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10 Cryptocurrency Scams That Could Rob You

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Cryptocurrencies have been around since 2009, but only really hit mainstream last year as Bitcoin began 2017 under $1,000 and ended December at a whopping $13,000+. This meteoric rise also saw a similar rise in cryptocurrency scams.

The upward climb was also evident with Ripple, Litecoin, Ethereum (it started at $8.17 in 2017 and reached about $850 by the start of 2018), and other popular cryptocurrencies.

The cryptocurrency craze remains at an all-time high in 2018, despite the rise of cryptocurrency scams and the relentless creativity of scammers taking advantage of people’s interest in everything Crypto.

And because millions of people around the world are taking notice, from average Joes to millionaires like boxer Floyd Mayweather, scammers have a never-ending supply of target audiences to scam.

The Unparalleled Explosion in Cryptocurrencies

A lot of the interest revolving cryptocurrencies come from the Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) the cryptocurrency startups create. Like in traditional IPO (initial public offering), an ICO raises funds by selling a percentage of that currency (hard cash in exchange for tokens) in order to help the startup launch. So it means a lot (up to millions of dollars in funding) to crypto startups whenever a celebrity endorses a particular cryptocurrency.

Celebrity Endorsed Cryptocurrencies

And there are a lot of celebrities heavily invested in cryptocurrencies.

Sure, 50 Cent was lucky enough to have forgotten his 700 bitcoins collected as payment for his 2014 album Animal Ambition. Those bitcoins, which were valued $600 each in 2014, ballooned to $10,000 per bitcoin when he remembered and announced about his treasure in January 2018. (That’s some serious passive income.)

Celebrities like Ashton Kutcher (who is turning into an IT investor genius) and Richard Branson (of the Virgin Group empire) who have bitten the Cryptocurrency bug earlier than the 2017 boom are definitely reaping the rewards much more than those who joined the party late.

But even if the likes of Katy Perry entered the Crypto world only when she sought the advice of Warren Buffett about his thoughts on cryptocurrency in late last year, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that their investments would triple by the end of 2018.

Warren Buffet & Katy Perry Talk Crypto

However, like every other product endorsed by celebrities, you shouldn’t just buy that product and believe these celebrities hook, line and sinker. Cryptocurrencies are not created equal, and many of them have been proven to be a scam.

Just look at former action star Steven Seagal’s latest endorsement – a suspicious cryptocurrency venture known as Bitcoiin2Gen (yes, that’s Bitcoin with two “i”s) and you’ll understand how easy for “startups” to make claims.

How to Spot a Cryptocurrency Scam

With over 1384 digital currencies in existence (as of January 2018), how will you know which really is “the next Bitcoin” and which is just out to scam you?

There are two common ways investors lose out their money to cryptocurrency scams:

  • First is when hackers attack the coin “bank” (this could be anything from the mining company, digital wallet, exchanges, or even your web hosting provider) and steal coins directly. Just imagine the staggering stats of stolen Bitcoins – about 980,000 bitcoins valued at around $15 to $18 billion has been stolen since 2011 (this includes the $460 million hack from Japan-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox in 2014 that resulted in the company closing shop for good).
  • Second is when the scammers directly contact people to become investors in order to seek “funding” for a nonexistent crypto startup, steal personal details to gain access to your digital assets, fool you into clicking phishing emails, or other devious schemes.

Learning about the existing cryptocurrency scams could lessen the risks involved in investing in this market.

10 Most Common Cryptocurrency Scams

1. Fake Wallets & Shady Exchanges

Because cryptocurrency has to be stored somewhere investors could check it, the first choice is to go with virtual wallets. Not all of these wallets are dangerous, but those fake ones made specifically to steal your savings are. A good example of this is the scam site mybtgwallet.com (My Bitcoin Gold Wallet), which was built so people would associate it to the popular Hard Fork Bitcoin Gold and ultimately steal over $3 million.

The legit wallets are being proactive about this. For instance, MyEtherWallet warned its users and other people that may be interested in downloading the app that a copycat app is rising to #3 spot in the iOS App Store’s finance category.

My Ether Wallet Fake App

To avoid fake wallets, you can either use an offline hardware wallet or choose a service recommended by the cryptocurrency platform.

When it comes to exchanges… they’re everywhere, and are continuously competing to get investors’ attention and earn from transaction fees that come with the service they provide. Many of them are legit but have ridiculously high fees. But the worst exchanges are those that disappear into the night with your coins still stored with them.

If you plan to buy cryptocurrency but don’t know where to go or exchange your altcoins, start with these trusted cryptocurrency exchanges:

  • GDAX – Supports the big 3 (Bitcoin, Ethereum & Litecoin) with 0.25% taker & 0% maker fees
  • Kraken  – Supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and smaller altcoins like Augur. Has 0.26% taker/0.16% maker, but fees can be negotiated if you transact with them regularly.
  • Coinbase – Support Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Known for exceptional support.
  • Poloniex – Also supports the big 3 and a whole lot of altcoins. Offers 0.25% taker & 0.15% maker fees.

This is just a tiny list, out of the hundreds of exchanges operating 24/7 around the world. Whether your coins are stored on a digital wallet or on an exchange, the best way to prevent theft is to invest in an offline hardware wallet and transfer them daily. After all, it only takes a few minutes to transfer them back digitally.

2. Crypto Ponzi Schemes

Scammers have also adapted Charles Ponzi’s famous 1920s scheme to the world of cryptocurrencies and is leaving victims left and right. In a Ponzi scheme, the first group of people who invested in a product (like stocks or cryptocurrency) believe that their investment are successful not knowing that the returns they’ve received come from money invested by later investors (and not the product actually bearing fruit).

The most popular Ponzi-styled crypto scam comes from the Mumbai-based company called OneCoin. It ran on a private blockchain managed by Onecoin Ltd and was able to gather $50 million USD within a span of a year thanks to upselling, a strong social media marketing strategy, positive media coverage, and investors’ lack of knowledge about the technology being sold.

The main Onecoin business sold trading-focused educational packages that cost 100 to 118,000 Euros and included tokens to mine Onecoin token in Hong Kong and Bulgaria. The company tried to claim that they were only selling educational material (and not selling cryptocurrency).

By 2016, dozens of countries either banned or released public warnings about OneCoin. In April 2017, OneCoin held an event and was raided by Indian police. 18 OneCoin representatives were jailed for operating a crypto Ponzi scheme, but the company had already moved about $350 million.

Onecoin isn’t the only one. There are over 100 known crypto Ponzi schemes and more will pop up in months and years to come, so research extensively before investing in any of them. 

Don’t believe anyone telling you that you’ll need a “broker” to invest bitcoins for you, or claiming “guaranteed returns” on a cryptocurrency. As with any investment, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

3. ICO Fraud

ICO, or Initial Coin Offerings, is when a newly-invented cryptocurrency is introduced to investors. Like how IPOs operate, ICOs are announced even before the technology or product is truly ready, which means investors only have to rely on a whitepaper.

The Securities and Exchanges Commission is aware of ICOs and the risks involved in them, but ICOs are mostly unregulated, especially since cryptocurrency and altcoins pop up so quickly for the SEC to keep up.

Cryptocurrency Scams: ICO Fraud

ICO fraud can be due to crypto startups overestimating the value of their product, or true-blue scammers aimed at taking advantage of the gold rush.  The most obvious ICO fraud involves a fake company creating a dubious ICO in order to steal any funds investors give them. In December, SEC froze the assets of PlexCoin for promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month. The company raised over $15 million from thousands of investors within a 5-month ICO period.

Because the technology behind cryptocurrencies can be confusing to those new to the market, victims of ICO fraud increase by the year.

It doesn’t help that cryptocurrency has the potential for large short-term profits, so scammers advertising discounted Bitcoins or pre-sale of mining hardware may seem like such a good deal to investors.

The only thing you can do to avoid falling from ICO fraud is to do your own research to triple-check the legitimacy of any ICO you’re interested in. If in doubt, check SEC’s tips on ICO investments.

