My Extra Monthly Income

Today is Wednesday, finally! Anyways, I thought I’d finally give you the details on my extra monthly income.

In my January Goals update, I said:

“Make an extra $500 this month.  PASS. I made over $600 from blog income and surveys!”

After I posted that, I was literally flooded with e-mails from you guys!

I’ve told you guys in this post, my February Goals, and in my goal update post that I would tell you more information about my monthly income. I’m not going to lie, I have been pushing this off because I’m not too entirely sure what to say and I thought this post would be extremely boring. But then I reminded myself that before I was making this extra income, I LOVED (and I still do love) reading about others and how they made their extra income. It’s nice to find out about new opportunities that you may not have thought about.

I am definitely not a blogging professional, so when you read this post, definitely remember that I don’t know everything. This is all just my opinion!  Also, I definitely didn’t get into blogging to make money, I blog to share stuff with you guys and improve myself. I also didn’t think I was ever going to ever make anything. I really hope the ads on my blog don’t turn people away from my blog, but I don’t think they are too noticeable. I usually don’t even notice ads at all. Having ads on my blog are nice though, because making a little money from doing something that I love is very nice.

My main extra monthly income is from my blog. I didn’t really have any ads on my blog until I started noticing that Erika from Newlyweds on a Budget started monetizing. Erika also uses her side income for similar reasons to me, for traveling. By the way, if you haven’t checked out her blog, go over there now!

Traveling is something that I definitely value in my life. I’m always super busy and I need time to relax (by the beach), and with extra income, I won’t feel as bad about spending money on vacations instead of strictly paying off debt.

This is how I made my extra monthly income for the month of January, after fees (these are all guesstimates as I can’t really remember, I need to keep better track):

• Ads on my blog -$270
• Sponsored posts -$222
• Surveys -$33
• Mystery Shopping -$150

So I actually made around $675 last month!

1. For the ads on my blog, so far I’ve only gone through Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, and this has worked out great! She has been extremely helpful and does pretty much all of the work with the advertiser. I’m sure I’m not the only one who says this, but she is definitely an inspiration for all of those in the personal finance blogging community (wow that sounded cheesy!).
2. For my sponsored posts, I used Social Spark for one of them. I get leads sent to my e-mail and then I can say that I’m interested or negotiate the price. I’m still pretty new to the whole sponsored post thing, but it’s not bad. I was also approached by 2 or 3 other advertisers for doing sponsored posts and did those too.
3. For my survey income, I mainly use Pinecone Research. A lot of you e-mailed me asking how you can join, but I looked it up and they aren’t taking any new people right now. I’m sorry! But it does say that they occasionally have banner advertisements floating around places and if you click on one, then you can typically join through the banner ad. So I would definitely keep an eye out for those! I don’t make a ton of money with the surveys, but the money does add up, and you occasionally get free stuff sent to you also! I’ve gotten many things that I’ve used and are great. If anyone knows of any other survey companies, let me know so that I can tell everyone else!
4. I’ve talked about mystery shopping a lot, and I mainly use Bestmark.com. This is kind of easy, but the surveys that you take at the end are extremely repetitive and boring. But it is nice to get things for free such as makeup (Estee Lauder), food, and so on.

And then of course I use Swagbucks for nice little Amazon gift cards! I’m trying to save these up for little things that I want to splurge on. These add up kind of quickly. I don’t really use Swagbucks a ton anymore, but I probably make around $25 a month in gift cards from it.

I plan on making more money from eBay soon, but I’m not sure how much that will be. I haven’t sold enough yet, but hopefully soon this starts adding up more quickly.

I plan to do more posts that are more detailed about all of this, so that I can better explain everything to you guys. My main tip is to have an “Advertise” or “Contact” tab on your blog. If they can’t contact you, then how can they let you know about any offers? Do you have any specific questions that I should answer in my future posts? Please let me know! I don’t know your questions if you don’t ask.

What things do you do to make extra money? Please share! What do you use your extra income on?

I hope you all can increase your extra monthly income!