Etsy

Etsy is a peer-to-peer (P2P) e-commerce website which promotes itself as a vehicle through which to "shop directly from people around the world".

Etsy is, in its own words, a marketplace where people globally can connect, both online and offline, to make, sell or buy goods that are unique. It serves "creative entrepreneurs" who produce art, crafts, clothing, vintage goods and handmade items. For a very small fee one can open an online Etsy shop and trade with customers who are specifically interested in that particular type of market.

Originally founded in 2005, Etsy has been up and running since 2008 and has some 30 million registered users, with over $1 billion dollars in total annual transactions.

YouGov - Being Paid for Your Opinions

I have already covered Online Surveys as a good means of earning a regular secondary income.

But of all the survey providers YouGov is probably worth a stand-alone mention, as it is just so straightforward and reliable. Once you join YouGov you need only to sit back and wait for notification of a new survey to be e-mailed to you.

YouGov typically pays 50p per survey that you complete. On occasions a short survey may pay 25p or a longer one 75p or even £1, but 50p is the norm. Or to be precise you will earn 50 points, with one point equating to one penny. Alternatively a prize draw survey (called an Oracle Survey), is offered.

Once notification of a new survey arrives by e-mail the easiest way of accessing it is by simply clicking the link in the message. YouGov chooses participants from their profiles, which you should fill out as soon as you join, so the eternal irritation of completing half a survey only to be told that you don't qualify rarely happens. Normally, once you are in you are in.

Surveys can be about any subject but common ones are politics and shopping. The questions are easy to follow and the options given cover all possibilities. You simply select the one which best matches your own opinion and move on to the next question.

At the end of each survey, before your points are allocated to your account, you are given the option of either banking them or redeeming them for an entry into the prize draw. This is of course your choice to make but if the object of the exercise is to make money fast the obvious course of action is to hold onto the points.

Once a total of 5,000 points has been reached a payout of £50 can be requested and either the money is paid into your bank within a few weeks (usually two) or you can request a cheque.

As it is a highly professional and universally respected survey platform YouGov does not take liberties with your time. You complete your surveys and you get paid for them, simples.

Sports Betting Arbitrage

"Betting is a mug's game," or so they say.

You'll never meet a poor bookie".

Clichés as they are they do have a certain truth. Bookmaking is all about the "house edge". What this means is that the price offered to the punter by the bookmaker is less generous than the "real" price should be. In other words, if a bookie was offering you odds on the flip of a coin coming up heads he would probably be setting a price in the region of 10/11 or 5/6, when the true odds would of course be Evens.

Certainly you still have a 50/50 chance of winning the bet. But if you win the bet at 10/11 your £11 stake will win you £10. If you lose, your loss is £11. So although your chances of winning a single bet are 50%, place the same bet 100 times and it is virtually certain that you'll be out of pocket. Hence "the house edge".

Sports betting arbitrage reverses that verdict. By using different odds at different bookmakers you turn the prices to your advantage. For instance, if Bet365 is offering 6/5 on Bloggs to beat Brown in a snooker fixture and Evens is available at Betfair on Brown to beat Bloggs in the same match you can, by carefully setting your stakes accordingly, lock in a guaranteed profit whatever the outcome.

There are pitfalls - human error, last-minute price changes, cancelled bets, maximum permitted stakes being altered without notice - but the skilled arbitrageur will overcome these on balance. Of course the return each time is relatively low - any "arb" over 2% is considered a good one, so an investment of £1000 would be needed just to make £20 in profit. In other words to benefit from sports arbitrage one needs some serious starting capital.

But it does work, and many people make a living from it.

High Rolling in Online Sports Betting

The term "high roller" in sports betting refers simply to the placing of large stakes. What one person might consider high, of course, might differ substantially from another's understanding of the term. For the purposes of this article let us consider those punters who are frequently prepared to wager into four figures and beyond.

Very few bettors place four-figure or five-figure bets every time. Ordinarily they will assess the likelihood of a wager being successful and stake accordingly. How generous a price on a particular market happens to be would often be a consideration too. However a person who places high stakes with some degree of frequency might reasonably be considered a high roller.

Perhaps unsurprisingly different bookmakers (sometimes called sportsbooks) will take different views on the desirability or otherwise of high roller custom. A very large wager on a line which carries a big price exposes the book to the prospect of hefty losses should the bet be successful. A good book such as Pinnacle (now sadly no longer accepting business from UK customers) will welcome the bet every time due to its skill in balancing its prices out. Others though will run shy, and seem to prefer the custom of the pound-a-bet hobbyists and occasional dabblers.

FA CUP FINAL

Most sportsbooks will operate different limits for different markets. A punt of several thousands on the likely winner of the next X-Factor competition is unlikely to be accepted as this tends not to be a high roller market, and it would be difficult for the bookmaker to offset the bet. The same sportsbook is likely to offer a far more generous limit on the outcome of the FA Cup Final or the winner at Wimbledon because there will be wagers aplenty on the opposite side of the line creating some sort of equilibrium. Indeed your five-figure punt may have the effect of pushing down the price on that market, thereby increasing the price on the opposite line{s) which is thereby itself made a more attractive proposition for potential customers.