4. Phishing Scams

Bittrex Phishing Scam

Like any other phishing scams, the scammer pretends to be a legit company and invites the would-be victim to invest in the company. In most cases, the scammer uses a copycat email address and website, Facebook page, or any other branding that may associate them with the real crypto company.

Once a person clicks on the e-mail and redirects him/her to a phishing site, he/she pays for the digital currency thinking the investment would go to the official ICO, only to find out later that he/she has been duped.

It may seem like a pretty obvious scam, but you’d be surprised at the number of people victimized. Chainanalysis reports that about $225 million from 30,000+ investors were stolen from January to August 2017.

Even worse, hackers are now using Unicode to disguise their URLs and make it look like you are on a legitimate website.

Make sure you enable 2-Factor Authentication on every exchange. Use a password manager like LastPass to fill in your passwords as well.

5. Crypto-stealing Malware, Malware Mining, & Ransomware

There are two kinds of malware you need to know if you’re involved in cryptocurrency – the malware designed to steal your coins and malware aimed at stealing PC resources for crypto mining.

With the first type of malware, it could attack your system and steal coins in various ways, from getting it from your wallet, stealing your information, or even bypassing security channels while you’re in the middle of a cryptocurrency transaction.

In both malware mining and ransomware, scammers access another person’s (or company’s) computer. In the first type, there is little to no interaction between attacker and victims since scammers hijack the victims’ PCs and use them to generate cryptocurrency without the victims’ knowledge. Check Point Software estimates that around 55% of businesses have been victimized by crypto mining applications, either from browser extensions, third-party programs, or apps.

Malware mining isn’t going anywhere soon. Just recently, it’s been reported that around 526,000 computers around the world are infected with the crypto mining botnet Smominru thanks to the leaked NSA exploit.

Ransomware is different because scammers access the victims’ PC, infects the system with ransomware, and then demands a ransom payable in cryptocurrency. A great example of this would be HBO’s 2017 dilemma about paying hackers Bitcoin as ransom, or else they would leak a ton of content including a new episode of Game of Thrones. Netflix also had the same problem, but the ransom was the entire new ‘Orange is the New Black’ season in exchange for “tens of thousands of dollars in electronic currency.”

6. Phone Porting

Phone-porting, or mobile phone identity theft, occurs when thieves seize a person’s phone number and tricks his/her mobile provider into giving them control of the victims’ account. Once they’ve successfully do this, they’ll try to hijack a digital wallet and drain its coins.

Unfortunately for the real account holder, he/she would lose everything stored in the wallet since cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible.

Your best bet to avoid phone porting is to change passwords regularly, add a unique PIN and verification question, or perform any other available identity theft protection.

7. Non-Existent Coins

In August 2017, London police arrested a man who ran a call center within the financial district. Apparently, his cryptocurrency business had been cold-calling people to sell non-existent digital currency. Unfortunately, the scam has victimized at least nine unsuspecting investors with combined losses exceeding over 160,000 pounds.

Some scammers use legit cryptocurrency, but with a twist. For instance, Trusted Reviews has spotted that a ton of Facebook ads have been promoting a non-existent funding round for TON, Telegram’s upcoming Bitcoin rival.

Unlike two years ago, trading cryptocurrency isn’t a hush-hush activity anymore. There are plenty of resources to double-check authenticity of cryptocurrencies or digital currency news. Be aware that most legitimate ICOs wouldn’t be cold-calling people to invest. And should that ever happen to you, list down the caller’s name, his/her company name, business address, and other company information available.

Don’t deal with the caller just yet – check with the SEC first before handing over your hard-earned cash.

8. Cloud Mining Scams

Cloud mining is the process of using a remote datacenter with shared processing power that would enable users to mine cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, even without hardware management. Companies offer cloud mining services to people interested in having another stream of passive income, but without learning all the technology involved with mining per se.

Technically, cloud mining isn’t a scam, but because these companies often oversell their services to encourage clients to subscribe to its monthly fee (or sometimes, on a price per hashing rate), and then fail to deliver due to volatile cryptocurrency prices and difficulty of actually mining… it’s understandable that those who were fooled would call cloud mining a scam.

A popular example of this type of cryptocurrency scam comes from cloud mining company HashOcean, which successfully provided the service for an entire year until finally disappearing when they couldn’t pay out users anymore.

9. The Classic Pump and Dump

In finance, pump and dump is a securities fraud practice wherein a person encourages investors to buy shares in a company in order to inflate the price artificially, and then sells one’s own shares while the price is high.

When it comes to cryptocurrency, the prices of major players like Bitcoin and Ethereum can no longer be manipulated. However, hundreds of smaller altcoins are still existing, so be wary about groups of investors (from Telegram, Discord and other platforms) gang up to inflate a cryptocurrency’s value artificially. These groups are known to hold regular meetings and a monthly vote to determine which altcoin they’d target next.

10. Market Manipulation

Aside from pump-and-dump practices, other market manipulators such as spoofing are being used. Spoofing involves “bidding with the intent to cancel the bid or offer before execution.” The idea is to create panic among other traders that somebody with influence or money is preparing to buy or sell.

Spoofing and similar practices aren’t actually scams, but just shady habits you should be aware of, since other people can be doing it to the coin you’re currently trading without letting you know. For more real-world samples of market manipulating techniques, check out this in-depth guide of spoofing and how you can protect your coins from spoofers.

The Bottom Line

Financial analysts have been warning people about cryptocurrency since Bitcoin was launched in 2009. Aside from being too volatile, cryptocurrency is mostly unregulated and unprotected. The SEC isn’t able to go after all of the cryptocurrency scams, but they’re trying to be on top of things by filing complaints against companies or individuals trying to rip people off.

Unfortunately, having clearer rules won’t wipe out cryptocurrency scams overnight.

Human beings have been trying to steal each other’s money for thousands of years, it’s just that cryptocurrency is the latest market they could test their practices out. Your protection against these scams is to do your due diligence, and research everything you can about an ICO or investment opportunity before handing over your cash.

And if you’re serious about cryptocurrency, mining coins, blockchain technology and everything in between, consider investing on additional security measures first. Encrypting the internet with a VPN (virtual private network), buying hardware wallet, and using advanced antivirus program for your phone and PCs can already avoid half of the cryptocurrency scams listed above.

Lastly, as with any investment, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Earn Cash on the Side by Selling Designs at Print on Demand Sites

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If you have a knack for designing catchy t-shirt designs, handbags, hoodies, mugs, pillows, phone covers and other products, there’s a very special place on the internet for you. It’s called Print On Demand (PoD) niche, and there are at least 10 websites that offer useful tools for designers like you to begin selling designs on your own shop. This industry has been around for decades, but has slowly creeped into the ecommerce industry, and is now here to stay.

5 Reasons to Join Print-on-Demand Sites

The Print-on-Demand websites provide a powerful platform for designers without a reputable name yet, or their own store to house their fruits of labor. But there are a couple of reasons why designers have stayed with PoD sites for years, even if creating their own store is a viable option. Here’s why:

1. Buyers Visit PoD Sites Directly

Traffic is one of the hardest things to obtain with having your own website. PoD sites know this. Designers are aware of this. Letting the PoD site handle marketing and traffic makes a lot of sense, particularly for new designers without capital.

2. No Need to Buy Printing Equipment

The problem with t-shirt manufacturing is that you’d need capital to buy printing equipment. But since PoD sites take care of producing the designs for you, you can focus on creating designs for your shop and never worry about broken machine parts, paint requirements, and a whole lot more.

3. PoD Sites’ Fees are Fair

Most PoD sites don’t ask for up-front payments, but earn from every item sold. Designers have some control on how items are priced, and they take home royalties for every one of their designs sold.

4. No Need to Find Distributors and Freight Services

Another benefit of joining PoD sites is that designers don’t need to find distributors of blank shirts, mugs, or other products anymore. They’re also not responsible for shipping the items to customers, which removes the need to find freight/shipping companies completely.

5. Huge Support from a Community of Artists

Every designer on PoD sites is part of huge community of fellow artists hoping to earn extra cash from their designs. What’s cool about this environment is that creatives support other creatives to make their PoD a great experience as possible.

Top 7 Print-on-Demand Sites for Designers

If you’re new to the world of POD sites, and don’t know where to go, here are the top 7 most popular websites that could provide you with a platform for selling your designs.

1. Zazzle

Zazzle is a true-blue American online success story, wherein father Robert Beaver and sons Bobby and Jeffrey Beaver launched the website in 2005 from their garage. Today, Zazzle is the most popular POD site that attracts over 30 millions of designers and customers a month.

What makes Zazzle Stand Out: The company gives sellers tons of customization options. In the marketplace, you’ll find designers who sell art as is, and makers who can personalize products for buyers. Products ordered are shipped within 24 hours, which is always a plus for buyers.

Earning Potential: Royalties range from 5 to 99 percent on top of Zazzle’s base prices. And because Zazzle offers buyers numerous ways to customize products, designers also earn extra whenever buyers opt for a personalized version.

2. DeviantArt

DeviantArt is one of the oldest communities of online creatives. Every member is allowed to post their art and share their virtual “galleries” to the world. It is more of a social network of artists who create designs, animations, videos, paintings, and more.

What makes DeviantArt Stand Out: The DeviantArt Print Service isn’t as popular as other PODs on this list because the website didn’t originally offer this feature. But if you’re a popular DeviantArt member and want to capitalize on your work, this platform is the way to go.

Earning Potential: Arists are paid 20% of the item’s retail price. Earnings would depend on the type of products designers put on sale.

3. CaféPress

Founded in 1999, this website was the ultimate go-to POD site before it turned off its own designers after changes in the pricing structure and terms weren’t received well. The company is still up and running, has fully recovered from the backlash and continues to offer an excellent POD platform to designers.

What makes CafePress Stand Out: Buyers flock to CafePress for customized products because the pricing offered is lowered compared to other POD sites.

Earning Potential: There’s two places you could sell on Café Press – the marketplace (where commissions are default at 10%), or your own CaféPress-hosted store (which offers more flexibility in terms of commissions and offer volume bonuses).

4. Redbubble

Launched in 2004, this Australian-based POD site is one of the most-visited POD websites today. Redbubble has mastered the industry to a T – they even provide returns to unhappy customers (an uncommon practice of POD sites due to the customized nature of products).

What makes Redbubble Stand Out: The categories offered on the store are a lot, from the typical clothing and paper products, to super-niche items like duvet covers (in king-sized!). Aside from direct bank account deposits, commissions of designers can also be sent via PayPal (if that’s something you prefer).

Earning Potential: Redbubble lets designers choose the percentage of their royalties. So if an item’s base price (the amount of production of the item) is $30 CAD, and designers set a 30% makrup on their designs, they earn a $6 CAD commission every time someone buys the $36 CAD (retail price) item.

5. Design by Humans

This website first operated in July 2017 and has since been an interesting platform for both designers and consumers alike. It is one of the few POD business models that has landed licenses from major brands like Star Wars and Marvel.

What makes Design by Humans Stand Out: The company offers design contests (for $1,000 prize a pop) and features an artist’s work on “Shirt of the Day” for a $1,000 award. Design by Humans also has a strong social media presence, which brings in traffic to designer’s stores organically.

Earning Potential: Royalties are fixed from as low as 50 cents for stickers, and as high as $8 for framed artwork. You can check detailed pricing here.

6. Threadless

The company started operating in 2000 and is one of the best examples of successful crowdsourcing. Artists create the designs (about 1,000 are submitted weekly) and an online community gets to vote which designs they want featured. Threadless then weighs the votes, community feedback and their own reviews, then chooses 10 designs to be printed on t-shirts, other types of clothing, and various other products.

What makes Threadless Stand Out: Aside from the unique crowdsourcing model, this POD site also lets artists create their own stores.

Earning Potential: Artists who are chosen for the week’s prints do not receive cash, but are given $250 Threadless gift cards and 20% of the royalties based on net profits. When that same design gets reprinted, the artist receives an extra $500. When it comes to designer’s own store, they are free to price their designs they see fit, and keep profit minus base cost.

Many successful designers join 3 or more sites and house their designs on those POD websites simultaneously to increase potential royalties. Note that other POD sites put restrictions on uploading the designs you’ve submitted on their site to other similar POD sites.

Wrap Up

There’s money to be made in the POD business. And some even turn this side gig into a full-time career. Take Michael Essek as an example, who uploaded his first design on Redbubble in 2014 and earned $50 from his first month, then jumped to a whopping $7,000 by July 2016 with over 1,000 designs across various POD sites.

If you want to replicate his success, there’s nothing special you could do but to start designing, let your creativity speak for your work, and if you’re lucky, turn this into a lucrative career.

Get Paid to Perform Easy Tasks at Clickworker.com

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Clickworker.com is a Germany-based microjob website similar to Amazon’s mTurk. It was founded in 2005 as a company specializing in internet data services, but was turned into the microjob platform it is today since 2011 with a user base of 150,000. By 2014, Clickworker has expanded its workers to over 700,000 people.

Clickworker.com follows the concept of crowdsourcing, wherein businesses post or advertise a detailed task and workers have to complete them quickly. Available microjobs include data entry, writing, translating, web research, surveys, and more. These tasks take a only few minutes to complete, which is why Clickworker is advertising a $10/hour rate offered to workers.

How to Join Clickworker.com

Anyone can join the clickworker network by simply filling out your user profile and completing two assessment tests. Any Native English speaker can easily pass these tests, but those with higher scores are prioritized with more jobs. Check out the available tasks, complete them by following all the instructions and get paid on a weekly or monthly basis.

Clickworker.com works with UHRS (Universal Human Relevant System) for workers living outside the United States. Tasks available for non-US citizens are scarce on clickworker, which is why you’ll need to go the UHRS site (using Internet Explorer) to check out the list of microjobs and complete tasks from there. UHRS becomes accessible and inaccessible to users, depending on the volume of work available for a particular country. In some countries, UHRS never becomes available, so make sure to check if your location would be a problem.

How Much Can You Earn with Clickworker?

Like other microjob sites, clickworker.com won’t make you rich. Depending on how quick you can finish tasks, you can earn anywhere from $5 to $12 per hour. Some pioneers of clickworker.com have been earning $20/hour for tasks they’ve mastered for months. Simply put, the best way you could earn more than $12/hour is to find a task that you can do super-quickly.

Note that the tasks may require a learning curve, so you’d have to practice for a few weeks before arriving at an acceptable hourly rate. Most users work extra-hard for a month to earn the first EUR 5 payout threshold.

Payments are sent out via PayPal or a bank account in a SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) country. The Clickworker website states that payments are processed either weekly once your balance reaches $10 via PayPal, or monthly via bank deposits.

Clickworker Issues

The main problem of Clickworker.com is that the users waiting for microjobs are much larger in number than the available tasks at any time. This means you’ll have a ton of competition for cents or a few dollars for every task. Depending on your current employment situation, clickworker may not be worth the time you spend on hunting for tasks. But for students or those with some free time, completing clickworker tasks occasionally and saving up your earnings for an entire month can give you a way to spend for an extra expense you wouldn’t earn anywhere else.

As a full-time job, clickworker wouldn’t be ideal. There’s no guarantee of continuous work, which means your income potential would go up or down depending on task availability.

Many users report technical issues on tasks, which can be frustrating if you’re in the middle of completing the task. In addition, completed tasks aren’t technically “complete” until they have been reviewed, and it seems that reviews aren’t instant. As a result, your account balance wouldn’t be updated instantly as well. The upside to these two issues though is that clickworker.com’s e-mail support replies quickly and efficiently. You can also get 24/7 support from the Clickworker community.

The Bottom Line

Clickworker.com is a legit website that pays its clickworkers properly. If you are given access to UHRS on top of clickworker, you’d have more options for gigs to choose from, and your earning potential could double.

There are some benefits of clickworker and UHRS, such as being able to work from home or outdoors and be in total control of your work hours. You also won’t have to worry about customer acquisition, since these two platforms take care of task distribution.

However, like most microjob sites, you’ll need to complete a ton of tasks before you can earn a decent amount. If you found a continuous gig that you find enjoyable to complete, then you’re lucky and could probably finish the tasks more easily than others.

Join Crowdsourced Contests for a Chance to Win Cash

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Crowdsourcing contests are ideal for people who are in-between jobs and those who are not yet ready to commit to a full-time career.  Since there is no guarantee that you’ll win each contest you participate in, crowdsourced contests are not recommended as a source of income. Instead,  these contests could be an exciting way to master your skills when you’re practicing to become a graphics designer, copywriter, video producer and more.

For those who have free time and would find it fun to get a chance to win cash prizes or gift cards for a few minutes of work, here are some of the websites to check out:

Idea generation

This category of contests involve sharing your name ideas, may it be for a company name, tagline, or even domain names. I talked about the three major crowdsourced contests of this kind – Naming Force, Squadhelp and CrowdSpring – in this guide.

Picky Domains caters specifically to domain-naming contests, so if you’re a regular visitor of GoDaddy and love finding out memorable domain names, don’t miss out on the fun.

Tongal lets participants pitch ideas for music videos, commercials, and other creative media. Prizes for these contests range from $1,000 to a whopping $10,000. In addition, winners also get to receive residual payments – often around 5% to 10% of the amount prize.

Logo and other graphics

This type of contest requires a bit more skill and effort than naming contests. For a pro graphic design artist, creating a logo could take just 5 minutes of his/her time, but can take an entire day for someone without experience in Photoshop and other graphic design tools.

Logo Force – Unlike other crowdsourced contest sites on this list, Logo Force lets clients invite participants to join their contests. Not everyone will be invited, so there’s less competition. Once chosen, not only will the participant receive a cash prize, he/she also receives contact info of the client, which means the business relationship has a chance to grow beyond the contest.

Logo My Way, Logo Contest, Logo Arena and LogoTournament also host logo-designing contests.  Some sites like 99 Designs, DesignHill and Design On Click  have web design, newsletter graphics, Facebook cover other design-related contests beyond logos and often have higher amounts of prizes. Create My Tattoo, as its name suggests, host tattoo-design contests.

Threadless is a popular t-shirt design platform that sells and prints designs of its creative members for a fee. The site also holds t-shirt design contests with cash prizes regularly. Submitted designs are voted by the crowd, and the winner receives $1,000.

Writing

If you have a knack for crafting beautifully-written ad copy, slogans and other texts, this type of contest is for you. One great example of this is BoostCTR (now Boost Media), which gets the help of copywriters around the world to write 30 to 40-word copy that will be used by clients for online ads. BoostCTR isn’t open for new writers anymore, but you could check out Copy Shoppy for similar copywriting contests.

Some contests are aimed at collecting feedback or reviews from people. For example, StartUpLift pays $5 to a user that can provide the best review for a particular website (or $10 for a certain app). BountyIT used to be an option similar to this, but it seems contests aren’t updated anymore.

Other Crowdsourced Contests

Zooppa caters to big brands that are looking for video content and graphic design. The cool thing about Zooppa contests is that the prizes are huge and sometimes include high-value products like newly-launched cameras.

Kaggle is a platform of crowdsourced contests involving data science. It’s highly competitive with experts ranging in the field of mathematics, statistics and real-world machine learning that team up to make educated predictions. Prizes start at $5,000 and can go as high as $1,500,000.

How Much Can You Earn?

Idea generation contests have an average prize amount of $10. Note that Tongal’s $1,000 contest prizes are a rare exception. Logo design contests usually range between $100 and $300, but higher prizes may be offered for other graphic design (such as website header or Facebook cover) contests.

Contests that require more amount of work but higher prize amounts, such as video production and data science analysis, can be a worthwhile hobby for professionals. Imagine earning thousands of dollars for a video you made during your day off from work.

The Bottom Line

The best thing about crowdsourced contest sites is that every posted contest includes a description of the project and amount of prize to be won. Based on this client-provided information, participants can determine if the contest is worthy of their time…or not.

If you’re passionate about a sub-niche, such as t-shirt or tattoo design, the fun in joining these contests will serve as a driving factor for you to join. But without a guarantee of payment, it would be frustrating for some people.

I recommend joining crowdsourced contests only if your skill set or line of work is somewhat related to the contest. If not, it would be better to skip these contests completely.

3 Sites that Pay You to Recommend Company or Product Names

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Crowdsourcing (outsourcing tasks to a crowd) is a powerful concept that can be adapted to a wide range of industries, such as entertainment, finance, IT, and more. It has branched out into sub-niches like crowdsolving (solving a problem as a group of people), crowdsearching (modern-day search party), crowdfunding (funding a product or cause as a group), crowdvoting (gathering reactions or ideas of a group of people), and more.

Today, there are even inducement prize contests that are based on crowdsourcing, but with a cash prize element in exchange for idea generation. Earlier versions of this include IBM’s 2006 “Innovation Jam,” which yielded 46,000 ideas from over 140k participants around the world, and Netflix’s 2009 “Netflix Prize” recommendation-algorithm $1m contest that increased the platform’s prediction algorithm to over 10% thanks to the idea from the winning team BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos.

Eventually, crowdsourced contest sites that cater to businesses popped up everywhere. They provide a platform for businesses in need of help with naming new products, services or startups and hundreds of participants from all walks of life giving out their ideas in hopes of winning cash prizes.

How Do Crowdsourced Contest Sites Work?

Every participant must join the crowdsourced contest site, check out available contests, and enter their name recommendations for a chance to win a prize. Most contests only give prize ranging from $10 to $500 to the participant with the best answer, but some contests also include smaller-amount prizes to second and third placers.

Businesses rarely disclose their names, but they include as much information needed for participants to be able to churn out recommendations properly. For example, an IT startup providing internet marketing and website creation is looking for a “quirky and memorable” company name that shows the professionalism and fun side of the company. Prize amount is displayed, so participants can decide whether to join the contest or not.

In most crowdsourced contest sites, participants can recommend as many names as they want, and join as many contests they like. There’s no technical skill or educational requirements required from participants, so all you need to do is your creativity and ability to follow instructions.

Getting Started with Crowdsourced Contest Sites

If you have some free time and want to join brand-naming crowdsourced contests, you can start with these 3 sites:

1) Naming Force – With Naming Force, a client creates a contest and allows members to recommend names within 7 to 10 days. Once the submission period ends, Naming Force members have up to 3 days to vote for their favorite entries. The client reviews leading suggestions within 7 days and picks the winner. If the client fails to choose a name, the name with the most votes automatically gets picked and the one who recommended it gets the prize.

  • Participants earn higher ranking every time they submit more names per contest.
  • Participants with high rankings increase the number of submissions per contest. This is because some clients can set the number of times a participant can submit a name.
  • Average prize amount is $100, but it may also range from $50 to $500.
  • Prizes are set by the clients.
  • Prizes are sent via PayPal
  • Naming Force is only open to U.S. citizens.

2) Squad Help – Founded by Chicago-based entrepreneur Darpan Munjal in 2011, Squad Help doesn’t just help with naming brands or companies. They also help clients find logo design, taglines or slogans through the work of contest participants. Out of all crowdsourced contest sites, Squad Help has the largest online presence (from Facebook to Twitter). Participants can jump right in a day after registration. New members can join select contests and can enter up to five entries per contest.

  • Your entries are instantly checked for Trademark issues and domain (URL) availability. If the system accepts your entry, you’ll see a green flag pop up. If not, a red flag will notify you and you can try again.
  • Some contests are invite-only and past winners (Tier A Category) are the only ones eligible to join
  • Some clients require participants to sign a Non-disclosure Agreement before being allowed to join the contest
  • Prizes range from $50 to $300 with an average of $100.

3) CrowdSpring –This platform was founded by Ross Kimbarovsky in 2008. Like Squad Help, Crowd Spring also offers various crowdsourced services, including email templates, design, and more. This is a favorite among creatives since they are allowed to communicate with clients and receive feedback from their submissions. Crowd Spring is also known to police projects properly, which reduces the chance of creatives to get scammed.

  • Creatives can register without a fee.
  • Enter as many contests as you wish.
  • There’s no limit as to how many entries you can submit per contest.
  • As prize, winners are given 60% of the package fee a client chooses.

Are these Sites Worth Your Time?

There are downsides to joining crowdsourced contest sites. First, there’s tough competition. Second, there’s no guaranteed income from participating in these sites. And lastly, your creative name suggestions will be out in the world without much copyright protection and you can’t do anything about it when they get stolen.

On the other side of the coin, naming products or businesses doesn’t require tons of skills or an impressive resume. Just put on your thinking cap, get creative and hope that you win. I don’t recommend using these sites as your main source of income, but if you have spare time, you can always check out what’s available and join in on the fun.

How to make a Side Income as a Store Merchandiser

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If you’ve ever been in a retail or grocery store and asked for help from a “stocker,” you may have been told something along the lines of “I don’t work here.” How is this possible? Because that “stocker” was more than likely a merchandiser.

What is a store merchandiser?

A merchandiser is an independent contractor who is paid to stock shelves with merchandise, remove discontinued/expired products, scan inventory, create displays, adjust prices, and take before and after photos of the merchandise. The merchandiser does not work for the store or outlet when performing these tasks. Rather, she works directly with the company/ies and manufacturers supplying the products to that store or outlet.

A merchandiser performs some of the duties of a mystery shopper, including reporting on the condition of the store and its displays, interacting with store managers, observing store staff and their behaviors, etc. However, because the merchandiser is also helping to market the goods by arranging, tracking, and discarding them, he makes a higher hourly wage than the average mystery shopper. Typically, a novice merchandiser will make $9.50/hour, while an experienced merchandiser can command as much as $20/hour.

Many retailers and companies hire merchandisers via agencies. These agencies work with a number of such clients and assign merchandisers to them on an ‘as needed’ basis. Merchandisers can work a few hours a week if they are assigned to just one or two clients; alternately, they might put in a 40+ hour workweek if they take on a roster of clients, and especially around the holidays.

When it comes to finding merchandiser jobs online, it helps to have some background in sales, advertising, and/or marketing. Even having past mystery shopping experience is a plus when applying for merchandiser jobs. However, if you have no experience in this arena, don’t worry: Some agencies will take on newbies and train them to become merchandisers in the space of a few months.

In most cases, your work hours as a merchandiser are fairly flexible, allowing you to choose when you can show up and complete your assigned tasks. Many companies only require that you work a given day or weekend.

So, where can you go to find merchandiser jobs? The following companies offer a regular batch of such jobs in different stores and industries.

A & A Merchandising

This Canada-based company offers merchandising and other jobs, complete with their hourly rates, via its website. Merchandiser jobs start at $17-$20 (CAD)/hour and range from 3-4 hours/week to full-time.

At Your Service Marketing

This company offers merchandising representative jobs in select states. You can fill out an application online, after which matching jobs will be emailed to you.

Creative Channel Services

This retail marketing agency has been in business since 1995 and offers a number of merchandising positions via its
online portal. Pay rates start at $17/hour.

Crossmark

This company hires merchandisers for area retailers and pays $12-$15/hour. There are plenty of jobs available through this company, both in the USA and Canada.

Franklin Retail Solutions 

Founded in 1998, this company offers projects with area stores and retailers in the fitness, sports, outdoor, and health industries. Merchandisers are paid from $12-$19/hour. To start viewing jobs, you need to fill out an online application.

Merchandise Management Company (MMC)

This agency has been posting merchandising work since 1979 and offers many merchandiser jobs through its member job board. Before being able to peruse the listings, you will need to fill out an online application. After that, you’ll become a member of the site and login to find jobs available to you.

Mondelez International

The agency, as its name suggests operates on an international level and offers merchandising jobs all over the world. The site’s handy job selector lets you pick which types of jobs, and in which regions, you’d like to peruse.

Mosaic

This company offers rows of location-dependent merchandiser jobs in fields such as cosmetics, retail, groceries, etc. The jobs vary from a single gig to 40 hours/week. You can also sign up to receive the company’s regular daily job alerts.

Resource Plus

Resource Plus works with Fortune 50 clients in a number of retail categories, including home improvement, office supply, groceries, hospitality, and major department stores.

Wolf Retail Solutions

This agency has been in business since 2011 and offers merchandiser jobs with a variety of retailers. You can apply for the positions via the site’s application portal. Wolf merchandisers earn $10-$15/hour.

How to increase your odds of being a successful merchandiser

As noted above, you can increase your chances of being hired as a merchandiser if you’ve had experience in marketing or sales, or even if you’ve been a mystery shopper in the past. Other ways you can increase your chances of success include reading up on marketing tactics and the latest ad practices.

Also, keeping an eye on your retail or manufacturing competitors is useful for when you’re called upon to set up or enhance a store display, arrange products, or reduce inventory. As your time and success with a given company increases, you can eventually expect additional work and bumps in pay.

How to Earn Extra Money and Freebies as a Product Demonstrator

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Do you like chatting with people and offering helpful tips? Is your schedule flexible enough to periodically allow you 4-5 hours ‘off’ in order to leave the house and work a side gig? Then you may have what it takes to become a product demonstrator and earn up to $14/hour by handing out samples and coupons, or showing potential customers how a product works.

Product demonstrators are everywhere, from the grocery store aisle to the shopping mall to even the local carnival. Companies make use of such demonstrators to capture audience information via surveys, promote new and/or existing products, provide discounts, and answer customer questions.

Where can you go to get started as a product demonstrator?

Product demonstrator online job sites

There are several online sites dedicated to listing demo gigs. Here is a sampling of such sites:

AtWork– This company offers product demonstrator gigs all over the U.S. and pays $11/hour plus benefits. When looking for work with AtWork, your best bet is to use its integrated job board and input search terms like ‘product demonstrator’ and ‘event specialist.’

Big Orange Productions– The average daily payout from Big Orange is listed as $77.14 on Indeed, and positions with this company pay $15-$20/hour. This company contracts demonstrators, or brand ambassadors, and sends them out to grocery and liquor stores, as well as other retailers, to help with demo set-up and product promotion.

Work shifts are about five hours long and run from Thursday to Sunday (11 am- 4 pm). Product demonstrators can select the events they wish to work by using the company’s portal. The company also provides position training.

Club Demonstration Services– This company offers product demonstrator positions all across the U.S. (and will soon be in Canada) on a part-time basis. According to Glassdoor data, demonstrators earn roughly $11-$12/hour. CDS is the in-house demo company for Costco, incidentally, so most if not all of your shifts will probably occur in that store.

CDS also offers part-time product demonstrator shift supervisor positions, which pay roughly $13/hour.

Crossmark -This marketing services company offers product demonstrator positions in both the U.S. and Canada. Most of the work occurs during the weekend and between the hours of 10 am – 7 pm. According to Glassdoor, the typical hourly rate for this gig is $9-$10/hour, with event demonstrators making a bit more at $11/hour. Demonstrators work up to 25 hours/weekend.

Dyson– This high-end vacuum company hires demonstrators, or sales experts, at $17/hour with no commission. Overall, the feedback is positive. Demonstrators report working half or even full days on weekends and weekday holidays at retailers like Costco, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Best Buy. Demonstrator jobs are part-time and available all around the U.S.

Zip Recruiter is a good place for searching on Dyson jobs. Type in “Dyson Expert” as your keyword and you should get a list of geographic locations looking for demonstrators.

Healthy Bites Demo Company– According to Indeed, this company averages $16.46/hour for demonstrators. Most of the work is based in California and involves driving from location to location to do demos of products like freshly squeezed juices, coffee, smoked wild salmon, etc. 

Market Connect Group– This company hires part-time demonstrators throughout the year, but especially around November and December, during the holiday shopping season. Average pay seems to be a bit higher than at other companies, with Indeed reporting $18.90/hour. From the reviews posted about this company, it appears that you can’t expect steady work here.

To locate demonstrator jobs, go to the company jobs board and input the search term demonstrator. Hopefully, you’ll see a job listing such as this one pop up:

PromoWorks– This company hires product demonstrators (PDs), also called engagement specialists (ESs), to promote products at grocery stores and other retailers. PDs earn $11-$22/hour, while ESs earn $9-$10/hour. It seems that the demonstrators are more senior to the specialists and receive higher compensation due to their additional duties, such as mentoring.

Don’t forget to apply directly to stores and retailers

Not every grocery store or retailer works with a big marketing firm. Some businesses hire product demonstrators directly. Oftentimes, these positions will also be more lucrative because the business is paying you directly, and not a marketing firm middleman.

How to make more money as a product demonstrator

Once you have a few product demonstrations under your belt, you might be able to make a bonus by reviewing the product yourself, and especially if you can post your review to your own website or blog. At the very least, you should be able to keep the product as part of your compensation.

Successful product demonstrators can also sometimes collaborate with other demo and marketing companies to increase their number of gigs. This is especially useful if one store is working with two or more such companies- all you have to do is return to that same store and perform a slightly different gig to double or even triple your daily earnings.

How to Start Your Own Direct Sales MLM Business

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If you’ve been following our recent posts on ITT, you’ve seen us review several different direct sales MLMs such as Scentsy, Park Lane Jewelry, Pink Zebra, Tastefully Simple, etc. All these businesses operate on a similar model of direct sales multi-level marketing (MLM). What this means is that private individuals and not retailers sell the companies’ goods. These individuals are rewarded with commissions for selling the goods; they also earn extra commissions for recruiting other private individuals, who then also (hopefully) sell the companies’ goods.

In the work-at-home arena, there is high emphasis placed on which direct sales MLM businesses offer the highest commissions or the best incentives. There are online forums and social media groups that teach and advice individuals on how best to sell for this or that direct sales MLM company. Lots of blog posts have been published espousing how to sell merchandise from various MLMs.

However, what if, instead of joining yet another direct sales MLM company, you created your own?

It’s entirely possible- and here’s how you can do it.

How to start your own MLM company

Obtain cheap merchandise from wholesale marketplaces.

Your first step towards establishing your own MLM business should be in securing unique yet cheaply priced merchandise, which usually comes from wholsale marketplaces like AliExpress or Alibaba. These dropship marketplaces not only offer cheap goods from all kinds of manufacturers, most of which are based in China, they will also ship your goods for free (via ePacket shipping).

The advantage of using AliExpress is that you can order individual merchandise items and test them out at your leisure. Once you are certain that the item fits your need, you can order it in bulk. Alternately, you can check out Alibaba, the parent site of AliExpress, and order bulk merchandise there.

The wholesale prices that you will pay for your items through AliExpress and/or Alibaba are just unbelievable. Let’s say you wanted to start selling bracelets at $15-$20/piece, which is a reasonable sum of money for jewelry. Here is an example of what you’d pay as your wholesale price:

Arguably, you could mark up this merchandise to 1000% its priced value on AliExpress and still come off looking decently priced. That markup would also give you a wide baseline from which you could run promotions and provide commissions to your MLM members.

Taking this one step further, you could dropship selected merchandise directly from AliExpress and/or Alibaba to your members, saving yourself the hassle of paying for shipping/handling and then needing to house inventory.

Create your business commission structure and install software.

Create a few documents and a website that outline your products, how recruits can join your business (oftentimes by paying a membership fee), and the 3+ levels that recruits can access to increase their weekly/monthly commissions. In order to make new memberships worthwhile for you, create a selection of kits that members must choose from when they first get started with your MLM.

You will need to obtain MLM software that operates within your website and awards different commissions to different levels of members. Some examples of such software include Xennsoft MLM software, which is offered via Utah-based Xennsoft. If you’d rather not pay for such software, open-source options exist, including Mvc’s MLM Studio, which is a WordPress-based open source MLM software.

It’s imperative that your MLM software accurately track your business members and their earned commissions. Otherwise, you’ll earn bad online reviews and members who eventually leave (or even sue) your business. And speaking of being sued…

Incorporate your MLM business as an LLC.

The MLM world is rife with dissatisfied members and individuals who are more than ready to call your business a scam or pyramid scheme. If you run your business as a sole proprietorship, you are likely to lose your shirt when (not if) you get sued. Thus, in the MLM business world, it’s essential that you protect your personal assets by incorporating ASAP.

Luckily, filing your business as an LLC isn’t difficult or time-consuming. You can create an LLC even if you are the only employee of that business. More information is provided here.

Market your MLM business online and elsewhere.

Once you have your products picked out, your website set up, and your business incorporated, it’s time to start marketing your MLM and its unique value proposition. To this end, you can hire help fairly cheap, such as through sites like Fiverr.

Microjob sites like Fiverr are not only filled with experienced professionals who can complete specific tasks for you, and cheaply, they are also a great timesaver.

When creating your MLM, keep in mind that you will need to deal with members directly from time to time. Frankly, most MLM members do want to see and know who their business owner/founder is and what is his “backstory” to creating this particular business and its line of products. If you are by nature a people person, you have a better chance at succeeding.

Also, most successful MLMs pump up their members with incentives programs, occasional conferences/trips, rewards, etc. Consider setting aside some money now for these incentives as part of your overall marketing plan.

The MLM as a leveraged dropship business

Most dropship businesses advertise wholesale marketplace-derived merchandise that is dropshipped to customers following their purchase. This is a good business model in and of itself because you do not need to house the merchandise in order to sell it. Also, because you are sourcing your merchandise from wholesale manufacturers, you can mark up your goods several hundred percent and make a handsome profit. Alternately, you can generate promotions and sales with ease to drive consumer demand for your goods.

By adding an MLM layer to this business model, you leverage your people power significantly through member recruitment. Now, not only are you selling individual wholesale items to customers, you are also selling batches of wholesale items to member-customers. Those member-customers must then turn around and sell the items they purchased from you or eat the cost.

This is, by in large, why there are many upon many MLMs, each with their own unique product line(s). The MLM business model is actually a profitable business to get into- provided you are the MLM owner and originator. In contrast, members within the MLM structure can make some money by selling merchandise- but it’s doubtful they will ever replace their full-time income in this way. However, some MLM members do in fact succeed by breaking out of the current structure and starting their own MLM businesses.

Earn Cash While You Travel with These Mobile Apps

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Wintertime is rough. After the holidays pass, the gloomy and cold days of winter settle in and test even the hardiest of souls. Therefore, it makes perfect sense why many freelancers and even employed workers choose to escape to warmer climes.

There’s just one problem with these winter vacations: How do you make money while you’re frolicking in the ocean or drinking your third margarita amidst the cacti? While some of us can take our work with us, many of us can’t.

Luckily, mobile technology has come through with a solution to this dilemma. In fact, it’s come through with several solutions. Here are several mobile apps that help you earn cash while you’re watching that football game in Pasadena (and trying hard not to brag about it to your Facebook friends) or snorkeling amidst the coral reefs of Hawaii.

1. Airmule

Got extra space in your 50 lb limit luggage? That space could end up paying for a good portion of your airfare. Using the Airmule app, you can easily advertise how much space you have available in your personal luggage as well as your flight. Interested parties will then contact you.

If you’re worried about noncompliance with the TSA’s “don’t-accept-packages-from-unknown-persons” rule, know that Airmule vets its senders and their materials so that the items are legal to send and pass all security checkpoints.

Once you land at your destination, you can hand deliver your package to the recipient, or you can request that Airmule complete the handling for you. Hand delivery, incidentally, is compensated extra.

