2021 The money earners review (Part 1: Earning extra money online) £5,500 earned

Well, what a year 2021 has been. I have always been looking at ways to make money from home and in my spare time. But this year, my second year of ‘The money earner’ being in existence. We have gone with new enthusiasm. Looking for more and more ways to earn extra money. Surveys, market research and user testing, we have tried to be more organised and maximise our time and with great results.

We also started our KDP, kindle direct publishing, low and no content books business. This was a steady start but an encouraging one. I hope I can turn this into a more substantial business in 2022. But we are in the very early days of this and there is still a lot to earn if I am going to make more than £500, may need to branch out more than notebooks and planners, but perhaps as someone who is creatively naive, to say the least, this may not be for me. We will look at this in more detail in part 2 of the review.

We also started at the beginning of the year, ‘investing’ in Lego, looking at buying sets at discounted prices waiting for them to be retired and selling at a profit on amazon or eBay. Again, another steady start most of this year has been purchasing lego, with the hope to sell in 2022. But we did sell quite a few in Q4 we will look at what we sold and what we bought and some lessons that we learned along the way. We will look at what we bought the discounts we found and where. What we would do differently, the sales we had in the last year and our plans for 2022, all to come in part 3.

Crypto also had another great year perhaps not the mass pumps that we were expected. But our investments have done well somewhat. We have consolidated our crypto earnings and making good use of staking to hopefully grow the crypto further. Only time will tell whether this was the right thing to do or not but it is something I believe in and am confident in. We are here for the long haul

But we had some great crypto earning opportunities, from free crypto sign-ups and learn and earn opportunities, as well as from earning on social platforms. In part 4 we will delve into the crypto projects we are exploring and review what happened with our various projects.

Part 1: Earning extra money online: Surveys, Usertesting, market research, cashback and others:

Total:£5,620.84 in cash (£612 in vouchers)

Lots of time spent behind the computer screen earning money from home this year. One thing I tried to change this year was my time for money motive. Instead of spending time on lower-paid survey sites, I would go more on to other projects, KDP, LEGO or blogging.

 

Surveys

2021 Earnings: £2295.35

 

Surveys are always a consistent and solid way to make money online, and as my reviews will attest some are worth the time with good rewards, others are certainly not. Paying a pittance for your time. Your time is worth far more than that. I will only do surveys now that pay a decent amount for their time.

I avoid the sites that give you too many screenouts as well, as all this time adds up and is time that can be spent doing things much better. 

But still a great way to earn some extra money. The thing I like about surveys is I can do it quite mindlessly whilst watching the telly or doing other things, something that I cannot do with my other exploits. Also, you can dip in and out of them whilst on a break or commuting. This is where surveys can be worth their time.

I focus on a few sites each day trying to do all of the surveys possible. Populus, life points, clickworker and panelbase. The others Qmee, swagbucks, pureprofile, curious cat and others I will only do if don’t have the time to do anything else.

 

Top earners

• Lifepoints £625
• Populus £600
• Panelbase £256.33

These 3 I bang on about all the time, and with very good reason. Lifepoints is extremely consistent with lots of surveys, most of them worth the time. The screenouts are always early on and not incredibly late. Lifepoints also have the opportunity for bigger projects.

Populus is the best bang for a buck survey site. Each survey is paid a very fair amount of £1 for 5 minutes. Normally surveys range from 5 -20 minutes (£1 – £4 respectively) Semi consistent, but with each account netting £300 each it is a great earner. Hopefully, it keeps up in 2022.

Panelbase is my next one and although a lot less than the other two, I would probably say it is equally as valuable. Because not only does it have regular surveys that are worth the time and pay well for the time taken. The best thing about Panelbase is the recruitment opportunities for other projects that pay really well. I have had a number of extended market research studies through Panelbase. One paying £160 in December, as well as that I have been invited to consumer pulse which is a great way to get some vouchers for a few minutes each week.

 

Other notable mentions:

Qmee: Is very hit and miss at times, can have a lot of screenouts but also can have a few well-paying surveys, I now only do a survey on there if it is £1 for 5-6 minutes otherwise I won’t bother. Doing these even with the occasional screen out appears still very worthwhile. In 2021 we earned £128.46.

Clickworker is another one, that although I have included in surveys they also have some user tests which are very worthwhile as well. Very easy to complete good rates of pay for their surveys, and paid in cash via PayPal. Definitely, one to check regularly for more money earning opportunities. Last year we earned £167.47

Comparison to 2020

I would probably say in 2020 I spent more time with surveys, as was not doing other things like KDP or Lego, or as much user testing. In 2020 tallying up the surveys from the last year we earned in cash. £2545.90 so actually a couple of hundred pounds less.

So a bit less but a lot less time spent on it which have been used on other exploits. Hopefully, I can keep this up in the next year.

 

My plan for 2022

My plan for the year ahead with surveys is to lower my time a little bit with the number of surveys, but still to do the top ones and hope that this is enough to get to the £2,000 mark if things stay as they are. I want to try and be stricter with my surveys and consider that if I am not earning a decent hourly rate to not go near it. We shall see how it goes.

We need to earn £160 – £170 a month from these surveys. So we will need more than the top three. But in 2022 I think there are bigger fish to fry than grinding away with surveys all the time.

Vouchers: £612

As well as cash I love earning vouchers these are great ways to help with Christmas presents and birthday presents by storing these up.

I earned from money earning plans over £600 in vouchers. Some survey companies although these ones were often not worth the time. I-say is an almighty slog but I might try and do one a day and see what it adds up to come to the end of the year, we got £60 from I-say in the last 12 months.

 

Consumer pulse which I talked about when talking about Panelbase is a panel I never want to leave, we accrued a nice £160 in Argos vouchers last year.

Daily TRP surveys is another good one we got £45 of amazon vouchers by consistently doing them. Takes about a minute each day.

Maximilies is a survey platform worth being on although we only got to £25 in Argos last year.

Then lots of random little studies and groups that paid separately in vouchers.

My biggest problem is as soon as the voucher pops into the amazon account, my other half has sought good use for it straight away. So don’t always have as much at Christmas time as planned. But it is cash we would have spent any way (I think) so a great help.

Usertesting £609.43

This was the first full year of doing user testing and it was a nice earner, averaging just over £50 a month, nice little top-up. There are probably more user testing opportunities out there, but find it hard to do in the limited spare time that I have. The two that have served me well are Usertesting and intellizoom with a few from Userlytics as well but they always went so fast. I think I have probably kind of peaked with these so need to aim to keep them up and do as many as come my way. But always looking for more opportunities, as I like these user tests as they are a much better use of my time as opposed to surveys if there was enough of them.

 

Market Research £724.31

Talking of better use of my time, market research is really the one, I haven’t had many studies throughout the year. But a few at over £100 each has got me to an impressive total of over £700. I find they are hard to get into and I can sometimes go a while without applying for them. Hopefully trying to kick on a bit more and apply for as many as possible. I can get this little hustle to £1000 +

Check out Market research page to see the best ones to sign up with

Sign up bonuses and referrals £998.79

These are my favourites, the freeways to earn extra money. Often from signing up, making small deposits there have been so many great free signs up offers this year.

That after having tried and tested them, I have posted about them on my website and other platforms, and I have been fortunate to receive some referrals for them.

You can keep track of all the signup offers on my free money page with step by step guides on how to earn the free money and maximise them. Refer your friends and you can earn even more.

 

Cashback: £125.42

Cashback was a bit disappointing this year. I think this is mainly because I don’t do the buying of things but still some great free cashback offers. The trick that I really need to get in the habit of is when making a purchase can you get cashback on it.

Check out the cashback sites and the bonuses can get for signing up as well as the great free cashback and profitable cashback offerings on the cashback page

 

Numbrs: £867.54

This one involved a small slice of luck, earlier in the year there was this promotion that i came a bit late to the party, that if you signed up to Numbrs you were entered into a free prize draw. Which was a great little money earner as many reported getting at least 10-20 pounds which I did for the first week. I was then fortunate to get a few referrals for the second week, in which I won 1,000 euros. I was rather chuffed. Yes although this is a massive bit of luck it does go to show that there is great potential for winnings with competitions, and although not guaranteed is a great way to earn some extra money.

Unfortunately, this offer has now come to an end, here is the article at the time of my win

I would never have thought a couple of years that I would be earning an extra £5,500 from home from random things on the computer. But there we have it. A fantastic year, there is still more to come, not quite as impressive numbers, but a good start to a potentially new thriving business with KDP. Where we earned just under £500 selling notebooks and planners and amazon. Follow my KDP 2021 Journey in Part 2 of my review of my year.