Making Money as a Stay-At-Home-Mom!

I've hardly done any work at all this month. It's fine though. I fell behind on a lot of stuff like school and housecleaning. I felt like I wasn't paying enough attention to my baby. So I've spent the first part of February cleaning the house, catching up on school work, and spending quality time with my little guy.


The house is almost clean at a level that will be easily maintained for awhile even with work, but I still have a paper, project, and final exam coming up in my current class. (I'm in graduate school, in case I never mentioned.) 


I think I'm going to scale back my goal for the month to $750 simply so I can give other elements of my life some much needed focus without feeling stressed about it. The baby is getting to a point where he's becoming more independent and soon won't need 24/7 attention, so I'll have a little more space to do work throughout the day instead of having to wait until 10 at night when he goes to bed.

I am highly disappointed in how the Super Bowl was handled while working with KGB. They experienced a ridiculous number of technical issues that basically wasted the entire two hours I scheduled from 8pm-10pm. I seriously could have better spent my time on other things. It was so bad that I was literally sitting next to the computer and folding laundry, because I really couldn't do anything on KGB. I made less in two hours with the .50/question than I usually make in one hour with the regular pay rate.


I apologize to anyone who I referred to them who chose to work during the Super Bowl. I received e-mails from several readers requesting a referral. If any of you made it through training and chose to work during the Super Bowl, the silver lining is that the $5 bonus for each of us will be honored. 


I really hope that KGB gets their act together for the future, because I had a very good experience with them last October when I made over $250 with them.  It just seems that they were not prepared for the influx of new agents and higher volume of texts.

I have a few new programs that I'm trying out, but I'm not prepared to unveil any information about them. Hopefully I'll have something up later in the month about them.


This week I have been incredibly lazy. I burned out pretty badly between school, working, house-cleaning, and watching the baby, so I took four days of needed rest and hardly did anything. I'm back with a vengeance though. I'm getting a lot more done and I don't feel so exhausted. I hope to be fully caught up within a week. Shrugging off four days of work is not easy to make up for, but I can do it!


I'm psyched about Super Bowl Sunday with the extra pay from kgb! I'm hoping I've still got my question answering skills so I can make some money!

My goal for the month was $1000. This was another month where I focused nearly all my attention onto one thing, but for February I'll be scouring for new programs to try out as well as working on KGB quite a bit more given the higher pay differential on Super Bowl Sunday.

I'm not supposed to say what my primary money-maker is due to my non-disclosure agreement, but if you do the math, I'm sure you can figure it out.


1.) Cash Pirate: $13.83
2.) CloudCrowd: $1.83
3.) iRazoo: $10.00
4.) kgb: $7.95
5.) Private: Cannot disclose.
6.) Opinion Outpost: $14.50
7.) PrizeLive: $12.71
8.) Surveyhead: $5.00
9.) SurveySaavy: $1.00
10.) Swagbucks: $5.00
11.) TrekPay: $5.76
12.) YouData: $0.68

My January total was:
$1282.06

My goal for February is $1200! Think I can do it?

Reference - Past Month Totals
December 2009: $778.18
November 2009: $670.30
October 2009: $446.25

How It Works
You can earn Swagbucks many ways, but I am going to focus on the easiest (and free) ways. First and foremost, install the Swagbucks Toolbar into your browser. If you're like me and hate toolbars, install it and then hide it when you're not using it. It's worth it. (Toolbar download link)

1.) You get Swagbucks dollars by performing searches through the Swagbucks web site and toolbar. These are awarded at random. Also, if you do too many searches in a row (trying to cheat the system), you'll get a rules page that pops up and you won't get any codes for awhile. My suggestion is to do some searches and wait a few seconds in between each until you get a code. Once you get a code, the chances are pretty low that you'll get another any time soon, so wait awhile and come back to it. I usually do searches in the morning, afternoon, and evening.

2.) Swagbucks codes are released at random times during the day, usually from 3pm-12pm PDT, but not always. The codes are then entered into the Swagbucks main page, which you can get to from your toolbar quite easily. When a new code is out, you have a specified period of time to enter it in, so be on the lookout. Where are these codes? Well, here's a handy widget that will tell you when a new one is out!  All you have to do is click the "Swag Codes" button and it will tell you. (Bookmark this page for future reference.)

3.) Referrals. I don't really get a lot of Swagbucks for referrals because I don't like to spam people and annoy them about signing up under my name. You can receive up to 100 Swagbucks per referral from their searches (1 buck per search), so it's pretty nice when those come in. So while we're on the subject, if you'd like to sign up and help me get points, I won't mind--but no pressure. ;) Click the banner below.



Payment
So what do you do with all these bucks you collect? Well, you can use them for a variety of things, but the favorite for most is Amazon gift cards. You can buy almost anything on Amazon, and they are usually the most bang for your buck. A $5 Amazon card is 45 SB whereas $5 to your Paypal account is 70 SB. It's really just not worth it to hold out for anything else.

Once you request a gift card, you'll get an e-mail that you have to verify. Once it's verified, you'll receive your card on either the 15th or last of the month, whichever comes first for you.

Payment Proof

To date, I have received $25 in Amazon gift cards from Swagbucks (October 2009-January 2010).


Recommendation
RECOMMENDED. It's simple. Easy enough to do. Very minimal time requirement. All you have to do is remember to do a search occasionally. I normally use Google, but occasionally if it's time for a Swag search, I'll use my toolbar instead. I don't push myself too hard on this one though. If I forget to do it, whatever. I do aim to get at least two Swagbucks a day, if not more.

Last Revised: 2/1/2010
Created: 11/16/2009

How It Works
Log in multiple times a day to click on advertisements. There are different ads to click on throughout the day. You accumulate points and each week TrekPay takes the points and converts them to some amount of money based on their revenue. It took me from the middle of October until the beginning of January to receive enough money to cash out ($5.50)-- and I clicked links multiple times a day EVERY single day without missing a day. Upon cashing out, you have to wait two weeks to receive the money via PayPal.


Payment
You can cash out once you have $5.50 in your account. Payment is sent to your PayPal account.

Payment Proof

I'm all for making the most of any money I spend.  My husband agrees I'm the master of rewards programs.  I'd do frequent flier miles if I ever actually flew anywhere. (I normally drive, unless it's just really far away.)  In case any of you were unaware of these two programs, I'm just putting it out there.


Pampers Gifts to Grow

With a 5-month old, we buy a lot of diapers and wipes. Every Pampers item has a code on it for Gifts to Grow. When you have enough points you can trade them in for toys, magazines, photos from Shutterfly, and other things. Some of the codes are pretty obvious-- When I buy a box of diapers, it's a sticker on the plastic packaging for the diapers inside. Some are not so easy to find. I've been ordering boxes of 6 refills of wipes from Diapers.com and only just realized the code is printed on the side of each refill package inside the box. I guess I expected all the codes to be on stickers. Anyhow, if you're already buying Pampers products, then there's no reason not to do this.  If you aren't interested, but have codes... send them to me. ;)


My Coke Rewards


I am rather addicted to Diet Coke. I started this program a few years ago, got as many as 900 points, but then they expired because you have to put in a new code every 3 months.. unless they changed the rule since then. I was kind of irritated about that. I had intended to enter a new code, but due to an emergency I was away from a computer for several days and barely missed the 3 month deadline. What I do now is just save all the codes I find in a bowl. They're under the coke caps and on the cardboard piece of the 12-packs that you open to take the cans out. Anyway, get enough points and you can get all kinds of stuff. Again, if you don't want to participate, but have some codes, send them my way!


I don't get referral points from either program. I just thought you all might be interested in extra ways to get free stuff.