Increase Revenue, Decrease Cost

Secondary income is revenue derived from activities other than your core occupation. Creating secondary income is essential to building net worth. The Simple Dollar recently wrote an article describing ways to exploit your passion for additional income. I have compiled ideas from the The Simple Dollar and other sites to build a list of 15 secondary income sources:

1. Blogging: The best way to understand the concept of making money from blogging is to think that your creating an online newspaper. Newspapers make money from selling advertising spots within the paper. Revenues from blogging usually come from advertising opportunities, but can come in the form of product reviews and guest writing as well.

2.  Niche Consulting: You are likely an expert in a particular niche and could build income from freelance consulting within this discipline. Specific niche-based consultants have recently become more popular and there are now opportunities to cash in on all types of consulting from event-planning to home organization.

3.  Tutoring: Similar to consulting, many individuals have specific talents that can be shared to others in the form of lessons. A great way to build income is through private piano lessons or instructing an aerobics class at the local gym. Tutoring is truly an excellent source of income because it usually requires little capital investment to share your services.

4. Selling Your Junk: Clean out your garage and start selling your junk on eBay. This activity is great because it not only adds some cash to your wallet, it actually helps move junk out of your house. I recommend selling on eBay, Amazon, and Craigslist. All of these sites offer user-friendly services that will get you selling in no time!

5. Become a Writer: If blogging is not your niche, but you love to write, consider writing your own book or articles for online sites and magazines. Using this as a platform for building secondary wealth is usually a bit difficult. It often requires the right connections and experiences to make substantial money. The Simple Dollar article encourages you to network with local publishers in order to best pursue this option.

6.  Selling Other People’s Junk: If you have mastered #4, you may want to push the envelope and really craft a trash-to-treasure business. This entails going to rummage sales and estate auctions to find cheap items, cleaning them up a bit, and selling them for a premium online. This requires a lot of market knowledge; understanding what sells and for how much, but is done successfully all of the time.

7. Become a Virtual Assistant: The growing acceptance of professional and personal outsourcing has opened up many opportunities within this income stream. Individuals can now deligate data entry, phone solicitation, and online shopping when they are too busy. As a virtual assistant, your ability to complete these tasks for your client will put cash into your wallet. Find out more about virtual assistants here.

8. Selling T-Shirts: Got a creative flare? Many online sites like CafePress.com and Zazzle allow you to design and sell your own appeal, but do not require you to maintain any inventory. These sites basically engage in all of the other business activities (manufacturing, storage, order procurement and shipping) reducing any significant capital investment.

9. Selling Art: Sticking with creative income sources, selling art is another way to translate a passion into income. The nice thing about selling art is the variety of channels to which you can derive revenues from your work. eBay and other sites are great outlets for sales, but local art groups and community events are great resources for selling your work.

10. Website Services: If you have technical talent, offering website solutions is a great way to build secondary income. Many software and web applications make it very easy to build websites, and with more businesses and individuals requesting websites, this opportunity could prove to be a lucrative source of income.

11. Surf the Web: Always on the internet? One way to leverage this hobby is by making money by clicking through advertisements and participating in web surfing studies. Be careful with these services because they are a lot of scams in this arena, but generally this vehicle is a great way to build secondary income.

12.  Online Referrals and Affiliate Marketing: This usually requires a website, but email works as well. These activities build revenue through product referals. If an individual were to purchase a product using your link or referal code, you would receive a commission from that sale. To learn more about this money maker, click here.

13.  Selling Stock Images: Love to take photographs? This income strategy may be for you. Website designers pretty much always outsource images on the websites they create. You can make money by selling your photos on a slew of online stock photography sites.

14. General Goods & Services Businesses: A classic secondary income strategy that has work for years is simply selling speciality products and services to local clients. If your neighbors love your sweet apple pies, maybe you should consider selling them. Have a dog that you walk everyday? Why not earn income from busy dog owners by offering to walk their dogs while you walk yours? Simple services like these are needed in every neighborhoods and are opportunities for wealth creation.

15. Part-time Job: No secret with this income strategy. Libraries, museums, and retail stores are always looking for weekend help. If none of the other income strategies tickle your fancy, try old reliable to build income!

Have more secondary income ideas? Please share by commenting below!

Have the urge to spend money? Well if I can’t convince you to think otherwise, at least shop responsibly by decreasing your spending expenses. One way to get a really good deal is using gift card arbitrage strategies:

1. Buy/Sell/Trade Gift Cards: Sites like Card Avenue, Plastic Jungle, and eBay all offer discounted gift cards. Need to buy a new DVD at Best Buy? Consider going to one of these sites and finding a $20 gift card for $16.
2. Buy Discounted Gift Cards at the Retailer: This one is the best! Restaurants have these promotions all of the time. They usually offer a free $5 bonus with all $20 gift card purchases. Before you sit down for dinner, buy one of these gift cards for $20 and enjoy that $25 meal.
3. Credit Card Arbitrage: This idea was originally posted at Five Cent Nickel. Grocery stores and gas stations often sell gift cards for other firms. Many rewards/cash-back credit cards give you more points/cash-back when making purchases at grocery and gas stores. By buying gift cards to the stores you wish to spend money, at the grocery store, you are essentially earning excess points/cash back. Let’s say you need a $50 drill at Home Depot. Buy that Home Depot gift card at Kroger where you get 3% cash back, and use that gift card at Home Depot (where you normally get 1% cash back). Your additional savings in this example is 2%!

Good luck shopping!

This post has been featured in the Carnival of Personal Finance.