Need to make some extra cash? Here are five places to try.
- CreateSpace. Are you an expert at something? Amazon's CreateSpace is an excellent place to publish a nonfiction book in a niche market. That is, it's a great place to use your writing skills and share your expert knowledge. Publishing a Print-on-Demand (POD) book makes sense for specialized markets where a big publisher won't venture because the projected sales are too low. However, you are in a position to take a small risk (it's just the time writing and designing the book that you risk) and you might make a killing.
- GoogleAds. (Sign into your google account and look under products for Google Adsense.) Many people have thriving blogs but hesitate to put advertising on them. Yet, that's exactly what magazines do every day: deliver a specialized set of readers to advertisers. They do this while also satisfying the readers with unique, interesting, helpful content. If you have a blog with a loyal readership, you are already delivering great content and there's nothing wrong with the magazine industry's business plan. You publish great content, then deliver eyes and advertisers pay. It's a win-win-win.
- TeachersPayTeachers. On track to bring in over $21million this year, TPT allows teachers to sell lesson plans, graphics such as bulletin board ideas, and professional documents to other teachers. If you have a foot in the education world, get thee hence! It's simple to upload .docs or .pdfs and start to make money on the work you've done for your own classroom.
- iStockPhoto. Most of us write, but some of us also do photography. Stock photo sites are always looking for great photography. It's easy to pick a topic and shoot around it. For example, if you love dogs, go to a dog show and snap away. The only caution here is that you must obtain photo releases. Be sure to read the guidelines for releases and quality of the photos.
- oDesk or eLance. Are you great at technical writing and need to find a way to connect with customers? These two sites are great places to hook up with a huge variety of customers. You'll find people looking for ghost writers, video editors, business plan writers, bloggers and much more.
Will any of these help you get rich fast? No. But they are places to build a slow and steady income stream.
Darcy--Thanks for the post. I'm a teacher and also a writer, and I've seen the Teachers Pay Teachers site (when looking for resources) but had not considered taking the time to try and become a resource for other teachers (and make some green for the effort). Thanks for the wake-up call.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with Sioux on this one. Where have I been?
ReplyDeleteI'm going to check out TPT. Interesting site!
ReplyDeleteI sell to iStock, but it's not like you can just take pics and upload them. They have a stringent process photographers must go through (reading multiple pages and taking a quiz) over photography terminology and examples. Plus, there's a bit of a "science" to selling photographs on iStock, and it can take awhile to catch on to what will and won't sell.