Free lotteries - are they worth it?

Over the last year a slew of free lottery sites have cropped up.  We've been trying them for almost a year, so now's a good time to analyse the results.

The business model is fairly simple.  Your entry to the lottery is based on some personal datum, like post code, date of birth or phone number.  Entry is free and there’s a draw every day, all you have to do is go on to their site and check the results every day.

There is advertising on the site and that pays for the prizes.

The big question is:  Are they worth doing?

The £70 or winnings sat in our bank account suggests yes.  A more thorough look at effort and reward says maybe not.

On the surface, it looks like a no-brainer.  It only takes a couple of minutes and you could win a nice lump of cash, in some cases hundreds of pounds.

But those couples of minutes add up.  We’ve been using six of these sites for eleven months.  That’s 330 days at 6 minutes (allowing for 1 minute per site) a day, times 2 people.  3,960 minutes or around 66 hours.  So the £70 we’ve won over all came at a rate of £1.06/hour.

This is a slightly unfair statistic, as all of our £70 has come from one site, so discounting the others, that one has a pay rate of £6.36/hour.  Almost minimum wage.  Add in the excitement of winning and that’s probably worth the effort.  Or it was, before they reduced the pay rate by 60%

Luckyphone

This is the one we’ve had the money from.  The main reason that this site pays out is that there’s a slight difference in format.  Where the others are all-or-nothing jackpot only, Luckyphone allows you to build up smaller prizes and cash out at £10.

I’ve loved this format from the start and it’s always been the one free lottery I would have recommended to people.

Your entry is based on the last nine digits of your phone number and you can have multiple entries if you have more than one phone number.  The main daily draw picks one person who receives £20 (originally £10), then you can have smaller prizes for matching 6, 7, 8 or 9 of their numbers.

It was nice.  A couple of times a week you’d log in and see you’ve won 25p or 50p.  It’s small amounts, but a little bit of free money is a great way to start the day.

Up to 4 May 2016, we were averaging 25.8p per day between us.  It was never going to make us rich, but it was a nice little bonus.  A little bit of excitement every day and competition to see who could get to £10 first.

On 5 May 2016, the format changed.  Jackpots were doubled, a new “mega draw” was introduced with a one in a billion chance of winning £1,000 and the small prize structure was changed.

The rewards for matching 7, 8 or 9 numbers was reduced, matching 6 now gets nothing but new prizes for matching 0, 1 or 2 were introduced.  Maybe that will balance out, maybe not.

Since that change, our average is 9.8p per day. 61.8% lower than previous.

We’re only a month into the new regime, but so far it’s pretty damning.  If it continues like this, it’ll be bye-bye luckyphone.

It’ll be a shame because it’s been a great site.  Excellent service and very prompt payment but if the bottom line doesn’t add up it has to go.

The others

Well, we’ve had nothing from the others.  They are all jackpot-or-nothing, so maybe that’s just the odds slowing things down.

That being said, with over 10 hours sunk into each site so far, even winning the bigger jackpots will struggle to bring up a decent average.

Maybe it’s just luck though, maybe the experience of two people over eleven months is too small a sample to really tell, so I’m going to ask you to help improve my stats.

Please comment with your own figures and I’ll edit this post with overall predicted earnings on each site.  I’ll need the following info:

·         Name of site
·         Number of days you’ve been using it
·         Total amount won

My conclusion so far is that it’s just a long-shot gamble like any other lottery, but at least you don’t have to pay for this one.  If you enjoy the anticipation then go for it, it doesn’t cost anything after all.  If you’ve got a more mercenary approach like me, maybe don’t bother.

If you do want to give them a go, here are some links:

Luckyphone

Selfie lottery

Free postcode lottery

Ashleigh money saver

DoB lotto

Free birthdate lottery

Number plate lotto

Edit: On 14 June 2016, Luckyphone changed the reward structure again, once more reducing the value of various wins.  In the 39 days since, we have averaged 1.74p per day between us.  The total reward has been reduced by 97% over the two changes.

It's going to take each of us about 3 years at this rate to build up £10 with withdraw.

Thanks for he good times Luckyphone, but I'll be leaving now.

If you can't beat 'em...

In my quest to make a little extra money, I read a lot of blogs, forums (fora?), articles and adverts.  I tend to read through it all because who knows, maybe there’s some little grain of truth in there and I’ll actually be able to make some money.

There are some phrases however, that really set the alarm bells ringing.  (Actually, Admiral Ackbar pops into my head shouting “IT’S A TRAP”, but essentially the same thing.)

If I see someone shouting that something is “FREE”, in capital letters, over and over again, I start to wonder how much it’s going to cost me.  When something is described as a “secret”, I have to wonder why you’re offering to share it with strangers on the internet.

Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Here are some of the fantastic secret business opportunities that will allow you to make £££s from home in just a few minutes a day with no experience for FREE* with no selling** involved.  Places are limited, so sign up immediately.  No time to think or Google anything, just rush straight in.

*Except for the fees

*You won’t have to sell anything, buy you may need to convince people to buy stuff.

Amazing opportunity 1: Money for Old Rope

I bought this piece of old rope last week for £20.  I’m now offering to sell it to you for £100.  That’s a 400% profit in just ONE WEEK!

All you need to do is wait a week, then find someone to buy it from you for £500 and you’ll have made 400% profit in ONE WEEK too.  It’s really that simple.

Then, if you’re smart, you’ll come back to me and buy another 5 pieces of old rope and repeat the process, for a total profit of £2,400 in just TWO WEEKS.

Supply is limited, so hurry!

Amazing opportunity 2: Self-assembly air guitars

This is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor of my fantastic new business enterprise.  Work from home as much or as little as you like and earn £££s in your spare time.

Have you ever noticed how cool people look when they’re playing the air guitar?  Would you like to be cool?  Well now you can, with your very own air guitar!

For just £50 I’ll send you a flat packed, self-assembly air guitar kit.  Once assembled, you can sell it on for £100 with no upline commission to pay!

Alternatively, you can keep it for yourself and use it as the basis for your own fantastic business.

So how does it work?  Well, once your friends see how cool you look, they’ll want to be cool too and you can help with that.  As a licenced air guitar distributor, you can supply them with all the air guitars they’ll need and you’ll receive a 10% commission on every sale!

It gets better.  If you recruit your friends as distributors, you can also receive a bonus 10% of everything they earn, including bonuses from people they recruited and so on ad nauseum.

Don’t have any friends?  Don’t worry, you soon will now that you’re a cool air guitarist!

You get to be cool and make money.  What have you got to lose?

**As a bonus for the first 20 applicants, you’ll receive free instructions on how to play the dirty trombone!**

Amazing opportunity 3:  Become a minister of the Church of the Almighty Dollar

Many people already worship the Almighty Dollar, but none of it is organised and worse yet, nobody is cashing in on all that worship, which is clearly an affront the the Almighty Dollar itself!

There is so much in the world that is sinful and much of that stuff is fun, which is why so many people sin.  Fortunately, the Dollar is very forgiving - for a price.

Did you give in to the temptation of chocolate? That’s a sin.

The good news is that the Dollar will forgive you for the low, low price of just £2 (paid to a licensed minister).

Now this pay-as-you-go redemption could prove expensive, but fear not!  The Dollar is not only compassionate, but also efficient.  For the bargain price for just £9.99 a month, you will be pre-forgiven for all of your chocolate-based sinning.  Then you can enjoy chocolate guilt-free every day of the week!

Chocolate is just one example.  So many sins are forgiveable for the right price.

As a special introductory offer, I'm looking to ordain 20 new ministers.

After you receive your training, you’ll be able to sell forgiveness too!