Currently, much of Airmule’s shipping goes from the USA to China; however, other locations are being added.

2. Roadie

Why drive an empty car when you can earn money for that extra space? As a driver with Roadie, you’ll be paid up to $50 for transporting and delivering items locally. However, if you’re about to embark on a long-distance voyage, you could make several hundred bucks per delivery, and especially if that delivery includes a live pet.

Why would someone wish to use your services versus those of the USPS, FedEx or UPS? Oversize items that won’t fit on a plane can cost a pretty penny to ship. Travelers become even more nervous if they’re shipping a prized possession, a delicate family heirloom or a beloved pet. For these reasons, personalized item delivery has become popular through mobile apps such as Roadie.

An added incentive to using Roadie is that you can deduct your mileage, on-the-road hotel stays, and meals as a business expense.

3. Presto InstaShops 

This mystery shopping aggregator works with several dozen mystery shopping companies, so you’ll never lack for an assignment that’s close to you. Even better, the app tracks your geographic location and “points out” which shops are closest to you.

When you click on a given geotag, you obtain a short blurb of information about the shop assignment. Should you be interested, you simply click on the assignment and apply for it. If you’re an experienced mystery shopper and/or have a high shopper rating, you can self-assign your shops without waiting for approval- this makes it even more convenient to mystery shop on-the-fly.

Using this app, I’ve been able to do drive-thru assignments without even leaving my car ($4-$6), receive compensation for shopping at an outlet store ($20 in merchandise + $25), and check out tourist attractions for free with bonus cash (tickets + $20).

4. Field Agent

Another on-the-go mystery shopping and odd job app is Field Agent, which pays you up to $20 for quick jobs completed at grocery stores, gas stations, banks or even in your own home.

Example Field Agent jobs include the following:

  • Scavenger hunt jobs that pay a few dollars to locate an item in your home, store or even at your friend’s house.
  • Photo submission jobs that ask you to locate a certain store product, endcap, promotion, price or display.
  • Survey jobs where you answer 5-10 questions and earn a few bucks.

With Field Agent, not all listed stores in your given area will have the app’s requested products or promos. This is why it’s good to be traveling; inevitably, you’ll locate a store that has what you’re looking for.

5. Shopkick

Are you traveling by a mall or grocery store? Then be sure to download and activate Shopkick, the app that pays you to walk into stores and scan merchandise. Successfully completed tasks are rewarded with points (known as kicks) that can be redeemed for gift cards.

It doesn’t take a lot of scanning before you’ve racked up the necessary kicks for a gift card. Some items give you 100 kicks a piece just for being scanned. At 500 kicks, you already have $2 in gift card money.

One of the best ways to make money with Shopkick is to visit shopping malls. There, you might score points at a handful of stores and be able to redeem your earnings right on the spot, before you even return to your vehicle.

Submitted receipts that feature previously scanned items earn anywhere from 100-2500 points. On occasion, you’ll also score points for watching short product videos.

Earning money while on-the-go is possible

The days of foregoing any kind of money-making activities while enjoying your vacation are over. Nowadays, the person who is traveling has several unique opportunities to make money. Many of these opportunities are available via mobile apps. By making money on-the-go, you not only slow down your ‘cash burn’ rate, you might even find a way to extend your time off.

How to Earn Extra Cash by Sharing Online Coupons and Promo Codes

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You may already use online deal and coupon sites to get discounts on your .com shopping excursions. However, did you know that you can also earn money by submitting discount and coupon codes to these sites? The following deal and coupon sites award you money when you submit promo codes to them.

Coupon Chief

This site’s “Pays 2 Share” program pays out 2% of the sale when someone uses the coupon code you submitted- and that includes you. Cashouts are possible once your account is at $25 or more. The downside with Coupon Chief is that you are limited to making up to $25 per store per month for each coupon code you enter.

pays-2-share

Once you enter a candidate coupon code to Coupon Chief and it’s accepted, you’ll receive a message like this one:

coupon-code

Coupons.com

Find and submit an online coupon code on the Coupons website and you’ll earn $25 in your Paypal account. You will need to submit codes that haven’t been listed before, that aren’t limited to only one retailer or one use, and that aren’t personal referral codes. Payouts are made 30 days after coupon code submission. Additional details are provided here.

coupons-com-savings-guarantee

Dealspotr

This recently launched coupon site and blog offers members points-based incentives for coupon codes and deals that they submit. Those points can be redeemed for e-gift cards.

dealspotr

Dealspotr accepts coupon codes for any brand, not just brands already listed on its website. Also, the Dealspotr community rates submitted coupon codes and deals based on their validity, accuracy and discount amount. So, the better your submitted deals perform, the more points you are awarded. For example, here is a promo code I submitted to the site for free shipping, which earned me 56 points:

Here is a promo code I submitted to Dealspotr for free shipping at Harry & David, which earned me 56 points:

dealspotr

Savelex

If you share coupons and/or product deals on this site, you’ll earn “S-Dollars,” which can be exchanged for real money. Every 100 S-dollars equal 1$, and there is a monthly payout limit of $25. You earn S-dollars by either sharing information about discounted products with your Savelex friends, which earns you 10 S-dollars; alternately, you can submit coupon codes, sales and online deals to the general community and earn 25 S-dollars.

savelex

Hunting promo codes for fun and profit

So, how do you locate coupon, discount and promo codes that haven’t been listed before? Here are some covert methods for finding those elusive promo codes.

  1. Join coupon and deal sites. The first thing you’ll need to do is to sign up with as many daily deal and promo code sites as possible. Big name sites include RetailMeNot, Krazy Coupon Lady, Slick Deals, CouponPro, etc. You are best advised to create a unique email account and use only that address when signing up; otherwise, your inbox will be flooded with daily notices and other marketing collateral from these companies.
  2. Generate checklists of store codes. Maintain an Excel file of coupon codes you come across and to which stores these codes apply. By maintaining organization up-front, you’ll be able to quickly and easily submit codes to numerous sites.
  3. Look for exclusive coupon codes. Individual deal sites often make arrangements with retailers for unique discount codes that are showcased only on their site. However, once these codes are published, they can be considered public domain and used by anybody, including another deal site. Even if the eventual credit goes back to the originator site, the big draw with promo codes is their SEO power. This is why other sites will often publish exclusive promo codes.
  4. Create and/or use a deal aggregator. Many industrious affiliate marketers use or generate apps that scour the Internet and retrieve all kinds of codes and coupons for them. Such deal scraper apps are useful for quickly finding deals; one example includes the Chrome plugin DealTrunk.

Extra credit: Create your own coupon code site

What’s arguably the best way to make money from coupon and promo codes? By using them on your own affiliate website and/or blog. Here are a few reasons why:

  1. SEO. You can use the lure of discounts and coupons to improve your rank in search engine results pages, which will generate more traffic to your website. This extra visibility and traffic will inevitably help you better promote and sell your products.
  2. Audience loyalty. By employing promo codes as a kind of “clickbait” on your site, you create a reason for your audience to return there.  A loyal following of readers is more likely to sign up to your email list and to eventually purchase from your website. By pairing coupon codes with your affiliate products, you also provide a reason for audience members to use your website as a “one-stop shop” for their online shopping and checkout activities.
  3. Retail agreements. Once you have sufficient traction on your website and/or blog, and shoppers mention your site as their referral, retailers will eventually take notice and offer you exclusive deals of your own. These exclusive deals will give you a far better profit margin than the 4-6% rate that Amazon provides. Having exclusive codes will also further improve your site’s SEO and audience loyalty, creating a positive feedback loop.

Online shoppers are becoming ever more price-conscious and coupon-savvy, and you can take advantage of this trend by finding and, in essence, selling coupon and promo codes. These codes can also be utilized on your own website and/or blog to generate extra SEO, traffic and affiliate income for you.

How to Make Money with Pokémon Go

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Crazes and fads are an exciting prospect for marketers, and also quite scary.

How soon is too soon to jump on the bandwagon and try to make money off of the back of the latest thing to create a buzz?

