4 Apps to Make You Some Pocket Change

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4 Great Apps to Make You Money

Hello there! Do you want to find legit ways to make money on the side? If you’re like me, and most people who get paid every two weeks, it is nice to have some buffer cash in between payday to kickstart your miscellaneous fund, date night, movies, gas, whatever.

I am going to share some ways to make some extra cash on the side with mobile apps! Now I will say these apps are by no means get rich quick (really that does not exist unless you win the lotto!), and the dollar amount does fluctuate depending on a few factors which I will delve into.

Most of these apps take time (keyword), but a little goes a long way, and it does add up over time! I have tried a few different money making apps, and the below four have been successful for me.

  1. OfferUp

OfferUp is a mobile platform where you can list your unwanted items for prices set by you. It is basically like Craigslist/eBay-you take pictures of your stuff, write a description and can set whether you want it to be pick up only or ship it through the app.

After you sell an item, you have an opportunity to rate the buyer, and they can rate you on the purchase, communication, etc.

You can pretty much offer anything on there-you’d be surprised what people buy. But also, sometimes people won’t buy your items or the classic trigger finger where they send “Is this still available?” but never have the follow-through to buy it.

When my husband and I bought our home, the previous owners left some things behind that we did not care for.

So I put them on OfferUp and the majority of the items I listed sold! I sold a bulky computer desk, toilet paper mount, storage cabinets in the garage, a mini-fridge, a potted Jade plant, and two-bedroom wall lamps! I made $280 from those sales.

What didn’t sell was a thin shelf from the laundry room, which I ended up throwing away. Now with OfferUp, depending on how “hot” your item is, that will determine how fast your item sells. It could be the same day, the next day, or the next few weeks or months.

If I see that an item has low views (for me, less than 50) and it has been on for 1-2 months, I take it off and donate to Goodwill.

You do need to be a little savvy when it comes to buyers and how much to sell an item for. Be prepared for lowballers! Sometimes they will ask just for the sake of asking, but don’t be afraid to say no thank you and hold out for someone who will buy it at your asking price.

One time I told someone no, I am selling it at (blank) price, and they ended up buying it at that full price.

Sometimes people will be a little demanding with messaging me (asking for my phone number and/or home address), or try and get me to go down in price, and honestly, when I start to feel uncertain about the person, I walk away. No use in putting myself in a potentially uncomfortable or risky situation for a few bucks.

Don’t ever be guilted into lowering a price for something. If it doesn’t sell, that’s okay, it happens, just donate to Goodwill!

I also refrain from giving people my address unless it is a huge/heavy item that I can’t lift alone.

I find a mutual meeting space like Starbucks or meet people halfway sometimes. Also, 99.99% of the time there is no need to give a stranger your number. You can communicate inside the app, and it is also safer that way too.

  1. InboxDollars

InboxDollars will be able to pay you out when you get to $30-but they take out a $3 processing fee to send you your check, so I would wait until I had at least $33.

Inbox Dollars was the first app I tried to make money on the side! Now I’m embarrassed to say I had it for 9 years until I realized-wait why do I still have this app?

This app typically takes a long time to make money (hence me having an active account for 9 years).

The ways you can earn money on InboxDollars is by the following: taking surveys, watching videos, reading emails, using a search engine within the site, and completing offers (free or cost).

Occasionally they would have a code word on Instagram or Facebook that when you typed it in was a few cents or “tokens” (which add up to earn cash later).

Now, most of their rewards are very few cents, which takes a long time to add up to anything significant. I stopped trying to take their surveys because 90% of the time I didn’t qualify for the offer ( .25c, .50c, $1).

Also, the surveys can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 minutes and for the cash reward offered, it is just not worth the time.

Another annoyance with the surveys, it seems like an online corn maze-it would take you to a different site and more questions and the survey didn’t quite have a finite completion, it often was just spam emails.

Very rarely did I complete a survey successfully. I mentioned reading emails-they send paid emails periodically which will be 2 cents if you click on where it says read paid email.

Watching paid videos will earn you about a penny per video. They also have free/paid offers that if you sign up for something through their website, you could earn a few bucks.

That is more substantial and if you’re going to get the product anyway, you might as well do it through the ID link.

Some of their offers could be like sign up for Hulu and get __ dollars. You do have to keep an active account with what you sign up for so you can’t just sign up for something and then cancel the next day you won’t get paid.

In the time I had ID, I made a total of $403.32. So overall ID does make money but depending on how much time (and sometimes money) you spend will determine how much you will make.

Basically, ID is a platform where it advertises businesses in hopes to get their customers (you)  interested in the product/company and sign up. It is worth it if you plan to keep it for a while, and it can be fun sometimes too when you are bored.

  1. Achievement

Achievement is an app where you get paid to be fit! How? Connect your health tracker apps and you can get points for your activities that sync through the app.

I have a FitBit so I connect that, and my tracked activities I get points for. Another way to earn points is by answering questions about health and wellness.

They will ask you to take a brief survey either inside the app or through email and you get points for each survey you take.

Sometimes the question is as simple as, “did you go to the doctor in the last 3 months? It’s a simple yes or no question and just by answering you get rewarded points.

They also have informative articles that if you click and read the article, you get points.10,000 points will get you $10 where you can cash out.

So far I have only earned enough for $10, so I do not know if they keep going up in $10 increments.

Getting to 10,000 points can take a while as many points earned are anywhere from 3 points to 25 points (just averaging).

Depending on the activity tracked, that will depend on the points earned. Right now, I am currently on an active flu case study where for the next 4 months, they will be asking me each day in an email questionnaire if I have experienced flu-like symptoms in the last 48 hours, and I wear my FitBit every day so they can track my sleep and steps.

At the end of the study, as long as I keep up with the surveys and wear my FitBit daily, I can earn up to $106! Now obviously $106 is not a great deal of money for a 4-month trial, but remember this is passive money-I wear my FitBit daily anyway so this was not a hard task to accomplish.

I like Achievement because it is a low-risk app where you can earn cash for making healthy choices.

It’s not like online weight competitions where you have to put in some money in the “pot” and whether you are successful or not determines the winning money in the end.

  1. Ibotta

Ibotta is a great ongoing app that I use. It has several retailers like grocery stores, retail shops, online stores, etc where when you make a purchase, if you have qualifying items, you get a rebate per item for by uploading your receipt.

Inside the app, they have A TON of companies to choose from eg. Target, Walmart, Vons, Ulta, Sephora, Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, etc and you can select specific items or generic items.

What you do is when you go shopping at a grocery store, you can either look at their offers before or after you shop (it is better to look before in case you see an item you could buy and get a rebate off of.)

Then you just select the item, and once you check out, take a picture of your receipt and Ibotta will credit you based on what you earned.

Each item is in a category (any item, dairy & eggs, pantry, beverages, frozen, produce, etc). The credit to your account shows up fairly fast-within minutes to 24 hours depending on how easy/complicated your purchases are.

You are able to withdraw your cash via PayPal after your account has reached $20. You also have the option to choose a gift card of your choice-they have several options including amazon, AMC theatres, American Eagle, Applebee’s, Barnes & Noble, etc.

They also have a new feature called Pay with Ibotta where you link your credit card and you can make a purchase directly from your Ibotta app-almost like apple pay. Then you get credited a percentage of your purchase-around 1%-5% and you get credited instantly.

Since having it since 2016, I have made $310.31 This is my favorite money-making app-although I am “spending” money-it is awesome to know I can earn money back for every time I go grocery shopping.

Groceries can add up, so every little bit helps when you are trying to save money. It is also fun finding retailers that have the Pay with Ibotta feature.

When we would make regular trips to Lowe’s, it was great getting rebates off our home improvement purchases.

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