Growing Snowflaking Opportunities

One of the hardest things I deal with when paying off my debt is that I want to be making greater and faster progress.

I am on a partially fixed and partially not fixed income. I have a full time job with a set salary, a part time job that pays hourly and fluctuates, and then other income streams.

These other income streams are probably the most important part of my income. Some are passive, some require a lot of work. These are the ones that have the potential to always help me. Some make me just a few cents, some can give me a lump sum payment of a few hundred dollars (if I'm super lucky).

So what am I working on in my "spare time"?

Voice Over Work

I have been doing voice overs for a while. I have a professional demo online and I am always looking for work. This can pay really well when I get gigs, but a lot of the work I have done for free while I build my portfolio. This is the kind of thing that can get me lump sums if I get the work. I'm currently looking for an agency so that I don't have to chase gigs myself all of the time.
I also find it really really fun.

CashCrate

When I have a little spare time, which is rare, I take a few minutes to fill out surveys on CashCrate. With their awesome referral program, I am able to make extra money each month. True, when you start out you might not earn much, but snowflaking is about adding in little bits to make a bigger whole.

eHow

Do you know how to do something not many other people know how to do? I write articles on eHow. Granted, this starts with you just making pennies, but it's passive income. Once an article is written it's on the site and generating income. If you have a large library of articles, you can potentially do very very well. There is a really nifty list of requested articles if you are looking for inspiration. I've written articles from How to Get Around a Necklace Allergy to How to Make Felt

Half.com Sales

I read a lot of books, and when I am done with them I am really brutal. If I know I won't read it again, I instantly put the book up for sale on Half.com. My old building used to have a trash or treasure section where people would leave things for other people to take and any time there were books, I would go through them and grab them to sell online. I can usually make three sales a month or so with them. It's not a lot, but again, every little helps!

Distilled Rose Herbal Tea

I have a fledgling online company that I am still working on getting off the ground. I make herbal tea blends and sell them at my Etsy Store. Once I get this off the ground and start marketing the company it has the potential to be a good earner for me.


So how about you? Do you have any great extra income ideas that work for you?

CashCrate Comes Through - My First Check

A while ago I told you about CashCrate, an online survey site that allows you to make some money by filling out offers and referring new members. 

I put in about 40 minutes to an hour at the end of August with this program, and today I received my check for the work I did. I now have in my hand a check from Kingside Media for $13.39. 

This means that I got paid about $15 an hour for my work from them, and I did this during some downtime I had. So, I'm definitely sticking with it and I highly recommend that if you want to make a little extra passive income, you sign up too!

Making Money From Cash Crate

I've jumped on the Cash Crate bandwagon and signed up for an account. 

It's an interesting system and a great way to make a little extra money. The way that Cash Crate works is you sign up for an account and you do a lot of little surveys and fill out online forms. You make small amounts of money for each. Anywhere from $0.50 to $7. When you've filled out an offer, you submit it to Cash Crate and it lists as pending. Cash Crate confirms that you have completed the offer and deposits the money into your account. 

The real kicker though is that they have a great referral program, allowing you to earn a percentage when anyone signs up under your referral link. You then also get earnings from people that they sign up. It has a lot of passive income earning opportunity. 

Pros of Cash Crate

1. You can cash out each month for as little as $10. Many other companies require a higher dollar amount before they actually send you the money. 

2. You earn money for referrals, so it's possible to make completely passive income from it. 

3. Making money from it is pretty quick and easy. $10 took me a little under half an hour and not a lot of brain activity. 

Cons of Cash Crate

1. It's all about volume. To get into the making hundreds of dollars, you will need to actively work on gaining referrals and filling out offers. 

2. When filling out forms or offers,  you need to supply your mailing address. I will update this if I end up getting any Cash Crate related mail. You also need to put your email address in quite often, though I have a special email address that I use for just that purpose. 

3. Not every offer gets approved. Some of the surveys you fill out might not end up getting approved. This seems like a pretty low percentage, though

I think this program is a wonderful thing to make a little mindless money. If you're surfing the net or bored at work, you can fill out a couple of offers here and there and it will add up over time. 

I'll certainly update with progress as I try this program. For now, though, if you would like to try it out, you can sign up here. 

What is Passive Income and How Do I Get Started?

This is a guest post from Scott at The Passive Dad. Scott runs a great personal finance blog focused on his success with Passive Income and filled with great advice on how you can follow in his footsteps. 

If you would like to submit a guest post to Distilled Rose, please feel free to contact me!

What is Passive Income and How Do I Get Started?

You might already own a passive form of income and not even know it. Actually, you don't own it, the bank does. Banks earn income from your mortgage payments in the form of interest. If you are a landlord, you also are earning passive income on your apartment or rental house. Basically, passive income is derived from investments that require little to no work. They can require a basic investment, but the maintenance and time requirement are very minimal.
Getting to the point where you have several thousand dollars to invest in real estate may be a huge step for you.

How do you start out earning passive income then? Well, it's actually easier than you think. Start with something you love and are passionate about. If you don't have a passion, think of something you would love to do if you won the lotto. Got it? Great, now write it down. Is this something you would like to research and maybe tell others about? This is how your passion can become passive income. You have so many tools available that if you are truly passionate, the passive income will follow. Let's say you are passionate about raising horses. If you won the lotto tomorrow, let's say you would want to move to Kentucky and buy a large horse ranch. You would still need to research real estate, horses, land, breeding, etc right? Now is the time to write about it and teach others about your passion.

Utilize any of the following to start turning your passion into a passive income stream:

-Create a blog for free on blogger, typepad, or wordpress
-Write an ebook
-Create a Squidoo page

Want a really easy way to start earning passive income quickly? This will help you understand how passive income works and the importance of network marketing your ideas and passions. You are already shopping online and in stores, so you might as well earn some money for your efforts right? Join BigCrumbs and start earning passive income today!

I hope you have a passion that gets you excited and fired up. If you don't, use that lotto example and think of what you would do with your winnings. Think about it and start writing your way to passive income today.

For more of Scott's articles, check out The Passive Dad.

Scour : Getting Paid to Search the Internet

I'm a pretty big participant in internet survey programs as a way to make a little money and work on adding it to my debt snowball. I am a member of SurveySpot and MyPoints. 

I've just joined a new program called Scour as a way to make some extra passive income. Scour is a user driven search engine that rewards you for doing regular searches and then voting or commenting on the results. 

When you search with Scour, it pulls the top results from Google, Yahoo and MSN. You can then vote or comment on them, which helps Scour to determine their usefulness. This allows the "right" results to be given a higher place on the page. 

You receive 1 point for a Search, 2 for a Vote, and 3 for a Comment, and you can earn a maximum of 4 points for each Search. 

When you've earned 6,500 points you can cash out for a $25 Visa Gift Card.

Obviously you'd have to do a lot of searches to earn that, but here is the really neat part. If you invite a friend, Scour will give you a matching bonus of 25% of what your friends earn. If you send it out and everyone does just three searches a day or so, along with the searches you yourself are doing, the points can rack up quite quickly. 

I'm really interested and excited about this program. I like the idea of users being able to effect search engine content and improve how relevant certain sites are. 

So click here if you want to join me on Scour, and let me know what you think!