Money’s tight for pretty much everyone nowadays, whether they’ve got kids or not. People are clipping coupons, buying on clearance, downgrading their cable, and numerous other attempts at saving money. Those are all good starts, but when you’ve done everything you can think of to save money, and you still can’t afford to pay your bills or buy the things you need and/or want, what are you supposed to do?
If you can’t possibly save any more money, then saving more is no longer a viable solution to your situation. The new solution would be to earn more money. That sounds difficult, time-consuming, and probably pretty unattainable. But you don’t necessarily have to get a second or third job. There are numerous ways you could earn extra money, even from the comfort of your own home. Trust me, I know – I wrote a book that lists 100 of them!
Now obviously there’s not enough room for me to tell you about all 100 of them in this short column, but I will share a few with you. Here are 3 random ideas summarized for you.
1. Direct Sales
Direct selling is basically selling directly to customers without the customers having to go to retail locations. It can be done by hosting at-home parties, distributing catalogs, or other less common methods. There are tons of companies that offer direct sales positions in which you work as an independent sales representative and earn commissions on your sales. Your income will depend on the number of sales that you make, the price of the products you sell, and your commission percentages. Depending on the product line that you choose to sell, you may or may not need to purchase a start-up kit. A few companies that you may already be familiar with include Avon, the Fuller Brush Company, and Mary Kay Cosmetics, but there are countless others, too. If there’s a certain company you’d like to check out, visit www.dsa.org or www.wfdsa.org.
2. “Get Paid to Drive” Advertising
For “get paid to drive” advertising, you’ll be paid to drive a vehicle (either your own or one that the company provides you with) with a large advertisement on it. You’ll need to do a minimum amount of driving, but the amount of time you spend running errands may be sufficient. Your monthly income will probably be a fixed amount and will depend on the company for which you’re advertising. If you’re provided with a company car, you’ll probably be paid less than if you’re driving your own vehicle. Currently, you may be able to earn anywhere from $200 to $1,000 dollars per month, but that’s just a ballpark figure. You can find out more at FreeCarMedia.com.
3 Onlilne Customer Service Representative
As an online customer service representative, you’ll assist customers via online chat or by telephone while sitting at your home computer and using it to look up customer issues on a company’s website. You’ll log into the company’s website and begin assisting customers with their comments, product orders, questions, requests, or other customer service issues by accessing information that they don’t have access to themselves. Most companies will probably require a minimum amount of hours in a given time period, maybe even as few as a couple hours per month, and you can generally set your own schedule by choosing blocks of time (generally 1-hour time periods) in which to work. The pay range starts at minimum wage and goes up from there. Some online CSR companies that you may be familiar with include LiveOps.com, VIPDesk.com, Convergys.com, but there are others.
If you decide to work from home, I highly recommend you check out the company for which you’d like to work. I do not en¬dorse, and can’t vouch for, any company or website listed. They’re listed as examples and as possible sources for more information about the income streams. I can’t guarantee their ac¬curacy. There are numerous more resources available besides the ones I mentioned, but you could check out any company that you’re considering with the Better Business Bureau, at a website like workathomenoscams.com, or any other reliable method.
If you’d like to check out more of the possible income streams I wrote about in my book, you can look up 100 Income Streams for Full-time Moms on Amazon.com and use the “search inside” feature to see the entire list. Admittedly, by recommending you do that, I’m clearly not the best sales person in the world, but I know what it’s like to be strapped for cash, and helping people is more important than selling books.
Article by Randi Millward
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