How This SAHM Supplements The Family Income

Like many who seek to make money online, taking online surveys was the first real way I came across. They're definitely not a living, but the income has helped with bills in some tight spots, or bought extras at other times. I was fortunate to be able to spot scams before I lost anything more than a little time to them, but there certainly are scams out there. Like all experienced survey takers say: Don't pay for anything, they're supposed to pay YOU.

My daughter is homeschooled, and now has three little brothers under the age of five, so any extra income I make has to come from things I can do in a few moments here, a few minutes there, and walk away from at any time for as long as I need. Surveys certainly fit that requirement. They tend to be 10 minutes to a half hour, and will usually sit waiting patiently if I have to leave suddenly, so they're one of the main ways I've supplemented our income.

After years of trial and error, I've finely tweaked my list of sites to include only those that pay reasonably for my time, and have never given me a problem with paying what they owe. I've made as much as $75 for an hour long interactive market research session and as little as nothing (something I no longer do).

Here is the page I wrote sharing the best companies I've found, including sites that pay children.

Writing online was the second good way I found to make money on your own time, with just your mind and your computer. My main place to earn money writing is Squidoo. I've been a member here since 2006. The site and community have grown a lot since then, as have I.

It actually took me a long time to figure out how to get the most from Squidoo and make from it the potential I'd seen when I signed up. The most important thing to realize when you're starting out is that you're banking up for the future, building a base of lenses or articles for which you likely won't see much return for 6 months to a year, but when you do get there, it is worth it. After I'd published 50+ lenses on my way to applying for Giant Squid, learning a few basics about SEO along the way (though still far from expert), I took 7 months off with a new baby yet saw my income climb, and keep right on climbing, as all that work continued to take off. Within a year I went from less than $5 a month to a solid three digits.

I'm still staying home with my kids, homeschooling my daughter, and earning the same from Squidoo as I would at a part time job, without giving up the reasons that I originally chose to stay home in the first place. My next goals are to strengthen my affiliate income from selling physical products, like Squidoo makes so easy from Amazon and eBay, continue to increase my lens amounts, and reach the level of a minimum wage full time job.

If you're new to Squidoo, you can find great guides on what you need to know about Squidoo (including the ones that best taught me seo, and others I wished I'd found years ago when I first signed up) linked in my Squidoo Newbie Survival Guide.

I do a lot of research for my various writing activities and homeschooling my daughter, so sites that reward you for using their search have really paid off for me. I install their browser search bar plug in so it's an easy drop down click to use whichever one I want, and if I don't get good results with it, just click the same search over to another. It's not a get rich quick scheme but it earns me an amazon gift card now and then for searches I'd be doing anyway.

I love gaming. All the better if I can get rewarded for playing. There are a lot of sites that claim to pay players of their games, but often they want money charged in the account for a tournament, are kind of a spammy, scammy site, take forever to reach a payout level, or other things that make a frugal person looking to actually earn money think twice about spending time there. I have found some good sites that aren't like that, though. Check them out at the page below if you're interested.

Sweepstakes and instant win games take only seconds at a time if you use an auto-form-filling program, and I've had some success with those. I've won a cruise for two, and tons of little items like beauty products and iTunes. My favorite win was a large activity center for infants and toddlers that my boys wore out before they were through. A $90 value, and not anything we would have splurged on, but it was cool. Boy, did they love it.

Frugal living is all about looking at your wants and needs, and finding less expensive ways to do them. Sometimes it's an attitude adjustment, sometimes it's thinking outside the box to figure out how to meet the same needs in ways that fit our budget. Bit by bit we've applied this in different areas of our life.

This journey has led to a lot of my articles, and gave me material for others, and finding ways to turn our experiences along that journey into articles others would find useful (and thus, add to our income) has been fun as well as rewarding.

A few of the (many) topics I've covered on that journey are on the pages below: