You can get started in just a few minutes, and you don’t need any sort of special skill or even prior experience. Simply put, you’ll be sharing your opinion on popular brands, products, and services, and in exchange, you’ll earn anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars [per survey] for your time.

In our Ipsos iSay review, we thoroughly tested the survey platform to help determine if the site makes sense for you.

From exploring the platform’s ease of use and sifting through all of its features, to vetting privacy concerns and looking at earnings claims, here’s everything to know about the survey site before signing up.

What Is Ipsos iSay?

Ipsos iSay is an online survey platform owned and operated by the market research giant Ipsos.

Founded in 1975 in Paris France, Ipsos partners with over 5,000 clients to conduct 70 million surveys each year, reaching participants in over 100 countries.

The idea behind iSay is simple: users complete surveys and engage in certain activities to help Ipsos better understand what consumers want. In return for your valued opinion, you get paid with points that you can redeem for free gift cards or cash.

Start Earning

$0.25 to $1.00 Earnings Per survey.

$0 Fees Free to join.

DollarSprout Rating

Founded in 1975, Ipsos is one of the world's largest market research companies, operating in 89 countries with over 19,000 employees. Their iSay panel generally pays member survey takers between $0.25 and $1.00 for each study they complete.

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Pros

• A+ rating with BBB.
• 4.2/5.0 rating on Trustpilot.
• Transparent earning expectations.
• Low payout threshold (only $5).
• International users welcome (check website for exact locations).
• Earn points even if disqualified from a survey.

Cons

• Few high-paying opportunities.
• Mobile application is sometimes glitchy.
• Occasional broken surveys.
• Few gift card options.
• Limited number of ways to earn points.
• Like many survey sites, may be disqualified after starting a survey.

Is Ipsos iSay Legit?

Ipsos iSay is as legit as any other noteworthy survey platform on the web. The Ipsos group holds an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and has zero unresolved complaints.

Additionally, they maintain a strong 4.2-star rating (out of 5.0) on Trustpilot.

The Ipsos iSay app comes in notably weaker at 2.9 stars on Google Play and 1.9 stars on the Apple App Store. This appears, in part, due to negative reviews revolving around a glitchy survey interface and the inability to use the app in landscape mode.

Ultimately, users should expect to earn points and receive payouts in the advertised manner.

How Ipsos iSay Works

Like most other survey sites, iSay requires that you create a member profile during the signup process.

It is normal for them to ask you to answer questions about seemingly personal demographic information.

Age, gender, location, marital status, and number of dependent children are but a few of the many areas they may touch on in their Sensitive Personal Information Profiling Survey.

Additionally, you’ll take Profiling Surveys in several other categories such as Travel, Technology, Personal Care, Home and Garden, and General Consumption Information.

Your answers will be stored under My Profile and are used to match you to relevant studies during the survey pre-qualification process. They can be changed or deleted at any time.

Notably, Ipsos iSay has streamlined its platform in recent years. Previously available features such as Polls, Contests, and their Loyalty Program have been removed.

Unlike other platforms that offer an array of ways to accrue points, there are now just two ways to make money on Ipsos iSay: completing paid surveys and referring friends and family to the app.

Paid Surveys

After completing the signup process and completing the Profiling Surveys, one can immediately start taking “real” surveys to earn points.

Available surveys on your active member profile will share an estimated completion time and the number of points you can expect to earn (up to).

No surprise, the longer the estimated completion time, the more iSay points you’re generally eligible to earn.

Surveys will often start with a number of qualifying questions to make sure you’re a good fit for the survey.

After screening in, users will then complete the survey in front of them. Surveys can be anywhere from one to dozens of questions in length, and take as little as 1 minute, to 30 minutes or more, to complete.

Questions are presented in a number of different formats including:

• Multiple choice
• Select all that apply
• Matching
• Drag-and-drop
• Or even short answer fields.

Additionally, some surveys will ask if the participant is comfortable allowing access to their webcam (to gauge physical response to a prompt) or if they’d be willing to upload a photo of products [in use] in select circumstances.

These are optional and can be declined at every occurrence, but may be worth the hassle given their often higher-than-average earning potential.

Earned points are typically delivered instantly upon survey completion, but the website does state to allow up to a few days for the point crediting process to complete.

Earning Potential

Over a large sample size of surveys, it becomes readily apparent that a reasonable earning expectation for taking surveys with Ipsos iSay falls between $3 and $5 per hour.

Related: 190 Side Hustle Ideas for Making Extra Money in Your Spare Time

Referrals

In light of iSay removing previously held Contests, the Polls feature, and their Loyalty Program, the second and only other point-earning method available is the ability to Refer a Friend.

If a friend or family member signs up through your link and completes an incentivized survey — not the default Profiling Surveys that everyone completes at registration — you’ll be awarded 100 points. (Each successful referral will earn you $1.)

There is a monthly cap of 10 referred users, so you won’t get credit for referring more than that.

How to Sign Up

Creating an Ipsos iSay account is easy. Simply head to their website (affiliate link) and create an account.

If you’re on a mobile device, the homepage has links to the respective app stores. I would go through their homepage instead of searching through the app stores because there are often knock-off apps that try to emulate the official iSay app.

Ipsos iSay does not currently offer any sort of bonus code or referral bonus for the user.

Any person or website promoting one is a scam.

Our content is reader supported, so we will earn 100 points if you choose to try Ipsos iSay through our link. Your patronage is much appreciated. 

How to Redeem Ipsos iSay Rewards 

One of the nice things about iSay is that it’s stupidly simple to use. There are just three tabs on the dashboard, and if you head to the Rewards tab, you easily see the three ways you can redeem your hard-earned points.

1. Redeem points for cash

My go-to redemption preference once I have enough points, I head to the Money Transfer section of the Rewards tab and elect for cash to PayPal.

There are no incentives to save for a larger deposit amount so I cash out every time I meet the minimum threshold (currently 510 points for $5 in PayPal funds).

The one drawback about cashing out to PayPal is that there is a significant delay of 1 to 3 weeks between requesting a payout and funds hitting your account. This is significantly slower than other sites in this industry, but the funds do eventually come. If you desire faster payouts, the gift card option below may be a better option. 

*There does appear to be a nominal 10-point transaction fee for PayPal payments. Gift card redemptions do not include this fee.

2. Redeem points for gift cards

iSay does offer cashouts to several popular merchants, but the number of options is somewhat limited. Currently, you can redeem your points for gift cards at the following places:

• Amazon
• Lowe’s
• Grubhub
• DoorDash
• Virtual Visa Prepaid Card
• Target
• Starbucks
• ROBLOX

The digital gift cards are delivered instantly to your email address on file.

3. Donate points to charity

Lastly, iSay does provide a method for donating your earned points to the Ipsos Foundation — a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that focuses on educational projects for disadvantaged youth across the globe.

Since its creation in 2014, the Ipsos Foundation has funded 67 education projects for children in 34 countries, totaling more than €1.8M.

The minimum threshold to donate is just 200 points ($2 effective donation).

Ipsos iSay Alternatives

Ipsos iSay is one of many market-research-focused platforms on the web, each with pros and cons that may make them more worth your time. Other survey sites include:

Branded Surveys. Offers a user-friendly interface and a consistent flow of survey opportunities, which can lead to quicker earnings compared to iSay. They also have a wide range of redemption options. However, the average payout per survey is generally lower than iSay, which means that you might need to complete more surveys to reach the same earnings.

Survey Junkie. Known for having a vast selection of survey topics, providing a more engaging experience than iSay. That said, Survey Junkie tends to have stricter qualification criteria for surveys, which can lead to higher disqualification rates.

Swagbucks. Offers more earning opportunities beyond surveys, such as watching videos, playing games, or shopping online, providing a more diversified experience compared to iSay. On the flip side, the value of rewards earned per activity can be lower, and it might take longer to accumulate enough points to redeem for cash or gift cards.

FAQs

Many of these answers can be found scattered throughout the Ipsos iSay review, but we’ve consolidated some frequently asked questions here in case you missed them.

Is Ipsos iSay Worth It?

Generally speaking, paid surveys are a not-so-fun way to earn extra money in your free time. But they are legitimate, and you can take home a few extra bucks each month for your efforts.

Very consistent Ipsos iSay survey takers can plausibly earn between $50 and $100 each month, but that means taking surveys almost daily for one hour on average.

There are certainly other ways to make money online whose earnings will far exceed that of taking paid surveys, but those opportunities may require physical labor or skills that you simply don’t have.

Ultimately, Ipsos iSay is amongst the better market research platforms out there. Its simplicity makes it easy to use, and earnings are on par with other survey providers.

If paid surveys are a good fit for you, iSay should be amongst your earning repertoire.

Related: Honeygain Review: How I’ve Made $2,000 Selling My Unused Internet

The post Ipsos iSay Review 2023: Pros, Cons & Realistic Earning Expectations appeared first on DollarSprout.

(Spoiler: not possible by selling just your unused internet.)

It’s rare we come across ways to earn passive income that don’t involve some sort of actual work, or some large amount of money invested over a pretty good period of time, just to see a meaningful return.

Technically speaking, Honeygain is no exception. The reality is that in the absence of an internet connection you’re already paying for, you won’t be able to earn any sort of extra money online.

By installing the Honeygain app, however, one can unlock a truly passive income stream in just a few clicks with zero additional activity required. In doing so, users will earn money by de facto “selling” the unused portions of their Internet connection.

But, with their homepage flashing a $55 per month figure, their stated average $26 cashout amount, and the outlier $16,000 success story, it’s important to shed context on how the app actually works, how much you can expect to earn, and ultimately whether or not it makes sense for you to use it.

All these details, and more, in our Honeygain review.

What Is Honeygain?

Honeygain is a legit passive income app that allows users to share (sell) the unused portions of their internet bandwidth. By keeping the app installed and active on your desktop, mobile device(s), or both, you will accrue Honeygain credits which can be exchanged for USD or crypto.

The rate at which credits are accrued is impacted by your location, internet speed, and the number of IP addresses your devices are connected to.

The app — operated by Albany, NY-registered Swarmbyte Inc — was launched in May of 2019 and has active users in over 150 countries. They currently maintain a 4.5 out of 5-star rating on Trustpilot with over 10,000 reviews. They are not a BBB-accredited business.

Try Honeygain

Free Price

$5 Sign Up Bonus

DollarSprout Rating 4.5 out of 5 stars

Active in 150 countries, Honeygain has paid out millions to its "hive" of users that donate their unused bandwidth to the app's robust residential proxy network. The combined resources are used by scientists and Fortune 500 companies to help power market research, prevent fraud, aggregate data, and more.

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Pros

• A truly passive income stream.
• Minimal to no interference of daily device usage (desktop only).
• Robust referral program with recurring bonuses.
• Sleek, easy-to-use app interface.
• Not resource intensive (uses less than 1% CPU/available memory).
• Daily giveaways allow users to earn additional free credits.

Cons

• Honeygain does not have a clear or publicly available management team.
• Increased data usage is a large concern for data-limited plans.
• May notice a drain on speed if you have a bandwidth-limited network or many devices connected simultaneously.
• Battery drain for mobile devices may be intense.
• App does not work in the background on mobile devices, rendering its functionality nearly pointless.

How Honeygain Works

When you download the app and complete the registration process, Honeygain immediately begins to run in the background and taps into your unused bandwidth.

(This is the part of your internet capacity that remains idle when you’re not actively using it for browsing, streaming, or downloading.)

Essentially, you’re allowing Honeygain to access a small portion of your internet connection, which you’re not using anyway, in exchange for some earnings.

Honeygain partners with businesses that require large amounts of data for various purposes like market research, content delivery, and more. These businesses pay Honeygain for access to their distributed network, which is made up of the combined bandwidth of all Honeygain users. The company then shares a part of its earnings with you, as a token of appreciation for contributing your bandwidth.

Honeygain claims to take data security seriously, and its network is purportedly built in such a way that it does not have access to your personal data, browsing history, or any other sensitive information.

How to Make Money with Honeygain (Core Features)

Each of Honeygain’s three core features has vastly different earning potentials. Becoming familiar with each will help active Honeygain users maximize their earning potential and set realistic income expectations.

1. Gathering

Gathering is the primary method for earning Honeygain credits and is what the app is predominately known for. There are two different types of gathering:

Default network sharing

When users share their extra bandwidth with Honeygain, it is used to “gather small pieces of publicly available data from websites all over the world,” according to their website.

More specifically, your unused bandwidth is leveraged to provide proxy services to reputable third parties. The services help data scientists, Fortune 500 companies, and other reputable organizations conduct market research, prevent ad fraud, protect brand integrity, gather data and pricing intelligence, aggregate travel fares, and monitor SEO services.

• Earnings accrue at a rate of 3 credits per 10 MB of traffic.
• For 10 GB, a user will earn $3 USD.
• You’ll need to share about 66 GB of data to reach the payout threshold ($20). 
• Your network connection must maintain speeds of 10 MB/s to be used.
• 100 MB/s is the maximum utilizable speed.

These figures are greatly impacted by how many devices and IP addresses you have connected to the app (more on this below). Furthermore, there are several other ways to earn Honeygain credits, which can reduce the time it takes to reach the minimum payout threshold.

Content Delivery

In addition to the default network sharing feature that automatically begins running after installation, desktop users can choose to opt-in to Honeygain’s Content Delivery (CD) feature to earn even more money.

In short, your network connection will now be used to process data-heavy content, including videos, images, more extensive websites, and the like. As a result, earnings with Content Delivery surpass those of Default Network Sharing. (While Content Delivery is active, you will accumulate 6 credits per hour, which is different than the 3 credits per 10 MB you earn through Default Network Sharing).

Fortunately, Content Delivery operates in conjunction with Default Network Sharing, so you can earn from both simultaneously.

Playing with the Honeygain Calculator will give you a more accurate idea of how much you should expect to earn with their combined Gathering features.

***Currently, CD is available for the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States of America. [Updated 2023-04-06]

2. Winnings (Lucky Pot)

While how much internet one shares with Honeygain will ultimately make up a good portion of their overall earnings, users can “win” up to $10 per day (10,000 credits) by sharing at least 15 MB of traffic and then clicking on the Lucky Pot logo in the top right portion of your Honeygain dashboard.

You can only enter once per day, but you’ll earn at least 5 (and up to 10,000) credits, each time you open the Lucky Pot.

3. Honeygain’s Referral Program

By far the most robust way to make money with Honeygain is their referral program.

Immediately after creating your Honeygain account, you’ll get access to a personalized referral link.

When your friends or family use your invite link to download the app, they’ll get a $5 welcome bonus, and you’ll earn 500 credits ($0.50) once they have gathered 2 GB worth of data.

And while the $0.50 for you and $5 for them is great, that’s not the real breadwinner in this equation.

More importantly, you’ll earn a 10% recurring bonus on all their future earnings.

This is a monster incentive. As the number of active users you refer grows, so too do your earnings.

How Much Does Honeygain Pay?

It comes as no surprise that the most frequently asked question we see thrown around is how much can you earn from Honeygain?

The answer is, as with many things in life, it depends.

To get a better idea of how much you can expect to earn, start by considering how many devices and IP addresses you can plausibly run Honeygain on.

By playing with the Honeygain Calculator (mid-way down on their homepage), I discovered that the expected earnings for a single device sharing 2 to 3 GB per day from a single IP address — with 0 CD hours included — came in between $18 and $27 per month.

For the vast majority of users, this is the most realistic expected monthly earnings range (assuming you have an unlimited data package with network speeds that allow for data transfers of at least 10 MB/s).

Honeygain Earnings Scenarios

• 1 device (desktop), 1 IP address: $18 to $27 per month.
• 2 devices (desktop + tablet), 2 IP addresses: $36 to $45 per month.

*Both scenarios require sharing between 2 and 5 GB daily; with 0 hours of CD participation.
**Adding 24 hours per day (!!) of CD sharing only adds $4 per month in additional earnings for both of the above scenarios.

While the Honeygain Calculator allows for 10 IP addresses and 20 GB of sharing for a max earnings of $184 per month, there’s nearly no feasible way for the average person to even come close to that outside some elaborate, likely expensive, setup.

How to Sign Up for Honeygain

Getting started with Honeygain is super easy. Merely head to the Honeygain website and install Honeygain from the relevant store that supports your device.

Supported operating system versions include:

• Windows
• macOS
• Linux (Docker)
• Android
• iOS

After you download the app, you’ll be asked to fill out their registration form to finish the installation process. Once completed, the app is ready to start sharing your Internet. There is no active work ever required again unless you choose to take advantage of the Lucky Pot or referral program features. 

Honeygain Sign Up Bonus

Though not required, you can use our Honeygain referral link and earn a $5 bonus (5,000 credits) for doing so.

Our content is reader supported, so your patronage is certainly appreciated.

You will earn the $5 bonus regardless of whether or not you download Honeygain using our invite link.

Honeygain Payout Process

Cashing in your earned credits once you’ve reached the minimum threshold of 20,000 credits ($20) — for cash to your PayPal account or crypto — is pretty straightforward.

Merely head to your online dashboard, hit Request Payout, and choose between PayPal or JMPT.

PayPal cashouts are hit with a hefty 15% transaction fee, a rather large drawback.

Conversely, Honeygain offers the opportunity to cash out to crypto via the award of JumpToken (JMPT). There is no transaction fee associated with this method.

Additionally, Honeygain adds a 20% bonus to your earnings if you withdraw using this method — net 35% swing over withdrawing to your PayPal account. Your earnings can then be moved to cold storage, or eventually sold on major exchanges like Binance or Coinbase.

Honeygain requests that you allow up to 48 hours to process withdrawals and get paid.

Getting Help & Customer Support

Honeygain seemingly favors a desk and ticket system approach to providing front-line support.

If you have questions about the app, its features, payout inquiries, and more, you’ll need to start by sifting through their available Help desk.

If you’re unable to find the information you’re looking for, you can submit a support request here.

Honeygain does not publicly share staff or support email contact information. They do however have several online communities you can join to seek out information and network with other users. You can find them on:

• Reddit: r/Honeygain
• Discord: Honeygain Official
• Facebook: Honeygain Official

Honeygain Alternatives

If you’re not sold and want to explore alternatives, there are a number of other data collection apps that can be utilized alongside or in place of Honeygain.

1. Nielsen Computer & Mobile Panel: By tracking the way people employ their internet-enabled devices, this app allows users to earn roughly $50 annually for granting the app permission to gather this information.
2. PacketStream: Employs a peer-to-peer proxy network similar to Honeygain. It offers a higher payout rate, but its user base is smaller, which may result in fewer opportunities to earn. The service focuses on catering to businesses and offers a more transparent approach to bandwidth sharing.
3. LoadTeam: LoadTeam is a distributed computing platform that lets users earn money by allowing the app to use their computer’s idle processing power. While it doesn’t involve sharing bandwidth like Honeygain, it offers an alternative way to earn passive income. 
4. Swagbucks: Not a direct alternative to Honeygain but offers various ways to earn passive income, such as watching videos, taking surveys, and cash back on online purchases. Swagbucks has a larger user base and a well-established reputation, but it requires more active participation to maximize earnings, unlike Honeygain’s passive approach.

FAQs

Final Thoughts: Is Honeygain Worth It?

Simply put, whether or not you use money-making apps like Honeygain depends largely on two simple questions.

1. Do you have a desktop device?
2. Do you have a stable internet connection with unlimited data?

If the answer to either of those questions is no, then Honeygain likely won’t be worth the hassle, and may even cost you money as it drains your data package faster. 

If the answer to both is yes, then the Honeygain app is almost certainly worth your time, even if your earnings don’t reach commonly cited levels.

One last thing you may want to inquire about is whether or not your internet service provider starts to throttle network speeds after a certain amount of data is used. For example, you may have an unlimited data or internet package, but the provider starts to downgrade your speeds after, for example, 20 GB is used in a particular month.

While you’re not technically paying more, the slower speeds may force you to reconsider using or potentially pause using Honeygain once your throttling limits are reached. 

Try Honeygain

Related: 50+ Legit Ways to Make Money Online

The post Honeygain Review 2023: How I’ve Made $2,000 Selling My Internet appeared first on DollarSprout.

