Making Money Spotlight: Using CashCrate to Earn Some Extra Money
I recently created a post listing 45 ways to make some extra money. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it generated a lot of traffic to the site. With 45 different ideas listed, however, I couldn’t spend a lot of time going into detail on many of the ideas (none of the ideas, actually). So, I thought it would be useful to go into a bit more depth on some of the easiest ideas to generate some extra money online.
The easiest of the opportunities from the making money online section of that post are:
- Get paid to complete offers at CashCrate.com
- Get paid to take surveys at OpinionOutpost.com
- Get paid to search at Scour.com
- Review products and take online surveys at Vindale Research to earn money
Out of these, I am most familiar with CashCrate so I want to spotlight using it in this post.
Overview of CashCrate
Maybe they added more offers recently or maybe I just missed the good stuff earlier, but now there seems to be some worthwhile offers on the site. When I first signed up for CashCrate, I poked around the site a little bit and tried out a small offer just to check it out. I have to be honest, I wasn’t overly impressed by the opportunities presented by CashCrate at that time. The offers available today are much better, however.
CashCrate offers cash awards as well as points. You simply complete the offers as specified, click on the Submit button back on the CashCrate site, and your account will be updated with "Pending earnings." When CashCrate has confirmed that you fulfilled the offer, the money will be moved over to your Earnings column. They have a very low payout threshold - you only have to earn $10 to get a check from them the following month.
Focus on the significant offers
There are a number of small offers of below $1.00 - basically you sign up to be on various email mailing lists and CashCrate will give you a small amount of money. If you do this, I’d recommend that you create a separate email address. That way you can keep track of the offers without inundating your standard email address.
To find the highest payout opportunities, sort the offers by "Payout." There are some significant payout options here. As of this writing, the largest is $125 to sign up for DirectTV. That’s right, if you sign up for DirectTV, CashCrate will give you $125. Of course, signing up for DirectTV service is a significant commitment.
Where I think the most value is in the large payout offers (not as large as the DirectTV) that don’t require long-term commitments. The two categories I look at first are the free product/service trials and the shopping offers.
Earn Money by Signing up for Product and Service Trials
For instance, there are currently a number of product and service trials available for which CashCrate will pay you for signing up for the trial. Some of the trials do cost a little bit of money, but a number are free. I’m not suggesting signing up for a bunch of stuff that you have no interest in just to get a few dollars. If you are interested in trying a service like NetFlix or Blockbuster, however, I think it makes sense to do it through CashCrate and earn a little money for your efforts.
Get Cash back while Shopping
Similarly, if you are planning on doing some internet shopping, I think it makes sense to check out CashCrate on your way to see if there are any offers to get a little money back while shopping. Just tonight I purchased an item and got $10 back from CashCrate for doing so. There are some offers for cash back in the offers section (like my $10 offer) and there is also an entire section on shopping (this provides a percentage of the purchase price back). It isn’t a huge section, but it does have some big names there like ITunes, Office Depot, and Wal-Mart among others.
A word of caution, please do not go around buying stuff you don’t want or don’t need just to "earn" some money. You’re not really earning anything - you’re just "spending" money. But, if you are doing some shopping anyway, then you might as well reduce your overall cost by using a service like CashCrate. [Another similar service that is geared strictly toward shopping is Ebates.com - I think they have more shopping options. Again, shopping is spending money, NOT making money. If you spend $50 you weren't planning to spend to make $10, you've just wasted $40!]
Make Money through Referrals
Another method to make some money is to refer others to CashCrate. For each person you refer, CashCrate gives you a percentage of what they earn and also a bonus when they make some money. If some of your friends sign up through your affiliate program, then both of you will make some extra money.
My Summary of using CashCrate
So far, I have been pleasantly surprised with my CashCrate experience. I have made some money while exerting very little effort. And I was really excited to see that I could get $10 back from a $23 purchase that I was going to buy anyway! Certainly I’m not expecting to replace my current salary with my CashCrate earnings but every little bit helps. If you complete some higher payout offers (without spending too much money in the process) and have some of your friends sign up through your referral link, you’ll be able to make some extra spending money each month.
Signing up for CashCrate is free so my suggestion to you would be to sign up and check it out . Check out the FAQs on the lower left corner on the front page for more info. Look through the cash payouts focusing on the higher payout values first. I think you will probably see some that are interesting to you. If not, then you can just leave the site and never return again. But please, do not waste a bunch of money just to get a little bit back. Also, and this is very important, if you sign up for the free trials, do not forget to cancel them before the "free" part ends if you aren’t satisfied with the value provided.
If you have any bad experiences with CashCrate, I would really like to hear about them. I have had a good experience so far, but I don’t want to be endorsing a service with which others are having problems. Please leave a comment or contact me directly.
Online Tools for Calculating and Tracking Your Net Worth
Last week, I created a post that included some video describing how I create and update a spreadsheet to keep track of my net worth. I find a simple spreadsheet to be the most powerful way for me to monitor my net worth. Of course, I understand that not everyone is exactly like me (probably a good thing) and that others will not find the same method as useful.
In the short life of BFN, I’ve already stated multiple times the importance of using net worth to track how healthy your finances are and what their current trend is. Today, therefore, I thought it would be helpful to list some other methods for tracking net worth. These methods are all online (so no Quicken or MS Money) and all free (thereby precluding Quicken online, for instance).
Simple calculators
Calculating your net worth is quite simple as long as you have all the data - it just requires some simple addition and subtraction. You can easily find myriad calculator choices using a simple web search. Type in something like "net worth calcuator" and results will be displayed such as CNN’s calculator and Kiplinger’s calculator.
Though these are straightforward and easy to use, I don’t feel that they are as useful as other tools. Simply calculating your net worth will not provide you with historical data and allow you to see how your finances are behaving over time. If you are going to calculate your net worth periodically and save the data somewhere, then you might as well use a spreadsheet .
Online Net Worth Tracking
The first site that comes to mind when I think of online tools to track net worth is NetworthIQ.com. NetworthIQ is a "social personal finance manager" that lets you "track, share, compare" your net worth with other users. You periodically enter your assets and liabilities to keep track of where you are financially and where you’ve come from.
The unique feature of this site is the ability to compare your net worth with other users. You can search for other users by age, income, occupation, education, etc. This allows you to see how your net worth compares to others earning your same salary, or in your same occupation, for instance. As an option, you can select to share your financial picture with other users of the site as well.
Online Net Worth and Transaction Tracking
While NetworthIQ focuses on your net worth, other online tools go beyond net worth to include a more complete financial picture. These tools allow you to aggregate all of your various account information (checking, savings, credit cards, loans, etc) into a single application. Of course, it calculates net worth but will also give you more detail on exactly how you are spending your money on a monthly basis. A very nice feature of these sites is that once you configure all of your account usernames and passwords, updating your net worth each month requires nothing more than visiting the site and clicking the refresh or update link. The site then automatically visits all of your account sites and collects your up-to-date account information.
The three most prominent sites that I have found are Yodlee , Geezeo , and Wesabe . They are somewhat similar in how they work and the data they collect and display. Each has the capability to calculate net worth, display categorized monthly expenses, and provide budgeting capability. As I see it, there are two main differences among the three sites.
First, Wesabe and Geezeo integrate a social component into the site. You can share information with other users, you can ask for tips and information, and you can see what others have done in similar situations. This can be very powerful in assisting you to create and stick to your financial plan.
This feature can actually be good or bad, frankly. Allow me to relate a story (or just skip to the next paragraph and I’ll never know the difference). When I first found out about Wesabe, I was so excited about it. I thought it was going to be a fantastic tool to really optimize my finances. I created an account and put in my first main goal as getting rid of my student loans. Wow, it was quite disillusioning when most of the comments pertaining to that goal were about how it was stupid to worry about paying off student loans. ("good" debt and low interest rate and all of that). Honestly, I haven’t been back to that account since then.
The second main difference is found in the way security is handled. Security is obviously of paramount importance when you’re talking about usernames and passwords to all your financial accounts. For Geezeo and Yodlee, you upload your account information to their servers. Wesabe is a bit different, though. As I understand it, you download some software to your computer. That application stores your account information and transfers your account data to your computer and then up to the Wesabe server. In this manner, your account information is never uploaded to the Wesabe servers and that presents one less security risk.
Seriously, the security of your personal financial information is of critical importance. Before you disclose any of it to any of these sites, it is very important you investigate exactly how they collect your data and how they protect it so that you feel comfortable providing the information.
Your bank may offer a similar feature
Another place to look for a net worth tracking feature is your bank if they provide online banking. I have my main checking account at a "brick and mortar" bank that also has a good online banking component. Integrated into the online banking site is an application similar to Yodlee (I think it actually is Yodlee). I can add the accounts not held at my bank and use this tool to calculate net worth and track monthly expenses just like in Yodlee. If you are looking for an online tool to calculate net worth, this is something to investigate. If you are using it, your online banking site already has some or most of your financial information. So, if you can get the desired functionality there, it doesn’t make sense to unnecessarily upload your financial information to another site.
I’ll stick to my spreadsheet
My advice to you is to track your net worth. If you’re still listening for more advice, my next piece is to use a spreadsheet. Of course, if you want to utilize some of the transaction tracking and categorization features or social networking aspects, then a spreadsheet won’t be of much help to you. On the other hand, there are no security issues with the spreadsheet as it is on your computer and does not contain your account information anyway. Furthermore, a spreadsheet can be configured in a very powerful manner to allow you to pull more information out of your net worth updates rather than just the bottom line net worth number.
I am considering using the Yodlee-like feature of my bank to automatically update my financial information each month. I will then transfer this information to my spreadsheet. Using the tool in this way may save me a little time each month and allow me to look at the current status throughout the month.
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