each (like the ones on the top or on the right hand side displaying the main themes of our site…of course the one of Alex and me is our own and most all of the pictures in our posts are our own too :) ) but the rest were purchased on a site called iStockphoto.com.

iStockphoto.com is just one of the sites out there.  I think it is possibly one of the more popular sites out there because we have many fellow bloggers as well as web page designers that use iStockphoto.com for their stock photos.

Neither Alex or I are are professional photographers, but we have even taken a few amazing, themed and fun photos that we could probably sell too.  So honestly, it really doesn’t matter your skill level…if someone wants to buy the rights to your photo, then they can…and multiple people can buy the same photo too…so your income on one photo is limitless.

But the question really does become “how much can I make selling my photos online?”  Well, we can’t say for sure as we just don’t know.  This isn’t a business or money making opp that we have personally tried, but it is a fabulous idea!

At a place like iStockphoto.com, you can make 15%.  So if a photo sells for $3, you make .45 on that one customer on that one photo.  You can hold your photos on many stock photo sites to increase your photo visibility, but at some sites like iStockphoto.com, you will make more if you only exclusively use them – meaning your royalty rate increases to 22-45% each photo.

Now whether it is best to have your photos on many stock photo sites or exclusively on one for rate increases to determine which will make you the most…. we don’t have an answer for that! If it were us, we would probably test both.  For a time, try holding them on a handful of sites and see which is the most popular.  If one comes out to be the highest earner – perhaps become an exclusive seller through them for larger royalty.

Quite honestly, neither of us really has a clue about photography, but this sounds like a super fun way for anyone to capitalize on any pictures.  Just think, you go to Paris on vacation. Sure, you have a number of photos with your family/friends you traveled with, but what if you snapped some amazing pictures of the Eiffel tower at Sunset or of a French countryside, etc. You offer those few up and make a few dollars per month!

Another idea is to head to your backyard, have fun snapping close-ups of grass, pets, flowers ….. anything! It is amazing the subjects, themes, things and ideas that people need a photo for.  iStockphoto.com has probably hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of photos.  BUT, there have been a few times when we were looking for something specific and we still couldn’t find a photo.  Pictures of ANYTHING is what you can sell! A close-up of a pencil, a clean desk, a messy desk, a car seat, a waving hand…seriously, anything!

So we gave a brief summary of what you could make per photo above, but what can that equate to? Well, we found a photographer who shared his earnings from posting on iStockPhoto.com.  He makes several hundred dollars per month, but he also has about 800 photos for sale right now.  He has figured that he averages .73 per month per photo.  That is not a lot, but he goes on to explain that if you had 100 photos that will translate into $73; 1,000 photos equals $730, and so on! Now this is just an average because the prices vary, but this can give you an idea. Obviously, the more pictures you have up, the better chances you have of making more money.   You can read about his photo stock selling experience on iStockphoto HERE.

There are several sites out there that sell stock photos. We found another great article that helps to give a summary of 7 photo selling sites HERE that are out there.

Now the title of our idea here says that you can make about $100 per month – we said this as we think this is very possible.  Take a few hundred pictures and upload them to one or many stock selling sites and watch the money roll in…it can very quickly and easily add up to $100+ per month.  $100+ per month more would be a nice blessing for many homes and budgets!

This kinda makes me want to just pull out our camera and have fun taking pictures of things around my house and upload and see what happens.  And don’t forget – practice makes perfect, so the more you take, the more you earn, and the better a photographer you become! :)

 Have any of you made money doing this?  We would love to hear!

This may or may not be your thing, but we share well over 100 ideas and counting on extra ways to make extra income for every person, interest and skill! See our Over 100 Ways To Make Extra Income HERE.

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Alex & Cassie
 

Earn Cash and Gift Cards When You Eat Out or Shop With New Easy Rewards Program Plus FREE $5 for New Members

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy here.

by Cassie on March 21, 2013

We talked about this new rewards program a few months ago.  It has since become very popular and many people and sites are talking about it and so we thought we would mention it again.  BUT, we are also posting it again for you as they have a promotion right now where you will receive a FREE $5 gift card for joining! So the perfect time to join!

What is this rewards program? It is called Plink! This is a real, legit and safe way to earn extra money or gift cards! It is a one time set-up and then you don’t have to keep cards with you, you don’t have a lot of work, just your normal life.