Book your initial training now for just £199 and we’ll throw in certification on any two sins of your choice for FREE (usual price £49.99 per sin)!

The world is so full of sin, your earnings are limitless!

So, there are the three greatest deals you’ll ever see.  Who’s in?

Neobux Experiment: Part 6 - Golden Membership

Status: Profitable
Deposited: $10
Current Balance: $20.65
Profit/Loss: $10.65 profit
Assets: 73 referrals, Golden membership

On 24 March this year, Neobux celebrated its eighth birthday with a promotional discount.  This meant that golden membership cost $75 instead of $90.  Thanks to a good run of mini jobs through March, I had that much in my account, so I took the plunge.

What did $75 buy me?

Golden membership comes with a range of benefits and new features, but I couldn't find a full list of them anywhere before buying.  Now that I've had a chance to look around, here's my summary.

Increased income

The most noticeable benefit is the jump in income.  This comes from three sources:

1. Referral income doubles.  Referral clicks are now worth one cent each, rather than half a cent before.  My 53 referrals were making me about 20-25 cents a day, which immediately become 40-50 cents.  It's really noticeable the way the balance increases now.
2. Personal clicks are worth something now.  As a standard member, you're guaranteed four gold-coloured fixed ads a day, worth 0.1 cents each.  There's usually about 20 other ads available, so your personal clicks get you about 2.5 cents a day (plus the points and adprizes, which are much more useful).  As a gold member, the fixed ads are worth a whole cent each, and you get nine of them a day.  Add in the others and you're looking at around 11 cents a day from personal clicks.
3. Mini job bonuses double.  Standard members get a 15c bonus for every dollar earned, Golden gets 30c.  March was a good month, where I did $60 worth of mini jobs, receiving $9 of bonus, that would have been $18 if I were golden at the time.

So without the mini job income, I'm around 30c a day up, just on the 53 referrals I already had.  That's around $110 a year.  Even at full price, that upgrade is paying for itself.

Add in the mini job bonuses for an extra $110 (assuming I can keep up the March pace, which I probably can't) and we're up to $220 a year extra, a profit of $130 on full price membership or $145 on the promotional price.

So yes, it's worth it.

My referrals are not yet self-sustaining and will require subsidy from personal clicks and mini jobs until I have 115 of them (see previous post), but I'm making good progress towards that number.

Renting referrals

You can now have up to 2,000 referrals (or 2,099 if you're careful how you do it), up from 300 at standard level.

You should now receive better quality referrals, due to a stricter distribution filter.

As a standard member, you were guaranteed only to get referrals who have clicked at least 11 ads in the last 5 days (average 2.2).  Golden members only get people who have clicked 14 in the last 6 days (average 2.33).  So the people you get should be marginally more active.

You can still rent more referrals seven days after the last set, but you are restricted to two one-hour slots, which you chose yourself.  I chose noon and 11pm as the most convenient times for me, but then the clocks changed and now I'm on 1pm and midnight.

Enhanced statistics

A few new graphs appear with the upgrade.

On the statistics page, transfers to rental balance and golden pack balance are added to the group that contains the recycle and extension values.

A new graph showing the number of referrals due for extension over the next 270 days is very useful in helping you to spread out the costs.

On the rented referral page, a new icon has been added to each line which shows the click rate over the last ten days for that referral.  Possibly of use when making recycling decisions, but this would take a lot of effort if you have a large number of referrals.

The summary page now has a smaller version of the direct and rented referral clicks graphs from the statistics page.

Progress and future plans

Since upgrading, I have acquired a further 20 referrals.  At the time that I upgraded, I had enough cash to get another 10 and extend them for 240 days while there was still a discount on ($1.09 each, rather than $1,12).  I got the other 10 a week later and am holding back enough cash to extend them when they come due.