Let’s be real. Most people are not going to get rich by just using their phone. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t make money from your phone quickly by leveraging a few apps and getting in on some of the easier side hustles.

Of course, for the right person, a smartphone actually can lead to a substantial source of income. But usually, these opportunities require a significant amount of work, time, money, or a combination of all three before they pay off.

Here we will cover a variety of options across the entire spectrum.

How to Make Money From Your Phone

1. Flip cash

The internet is mired with hundreds of places promising all sorts of free money for a laundry list of different reasons. Sign up for this, buy that, go and do this, you name it.

But at the end of the day, very few actually give you any sort of free cash without you having to spend money yourself – or do a ton of work to earn it.

That said, there are still a few good ways to earn completely free pocket change in 5 minutes or less.

Cash App’s send $5, get $5 welcome bonus is one such way.

(For those unfamiliar, Cash App is the second most popular e-wallet in the world – next to PayPal – and you can use it to send money to instantly send friends and family money whenever you need to.)

I regularly use the app to reimburse friends if they have to cover me in a pinch or if I leave my wallet at the house.

To get your free $5, simply:

1. Create a Cash App account and use referral code GK6CDJ1.
2. Add a debit card or bank account and send a friend $5 cash.
3. Have them send that same $5 right back to you and you’ll both instantly earn a free $5 bonus. It’s that simple.

Pro tip: You can earn an additional $15 for every user that you refer using your referral link in the app. The person you invite must send/make a payment of $5 or more within the first 14 days of registering to unlock your $15 referral bonus.

2. Get free stock

A unique way to reward those interested in trading stocks, Webull – a popular microinvesting app – offers new users 2 free fractional shares up to $300 in value each. Deposit any amount and receive between 4 and 10 additional free fractional shares valued at up to $3,000 each.

The stocks are assigned in a lottery-like fashion, so most users will receive stock in the $3 to $10 per share range; the odds of being assigned a fractional share worth between $11 and $300 each is 1 in 50.

The cool part is that you can deposit any amount to qualify for the free stock, so there’s no need to deposit hundreds or thousands of dollars unless you really want to get serious about investing. Just make a small deposit, earn the free stocks, and watch them grow or cash out after their sale has settled.

Related: 8 Best Investing Apps for Beginner Investors

3. Play video games

You don’t have to be a Dota or Fortnite champion to earn money playing video games.

(Fun fact: the prize pool for The International 2022 – the Dota World Championships – was over $19,000,000).

It’s much more simple than that. For example, you can make money from your phone for free by playing the exact same games you do on a daily basis through an app called Mistplay (Android only).

A gamer loyalty app, users will earn time-accrued credits they can then redeem in the Mistplay store for free gift cards to Amazon, eBay, Starbucks, and the Apple App Store.

The list of games frequently changes (Mistplay helps game developers expose new games to the public) but at the time of writing this article Super Mario Run, Pokemon Go, Fruit Ninja, Chess, Solitaire, Candy Crush Saga, Wordscapes, and dozens of others were all available to play.

If you’re feeling bold, you can up the ante by entering into competitions for games of skill with real cash prizes. Skillz – an eSports platform – offers a number of casino-like games (available on Android, iOS, and Samsung) where users can play in single or multiplayer tournaments for, sometimes quite large, cash prize pools.*

Some of their most popular games include:

• 21 Blitz 
• Blackout Bingo
• Dominoes Gold
• Pool Payday
• Solitaire Cube

With thirty million active players, five million daily tournaments, and $100,000,000 in monthly prizes award, it’s safe to say there’s some serious cash exchanging hands across their platform.

*Cash tournaments are not available in the following states: AZ, AR, CT, DE, IN, LA, ME, MT, SC, SD, and TN

4. Sell old stuff

Most of us have stuff sitting around our house or apartment that we don’t want or need anymore. Instead of letting it stack up, sell it. After a quick walk-through of my own house, I found several semi-valuable things that I can easily get rid of through Facebook Marketplace or any number of other selling apps.

• An old surfboard I don’t use anymore ($100 or so)
• An extra coffee table from my last apartment ($50)
• A few old video games ($5 to $10 each)

This method of making money on your phone fast is a personal favorite of mine. I bought and sold over $100,000 worth of Pokemon cards on sites like eBay and Mercari during the pandemic and haven’t slowed down since.

I regularly purge the clutter I have laying around, and my house is cleaner (and wallet fatter) for doing it.

5. Complete microtasks

Microtasks are small projects that virtually anyone with an internet connection can perform. Think of tasks like tagging photos or videos for machine learning, transcribing audio, moderating content, data entry, etc. Companies that pay for microtask work tend to not pay very much since the work is fairly easy, but if you are looking for a way to pass time and earn a few extra bucks, it can be worth it.

Suggested sites for finding microtask-related gigs:

• Amazon Mechanical Turk (“human intelligence tasks”)
• Clickworker (app testing, copy editing, and more)
• InboxDollars (market research)

6. Take paid surveys

We spend a lot of our downtime looking at our phones. Instead of mindless scrolling, consider adding a better “mindless” task: taking paid surveys. Nobody is going to get rich taking surveys, but there is certainly an opportunity to make $5 to $20 a month or more by answering questions about products relevant to your interest.

And in case you are wondering how this actually works, the money that is paid out from these surveys usually comes from a company that is doing market research to better understand consumers. A toothpaste company asking about brushing habits, a streaming service asking about what kind of shows you like, etc.

Our managing editor, Megan, made $7.41 with the popular survey site – Branded Surveys – in her first few hours of using the platform. The earnings certainly won’t come close to that of a full-time job, but they’re meaningful enough to cover her electric bill each month.

7. Sell your data

The reason that social media companies are able to make so much money is that they own an incredible amount of data on you, and that data is mega valuable to companies that want to advertise to you (and people like you).

Most of us are at least vaguely aware of this, although there isn’t much we can really do about it. That’s just how the ecosystem works. We spend time on social media, social media companies compile detailed profiles on us, they sell ad space based on that information, and round and round we go.

But now there are a handful of apps that are attempting to flip the script on that model and teach you how to make money from mobile data.

For instance, Tapestri is an app that pays users for their location information (up to $25 each month). Tapestri sells your anonymized data to advertisers, which is less privacy-invasive than what social media companies do.

They then share the proceeds with you, the user.

For example, I made $0.42 just today by sharing my location data with the app.

I work from home and am about as boring as they come in terms of the places that I visit (and I live in a super rural area), but perhaps your location data is worth more than my own. Even my earnings extrapolate to almost $15 over the course of the month, which is not too shabby considering I did virtually nothing to earn it.

Our top passive income apps:

• Tapestri
• NCP Mobile
• Honeygain

8. Land freelance gigs

If you have a normal 9 to 5 job, you might be surprised at how high the demand is for freelancers. Companies love to hire freelancers for one-off projects and even ongoing work because it’s often more efficient and flexible than hiring a full-time employee with benefits. The best part is, you don’t have to be a world-class talent in order to land freelance work. If you are decently skilled at something and have a portfolio of work to back it up, drumming up freelance business from your phone is fairly easy.

