Earn More September

Money Funk is having an “Earn More September” challenge. If you’re not in it yet, there is still time! It is still the beginning of the month.

The goal is simple: Earn More Money!

My goals for the month are to earn $200 in “extra” income. Why $200? Well, today I made a payment of $800 on my credit card, and every month I’d like to put $1,000 on it so that I can pay this bad boy off by December 2010. (God, it sounds so far away when it put it that way, but really it is only a little over a year away!)

So, my philosophy going into this is full-well knowing that a lot of my ideas that I’ll have won’t come to fruition immediately, but may earn me money in the long run. I’m OKAY with that! My other philosophy is that EVERY CENT COUNTS, whether I make an extra dime or dollar or twenty, I’m going to count it. So if it seems worth my time and effort, I’ll try it (at least this month).

Alright… onto the strategies!

1 ) Youdata.com.
I was turned onto this site by another blogger a few months ago. Let me tell you up front, it won’t make you rich. But every little cent counts, and I’m counting it! In the past two months I’ve gotten $4 directly put into my paypal account simply by looking at ads. $4 saved is $4 earned, right? (Can I tell you a secret? I used that money to buy coupons on Ebay. Can you cut coupons? If so, I’d probably buy them.)

2 ) Donate plasma
There is a plasma donation center near my school with free wireless internet. I’ve been meaning to find out how much compensation one gets for donating plasma for a while. I also found a $5 gift certificate online that gets you an EXTRA $5 on top of what they already compensate you for. My goal this month is to set up an initial appointment to find out if I qualify to donate plasma, and if so to go at least once. It seems that the going rate for plasma donation is around $25-35. Not chump change at all!

3 ) Sell books/DVDs/CDs
I’ve done this before with my book and CD collection through Amazon.com and made quite a bit of money off of it (like around $200 over the course of a few months). However, since I’ve purged my library twice now I’m not sure how much more I’ll be able to get. As part of my Apartment Therapy in future weeks I plan on decreasing my media and books by about 15-20%. If I can’t sell the items individually on Amazon then I’ll try to sell them as a lot on Craigslist.

4 ) Clothes consignment
Also as part of my Apartment Therapy I plan on reducing my wardrobe by about 50%. However, I haven’t reduced it in YEARS. Since I live in a college town there is a pretty big market for mall-label clothes. Which works out pretty well because I have a lot of mall-label clothes that don’t fit me anymore. So I’m going to go through my closet and take what I think would be appropriate for resale down to the local consignment shop and see what I can get for them.

5 ) Crafts
I LOVE to crochet and have blankets all over my apartment that I’m just waiting for a reason to give to someone. Like baby blankets and the like. In fact, I have one blanket in a box that has been finished for two years that I’ve never bestowed on anyone. So, I’m going to open an Etsy shop and try to sell the finished creations online. I will probably just ask for the price of the yarn as payment, since the joy for me was in making them, but at this point that is money in my pocket since the time I spent the money is long gone!

6 ) Keep the Change
This month I’m going to an all cash system as a trial experiment. However, I’m considering all change that I keep and store, change I’ve “made” – in addition, I’m keeping my eyes out on the sidewalk for change that others have dropped. It may not be significant, but it is money that will eventually go into getting me out of debt. And every little penny helps!

7 ) Sell some “bigger” items
I have a few bigger items around my house that I wouldn’t mind getting rid of. A very nice Swiss computer bag, a large china hutch and a water cooler/heater. I’ll list these items with pictures on Craigslist and see if I can get someone to take them off my hands for me.

8 ) Tutoring
While tutoring has been a “side-gig” of mine for a while, I’ve only made about $40 tutoring in the past 3 months. All of this has been online tutoring. I’m going to take some steps to get myself some “In Real Life” tutoring clients. I’ve put myself on the tutoring website for my university, emailed back two people who have sent out general announcements for tutoring and since this is the first week of class – I’ll put up fliers in front of the big lecture halls this week advertising my services. My goal is to get 2-3 email-only clients (unlimited email tutoring for $300/semester) and 1-2 face-to-face tutoring clients per week ($20/session).

So as you can see, I have quite a few ideas for getting some side money. Many of them (like selling items online or getting tutorees) may not yield much money THIS month, but I think the goal of Earn More September isn’t in how much money you actually make in September, but setting yourself up to make a bit of extra money in ways you hadn’t tried before.

Those are my plans: What are your plans for Earn More September?