It is an unfortunate but unavoidable truth that some online bookies are known to slash the maximum stakes offered to certain customers once a few large wagers have proved successful. Indeed it is not unknown for punters to access their accounts and attempt to place their bets only to find that their previous £1000 limit has been reduced to £1.

Paradoxically the best sportsbook for high rolling customers is probably one which doesn't operate a limit at all on its stakes - Betfair. Because Betfair is a betting exchange which makes its money solely from the commission it deducts from winning bets it has no interest in restricting customer action, indeed quite the opposite.

High rolling is not a discipline for everyone. To even attempt it one must have the money to stake in the first place (and be prepared to lose it), and then some considerable knowledge of the market in order to ensure at the very least that losses are kept to a minimum, and ideally that a profit is made.

Reproduced with acknowledgements to Sports Review.

Consolidated Leaflet Distribution

For those who are of an energetic bent, leaflet or card distribution can be an easy way to earn some good money.

Ordinarily it is not a particularly well-paid job. People you meet along he way delivering pizza leaflets or mini-cab cards are usually employed by the firms they are promoting. Take on the business of distributing them yourself and you'll be lucky to command £20 per 1,000 items - often it will be less. And 1,000 items take, on average, around five hours to deliver, depending upon the type and density of the properties.

Distributing one item alone is called "solus" delivery, and proper leafleting companies do charge a substantial amount for it. Their customers are usually at the higher end of the market dealing in high value commodities, such as estate agents. Needless to say not all the money received for the delivery service finds its way down the food chain to the distributor.

RESPECTABLE INCOME

But there is one good way of earning a respectable income from delivering for the "cheap" end of the market, and that is to consolidate delivery.

The principle is simple - if it takes one five hours to distribute a leaflet to 1,000 homes, it will take the same amount of time to deliver three of four items to the same addresses. If each customer is paying, say, £15-£20 for the service, the same distibutor can earn anything between £45 and £80 for five hours' work.

Of course there are logistical issues to overcome. First of all it is necessary to build up a list of clients who all require their material to be delivered over the same area. Then items sometimes need to be collated to make them easy to manage, a job that can be done in the privacy of one's own home but which takes some time nonetheless.

All the same the potential is there. With organisation and some luck it is possible for an active person to make a reasonable weekly income through flyer distribution.

Multi-Level Marketing (MLM)

Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) is featured on this blog because it is a recognised and (usually) legitimate method of gaining income. It is not one that we would generally recommend.

The concept behind Multi-Level Marketing is that of the sales "pyramid". Each participant has a place on that pyramid, and his or her job is to recruit others to their "downline". Those recruits will in due course, so the theory goes, recruit others to the tier below them, who will generate an income both for the participant's recruits and for the participant him or herself.

Typically MLM involves the selling of a product. However such is the marketing model that in actual fact it works equally well with or without a product to sell. The essence of MLM is that once a pyramid of successful marketers has been created the original participant will be able to sit back and watch the money flow in as those below him struggle to create portfolios of their own and to build their own vibrant downlines.

Where Multi-Level Marketing has worked it has been because those within a particular downline have been dynamic enough to fill out the spaces below with active, spending customers. Some people do make a considerable amount of money from MLM. The problem that arises however is that no matter how big the structure, there is always somebody who is going to be suffocating at the foot of it all, unable to find fresh recruits with which to create a new downline. With all the money in the system being provided by participants, for the person at the top to win somebody at the bottom needs to be out of pocket.

Those who are involved will tell you that there is a difference between Multi-Level Marketing and Pyramid Selling. In truth the only difference is that with MLM there is a token product being sold in order to justify the exchange of capital.

There are many MLM products and schemes on the market. Some require a buy-in on the part of the visitor. But all of them operate essentially the same way and for similar reasons.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is the counter side of Google's AdWords program.

With AdWords, advertisers pay to have their promotional material displayed on Google's pages. It is displayed on a Pay Per Click basis, meaning that every time a visitor clicks on the ad the advertiser pays a fixed fee to Google. At the time of submission the advertiser sets a limit as to how much he or she is prepared to pay for each click, or in total over a given time period.

On the opposite side of the coin is Google AdSense. With this program blog and website owners display content supplied to them by Google, advertising other people's material. When a visitor to your site clicks on this link you, the blog or website owner, receive a share of the fee incurred by the advertiser.

There are, of course, certain rules to be obeyed and checks in place in order to present abuse - the most obvious being a prohibition on AdSense users clicking links on their own pages just to generate income.

Although the amount accrued per click is very small many site owners do make a considerable income from AdSense. Much depends on the popularity of the site, as well as the relevance and proximity of the advertising material. At the very least it costs nothing, provides additional web content, and creates a new potential income source.