I've added a page to my Neobux spreadsheet to track costs and tell me how much I can spend on new rentals.  It shows for every day over the next year the projected extension and upgrade costs, assumed daily income (based on a conservative 0.6 average) and then calculates the projected balance at the end of each day.  The sheet then tells me how many I can afford to rent based on my current balance, without running out of money when costs come up over the next year.

Currently it's telling me I can get up to another 15 this Friday, so I'll probably end up getting another 10.

My plan it to keep expanding until I'm renting as many as I can as often as I can, then I'll start withdrawing whatever's left.  Might take a while, but I definitely think it's possible.

Join the fun: https://www.neobux.com/?r=rrobson

Neobux Experiment: Part 5

Status: Profitable
Deposited: $10
Current Balance: $49.014
Profit/Loss: $39.014 profit
Assets: 53 referrals, extended 240 days

It's been a while since my last post, mostly because I've been busy with other things, but also because there were no major changes to report.

Now I've got to the point where I can report that the experiment is a success.  You can actually make money out of Neobux.

Before I discuss the profitability, I'll address my concerns from part 4.

Average click rate

I was worried that my average was suspiciously high.  This has now settled down to something like the figures other people are reporting, 0.68 clicks per day average.  It seems that new people are enthusiastic but tend to tail off after a couple of weeks.  I'm seeing that with my automatic recycling, when the new minion comes in, they average 2 or 3 clicks a day for the first couple of weeks and then settle down the same as everyone else.

Adprize

The wins are rolling in now, I've had 2 x 25¢, 19 x 10 points and 1 x 100 points.  The average is still only 60% of what I'm expecting based on other people's experience, but that could be the low sample size.

Break Even Point (BEP) - the magic number of Neobux

Now to discuss the profit side.  When you read through the forums, everyone is obsessed with BEP.

Your BEP tells you what you need the average click rate of your minions to be in order to make a profit.  If they click higher than BEP, you win, if they click lower, you lose.  There's nothing you can do about the click rate; your minions are anonymous, so there's no carrots or sticks available to increase productivity.  This means that your fate lies entirely in manipulating your BEP.

There are three factors that effect BEP: Number of minions, level of membership and extension choices.

As a standard level member, extending for the maximum 240 days and not taking advantage of any promotional discounts, your BEP is 0.93, regardless of number of minions.  The actual cost per day is 0.0047¢, slightly less than the income you get for one click.

If you chose to extend for the minimum time possible, 15 days, your BEP shoots up to 1.33.

Taking advantage of the occasional 2% promotional discount can bring BEP as low as 0.91.

You will have noticed that all of these figures are above the average click rate of 0.68.  At standard level, you will always make a loss on your rented referrals.  The more you have, the more you lose.  My 53 minions currently lose me around 6¢ per day.  However this is made up by my own clicks and some mini-jobs, leaving a net profit.

When you upgrade to golden membership, your income per click doubles, which reduces the BEP, but you also have the $90 cost of the upgrade to divide between your minions, which pushes it back up again.  If you're lucky enough to win a free upgrade your BEP instantly drops to 0.47 and you're in profit immediately.

As a golden member, the more minions you have, the thinner the $90 gets spread and the lower your BEP.

This leads to two important tipping points.

The first is where I am now.  Somewhere between 53 and 54 minions is the point where buying golden membership makes absolutely no difference.  The extra income per click is precisely equal to the cost of the upgrade.  Any fewer than 53 and upgrading increases your BEP (and your losses), any more and the BEP starts to fall.  That's why I've chosen this point to stop renting for a while and save for an upgrade.

Once I have my golden membership, I need to keep plugging away at the mini jobs in order to rent more minions to break through the second tipping point.  At 115 minions, my BEP will hit 0.68, equal to the average click rate.  Any more I pick up after that push me into profit.  At that point, my rented referral income will be turning a profit on its own, with no need for subsidy from my clicks or mini jobs, after that it's all good news.

If I manage to take advantage of promotions, 2% more off of extensions and $10 off the price of golden membership, That tipping point comes down to 95 minions.

