How to supplement your income with Ebay

Ebay.com the worlds most famous online auction website has benefited a great number of people. Many people have found "treasures" for mere dollars on Ebay and saved money, and tons of them have sold many items and earned extra cash. Ebay can help supplement your income and allow you to earn a little bit of extra cash or it can grow into a full time job or a private business.Out of the many ways you can go about earning extra cash below are few examples.
If you are going to go into this you should be comfortable providing your personal and banking information to Ebay. So create an Ebay account, as well as a Paypal account and fill out all of the needed information and do all of the verifications and checks so you are ready to go.
Both Ebay sellers and buyers get reviews, comments and rating scores, often times if you are a new seller people might feel worried to buy from you because they don't know if you are honest, if you will keep up your end of the deal. To help offset that you should create a good profile, provide the sellers with information about you and your products, give them certain rules and an ability to contact you without much hassle. If you have a returns policy, or any guarantees post them there clearly, anything about shipping as well. People will react more positively to a seller that seems serious and with ample information than to a blank profile with no reviews.
Once you are done setting up your accounts you should set a budget. Yes, you DO need to spend money to make money. Ebay charges small fees to sell your items. While this is no big deal if you are starting out with just a few items, if you are doing large quantities you might want to keep it all in check. Maybe account for the fee in the price of your item.
Now would be a time to figure out what to sell. If you look through Ebay you can find anything from a rock to high tech gadgets, and the weirdest thing sell. It is suggested that you go through your house and see what you don't need, think of it as prepping for a garage sale. There might be some tools in the garage, like that nail gun from last summers roof project, which you have bought but honestly wont use again. Sell them, it will help someone out, get you some cash and free up your space. If you are into arts and crafts of any kind chances are you can either make pieces or already have them lying around, these would be great items to sell on Ebay to supplement your income.
When listing the item you will have various options. You should think about your auction price, which starts small, and your "Buy now" price which should be your ideal price. You should have quality pictures that will show off the item adequately as well as a good description, and once again any rules of sale.
Once your items are up for sale you shouldn't just leave it up to Ebay and the Gods of Chance, you should promote your items online as well as off, it will pay off for you big time in the long run.

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Readbud.com

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Advantages: easy to earn

Disadvantages: not 100% sure if legit

Readbud.com is a website, which could be a hit or a miss but I thought why not give it a try? It is just another way to earn a few pennies online, however it could be worth your time if it is able to provide enough work.

The way it works is that you sign up and read articles for a small payout. Ideally you would ACTUALLY READ the given article, notice the advertisements and maybe even click on some. In reality all you do is open the offered article, scroll to the bottom and give it a 1-5 rating.
Before you open each article you will be notified how much that specific article is paid. I have spent 12 minutes on the website, 15 including account set up, and have earned $1.16.
The articles I have read were paid from $0.04-0.10.
When you sign up you will be asked to choose up to 50 interest areas, these are the areas in which you will receive the articles you will read. DO select all 50 choices. You can change your selection once every 24hrs if you want to keep things interesting or just get more articles heading your way.

How much you get paid per article depends on its length.
Article content word count and corresponding rewards:

Under 100 : 1 cent

Between 101 and 200 : 2 cents

Between 201 and 300 : 3 cents

Between 301 and 400 : 4 cents

Between 401 and 500 : 5 cents

Between 501 and 600 : 6 cents

Between 601 and 700 : 7 cents

Between 701 and 800 : 8 cents

Between 801 and 900 : 9 cents

Between 901 and 1500 : 10 cents

Between 1501 and 2000 : 15 cents

Over 2000 : 20 cents

I have been offered only 21 articles so far and have easily gone through them in 12 minutes while doing three other things at the same time. Assuming the website can provide enough articles, I think its worth the time. At this rate if you spent the whole hour doing this you'd be paid $5.80 an hour... Not too bad for an online gig of this kind.
They have a pretty high minimum for the payout. You will need to earn $50.00 before you can request a payment. They will pay you via Paypal so that is pretty decent as well.
They have referral programs where you get $5.00 when the person which signed up through you reaches their minimum payout amount.

On paper the website looks great, however I have not reached payout yet. I have been using the site on and off and can safely say that I can get around a $1.00 per day on it, currently I am at $33.27 and hopefully I will reach the payout minimum soon! 

Summary: looks great on paper, still to see if it will pay out

UPDATE: I have reached my payout of $50.00 and have requested it on the 25th of Nov. if the site is legit they should payout within 30 days. So i suppose I will write another blog in a months time letting you guys know how it went!

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Triond.com

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Advantages: Reliable, as far as per view payments go

Disadvantages: No upfront payments for posting your work

Triond is another one of the many websites where you get paid to write. And while it is reliable as far as getting you your money, it might not be worth your time unless you are a member of other such website which implements upfront payments. Triond will pay you revenue share for your articles, pictures and other media. So basically you get paid per click. From my personal use of Triond it is nothing compared to Helium. With my articles (even when I had a lot less) on Helium I easily earn ten dollars per month whereas on Triond I get barely a dollar. Recently though they have implemented a merge of a sort with Google Adsense. This will earn you even more revenue share each time someone clicks on certain Google ads which are showing on the pages containing your articles. To help lure people into reading your articles Triond has also teamed up with Twitter.

A look at some of the Triond's features:

- Dashboard.

While it might not be super flashy and what not I have actually taken quite a liking to this page. It shows graphs of visits to my articles and all other stats that we are usually dying to know. You can see your total months earnings from both Triond and Google Adsense as well as daily and per article. Another important thing is it shows the most searched phrases which lead people to your articles, as well as where the viewers came from.

- Submit tab.

This is one of the easiest ways I have come across as far as submitting your articles, and from the same place you can do photos and videos as well. The article format is wonderful, you can include links, photos (either suggested or your own). You can even embed Youtube videos. What I don't like however is the thumbnail picture. You must include one, it can't be your own and the search engine for them is bonkers, I rarely get anything related to my articles.

- Earnings tab.

This is another nifty feature, on the right hand side it has your current earnings and the next payment date. On the left side it has a summary of all the past payments with the Payment ID's. If you click on any of the Payment ID's you will get a detailed review of how much each of your articles has earned for that month.

All in all Triond is a good website, honest and reliable. However if you are writing all your articles and submitting them there you are getting screwed as far as earning money goes. Otherwise it is a nice edition to your articles being submitted elsewhere.

Summary: might not be worth your time unless you are a member of other such website which implements upfront.

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InboxDollars.com

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Advantages: A legit site

Disadvantages: I wish they paid through Paypal

Inbox Dollars is an online website which gives you a chance to earn money in return for various small favors, or to "Be rewarded for your online activities" as the websites slogan would say.

Inbox Dollars offers a $5.00 Sign on Bonus and requires you have at least $30.00 earned in your account before it sends out your check. The way to earn this money is to complete certain tasks such as reading the Paid Emails, and by reading that means clicking on them so you are taken to another link. You need to click so the site would register you looking at the advertisement . Just clicking on emails will earn you around two cents per email.

There are other ways to earn money as well and they are sorted in the following categories:

- Cash Offers, "Earn cash for trying out new products and services".
The Cash Offers part of the website consists of 100 percent free offers, meaning you do not need to submit your credit card info or pay for anything. Usually these might include something like signing up for another survey website or getting an auto quote. Usually the money earned on these offers is not that great, from 25 cents to $2.00. Other than this you also have Trial Offers, for these type of offers you will sign up for a service and provide your billing information. Signing up for these doesn't mean paying, even if you do have to put in your credit card info. You will have free trial periods and as long as you remember to cancel the service before the end of the trial period you will not be charged. The money earned for these is more than the Free Offers, ranging from $3.00 to $15.00 per offer.

- Cash Surveys, "Earn cash for sharing your opinion".
There are surveys you can take daily. You will be paid 50 cents per survey and entered for a chance to win $50,000.00 each time you complete one of the surveys. The down side is that the surveys usually take twenty minutes or so to complete and you get paid only if you qualify and meet all of the criteria, more often than not you will go through the majority of the survey before you are informed that you do not meet the requirements.

- Cash Games, "Earn cash for playing your favorite games".
This part of the site is pretty nifty for those that love simple games such as Solitaire, Bejeweled, Monopoly, etc. The first time you start the Cash Games Inbox Dollars will give you four bucks or so to start you off, after that you are responsible for making your own deposits if you want to play for money. Its sort of like online casino, with more variety. If you are good at games and can beat the competition those four bucks might earn you some money, and if not oh well no loss on your part.

- Cash Shopping, "Earn cash for shopping online".
If you often shop online this is probably a good section to check out before you make your purchases. Their offers are, depending on the store, earning from 0.4% to 10% cash back. Some of the partners participating in these offers are: Wal-mart, Dell, EBay, Macy's, Banana Republic, Best Western, GAP, and many more.

- Insurance Center, "Save more on your insurance".
This is just a one time jig. If you want you can try and save money on your insurance. That's it.

- Referral Center, "Earn cash for referring your friends".
Pretty self explanatory, get a friend to sign up and earn money off it. You get 10% of your friends qualified earnings, without any money being taken away from their end.

All in all Inboxdollars.com has potential to make you some money. It is a good site and it is not a scam, i have received two checks from them already. And have just earned enough for the third one!
It does take a while though, but considering the lightness of work its not a big deal.
If there is an issue with an offer and money coming through they are pretty helpful and diligent when it comes to sorting stuff out. If you are interested in earning money online in any of the above ways or something similar don't pass up Inbox Dollars.