Too early and you could be wasting time and money on a flop; too late and you could miss out on gaining traction in the market.

Take Pokémon Go for instance. This app filled with fun and crazy characters has just exploded worldwide.

While it’s been 2 months since its initial release, the game is still going strong and there has been a flood of ways to make money from it.

How then can you make money with Pokémon Go?

Become a Pokémon Trainer

Pokémon fans have wanted to actually be a Pokémon trainer since they were kids, and while the reality has come one step closer with the app, there’s still some way to go.

That being said, not everyone who plays Pokémon Go fully understands how to play it, I know I had some difficulty and battling is still just mashing the phone for me.

If you’re skilled and knowledgeable with Pokémon Go you could hiring your “training” services out for an easy $20 or more per hour.

You can offer your services locally on sites like Craigslist.

Sell Your Pokémon Go Account

Much like selling a World of Warcraft account back in the day, people are willing to spend a large amount of money for a pre-existing Pokémon Go account.

The selling price will depend on several factors including team, player level, and what Pokémon’s are on the account.

If your account has a rare Pokémon type then it could easily fetch several hundreds of dollars.

You can sell accounts on eBay and sites like PokeTree.com.

Bear in mind though that selling an account is technically against Niantic’s (the people behind the app) terms and conditions.

Pikachu

Get Paid to Drop Lures

In the game, dropping a lure will increase the chances of Pokémon appearing at Pokéstops.

The odd thing is, people will pay others to drop a lure, especially businesses close to Pokéstops.

Imagine a café that is next to a Pokéstop and suddenly a bunch of people turn up to hunt Pokémon.

Of course they’re going to want to sit inside in the warmth and have a drink at the same time, so café’s like that are more inclined to pay people to drop lures at specific times of the day and to advertise that fact.

This sort of service might not net you much per lure but you could easily buy the lures via the app and mark them up for a profit.

Why don’t local businesses do this themselves you may be wondering? Well some do, some even hire or pay staff to specifically focus on it. Others however aren’t technical or are just too busy serving customers.

Card Collection, Games and Memorabilia

While the buzz is high, anything related to Pokémon is selling like hotcakes! If you have any memorabilia now is the time to drag it out and put it on eBay!

Become a Driver

While Pokémon Go is designed to get people out walking there is a demand for Pokémon drivers.

Via cars, or even buses, Pokémon drivers take their passengers to a wide variety of different Pokéstops and Gyms around their locality which may not be accessible to people normally because they are so far away.

Drivers can easily charge $25 an hour for this service, for example PikaSpeed charges about $30 – $45 per hour.

If you’re an Uber driver you could even incorporate this into your service, for free or paid.

Design tools and apps

While there’s no direct API for the game, it hasn’t stopped people from data mining the app and creating all sorts of crazy services and tools such as the PokéAPI, Silphroad, PoGoToolkit and Poke Assistant.

You could earn money by creating similar apps and services or by using the existing ones to create new and innovative services.

Walk the Walk

If you don’t drive or prefer the fresh air, why not charge for walking?

Pokémon walkers will take someone’s account and do the walking needed to hatch eggs.

Generally you can charge $1 per kilometer so $2 for a 2 kilometer egg, $5 for a 5 kilometer egg and $10 for a 10 kilometer egg.

pokemon go egg

Hacks

Hacking the app is obviously against the terms and both the hacker and hacked can get their accounts banned. Many people are still willing to take the risk and if you’re technically minded, hacking the app for others can be very profitable, from $25 to $200 per hack.

There are several types of hacks, the most common being to trick your phones GPS into thinking you’re moving when you’re actually sat on your couch.

Another is to get unlimited Pokéballs.

IF you can come up with the same or even more desirable hacks, people will pay for them.

Write a guide

Every marketer out there knows that guides, tips and training sell!

Creating an e-book or short video course outlining how to use the app, the best ways to find rare Pokémon, tips for training and battling and so on can easily make a profit if marketed right.

There are numerous ways to promote something like this: get the e-book on Amazons Kindle e-book marketplace, sell it on Craigslist, advertise your own site selling the book and so on.

Craft Pokémon Items

If you’re into arts and crafts, creating and selling Pokémon related items could easily turn a profit. Etsy is full of Pokémon stuff, from Charmander panties, Bulbasaur planters and actual Pokéballs!

The possibilities are endless with this type of gig.

The Bottom Line

Like any fad, Pokémon Go will eventually run its course, but seemingly not for the near future. Niantic has many plans up its sleeve to try and expand the features, reach and commercialization of this popular app.

While it’s going strong it makes sense for marketers and anyone wanting to make a little bit of cash to jump on the bandwagon.

How to Make Money with No Money

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I’m pretty sure you’ve heard the often quoted phrase

“You must spend money to make money”

That advice is over 2,000 years old and nowadays it just doesn’t always apply.

The reality of our modern world is that it is possible to make money with no money whatsoever.

How then can you do this?

Time vs. Money

The thing you need to understand here is that if you have no money, you need to replace it with something else: time.

Time is after all, money!

Time is valuable to everybody which is why so many people out there use cash to obtain things that they could actually do themselves, just to free up their time.

This is where you come in; you take their cash and give your time instead.

Ways to sell your time

If you have access to an internet connection then there are a million and one ways to give your time in exchange for cold hard cash, here’s just a few of them:

Fiverr

Fiverr.com is a marketplace where people sell services for (in theory) $5 dollars. It’s changed recently so people can charge much more than that.

Not only is the marketplace proven, but people will buy all sorts of stuff, from proofreading to video testimonials, to logos and coding.

There are a lot of options and a large variety of them will cost you nothing but time.

Upwork

This site is more aimed at people hiring freelancers, but the basics are the same. If you have a skill you can promote, you can swap your time and energy for money.

Unlike Fiverr where you can sell yourself singing happy birthday in your birthday suit, Upwork is more professional so you will need to have a skillset.

Swagbucks

If you prefer to sit on the sofa and earn cash why not check out Swagbucks? This site allows you to earn cash from surveys, web browsing and more. They even give you $5 just for signing up!

MechanicalTurk

Like a cross between Fiverr and Upwork, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a marketplace for micro jobs. The system is designed to use crowdsourcing to perform jobs that computers can’t currently do, for example:

  • Inputting specific values from an image
  • Label objects displayed in images
  • Internet research
  • Classifying tweets as useful or not

The rewards are low but the tasks are generally easy.

Do the hustle

Using time to create money doesn’t have to be about working for someone else. Instead you can use that time plus a bunch of free services out there to actively create an income.

Take affiliate marketing for instance. While it’s not the fastest way to do it, you could start with a small free website such as one at Blogger, Hubpages or Squidoo.

Each of these sites offers the ability to get your content out there and potentially earn cash from affiliate marketing.

YouTube is another great opportunity. All you need is a video camera and an idea. If you don’t own a video camera, then use a webcam or smart phone. Borrowing one from a friend or family member is an option too.

Social networks are another great place to make cash just by using your time. Take Instagram for instance. By posting great photos it’s possible to get tapped by a company to do product placement and advertising.

Sometimes you do need to spend money

Once you’ve earned some cash, now would be the point to stop trading time for money and start spending your cash to create more cash. The reason is simple, if you continue to trade time for money you won’t make as much money as you could by spending money to make money.

You could start by teaching yourself to create an online business, that way you invest in your own future.

Or you could invest that cash for more short term goals like creating a website to promote your skills through or even hiring someone to do what you’ve been doing but at less than you charge.

Automation of your tasks is also a great way of spending cash to help speed things up and/or free up your time, to allow you to do other things to make money.

The Bottom Line

The reality is clear: while in the beginning selling your time for money pays off, it’s not a long term solution.

Far from it, instead you should see it as a stepping stone to building up enough money to really start your own business and start spending money to free up your time instead.

If you’re serious about investing a small amount to learn and grow and make more money online, then I’d suggest checking out sites like Wealthy Affiliate which are an affordable way to learn to earn.