Mo Money, Mo Money

Hi Friends!

Since I explored how to earn money on the side in my last article I thought I would explore another aspect of making money, that is of course selling articles to make money. My partner in savings N.M. Sotzek is talking about yard sailing so I won’t be discussing this here, but I will be looking how to shift unwanted items and make a little money.

To all our minimalist readers, you may not be able to take away much from this article, but if you are like me you may find you have accumulated a lot of things and need a clear out, or maybe need some extra money for a present or treat. Many people sell things online, its a lot easier to handle than organizing a yard sale, and if you lived in shared accommodation, rural settings or an apartment building yard sales are not an option. Luckily the internet has heard the call and answered in the form of multiple online second hand selling websites. The most common one that comes to mind is Kijiji which sells everything from property to makeup and everything in between. It does however tend to produce pretty non-committal members. Several times I have either inquired about an item or tried to sell something, have received multiple responses and have almost every single one of them fall through. It was this frustration that led me to try physical yard sales, and while I found more success there the amount of work I had to put into prepping and promoting it made it a wash out in the end. Not to mention having to contend with dubious weather, hardliner customers and appropriate pricing the yard sale opened my eyes.

At the recommendation of a friend I downloaded the app Varage Sale (available for cellphones and computers) and put up some old Halloween costumes along with props. What a surprise when the very next day I had distinct interest and sold most of my items. Full disclosure I probably lowballed the price of them but I was more concerned with shifting my items than getting money, I was just happy that I got some money for these things I no longer needed. In fact, I continued to use the app to sell many items I had trouble to sell in other venues to the surprise of my friend who had originally suggested the app to me. I sat down and had a hard think about how I could be so successful with this app where other avenues had let me down, and I came up with a few nuggets of wisdom I hope I can pass on to you fine folks.

Firstly, not all apps are alike. With Kijiji you may get the volume you want, as in your items on sale will reach a wider audience and when you want to shop around you will have plenty of things to browse, however the sites design and volume produce two specific results. One of these is a lack of commitment, since there is such a volume and the prices can be so cheap people can be fickle more often than not. They can change their mind after contacting you, they can be vague about their desired price or pick up specifics and because of the volume it doesn’t matter in the end because there is likely other people selling or buying the same item and they can afford to play you off of others. The second result is that as time goes on and your items are up for sale longer and longer, they will drift further towards the bottom of the list when people search categories. With Kijiji there is no mechanism to keep your items relevant, unless you pay to promote your items, and so you may find yourself seeing your item expire before you can sell it.

With Varage Sale they have refocused the idea of a yard sale and made some improvements on the set up that Kijiji started with. They are a free app but unlike Kijiji you can promote your items free of charge with their ‘Bump’ feature, a button that you can select which will push your item to the top of the search list once every 24 hours. Additionally, they have a feature called ‘Interested.’ People who are seriously interested in an item can indicate this on that item and then you can review it and private message that person to set up the buy. This means that only seriously interested people will make their intentions known, and personally 9 times out of 10 a person who mark an item as ‘interested’ will make contact with you and buy your item. Bonus for me, every person I dealt with automatically came to my home to pick up the item, which as someone who doesn’t drive was so lovely. Of course if strangers coming to your home makes you uncomfortable then of course you are free to make other arrangements, which can work in your favour if you happen to live too far from someone and that deters them from buying your item (which happened to me twice). Be prepared however for people expecting to try on clothing items first before buying, which considering the prices and quality of items on here I think is the least someone could do. A word of warning however, if you put up items for sale that are too cheap that may make the trip out to pick it up not worth it, after all driving for 20 minutes for an item that is $1 would cost more than that in gas and time and therefore make it less attractive.

Varage Sale is of course not the only website that provides a vendor platform, and considering I now have a house full of old junk I don’t need anymore so buckle your seatbelts friends cause I will be exploring as many as I can.

Sell on my people, sell on!

Lilaina 

Money, Money, Money

Hello Lovelies

Inspired by an article I recently found {LINK HERE} I decided to try out some ways to make money online and at home. Currently being at my parents’ home and unemployed has driven me to some interesting places, and while I have not found a fountain of youth style level of income I have learned a lot through my odyssey and I thought I would share this experience with you all.

Firstly, the biggest issue I came across when investigating the links in this article and exploring other options was country availability. I live in Canada and many of the applications are for the US only. If you are an American reader congrats, you have a lot less barriers to making extra cash on the side then your neighbours to the North. To my Canadian compadres, sorry, you will have to continue to suffer like the well behaved sibling of a naughty child who gets less attention from their parents. The first site on the list is one of those, in fact it has American in the name. Because its American I wasn’t able to check it out, but from the description by The Crazy Coupon Lady it sounds amazing! The next one on the list, FOAP, is in the same category; exclusive to the US and sounds amazing.

Secondly, The Crazy Coupon Lady really has collected an eclectic mix of different money making endeavours, however it seems like some of these were curated more closely than others. To revert back to my first point some of the apps mentioned are US specific but are not indicated as such, like Mobee and ACX (audiobook platform). Similarly, apps like ezyShot are listed that is not compatible with iOS, which cuts out a significant proportion of potential users.

Looking at the app Rewardable for example I was unable to access the secret shopper tasks as those were exclusive to US users (sensing a pattern?) however there were other features of the app that I was able to use. They consisted primarily of games to download and quizzes to complete for rewards they called acorns. Each acorn amounted to a certain dollar amount which can be cashed out via PayPal once a particular amount has been reached. You can even set this amount yourself and can track which rewards you have earned. Great in theory but so far I have struggled to find a reason to keep this one. The app itself also does a poor job I think of vetting what content they offer to users, like having dodgy looking third party links and tasks that send you to several outside websites and in the end require you to purchase their products to get the reward. I’d say about half the apps and games I downloaded never earned me the acorns it was supposed to. The first time this happened I sent an email to their support and about a week later got a response from a Jen Barber, complete with photos, asking for the specifics of the apps, so I sent them and never heard back. To be honest I half expected to just get a response advising me to turn it off and on again (kudos if you get the reference). The next time I attempted contact I wrote down all the details of the rewards I was missing and emailed again; this time no response at all.

It’s not all doom and gloom with Rewardable though, I am able to answer one quick multiple choice question a day, and earn 1 cent, so there’s that. So for all you math fans out there if I set a $10 limit (the minimum) for payouts and I only earn 1 cent a day, how long will it take me to be able to make any money? I’ll leave you to do the calculations on that but let’s just all agree that’s a long time, which begs the question, is the app worth it? Considering half of it doesn’t work, there is poor support for it, and a tiny payout I would have to say no, but then again if you do it in the States you should be fine, or if you are fine with a long term investment then more power to you, because this is a long, long, long one.

Want to know which one of these was my favourite? It would have to be Opinion Post, the rather unlikely underdog that turns out to be the hero, or in this case, the most lucrative. Normally survey websites are difficult to navigate, have many surveys that you often do not qualify for and have low payouts. With Opinion Post however you may encounter just as many surveys that you do not qualify for but the payouts are larger and the cash out is better. I have only completed 4 surveys so far but I am very close to earning the minimum of $10. It works out to roughly $0.10 per 1 point and you can earn between 10 to 30 points per survey. They, like many other survey websites also have regular cash prize giveaways where each survey gets you one entry into the draw, and Opinion Post also gives you entries for surveys attempts but ones you may not qualify for. I have tried many a survey website and this one is by far the best and I would definitely recommend it.

Stay tuned to find out more about my side money journey because I will certainly be continuing. Save on my friends, save on!

Lilaina