When it comes to making money online, I break it down into three categories: residual income, freelance income, and fun money.
Residual income is what I have been talking about all along on this blog, writing articles and creating websites that will earn from advertising or affiliate sales over time. Freelance would be these same basic skills, like article writing, but doing it for someone else and being paid upfront.
The new category that I announced in my last monthly income report is “fun money”. I define this as money earned doing something that doesn’t really constitute work, from rewards programs, surveys, get paid to and paid to click programs. Many of these don’t pay in cash, but I consider an Amazon gift card to be as good as cash
Now for those of you who don’t know about these types of things, the money is mostly miniscule. There is no way to get rich quick online without work, and these programs will never make you rich at all.
So why do I do them? Is it even worth the time invested?
For one thing, it allows me to take a break from more serious work and still have some sort of payout in the end. If you are writing every day, or coding, or doing whatever it is you do, your brain will need a break every once in a while. Of course you can make more money writing articles or something, but it is unlikely you can keep up with it every second of every day. Why not make some pennies while you take a break?
And another thing is that every little bit of money adds up. Since January, I’ve made over $120 from Swagbucks. That’s not a lot of money when you break it down, but it is still $120 I wouldn’t have had otherwise, and I probably would have wasted that time just playing games on Facebook.
I may not care that these programs are not “worth” my time, but that doesn’t mean I am stupid with them. I know not to spend too much time and for the most part, I have a routine that I go through to earn a little and get out. There are also many things I do that I get rewards for that I would have been doing anyway.
I will be writing guides the next few weeks to share how I do this for each site and how much time I spend on them. I hope this will be helpful for anyone looking to try any of these sites out.
Photo Credit Creative Commons User: Moyan_Brenn
An Investment Journey 