5/28/2015

Make More Money: 5 Amazing Ideas That Will Help You Prosper In 2015

Make More Money: 5 Amazing Ideas That Will Help You Prosper In 2015


I’m a huge advocate of making extra income and dabbling in entrepreneurship. In some cases, this side income can make enough to quit a bad 9-5 job and open up some new possibilities. From there the fun begins as we take a hold of our own lives and experience financial freedom!
So here are 5 ways you can make more money in 2015.

1. Rent out your car, bike, boat, outdoor equipment & extra land

If you’re not using it then why not make money off that asset? You could be making $250 a week from that nice bike you bought last Christmas or rent your extra car out and make an extra $2,000 a month!
For your bike, snowboard & surfboard:
spinlister
For your car:
relayrides
getaround
For your boat:
boatbound
For your outdoor equipment:
outdoor
For your extra land:
gamping

2. Renting out your space

People always need storage. You can charge people to store stuff at your house – a spare bedroom or basement would work perfectly.
You probably have a friend or family member that needs your help with this right now. A few boxes in an area of the house you’re not using are a perfect idea when you need some fast cash. Think about those self-storage places; they make an absolute fortune! You would be solving a huge problem for people and creating an easy flow of income. Cha-ching!
Try posting an ad for this on Craigslist and start interviewing or try this:
  • Roost (Predominantly in San Franciso, California but expanding nationwide. Make $3,000 a year)

roost
  • Sparechair (Launching soon. The twist here is people can use your space to work at home without being athome. The company is looking to help people network by making coworking fun and profitable. You can charge $10-$20 a day)

sparechair
  • Peerspace (If your space is creatively designed and can allow for groups of people to work then consider this)

peerspace
You can even rent out areas of your home to filmmakers and producers:
  • Setscouter (If a director selects your home you can make up to $4,500 per day)

setscout

3. Drive people around

The days of investing money to purchase a taxi business have changed. Today you can freely partner up with a driving company and make $200-500 a day driving people with your own car. If you’re worried about insurance these companies take care of it all. The cool thing about this is you can be a driver whenever you want or treat it like a regular job and make approximately $65,000 or more a year.
Wondering where you’ll find paying customers? It’s all in the mobile app which you can download and check out now. For more information visit:
  • Uber (Available in most major cities)

uber
  • Lyft (Just like Uber but with a cute pink mustache)

lyft
sidecar
shuddle

4. Voiceover

There’s a chance your voice is the type someone is looking for in their online or radio commercial. You’ll never know until you try. So find a quiet room away from distraction, stand up to project your voice, and record some samples. You don’t need the most professional equipment right now. Just use your mobile phone or computer microphone. Try these website’s for voice over work:
voicebunny
voices

5. Writing blog posts

There are more than a few blogs that you might follow. How much have you learned from reading, liking, commenting, and sharing this information? Quite a bit, I bet! If you enjoy it consider offering to write articles for them.
You don’t have to be a literary giant. Your thoughts are your thoughts and they’re valuable – treat them as such. You should get about 25 bucks per article which can take roughly 30 minutes to research and 30 minutes to write. If you write 40, you’ve got $1,000 – just like that! This is like working a 40 hour work week while staying in the comforts of home.
Here’s one source writers can make $30 a short blog post and $65 a long blog post:
scripted
You can find more options here:
elance
odesk

20 Creative Ways to Earn Money

20 Creative Ways to Earn Money


Perhaps your regular job is not earning you enough money, or you have just lost your job. If you are looking for new and creative ways of making money, then look no further!

1. Take online surveys.

People these days make as much as 500 dollars a month filling online surveys. Some online survey sites are TolunaVivaticMySurvey,YouGovSurveyBodsValued OpinionsThe Opinion PaneliPollGlobal Test MarketHivingPanelBaseHarris PollOpinion OutpostYourwordPineconeIPSOSNew Vista. You can make as much as 5 dollars filling out some surveys.

2. Sell your knowledge in book-form.

If you have some knowledge on a particular topic and you love to write, you could write a book. You can publish to the Amazon Kindle store and keep 70% of your earnings.

3. Join a direct-selling company.

Some people earn as much as a six-figure salary selling products of brands they love. However, some brands require resellers to pay money up front to get started with these programs.

4. Sell your photos.

The photos you take can be sold to photo agencies like IStock or Shutterstock. Each time someone downloads your photos you get 25 cents.

5. Start your website/blog.

You could earn a six-figure salary annually from your blog or website. Through affiliate marketing, Google adsense and subscribers, you could rake in some cash.