Here’s the description:

Get paid to eat and shop at your favorite stores and restaurants. Join Plink and earn Cash & Rewards from Amazon, iTunes, Home Depot, Facebook and more … just for eating and shopping at some of your favorite stores and restaurants. You’ll earn rewards at more than 35,000 locations nation-wide. Free to join.

Basically, you will link one of your cards (your most frequently used credit or debit card) and then based on your purchase history from restaurants and stores, you earn points.   Those points can them be redeemed for cash or gift cards!

You do need to initially register and link one of your cards so that they can do the rest of the work, but once you spend 5 minutes setting it up…then you are good to go!

It is an easy and secure process. We recommend joining now while they have the free $5 gift card.  We are not sure how long that promotion will last.

The thing that we like about this so far too is that you don’t have to take surveys, do extra steps…etc. just register and move on!  Also, we love the fact that you do not lose any of the normal rewards on your rewards debit (like our favorite… Perk Street) or credit card.  So it is like a double whammy in bonuses!

Head to the Plink site HERE to quickly register and get started with earning free rewards and cash!

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Alex & Cassie
 

It’s Back – Get Rewards For Your Normal Grocery Shopping: National Consumer Panel New Areas are Open For New Applicants

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by Cassie on February 15, 2013

It’s time to tell you about National Consumer Panel again! They are open again and last time we were able to tell you was back in June of 2012! Now that they have some openings again we are posting this as we know many of you have liked this program before.

Read below to get details on an easy opportunity to be rewarded for your normal grocery shopping (whether you use coupons or not!). It appears that they have added some zip codes and are accepting new applicants in these zip codes. We don’t know what those zip codes are, you will just need to fill-out the first page (no more than you would fill out for a sample) to see if your zip code is open!

Have you heard about Nielsen Home Scan Consumer Panel before?  Well, we had not and we had several friends that are consumer panelists for this company and they really like it! In addition, you can win cash and earn prizes just for doing something you all ready do – Shop.

Essentially how it works is (if you are accepted) you will receive a price gun and you will scan your groceries as you put them away.  They are tracking consumer spending habits to see how to change the market, etc.   This is a fun activity for kids to do while you’re putting groceries away and the longer you’re a panelist, the better the prizes get.

So you can join Nielsen Home Scan Consumer Panel – Earn valuable points, which are redeemable for electronics, household items, jewelry, toy, gift cards, and more.

In addition, every quarter an additional 40 panel members win a $500 American Express Rewards card just by sending purchase information in every week of a month. Once you become a NCP panel member all you have to do is scan and send them your household purchase information every week with a handheld scanner that they provide. For each week in a qualifying quarter NCP receives your purchase information you will earn one entry into their Grand Prix Sweepstakes where you can win $20,000! Every quarter one lucky panel member wins!

Their application windows are short, so if you and your family is interested, don’t hesitate to apply!

Head to the Nielsen Home Scan Consumer Panel site HERE for more details.

We have heard from a number of you that you or your kids really enjoy doing this! The best recommendation we have received from many of you is to at least try it out for yourself and see if it is something that fits and if not, then you don’t have to do it! But trying is the best way to decide.  Some people didn’t like it and others have done it for a long time! Either way, you can earn a little while trying it out :)

See our previous post for even more ideas on Over 100 Ways and Counting to Earn Extra Income

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Alex & Cassie
 

New Way To Earn Cash or Amazon Gift Cards Through Opinion Outpost

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy here.

by Cassie on January 17, 2013

Opinion Outpost is accepting new applicants right now.  We wanted to give you a heads-up because as we have mentioned before, survey companies can be great opportunities to earn a little extra money! This company pays via cash and via gift cards to Amazon.  Or you can opt for all or some of your earnings to be donated to charity.

This is a decent survey company and one worth trying out.  Their sign-up process is pretty simple as it is just one fomr like what you would fill-out for a free sample, and then you will receive an email confirmation and need to fill out a demographic questions which is very short. That’s it to get started, so it is quite simple!

What is Opinion Outpost? Opinion Outpost conducts surveys because businesses, governments, public bodies, and similar organizations are interested in the views and attitudes of the people who use their products and services. The more they know about what customers and citizens think, the easier it is for them to improve and adapt what they supply. Take Surveys to give your opinion and shape the future.

It takes a little longer to earn cash as it does to earn Amazon gift cards.  You can cash out your Amazon gift cards when you hit $5, which happens pretty quickly! So you could earn a couple of these a week with little time!  You can also go the cash route and cash out once you get $10.  You could probably do a few of these per month with a little bit of your time.  We think that Amazon would be a better route for us as this is just as good as cash.  Yes it won’t pay your electric bill, but if you snatched a $5 Amazon gift card a few times per month,  it can help with your grocery bill (Amazon has great food and household deals), diapers (don’t miss our weekly online diaper deals), Christmas, or other necessities which means that the money you save can go towards another bill or financial goal!

Here’s how to get started – we just went through the steps and it was just a couple of minutes:

  • Register through this link HERE by filling out a very short contact form
  • Then you will see the first Thank You window letting you know to watch for your email in order to confirm your registration and to start earning cash or gift cards.

  • Then click on the link in your email.

  • You will then fill-out a second short form that asks the demographic questions that all survey companies ask so that they can connect you with the right surveys.

  • Then you are ready to start taking surveys and earn!

*Please note, that since the demographic form is quite short, you will often fill-out the first page of each survey to see if you qualify further for that survey.

They do this because let’s say that Verizon Wireless hires Opinion Outpost to do a survey of smart phone users (as an example), when you start the survey, you will probably be answering questions that would be related to the smart phone survey.  Ultimately, you may or may not qualify for that survey if you don’t have a smart phone, etc.   This is just an example, but any company for any product/service will have surveys.  There are even cereal and other food ones.  If you don’t eat cereal, or a certain type of cereal, then you will not qualify for that specific survey, etc.

They do this as it would be near impossible or a never-ending registration process to answer every type of possible question.  This means that you will probably only qualify for about 20% of the survey’s in your account.  This is a common thing with every survey company.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying so that you can get in on those 20% or so surveys that you are able to take and earn money too!

So you can’t go wrong earning extra income and a chance to get an extra prize too :)

Head to the Opinion Outpost Site through this link HERE to quickly register.

See our master list of Ways to Earn Extra Income: Over 100 and Counting

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Alex & Cassie
 

How To Find $780 in Cash Right NOW

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy here.

by Alex on December 6, 2012

It is that time of year, you know, where bank accounts and wallets get drained from the holiday buying.  Well, there are also some who didn’t have any extra in the bank accounts or in the wallet to be drained in the first place, and they are trying to figure out how to make Christmas happen. Well, no matter what your situation is, we want to give some ideas to help ease the financial burden.

First,  we highly encourage you to do what you can to avoid going into debt to pay for Christmas.  We know the pain and struggles of make exceptions and saying “what are we going to do?” or “let’s just put it on a credit card” or get a loan or what we were doing right before we woke up to our financial misery – getting payday loans.

We don’t want you to have to do any of those things.  We have been honest about trying to scale back seriously on “deals” we share as they are very tempting when you don’t have the money, no matter how good of a deal it is.

Instead, we’ve shared minimal deals, but we have also shared very affordable and low priced deals like our $2 and under gift list and the $5 and under gift list with the $10 and $20 lists coming soon (it takes Cassie hours to put those together).

We’ve also shared how to earn extra income by capitalizing on seasonal jobs this year. But there is also the situation where you don’t want to commit to providing a product or service for the season, you don’t want to get a part time seasonal job, but you just need cash to finish up Christmas and you need it NOW!

So here’s a quick list of how to come up with of extra cash right now:

  • Sell used books, electronics, movies, video games, music to Amazon.  Amazon has a great, easy and very efficient process of selling these items to them and in return, you will receive Amazon gift cards in your account to use to buy anything on Amazon.  As Amazon already has some of the best and lowest prices out there, it is a great place to shop for Christmas and this allows you to possibly shop for free. We encourage you to find $50 worth of used books, electronics, movies, video games and music that you are no longer using to sell to Amazon. In one book alone, we made over $16, so with a few or several items…it can add up quick!  See the details of this process and our experience with it HERE. The amount of cash in your pocket = $50.
  • Sell $75 of stuff around your house.  Find some things, sets, toys, furniture, outgrown clothing, etc. that you are no longer using. Market to your Facebook friends and their friends for free as well as your neighborhood or any other groups (like homeschool groups) that you may be a part of. Market on Craigslist or your local classifieds that are free as well (most areas have either a free service or will list items under $50 for free).  You will be surprised how quickly you can get some cash this way. The amount of cash in your pocket = $75.
  • To those sames groups….your Facebook friends and neighbors, offer to do an odd job here and there.  Maybe offer to help wrap presents, do some deep cleaning for holidays, babysit so the moms can shop…etc. Something that is a one (or two) time thing that can earn you a quick $30 – $50. The amount of cash in your pocket = $50.
  • It may sound silly, but empty your change jars, clean out the couches, junk drawers, etc and you might find enough money for a gift or two.  Several years ago, we were trying desperately to pay off debt and had just started doing so. We had nothing extra after paying the minimums (we barely escaped bankruptcy).  We need groceries and did this exact thing and found around $18 just “lying around” our house. We save our change now and when we find it, it goes into a jar for a fun family outing now.  But it could do that same for Christmas too! You will probably find at least $10! The amount of cash in your pocket = $10.
  • Sell higher end furniture, clothing and even gently used items and especially gently used baby items to consignment shops.  Many of them will pay you right then and not just when the item sells. We have a kids/baby consignment shop in our area that does pay immediately! It can be the source for great stack of cash for items you are no longer using. You can get cash faster than selling them yourselves, but you will get less for them – but this is still a good option.  Consign enough items for $50 of cash. The amount of cash in your pocket = $50.
  • Sell your old cell phones or tablets.  I don’t know about you, but we have switched cell carriers a few times in the past several years, or upgraded cell phones.  Well those old phones could be quite valuable. Collect all of your old higher end cell phones.  You can get some nice cash for your phones, on average, about $25 – $40! Use any of the following sites to compare and get the best prices: SellCell.com,  usell.com, BuyMyTronics.com and SimplySellular.com. The amount of cash in your pocket = $40.
  • Sell gold locally to local gold providers.  This ensures you get paid now and that you get paid what the gold is worth instead of just sending it in.  Also, before selling your gold and to be sure that you are getting top dollar from a reputable company, read this article from ABC News about 7 Things You Should Know Before Selling Gold.  We haven’t ever sold gold like this before, so I don’t know exactly how much this could amount to, so I won’t count it in the tally… consider it a bonus :)
  • Recycle.  This may sound a bit extreme, but collect plastics, newspapers, aluminum, etc. and take to your local recycling center and get paid for it.  It won’t be a ton, but you could get $4-$5 a trash bag worth. Fill two bags and earn about $10! The amount of cash in your pocket = $10.
  • Sell gift cards for cash, or….. use the gift cards to buy Christmas presents or re-gift! If you want to sell a gift card, Plastic Jungle is a great place to re-sell your gift cards too. And it is also a great place to buy them as well as they are discounted :) Most people have at least $15 worth of gift cards to sell.  The amount of cash in your pocket = $15.
  • Finally, donate blood for cash! In our opinion, this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to earn cash fast! See our previous article HERE but in summary, a single donor in your household can make $60 a week and $240 a month.  So if there are two adults in the house that can donate, you can get $120 a week or even up to $480 for the month! That is a nice Christmas cash nest egg. See the information that we posted about this HERE.  In addition, this summer we wanted to go to an amusement park and donated plasma to get money ASAP to pay for it as we didn’t budget for it as it was an unplanned event.   The amount of cash in your pocket = $480.

So with the grand total of all of these little ways to find some extra cash this season = $780 average total! That can go a long way in purchasing Christmas presents, especially if you are also good about finding a deal on what you are looking for!

When we were in debt, our total Christmas budget was between $300 – $400 which included gifts for our immediate family, gifts for extended family, events, extra groceries, Christmas cards…everything! We now spend about double this amount, but we save all-year and we are debt-free and get to enjoy the fruits of our labors of the past.

There is a light at the end of the spending road this season. Just don’t be paying for it later, if you can avoid going into debt. We would encourage you to start saving for Christmas 2013 starting in January in the amount of $5 – $10 per paycheck.  If you go into debt this year, you will just be paying for Christmas 2012 before you can get a head start on Christmas 2013.

Our goal is to help you find extra money and find gifts for a lot less this year. Hopefully between all of these posts, you can fly through Christmas with ease!

So…to help you spend your $780 wisely, here’s a few posts we recommend that you read:

One final thought, consider opening and using a Perk Street Debit Card to earn cash back on your purchases too.  It will be money you get in the future, but still a wise move!

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Alex & Cassie
 

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