May 8, 2011

How to Make a Million Dollars from Nothing: Part 2

Last post, we talked about how to start generating some income by having nothing more than a computer and a brain. So what's next? You have a blog, a live show, a popular youtube channel, and you've received your first check from cashcrate and you've made a few hundred from a few hours of work a night. What do we do with it? 

First thing we need to do is turn our blog into a website with a domain name. This will remove the unnecessary yourblog.blogspot.com address and have a smoother name. This will increase traffic, give a better SEO ranking, and generate more income. Through blogger, a domain name costs $10/year as long as the name isn't taken, this amounts to about $0.80 a month which you can fund by taking one survey on cashcrate. With wordpress, I think it's $24/year or, $2 a month. Wordpress has better SEO and more options, so the cost is justified. Now, you have you're own website with content you care about and soon you'll be getting even more traffic and revenue!

What about the extra cash I've made on cashcrate? What can I do with that? 

So, you've made your first $20 bucks and you put you're cashcrate cash into your account, what we can do with it now to make even more money with cashcrate is make and print out ads for referrals. The first kind is with pull tabs, Microsoft Word has templates already in place for a pull tab flyer. Make sure to post these in trafficked locations like Schools and Universities, shopping centers have community bulletin boards, and other public locations. Good wording is important. You want to make it sound appealing and intriguing.

Next, use the business card template for ads to place under windshield wipers or to hand to your friends and people you meet. Now, you'll be making more money by having more referrals. 

Before we jump into Mutual Funds and other types of investing, we need to start with something that doesn't require a lot of capital.

There are a few ways we can turn $100-$300 into $1,000. First check out Lending Club, here you can invest a minimum of $25 and receive great returns (average returns are 9.67%). Check out Frugal Dad's experience with Lending Tree here.

If Lending Tree sounds a little too risky, look into opening a high yield savings account, there are plenty of reasons to have one. Traditional savings account rates have fallen due to the recent recession, but there are some out there. ING Direct is a great place to open one. Check out Broke Grad Student on how to make $25 in 10 minutes with ING and Why Choose a High Yield Savings Account.

As the Economy comes out of the recession, Banks are offering higher interest rates. Now might even be a great time to look into CD's.

Those are some great ways to earn interest and not have to do much work. Seems good to me, now let's see what else we could start doing to make some extra cash.

Yard Sales and eBay:

This is something considered a Side Hustle. Summer is coming and I'm going to be up early on hot days looking for great money makers. Go to a yard sale and use your keen eye to find something you could sell on ebay for profit. The great thing about this is there isn't much work involved, aside from getting up early and going somewhere (this could be a great way to exercise, take a walk around your neighborhood!). Get there early to get the best deals. A great example is an old Nikon camera I bought last year at a yard sale for $10 bucks, I did some research on eBay and the same model was selling for $80+ on eBay and Craigslist. The camera I bought had a special lens piece on it, since I wanted it to sell fast, I listed the camera $80.00, after the bidding was over it sold for about $100. Shipping was around $7 so I made roughly $80 from one small item. After getting the hang of it, you could even start up your own retail site if you wanted to take it to an extreme! I am currently working on developing one utilizing eBay, Craigslist, and Half.com - I'd love to hear some ideas for items related to Frugal Son and frugality and fitness in the comments section!

After I get a successful model, I will share the way on how to sell online and the best products to sell online.

So, take about $50-$100 of your online earnings and start hunting for those extra profit margins. 


Hopefully we'll start seeing even better returns on our website and the extra cash from eBay doesn't hurt!

What would you do to make money with only $100-$250?