It's in reach and I'll get there soon, then I can really start building my account.

Want to join me on this journey?

I'd say give it a go.  The zero investment route is entirely feasibly, if you have the patience.  Work up your funds from personal clicks and mini jobs and you can buy straight in.

If you don't have the patience, it'll cost you $241.80 to get straight to the profit point, or $202.55 with the right timing.

Sign up here: NEOBUX

Neobux Experiment: Part 4

Status: Very promising
Deposited: $10
Current Balance: $4.973
Profit/Loss: $5.027 loss
Assets: 40 referrals

Measuring success

The problem here is trying to gauge how successful this is, when I keep ploughing my profits back into more referrals.  The loss is growing at a slower rate, which is good, but does that really mean I'm making progress?

While I'm still in this growth phase, I won't be in profit, or not by much.  When I have a larger number of referrals, I'll probably be keeping a balance greater than my original $10, but it will regularly get used.  So I need to find a different way to measure success or failure.

The question is, how do I value my assets?  What are those 40 referrals worth?  I think an appropriate measure would be cost per referral.  Dividing my loss by the number of referrals will give me an idea of how well they're doing in paying off the original purchase price.  The starting cost is 20¢/ref.  If the figure goes above 20¢/ref, they're costing more than they're making and the experiment is a failure.  Cut your losses and run.

If things are working properly, the cost/ref will head towards zero.  When the number is consistently below zero, we're in profit!  We can withdraw our initial investment and we need a different measure to look at profitability.

So how am I doing?  With the additional 10 referrals I picked up this week, my cost/ref is down to 12.6¢.  Definitely moving in the right direction.

Things that are still worrying me

This all seems to be going very well, but there are a couple of things still niggling at me.

The first is the click rate of my referrals.  It's good.  Very good.  Suspiciously good.  Most days my minions are averaging between 1.5 and 2.0 clicks each.  Reading through the forums, the most experienced people seem very happy when their average goes about 0.6.  Is it just luck?  Is it because all of mine are still relatively new, and they tend to settle down after a few months?  Do they give good referrals to new people to create a false sense of security so that they'll buy the upgrades?  I guess time will tell, but I won't be falling into the trap of putting real money into this until I know it works.

The other thing is Adprize.  Where are my Adprize wins?  People are saying click everything you can and the wins will roll in.  I've been doing that for a few weeks and I've had nothing.

When you click an ad, you get three shots at Adprize.  That means you watch another ad, and maybe win a prize.  A few Neopoints, a few cents, if you're luck, free golden membership.  Looking at the forums, people who are clicking 50 ads a day (so presumably 150 Adprize attempts) are winning at least something four days out of five.  I'm only doing about half that, but surely I should get something once a week?  Or is that only for higher level members?  They say it's random.  I'll keep plugging away at it for a while yet, hopefully something will come in.

Penny Jars v Spending Loose Change

Free money?

"It's amazing how quickly it builds up."

How often have you heard that phrase?  It'll be after someone tells you that they throw all their loose change in an old whiskey bottle, or that they save all the 20p coins they get.

"By the end of the month, there's usually fifty quid in there!"  And that's free money, right?  It just appeared out of nowhere.  We can blow that on something frivolous, because spending the penny jar doesn't really count as spending.

I used to do that, but then I realised I was fooling myself.  This isn't money I've saved, it's money I've taken out of my bank account unnecessarily.  I've been to the ATM and drawn out £50 that was previously earning interest, when there was already £50 sitting in a jar at home.  Then I'd go and blow that money as if it were an unexpected bonus rather than something that should have been part of my regular budget.

So now I spend my small change whenever I can and as a result withdraw less from the bank.

But doesn't it annoy the staff?

Depends how you do it.  If you wait until all your groceries are through the till, then start counting out £27 in pennies, yes the staff will get irritated, as will other customers.  But then if you've got that much, you're still running a penny jar; it's just being kept in your pocket instead of in a jar at home.