One DollarSprout reader – Betsy Skinner – makes over $3,000 per month as a freelance virtual assistant. She helps needy bloggers and small businesses with everyday tasks such as email management and filtering, proofreading of articles and blog posts, and light bookkeeping.

Outside of any business connections you might have, the best way to find freelance work is to create a profile and apply for jobs on freelance marketplace apps like Upwork or Fiverr, or industry-specific marketplaces like Toptal (developers) or Law Clerk (legal).

For more manual-labor-focused work, check out sites like TaskRabbit or driving apps like Uber, Lyft, etc. You can also read about more gig economy jobs here.

9. Sell your photos

Even though everyone has a camera in their pocket, that does not mean that everyone is a good photographer. If you’ve got decent photo-taking and editing chops, you can try your hand at selling photos on stock photography websites like Shutterstock, iStock, Adobe Stock, etc. Many online publishers are always on the lookout for the right photo for a particular piece of content, and if your photo fits the bill, you can easily make money from your phone without investment in high-end photography equipment.

When someone downloads your photo, you will receive a small royalty fee, usually somewhere around a few cents. The more downloads, the more money you will earn.

If you are active on social media and want to get involved in selling your own exclusive photos to monthly subscribers, you can also check out OnlyFans. It’s certainly a different experience than selling generic stock photos online, but there are dozens of creators (health care workers, athletes, influencers, life coaches, etc.) who have turned this into a full-time source of income.

10. Earn rewards

When most people think of rewards, they think of cash back credit cards. But there is another way to earn rewards that doesn’t involve the risk of piling on high-interest debt: cash back and rewards apps. These sorts of apps allow users to earn rewards on purchases from virtually every large retailer.

The best part about these apps is that any rewards you earn are piled on top of any credit card rewards you may be getting. So if you are earning 1% cash back with your credit card and 1% with an app, you will earn a total of 2% in rewards for that transaction. At first, the income may seem small, but it adds up over time!

Some of the best shopping rewards apps we recommend are:

• Capital One Shopping
• Dosh

11. Up your content creation game

Most of the items on this list are great for quick hits of small income, but if you are looking for a way to make potentially life-changing money from your phone, you’ll need to put some serious work into creating an audience. There are lots of platforms that offer this opportunity, so choosing where to start depends on your skills and interests.

With an audience – even a small one – creators can earn an income with ads, brand deals, or even selling their own products. The options (and income potential) are limitless.

Some ideas to spark your creativity:

• TikTok: Erika Kullberg (@erikakullberg) is a financial lawyer who started making TikToks with quick money tips and has grown her account to over 9M followers in just over a year.
• YouTube: Ethan Yau (@RampagePoker) started a poker vlog 4 years ago on YouTube where he would film himself playing cards in various casinos. Like anyone else, he started with just an iPhone and zero followers, but people were quickly drawn to watching his journey up the ranks to bigger and bigger games. Now he has almost 200k subscribers and is a “celebrity” in this small niche.
• Instagram: Paige Proctor (@paige_t1d_fitness) is a Physician’s Assistant with Type 1 diabetes who also earns a full-time income from Instagram as a health and fitness coach for others with diabetes.

Related: How to Make Money as an Influencer (Beginner Guide)

12. Get paid to text

Although the opportunities and earning potential are somewhat limited, you can get paid to send and receive text messages through a handful of different services.

• McMoney: This is a service that tests cell phone networks to make sure SMS messages are delivered properly. If you sign up with them and offer your number as a test number, you can earn a few dollars each year.
• Premium.Chat: If you already have a base of fans or clients, you can use a site like this one to offer private, direct messaging or video calls to paying customers.
• 1Q: This app will send you questions and pay you $0.25 cents per answer.
• FlirtBucks: Like it sounds, this site provides a platform for users to make $100 a day on your phone by carrying on flirty conversations with other users.

If the idea of texting sounds fun but the ergonomics of being on your phone are exhausting, move to your computer with these online typing jobs.

13. Try mystery shopping

One challenge that retail businesses and chain restaurants face is keeping the customer experience the same across several different locations. In order to monitor different locations, companies will hire “mystery shoppers” to secretly shop at a store and then provide feedback on their experience. And of course, these mystery shoppers are paid for their time.

Secret shoppers will report on a variety of consumer experiences including but not limited to:

• How friendly is the staff?
• How easy it is to find an item?
• How visible was pricing and was it easy to understand?
• How effective is a store display of an item(s)? Is it neat, clean, and organized, etc.? 

After completing a “shop”, the consumer then answers questions provided by the mystery shopping company, and they’re paid via a variety of different methods – direct deposit, PayPal, or paper checks by mail, to name a few. This is a great method of making money on your phone if you need to get paid daily as many companies will release payment upon receiving their feedback.

Related: Best Mystery Shopping Companies to Work For

14. Sit through ads

Whenever you watch a video on YouTube and have to sit through an ad, wouldn’t it be nice if you got a slice of that revenue? Lucky for you, there are several platforms now that actually pay users to watch ads.

• AdWallet: One of the most important metrics advertisers follow is how easy is it to recall a brand after watching or viewing an ad. With AdWallet, you can make money on your phone quickly by watching ads relevant to your interests and answering specific questions about the ad. The company then compiles the information you’ve provided and helps big brands tweak their advertising campaigns to make them more effective. User reviews report earning upwards of $20 for reporting on as few as 4 to 5 video ads.
• Swagbucks: This is a free online rewards site that offers many different ways to earn money, one of which is paying users to watch short advertisements. For each video that you watch, you can earn a few SBs which can then be redeemed for gift cards.
• Ibotta: A free cash back rewards app that specializes in grocery shopping. In order to redeem some of the rebates and rewards, Ibotta may require users to watch a quick ad.

15. Ditch your textbooks

Another easy way to make money from your phone is to scan your old textbook’s ISBN barcode and see if its worth money. If you are a college student and have a pile of textbooks that you never plan on opening again, don’t burn them. Sell them!

Your on-campus bookstore is not always the best place to sell your textbooks. Instead of getting lowballed by them, you can sometimes sell your books for a higher premium online. Here are some of the top sites for selling your textbooks:

• BookScouter: 30+ vendors on BookScouter will “compete” for your textbooks, making sure that you get the best offer possible.
• BookFinder: Similar to BookScouter, you can enter your textbook’s ISBN number on BookFinder and compare offers for your textbooks from several different buyers.

Things to Watch Out For

Make sure you are spending your time wisely. It doesn’t do you any good to spend 3 hours on your phone, only to make $1. In the world of microtasks and mindless work on your phone, it can be very easy to lose track of time and not have much to show for it. In most cases, you will be better off putting your time into developing a skill or building some sort of asset rather than just simply trading your time for a few cents.

Don’t send money to anyone you don’t know. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. There is no shortage of scams to watch out for, but in general, anytime someone is asking you to send money, cash a check, or purchase a gift card, they probably do not have your best interest in mind. Always keep your eyes peeled for these types of schemes.

Be wary of downloading things (viruses). Make sure to check the reviews of anything before you decide to download it onto your phone, especially if you are not getting it directly from the App Store or Google Play Store.

The Best Way to Make Money on Your Phone

A balanced, rational approach to earning will help you realize maximum earnings. Start by employing options that equate to low-hanging fruit.

If you shop frequently, install one of the free cashback apps that are popular amongst consumers. If you don’t care about who knows where you shop – or what you bought – install an app that pays you for your data. These two avenues alone can reclaim substantial earned income that you’d have otherwise lost.

Then, look at the other more active ways to make money. From selling gently used clothing and no-longer-used tech to leveraging money-making apps and starting a new freelance gig, there are ways to boost your earnings from a few dozen to hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month.

The post 15 Legit Ways to Make Money From Your Phone appeared first on DollarSprout.

Details: Cold weather aside, it doesn’t take much convince me to stay in the house during the month of October. Fall scented candles, spooky decorations, and warm drinks have started to make appearances, and I’m all for it. 

Another welcome addition? A ghoulish lineup of good movies from now until the “joy” of the festive season ruins the fun. 

It goes without saying that I’ll be spending a good amount of time on my couch switching between College Football and whatever thriller is on in between.

If the occasional Hollywood horror is also your cup of tea, you may be interested in USDish’s 3rd annual chilling tradition: 13 Stephen King films for $1300. 

To help you suffer through it, USDish will provide you with a $350 survival kit.

In it you’ll find a blanket, popcorn, candy, and some Stephen King paraphernalia to set the stage for what is sure to be a terrifying experience.
Additionally, you’ll also be provided a Fitbit to help you track your heart rate during some of the more intense scenes.

There is a catch. 

USDish wants to “know everything about your experience. You will track your heart rate and jump scares. You’ll let us know who joined in on the scares with you. You’ll let us know what you thought before watching certain movies, and if your feelings changed after you completed them. You’ll even log your sleep—if you can sleep.” 

They go on to say they’ll provide a simple worksheet for journaling the above info and anything else you wish to share. 

Get Started: The only requirements are that you are at least 18 years of age and are a permanent US resident. Check those two boxes and you’re good to go. 

After that, head to their application and tell them why you’re the perfect victim and what you hope to get out of the experience. One lucky winner will be chosen on Friday, September 30th, but hurry, you only have until Friday, September 16th to apply. 

Related: 

• 190 Side Hustles to Make Extra Money In Your Spare Time 
• 12 Legit Ways to Get Paid to Watch Movies 

The post Watch These 13 Frightening Films, Get $1300 appeared first on DollarSprout.

No, you haven’t been let go, but you did just get a near 10% pay cut – effective immediately. Not a great start to your Wednesday morning. But that’s exactly what happened to all of us since July of last year whether or not we actually got the audio memo or not.

With the Consumer Price Index (CPI) hovering at 8.5% year over year, Americans are noticeably feeling pain when it comes to paying for everyday items. The price of gas, groceries, you name it, it’s virtually all impacted by the effects of inflation.

To put it all into perspective, someone who earned and spent $50,000 last year now needs to make $54,262.41 to maintain their standard of living. If you didn’t get that year end raise we all hoped for last year, odds are you’re feeling a little pinched, especially if things were already tight to begin with.

To that end, we’ve put together a list of fifteen different ways you can take back your purchasing power, and kick inflation to the curb.

1. Move cash to a high-yield savings account

Having lots of cash sitting idle in low-rate accounts is the most ineffective way to combat inflation.

What cash you must keep on hand, such as an emergency fund or cash to cover everyday expenses, put in an online savings account to recoup as much spending power as possible.

You’re still losing to inflation, but the goal here is to claw back as much earning power as we can.

2. Get a cash-back card

If you’re not on the market for a new car or home, consider opening a new line of credit.

Responsible card owners can take advantage of generous new card offers, many of which have robust cash-back rates on gas, groceries and travel.

With market averages sitting between 1% and 5% rewards on just about every category imaginable, it’s an easy way to earn passive income in perpetuity that helps offset protracted inflation.

3. Take advantage bank bonuses

High interest rates aren’t the only way consumers can cash in on banks’ desires to acquire new customers.

Odds are there are several hundred very free dollars waiting for you at one of many traditional banking institutions.

For example, Citi Bank is currently offering up to $2000 in bonuses for opening a new Citigold account and keeping your money there for 60 days (then rinse and repeat at a new institution). A tiered bonus, you’ll earn $200 for deposits between $10,000 and $29,999, and $2000 if you deposit $300,000 or more. 

Not everyone has that kind of cash on hand, but if you do, and it’s earning .06% at your traditional brick and mortar, this is an easy way to earn a few hundred bucks, and take advantage of their lucrative deposit bonuses. 

4. Use DollarSprout Rewards

Available on Desktop: Chrome | Safari

Most people know about cash back credit cards, which is great (as long as pay off your balance each month). But what most people don’t know is that there are ways to earn cash back even beyond your credit card points. 

With a desktop cash back browser extension like DollarSprout Rewards, you can effortlessly add another 0.5-10%+ cash back from over 15,000 online stores. So let’s say you are shopping online and earning 1.5% cash back with your credit card DollarSprout Rewards offers you a 2% cash back deal at a site, you are now earning 3.5% on that purchase. The extension is free to install.

5. Plan out purchases

The only thing that loses to inflation more than keeping savings in low-yield cash accounts is spending money on frivolous things you never needed to begin with.

Planning out purchases before going to a store helps you stay on track, and something as simple as sticking a written list can help keep you accountable for only buying what you need.

Keeping a budget and tracking your spending are two other proven tactics for keeping the temptation to window show at bay.

6. Cook at home

Food costs have skyrocketed over the last year, and those costs are being passed onto the consumer (and then some extra) by restaurants. Perhaps easier said than done, cooking at home can be a real game-changer when it comes to saving money on food.

One of the best ways to get started with home cooking is to plan out your meals in advance, a few days at a time. If the thought of this sends shivers down your spine, remember that you can have “repeat” meals that you prep in bulk beforehand; you don’t need to cook a unique meal from scratch three times a day.

Related: 14 Smart Ways to Save Money on Groceries

7. Buy in bulk

If money is tight, the last thing you probably want to do is buy in bulk, but in many cases it really is worth it – especially when it comes to food. For instance, buying a 2-pack of chicken breast may cost $3 a pound, but if you buy the bulk pack that comes with 6 breasts, you likely be able to get them for $2 or less per pound. That might not sound like much, but saving over 30% on food that you know you are going to eat will greatly help reduce your monthly food budget.

