June 2015

£83.27 in June.  That's 4.2% of our target done.

Looks like a slow start, but that's only counting what we've banked, or "real money" as I like to call it.

This doesn't include the $188 (around £120) pending on my Clixsense account.  I'll get that in August.  There are also small amounts kicking around on other sites, too small to cash out right now.  I'll only include them once we've got the money.

Here's how it breaks down:

Source	Amount	Guide	Sign up
MySurvey	£15.00	MS Guide	MySurvey
ValuedOpinions	£20.00	V O Guide	ValuedOpinions
Qmee	£0.96	Qmee Guide	Qmee*
Clixsense	£21.59	Clixsense Guide	Clixsense*
ELSE	£10.00	n/a	n/a
Halifax	£15.72	Halifax Guide	Halifax

*If you sign up using this link, we will receive a bonus, but it won't cost you anything.

The Valued Opinions payout was in the form of John Lewis vouchers.  They don't give cash, but other vouchers are available.

The Halifax part was cashback on using their credit card.  They offered 10% cashback on a Sainsbury's shop, so guess where we did our shopping this month!

ELSE run experiments for the economics department at UCL (where I study), unfortunately it's for students only.  They oversubscribed on this occasion and I 'lost' the random selection, so they gave me £10 to go away.

Qmee may be a small amount, but it's practically no effort, so a nice little extra.

Clixsense is the clear winner at the moment.  On top of that £21.59, we're expecting another £45 tonight and so far about £120 in August, all from about 3 weeks on the site.  From what I can see, there's about £150-£200 each of easy money available from this site, then it'll probably slow down to a relative trickle of £10-£20 a month.  The microtasks could work out lucrative, but not until I've built up my scores on that part, which is painfully slow going at the moment.  If you sign up using the link above, I'll tell you exactly where all the easy money comes in.

Here's what my Clixsense account looks like right now:

My PTC Clicks	today 0   total 155   earned $0.8560
My ClixGrid Clicks	today 0   total 716   earned $0.20
My Completed Tasks	today 1   total 49   earned $0.72
My Completed Offers	today 0   total 45   earned $10.33   pending $188.61
Earnings	today $0.0626   yesterday $0.1506   month $6.8349   year $47.5618 last month $40.7269   last year $0.0000   total $47.5618
Movements	payouts $35.24   fundings $13.78   purchases $17.00
Balance	$0.0618   Add to Pending Cashout
Pending Payout	$9.05   Cancel

How much can we make in our spare time?

For some time, Emma has been using online survey sites to generate extra income.  I'd always dismissed it as a waste of time, too much effort for too little money.

Then I took a serious look at the amounts she's receiving and it does add up.  It's not going to make us rich, but it'll pay for our holidays and maybe some Christmas presents.

At this point the geek in me emerged.  I thought I should research this area properly, experiment and record the results.  Refine the method, improve productivity...

Early results are promising, but just how much can we make in one year?  It's good to have a target, so let's aim for £2,000.

Us

We are a couple in our mid 30s, living at Emma's place in East London during the week and my place in Essex at the weekend.  We both work full time and I'm also studying part time for a masters in physics.  Along with the usual hobbies, social life etc, this doesn't leave a lot of time to spare, so whatever we do here has to be squeezed in where we can.

Methods

We're mostly looking at the little things that add up.  Mostly stuff that can be done online.

Naturally we'll be restricting ourselves to activities which are legal, decent and honest.  No shady dealing, no adult content, no con games.  All legitimate income.  Unfortunately this means much of it is also taxable income, but we'll discuss that with the tax man at the end of the year.

We'll be doing surveys, focus groups, microtasks, getting cashback, blogging, anything interesting that comes along.

The internet is full of get-rich-quick schemes which seem mostly to be pretty dodgy.  We avoid those.  If someone really had a method for making two grand a day for five minutes work, they wouldn't be selling it to you for £100.  They would rent an office, get some computers and pay a bunch of people minimum wage to do it for them and make a fortune for themselves.  At least, that's what I would do.

However, if someone tells me I can make £10 a month for a couple of minutes work a day, it seems possible, I'll look into it, see if there's a way to up the return.

I'm generally not keen on paying an up-front fee for membership, but may be flexible if the research makes it look worthwhile, or reliable sources tell me it'll be worth it.