6. Become a freelancer.

You could make money by selling your unique set of skills as services. You could try doing web design, content writing, and programming for many clients. Many people who do this earn between $40k to $100k a year.

7. Be a secret shopper.

Being a secret shopper means visiting shops to provide feedback to agencies on how their products are doing. The smartphone app Streetspotr could be helpful in the direction of getting mystery shopping job.

8. Sell your junk.

By selling junk on popular site like eBay could earn you as much as $2,000–$3,000 a month. You can sell what you no longer use, or you could buy other used items and sell those.

9. Do small tasks for businesses.

Small businesses need translators and transcribers, while others need people to write product reviews. You can earn a pretty decent amount from doing this.

10. Rent out your room.

You could take in a boarder to rent out an extra room. This could put more cash in your pocket if someone moves into your room or even onto your couch

11. Start a small or part-time business.

You could have an expertise or hobby which you could turn into a small part time business. Part time jobs like teaching guitar lessons and picking up trash for neighbors have been become profitable for their creators.

12. Be a coin collector.

You could buy coins from banks in large stock and find the ones that are worth something. Perhaps you’ll find a silver coin or gold coin, or a rare item. According to a CNN article, “presidential dollar errors can be worth $50 to $5,000 each; uncirculated state quarters can sell from $10 to $50 per roll; and rare error coins can value up to $35,000″.

13. Be a music reviewer.

If you are a music lover, you can make money reviewing artists online for cash with Slicethepie. Some users of the site claim to earn as much 60 dollars a month on the site.

14. Buy and sell domain names.

A domain name is a website address. You can buy a domain name for as cheap as $3, but you can resell such an address as a premium domain to someone who needs it for as much as $2,000.

15. Walk dogs.

If you love walking and exercising, you could rake in cash by walking dogs for people who are busy or at work. All you need to do is reach out to dog owners and market yourself.

16. Be a ghost writer.

The publishing business is experiencing a big boom with online publishing. You could advertise your skill to persons who will be interested in allowing you to ghostwrite their work.

17. Sell your services on Fiver/Craiglist.

You could make money selling small services on Fiverr and craigslist. The default price on Fiverr is $5, but you can quickly make this amount add up depending on how many gigs you take on.

18. Sell old water at busy and hot vacation spots.

Busy vacation spots could be ideal for selling cold water or lemonade. The demand is high and also the profit margins in certain locations like Las Vegas.

19. Become a tutor.

You could become a tutor to high school or A-level students and local GCSE students. You could also do this online and earn as much as 10 dollars per hour.

20. Sell old CDs, games and movies.

You could sell old CDs, games, and movies for free on Amazon Trade-In orMusicMagpie. You can earn anything from 20 cents to 30 dollars per item.

10 Financial Goals To Pursue Before You Reach Your 30s

10 Financial Goals To Pursue Before You Reach Your 30s


Have you set your financial goals? Being in your 20s is an exciting time – you finally have the freedom to set your own rules, and you understand the value of independence. However, a big part of independence is being able to support yourself financially.
It is a great feeling knowing you are on track with your money, and now is the perfect time to start working towards financial security.
Check out 10 financial goals to pursue before you turn 30.

1. Focus On Paying Off All Of Your Debt

This does mean all of your debt; student loans, credit cards and any auto debts. All of these payments come with interest, and some of the interest is very high. Focus on paying off your debt first; the repayments and interest will keep sucking up your money until they are totally paid off.
Paying off your high interest debt makes hitting financial goals and saving money much easier, and you will feel great once you have made that final payment!

2. Create A Monthly Budget Plan

Saving and paying off debt is much easier when you have a budget plan in place. When you have a free evening, sit down and write down all of your earnings and expenses. Set money aside for rent, bills, food, entertainment, paying off debts and savings.
When you have a set amount of money to spend, you will notice you are saving money without having to think about it too much.

3. Stop Impulse Spending

Impulse spending can decrease your savings – as well as often being a waste of money! Before you buy yourself something, ask yourself these questions; Do I need this? Why? Am I paying for this with my weekly allowance, or with my savings?
A good rule of thumb is if you are paying with your savings, put it down. If you are paying for it with your weekly spending budget, come back the next day and buy it then if you still want it.

4. Set Career Based Financial Goals

It is likely you already have plans to advance your career and earn more money, but writing these plans down can help you to solidify them, as well as motivating you to work towards them. Try to set a rough time limit to achieve them, as this way you can check that you are staying on track.