The trick to buying in bulk, if you are new to it, is to go from buying a 2 or 3-day supply of something and instead buy a 1-2 week supply. You’ll realize the benefits sooner and it will feel more rewarding than buying a 96 pack of toilet paper.

8. Minimize food delivery

Food delivery blew up during the pandemic, and for many of us, the convenience factor made it hard to give up once the world started to return back to normal. If you have a habit of DoorDash (or whatever delivery service you use), cutting back here is an easy way make room for other, more necessary, items in your budget.

9. Go generic

Brand loyalty in the personal finance space is akin death by a thousand papercuts.

A recent study by Accenture showed that consumers spend on average 18% more for products from brands to which they’re loyal when compared to identical products made by other manufacturers._[1]

A good way to make the effects of 8.5% inflation all the more painful is to pay nearly 20% more for them.

But really, even those numbers don’t paint the whole picture.

Take generic medications, for example. A recent FDA-published study showed that generic medications – when six or more companies were in competition – cost up to 95% less than their branded competitors._[2]

Your Excedrin Migraine and Kroger Migraine really are the exact same thing, but you’ll pay nearly 700% less for the latter.

10. Diversify your portfolio

Talk of recession and high inflation have many worried about the state of their portfolio. But moving money to cash or getting out of the markets entirely can do substantially more harm than good.

Instead, experts suggest using periods of fear to ensure that your money is still invested in a safe array of investment vehicles. Being cash heavy will maximize losses to inflation, and being overly equity heavy can inflict even more pain.

Speak with a trusted financial advisor and ask them to show you how your portfolio is invested to protect against periods of protracted inflation.

11. Negotiate bills or cut less-used subscriptions

Regardless of inflation, it’s a good idea to get into the habit of doing this once or twice a year. We’ve all had that free trial that we forgot to cancel or the subscription we’ve been overpaying for for too long (like cable TV).

Also, if you and your spouse both have your own Amazon Prime subscription, make sure you consolidate down to just one. My wife and I basically paid double for Amazon Prime for over a year because we didn’t consolidate.

For more automated help with cutting your subscription costs, check out these bill negotiation apps.

12. Rewards apps for gas and groceries

While broad-use cash-back apps are great for saving money on everyday purchases, one many be able to save even more by using category specific apps.

Cheap gas apps such as GasBuddy or Upside offer savings as high as 25 cents per gallon of gas.

Similarly, grocery apps such as Ibotta allow active users to save as much as $300 per month, according to a company spokesperson.

13. Tackle rate-variable debt

When the Federal Reserve attempts to combat inflation by raising interest rates, this means that many credit products will have increased interest rates. For instance, if you have credit card debt that was previously accruing 20% interest per year, odds are that the interest rate on that same card has increased to 25% APR or more. That means more of your money is going towards paying off the interest than before.

As hard as it may feel, the best time to get serious about paying off your debt, especially your high-interest debt, is now. There are lots of ways to go about doing it, but one of the smartest choices is to prioritize your highest interest rate debt first.

14. Look into inflation-adjusted investments

Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) are government bonds that help protect you from inflation. They pay interest twice a year at a fixed rate that is adjusted for wherever inflation is at the time.

When a TIPS matures, you are paid the adjusted principal or original principal, whichever is greater.

• Term: 5, 10 or 30 years
• Minimum purchase: $100
• Investment Increment: Multiples of $100
• Issue Method: Electronic

Related: 7 Great Short-Term Investments for Growing Your Money

15. Don’t panic (and get too aggressive with high-risk investments)

Social media is full of stories about people (people often younger than you) getting rich off the latest crypto token or NFT series. While some of these stories are true, there is no shortage of fake hype out there driven by people who want nothing more than to separate you from your money. If money is tight, now is not the time to YOLO it on a dog coin or an animal jpeg.

The post 15 Expert Tips for Beating Inflation appeared first on DollarSprout.

Unless explicit direction was given to a well-meaning gift giver, a good many of the Christmas, graduation, or birthday gifts we’ve ever received would have been better replaced by our favorite plastic currency. Especially now that there are options for exchanging new or used gift cards for free cold hard cash.

If you know you won’t be near a Starbucks, Costco, or Target any time soon, and Walmart just isn’t your vibe these days, instantly redeem your digital dollars for actual cash at any one of these best places to sell gift cards online. 

Highest-Paying Places to Sell Gift Cards Online

If you’re anything like me, getting top dollar for my gift card is really all I care about. Every gift card exchange has selling fees or takes a certain cut; that much is to be expected.

But when I sell my $25 Amazon gift card on any particular website, I’d like to get as close to $25 deposited directly into my PayPal account as I can. That’s why these gift card exchange apps and websites are the best. 

1. CardCash 

Perhaps the easiest gift card exchange to use, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better place to redeem your gift cards for cash anywhere on the web. Simply enter the store and balance using their quote tool and CardCash will display an instant offer. 

In my experience, quotes will most often fall between 80% and 85% of the cash value of the card, but offers can reach as high as 92%. Choose to receive your payment via mailed check, ACH (direct deposit), or, my favorite, PayPal Express.

• Sell cards from over 1,300 retailers. 
• Get up to an 11% value boost if you trade gift cards (i.e. swap a Walmart gift card for a Target gift card). 
• Give $5, Get $5 referral program. Earn $5 for each person you refer to CardCash (they get $5 too). 
• Need to make an online purchase? Get gift cards up to 34% off at one of the best discount gift card vendors online. 

2. Raise

The most well-known company in the gift card space, Raise offers one perk that sets them above many of its competitors: the ability to sell partially used gift cards. 

That’s right, even if you’ve spent money on the card, you can still sell the remaining balance for a cash deposit. Raise’s biggest perk helps to offset its biggest con: no immediate cash offer.

Unlike CardCash, Raise facilitates the sale of gift cards from one person to another. You’ll offer a small discount on your card — say 1 or 2% — and then a buyer will come and scoop up your card at the newly discounted price.

The bigger the discount you offer, the faster your card will sell. Payments are also made by check, ACH direct deposit, and PayPal cash. 

• Buy and sell gift cards at nearly 1,000 retailers. 
• Flat 15% commission taken by Raise on sold gift cards (in addition to your offered discount). 
• Refer and Earn $5 referral program. 
• Most popular direct sale gift card website. 
• App version available (Raise Mobile). 

Related: Raise Review 2023 

3. GiftCash 

While you can “only” sell gift cards to a smaller list of 150 retailers (still all the big ones), GiftCash boasts two unique features their competitors do not.

First, they offer an industry-leading 93% cash payout on some of the top retailers.

Second, you can convert your cash balances to crypto. They do require a $25 minimum balance for any card sold, and some brands like Apple and iTunes have a $100 minimum card value. 

If you value a totally private transaction from start to finish, all while getting the most money possible for your gift card, GiftCash is the best option for you. 