If you pay the odd pennies, or a couple of pounds in loose shrapnel every time you buy something with cash, then you'll generally get one of two reactions: gratitude or confusion.

Gratitude is the most common.  Most places start the day with a certain amount of change in the till.  Then, as everybody pays with a £20 note, the supply of change dwindles.  Eventually they end up having to give people a big handful of 5p coins because they've run out of 10p and 20p coins.  Restocking their float is actually very helpful to them.  You'll very rarely see the coin sections of a till overflowing, but you'll often see them empty.

Here's a top tip from my years of working in bars.  You'll get served a lot faster in a busy pub holding a couple of fivers and and a handful of change than you will waving a £20 note around.  There are never enough fivers in the world and all the coins disappear into the fruit machines.  We need to serve you first so that we have enough change for the guy buying a bag of crisps with a £20 note.

Then there's the confusion.  Some people just don't understand why you've given them the extra coins.  The bill comes to 63p.  I hand over a pound coin and 13p in change.  They look confused: "no, it's only 63p, you've given me too much".  "That's so you can give me 50p change."  They look blank, but type it in to the till anyway.  Ching change due: £0.50.  "Wow, how did you do that?".  As Arthur C Clarke said, to those who do not possess it, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.  Sadly, some people don't possess elementary arithmetic.  Just tell them it's a magic trick and walk away.

July 2015

£340.86 in July, bringing the total to £424.13, 21% of our target done after just two months.

Still got a big chunk pending on Clixsense and also a fair amount on Prolific Academic, so August will be off to a good start.

This month's favourite site is Prolific Academic.  It's a fairly new survey site used by universities to gather information for their research.  Their pre-screening is excellent, so you never get screened out half way through, pay is good and fast and there's plenty of work available.  The £50 below is just what I've banked this month.  I've got another £11 pending and I only started on 3 July!  Emma hasn't cashed out yet, but she's sitting on another £40, having started a week after me.

If you're only going to sign up to one survey site, make it Prolific Academic.

Here's this month's breakdown:

Source	July	Total	Guide	Sign up
Clixsense	£65.58	£87.17	Clixsense Guide	Clixsense*
Prolific Academic	£51.44	£51.44	Prolific Guide	ProlifcAdademic*
Quidco	£43.20	£43.20	Quidco Guide	Quidco*
MySurvey	£30.00	£45.00	MS Guide	MySurvey
Global Test Market	£35.00	£35.00	GTM Guide	GlobalTestMarket*
WorkShopPlay	£25.00	£25.00	WSP Guide	WorkShopPlay
Pru Health	£22.50	£22.50	n/a	n/a
Halifax	£5.00	£20.72	Halifax Guide	Halifax
Valued Opinions	£0.00	£20.00	V O Guide	ValuedOpinions
MyView	£20.00	£20.00	MyView Guide	n/a
Shop & Scan	£20.00	£20.00	S&S Guide	n/a
Selling stuff	£12.00	£12.00	n/a	n/a
Else	£0.00	£10.00	n/a	n/a
Top Cashback	£5.64	£5.64	TopCashback Guide	TopCashback*
The Viewers	£5.50	£5.50	Viewers Guide	TheViewers
Qmee	£0.00	£0.96	Qmee Guide	Qmee*
Total	£340.86	£424.13

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

Pru Health is a nice little bonus.  Emma gets private medical cover through work and they pay her cash once a quarter for not smoking.  As someone who has never smoked, that's a really easy thing to achieve.

Selling Stuff  Sold an old desk and chair on Facebook.  Now the room that was an office contains a beer fridge and a comfy chair.  Perfect place to sit and blog.

Shop & Scan seemed like a bit of a faff at first, scanning all our shopping before we can put in in cupboards, but I've been pleasantly surprised how fast the money is building up.

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.