How many times have any of us used the phrase ‘earn money from home’ or ‘earn money online’ then been sucked in by a range of MLM schemes that have ended up leaving us out of pocket?
Well I have been sucked into each and everyone you can imagine before getting wise to them and that’s more the fault of my own as I love spending money and trying new products so it was a dangerous combination for me but I know it works for many others.
However, in this post, I wanted to talk about a couple of ways that have worked for me and that don’t mean you have to walk around the streets in all weathers collecting brochures off door steps:
Competitions:
Enter competitions as a hobby is something I have done for years, I have won all sorts from DVD’s to an exclusive box at a local racecourse. Where this isn’t directly paying money into your bank account, if you use the competitions to look for items you actually want and would ordinarily buy, then yes it can save you money.
Entering competitions is a numbers game and is completely pot-luck. The more you enter, the more you are likely to win.
I use Money Saving Expert’s Competition Time forum thread to find mine as the ‘compers’ are very knowledgeable on detecting faux competitions and they update the thread consistently to ensure there are always more competitions posted than you could physically enter.
Why do companies offer you these products for free you ask? well its simple, its advertising, if you win a competition and get a load of ‘free’ goodies that you like, you are more likely to spend your money on purchasing them in the future.
Surveys:
This is one I am quite new too, and in new, I have clocked up about £300 in Amazon vouchers in about 2 months. However, I have a pretty addictive nature, so when something catches my eye, I end up going a little crazy on it!
The idea is, market research companies are paying for your opinion. How many adverts have you seen on TV that says ‘3 out of 4 women agree’ ever thought who are these women? Well many will be ‘survey queens’.
Surveys can take anything from a couple of minutes to half an hour to complete and some will be simple questions, other will ask you to analyse products but the more effort you have to put in the more rewards you get.
These rewards may be by points which you cash in for vouchers of your choice or they can also be cash payments that you can claim once you reach a certain threshold.
Here is a couple of my favourite sites*:
Product Testing:
Just like competitions, companies will offer their products to you in return to review their item which will encourage other like minded shoppers to purchase and in return, if you like the product yourself you are likely to buy again.
The most important thing about product testing is to be honest in your reviews, you might think that by writing completely positive feedback that you will be more likely to receive more products but that isn’t true, if there is something about their product that doesn’t work or you don’t like, the companies offering it want to know so that they can make improvements.
I use BzzAgent who offer a great range of products, you need to set up an account and regularly check in to complete surveys which increases your eligibility for reviews.
* these sites offer a referral scheme in which present members receive additional points for referring new customers, this does not cause any additional fees or exchanges
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