UPDATE:
I have actually requested the check from inboxdollars.com after writing this and have learned a new bit of information. The payout is $30.00, there is a $3.00 processing fee for the check so you really get only 27.00. Anyway, this time around they offered me this:
If I hold off the request and reach $40.00 within the next 30.00 they would waive the processing fee. $10.00 in a month isn't bad but due to the fact that I am moving and what not I declined and requested my check anyway.
As soon as I did they informed me that i got a $3.00 bonus for reaching the payout. So rather than starting at 0 I started back up at $3.00...not a big deal but not as dreadful as seeing $0.00 either!
All in all more brownie points for inboxdollars.com

Summary: A bit slow but great site to earn a few bucks on the side without any real effort

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Helium.com

http://www.helium.com/

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Advantages: a great earning potential

Disadvantages: after a while there is no room to grow, the top you will get is $3.50 per article

Helium is considered, by many, to be the largest online writing community, with well over a million articles under its belt.
So if you want to learn how to realistically, and by this I mean slowly but very steadily, earn some money here on Helium read on. First of all, get any sort of notion about quick and easy cash out of your head. Helium pays, however, no one pays you to do nothing, so with that in mind let's get to work. If you were starting your own business you would need a business plan in order to get anywhere, same with this. You can create one on your own, or you can use the one I wrote up (mostly in form of calculations):

The first month:

- Make it a point to write at least 30 articles total this month

+ All of calculations for the first month will be based on the 30 article count, feel free to recalculate with a higher number

+ Do not be intimidated by such a big number, take it a day at a time (one article per day doesn't sound bad at all does it?)

- Out of those 30 articles have 22 be written into Empty Titles

+ Great thing about this is that you are not limited to the subjects already posted on the website, you can suggest your own titles

- Write the other 8 articles into competitive titles, choose topics with at least 3 articles already in them and write in them. Make sure you pick the titles in which you know you can beat the competition or get into at least the top 25%.

- Make sure you set some time apart each day for rating. You need to make 500 rates to have 5 stars, do not just randomly click through articles, you wouldn't want it done to you and the quality of your rating gets scored as well (you need your rating score to be 75%).

- I will mention revenue in calculations and set it for $1.00, that is about how much you can earn through it if you don't put any effort in (more on this will be explained later on)

- If you do what i listed so far you can earn 1 or 2 writing stars and the earning calculation for each is as follows:

+ One Star: Competitive articles: 8x.50= $4.00

Empty Title articles: 22x1.5= $33.00 (For each empty title you get $1 plus whatever you get per article at your current star status)

5 Star Rating Bonus: $3.00

Revenue: $1.00

First Article Bonus: $5.00

Total Earned in the first month = $46.00

+ Two Stars: Competitive articles: 8x1= $8.00

Empty Title articles: 22x2= $44.00

5 Star Rating Bonus: $3.00

Revenue: $1.00

Total Earned in the first month = $56.00

- If you put in at least 30 articles in your first month you can very well work up to 3 Stars, if you write quality articles that get rated to the top in your Competitive Titles and have those remain at 85% or more your earnings will be even higher than what has been shown here ($1.5 per each article posted!)

Second Month:

- You will need to put in a little more work into this one if you want to move up to the next level and get more earnings, this time we are shooting for the 100Th article. Now don't freak out, this is 100 articles total, so you really need to write only 70 articles.

- Again, do not let yourself get scared, take it a day at a time. Two or three smaller articles a day is not a big deal, you think about so many things throughout the whole day that at the end (or any other time you catch a break) you have plenty to write about!

- For the second month the same basic rules apply, except there will be no $5.00 bonus you received the first month.

- Calculations:

+ One Star:

Competitive articles: 17x.5= $8.50

Empty Title articles: 53x1.5= $79.50

5 Star Rating Bonus: $3.00

Revenue: $1.00

Total Earned in the second month = $92.00

+ Two Stars:

Competitive articles: 17x1= $17.00

Empty Title articles: 53x2= $106.00

5 Star Rating Bonus: $3.00

Revenue: $1.00

Total Earned in the first month = $127.00

+ Three Stars : $161.50

+ Four Stars : $197.00

- Things are looking much better aren't they? Just make sure that out of the total number of articles you have submitted at least 25% are in competitive titles and doing well and so will you!

You have probably figured out how to calculate how much you can earn with simple article writing to Helium, however there are other ways of earning money on this website. Earning through Revenue simply means that each time someone clicks on your article to read it Helium gets money and they give you a share of that. There are many ways out there to promote your articles and get traffic to them.

If you have any of the networking website accounts such as Facebook or MySpace be sure to put a link up to either your About Me page or to specific articles. Same goes for any other similar website, if you have a blog better yet and you know people read it, put the links up there. You can put a link into the signature of your emails or if you are a member of any forums put it into that signature. One very overlooked way to get clicks is by getting to know people right here on Helium! Say hi, give feedback for someones work, make a Zone, join a group and post on the forums!

All of these methods will get people to notice you, to get curious and to take a look at you and at your work. Helium also offers many contests where you can earn a nice little sum if you win. The Helium Marketplace is another part of the site where you can earn anywhere from $16 to $200 per article, if chosen. Think of it as Ebay for publishers and writers. Perhaps you can't (...or can you?) drop your job and do Helium full time, but it is a very nice supplemental income and it can pay a bill or two each month.

Before you write any articles make yourself familiar with the website, this might seem unnecessary and tedious but it will save you a lot of trouble and frustration down the road. The two links you should be familiar with are How to earn money at Helium and Helium Stars and Badges, once you have read through those you will have an idea of how things work, and any instructions you receive will be much easier to understand.

Summary: a great site for many starter writers, and even later on its a great supplemental income website

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