5. Get Rid Of One Luxury

Most people have a few luxuries or treats they regularly buy. Try to track your spending for a month and see if there is any money that is being wasted.
For instance, many people buy lunch or coffee every day, but swapping to homemade can make a big financial difference. Try to cut out one luxury, and save the money instead. Keep your other treats as a reward for your savings!

6. Pay Your Bills On Time

One of the most important financial goals in your twenties is to pay your bills on time. Unpaid bills will leave you with bad credit, and they can pile up and become even harder to pay. Try to stay on top of the bill by setting up an automatic payment so you never miss another one.

7. Aim To Have Emergency Savings That Equal 6 Months Of Living Expenses

It may seem like a large amount of money, but through monthly saving you will eventually have enough savings to cover half a year of living expenses. The future is uncertain, and your life will feel less stressful if you know you have a safety net for worse case scenarios.
Try to also put your savings in a high yield account to benefit you financially as you save.

8. Save For A Home

It isn’t essential to save for a home in your twenties, but if you have paid off all of your debts it is often a smart idea. Saving up for a home takes a long time, and the sooner you start, the sooner you will be able to get on the property ladder – if that is something you are interested in doing.

9. Invest Wisely

Investing is a useful way to increase your savings, but be sensible if you are going to invest. Seek guidance from trained professionals, and let them support and guide you whenever you make investment decisions.
Try to take notes, too, as they will help you to make your own financial decisions in the future.

10. Start To Save For Retirement

While saving for retirement might feel like something you could put off for another decade or so, putting a small amount of money aside each month will make a huge difference.
It doesn’t have to be much at this point, so take a look at your budget and see how much you can spare. Even $10 a month will help to set you up for the future.
A general rule of thumb is to try and save 5% of your wage, and slowly raise that up to 20% over time.

5/27/2015

8 Things Which Shouldn’t Appear In Your Professional Resume

8 Things Which Shouldn’t Appear In Your Professional Resume


These days your resume should be able to tell your story in one page. This is what sells you and makes you more visible among the pack. Some resumes can be a turn off, especially when you get one from a seasoned job seeker who has spent some time in the job market. Here are some things you should not include in your resume if you are not a fresh graduate.

1. Your internships

Employers are not concerned about what you did while you were in college. They want to see the job experience you have acquired recently or what actions you have been taking all the while you got out of school. It will be better for you to remove your internship time from your resume and focus on something recent and essential to the current job you are applying for.

2. Your college grades

Maybe this was important and worthy of note to any employers you were trying to impress fresh out of college. But your GPA and college really doesn’t matter now as the employer is concerned about the experience you have acquired with other employers and jobs. What was performance like and how will you fit into their present company culture? That should be more emphasized rather than showcasing your GPA somewhere in the resume.

3. Your extra-curricular activities

While this may have applied when you were a fresh graduate it really doesn’t carry weight now. Of course you may want to show how sociable you are by being in a club, playing sports, or being part of a social group, but it might not impress on the employer – because they are concerned on more relevant things like the skills and knowledge you are bringing in.

4. The menial and extra job you took while you were in college

Most times the menial or extra jobs you took when you were in college is not relative to the career you are pursuing now, neither will it be of interest to a hiring manager or recruiter who wants specifics and streamlined job experience that will be of benefit to your new employers. So whether you shoveled ice during winter or you worked as a babysitter for your neighbor’s daughter, this will not be noteworthy for your employers.

5. Your honors

Just like your degree, your honors such as being on the dean’s list or being a member of the phi beta kappa, your honors back in school should have made a lot of difference to your employers when you were fresh out of school, not now. What you should include are notable awards, achievements or accomplishments you obtained at your last job.

6. The specific dates you acquired your degrees and certifications

Your job application should not be a history lesson reminding your recruiter of what dates you were actively studying and prepping to get his job. If you have been job seeking for a while, remove the dates from any degrees, certifications or awards that are not recent. Try to include a reverse chronology of such professional certifications that you acquired recently.

7. Your references

This is simply a waste of space. Listing your references or offering a note such as “References available upon request” doesn’t count to any employer. If an employer is interested in such information he will ask for it in a face-face-interview and they know you will provide it then when it is requested.

8. Fluffy buzzwords

You may want to oversell yourself by using such buzzwords such as “hardworking” “studious” into your professional summary, many recruiters are not impressed by them. According to a survey by CareerBuilder, such words were among hiring managers’ top resume turn-offs. Rather than use such buzzwords it will be better to use action verbs to detail how you contributed to the functionality and objectives of your past employer.