• Payouts issued within 5 to 15 business days.
• Only available in the USA and Canada. 
• Up to 93% cash offers for major retailers. 
• Cashouts are also available in crypto (BTC, BCH, ETH, or USDT).
• Earn up to 7% GiftCash (cashback) on gift card purchases towards additional free gift cards. 

Related: 15 Best Cash-Back Apps for Saving Money on Everything You Buy

Best Places to Sell Gift Cards for Cash (Runner Ups) 

There’s really no need to deviate from any of the three winners on our list. Doing so increases the likelihood you run into one of many gift card-oriented scams. But if you’re browser is acting up, you really want to do your due diligence, or you’re holding out hope that a different gift card exchange has a hidden better deal, we’ve found a few other legit apps and websites where you can trade gift cards for cash. 

4. ClipKard

If you’d prefer to do everything offline, ClipKard accepts mailed physical gift cards from over 100 retailers worldwide. 

Despite the snail mail route, everything works fairly simply. ClipKard sends you a free pre-paid USPS label, you mail the physical card, and within 1 to 7 business days after balance verification, you’ll receive either a PayPal deposit or check by mail. 

Payouts tend to be lower than their competitors, often in the 70 to 80% cash value range, but they’re a good option if you’re unsure about entering your gift card number and PIN online. 

5. CardSell

There’s a lot to be said about simplicity, and the CardSell mobile app offers exactly that.

With no desktop presence, you’ll only be able to access the platform with a mobile or smart device, but cash offers are semi-competitive and payouts hit your PayPal account in a fast 48 hours or less.

Payouts typically come in around the 50% to 75% of total value mark, so it won’t be the highest paying place to sell gift cards online, but if you’re looking to unload cards as quickly as possible, this is one of the faster options for doing it. 

Worth noting, don’t accept the first offer CardSell throws out.

If you decline the initial offer, the app will prompt you to resubmit the card for a +10% payout bonus.

Basically, they’re lowballing, but this is an easy hack to get a higher value straight off the bat. 

Download:

• App Store 
• Google Play

Top Gift Card Exchanges Compared

Hidden or even totally transparent fees can add up. Here’s how much you can expect a $25 gift card to be worth at each gift card exchange (at the time of writing). 

Other Options for Getting Rid of Unwanted Gift Cards

Despite their ease of use, exchanges aren’t the only way to discard or even get top dollar for your new or unused gift cards. Donating, regifting, or returning gift cards are all viable options. 

Donate

A near-cash equivalent, many charities would be thrilled to oversee the expenditure of your new or even used gift card codes and balances. Some donations are even tax-deductible, so be sure to ask participating charities for the appropriate paperwork. Some reputable organizations worth looking into: 

• GiftCards4Change
• St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
• Special Kids Fund
• Kars4Kids

Regift 

Not a whole lot needs to be said here. If you’re sitting on a $10 worth Starbucks gift cards you’ll never use because fried brown water is of no importance to your life, give it away at your earliest convenience. Zero dollars left your wallet, and the caffeine-addicted friend in your life is a whole lot happier.  

Return Them 

Perhaps the most surprising method for offloading your gift card, some retailers will actually accept gift card returns, so long as you provide a receipt for the purchase. 

While this isn’t common, places like Amazon and Shopify will allow you to turn your gift card into cash as if it were any other payment method, so long as you have a receipt and have returned any items that were purchased using the gift card. 

Each retailer’s return policy will vary, so you’ll have to check the fine print to see if your return will be accepted. 

Deciding Where to Trade Gift Cards for Cash

Selling gift cards online for cash isn’t rocket science. When it comes down to it, staying safe and helping you get the most money for your card is our biggest priority. 

As a past semi-professional poker player, my OCD brain won’t allow me to do anything other than extract max value from any situation. When it comes to selling my unwanted CVS and Walgreens gift cards, that means getting the absolute most for them. If you’ve got a few minutes, quickly open each site in a new tab on your browser and see who is offering the best bang for your plastic bucks. If you’re flexible and don’t mind waiting, always lean towards the top paying option. 

If you need an instant cash payout, places like CardCash and GiftCash will better suit your needs. 

FAQs

The post The 5 Best Places to Sell Gift Cards for Cash appeared first on DollarSprout.

Details: If you’re an avid bookworm, odds are you’ve read at least one New York Times bestseller in your lifetime. My money is on the over.

We presume that most of the time you did this for free because you simply enjoy reading them. But if you’d like to actually get paid to read books like these, there’s a neat little opportunity that recently popped up that just might be up your alley. 

A research company called WordsRated is looking for help collecting details on NYT bestseller-listed books. Specifically, they’re looking for readers to plow through books cover to cover while jotting down detailed information about the characters and plot. 

Their names, their ages, adjectives that describe the characters, how frequently they have dialogue — that kind of stuff. It’s not rocket science, but in their line of work, someone has to do it, and that’s where you come in. 

Specifically, they’re looking for 5 to 10 all-stars who can chew through books and spit out the details they’re looking for. Each completed book, along with the data submission, will net you $200. 

You can read and submit in your spare time, or you can turn it into a full-time gig. It’s fully remote, and you can read and submit from anywhere in the world. 

Check out their details and application page to learn more and to apply. 

Related: 190 Side Hustles to Make Extra Money In Your Spare Time 

The post This Company Pays $200 per Book You Read appeared first on DollarSprout.

Bigger than Mickey Mouse, Star Wars, Mario, Harry Potter, you name it — it’s bigger than all of them — and really, it’s not even close. As of May 2019, the last time The Pokemon Company released earnings figures, Pokemon was a cool $20 billion clear of the second largest franchise, Hello Kitty ($88.5 billion in revenue since its release in 1974)._[1]

Worth noting, this doesn’t take into account that since the pandemic hit in March of 2020, The Pokemon Company has been printing cards non-stop as the demand for the hobby has reached dizzyingly high levels. So high in fact that a Pikachu Illustrator card sold for $5,275,000 this month, and another card, the iconic 1st Edition Base Set Charizard, an astounding $420,000 just last week.

This all begs the question: Are you potentially sitting on a childhood gold mine sitting tucked away in a closet that you haven’t seen in nearly twenty years?

Odds are you likely aren’t sitting on anything worth close to that much, but there are dozens of vintage and modern cards worth hundreds of dollars, even in poor condition.

If you’ve been out of the hobby for a while now and would like to know how to sell your Pokemon cards for cash while the hobby is still hot, I’ll share with you the best places to sell them, some tips for spotting the rare ones, and how to get the most money for them.

NEW: Get free cash back online with DollarSprout Rewards:

Download on: Chrome | Safari

Best Places to Sell Pokemon Cards Online

While there are certainly options for selling your cards in person, the best (and most profitable) places to sell Pokemon cards reside online. Most simply this is because online marketplaces have a far wider reach and there’s more opportunity to find deeper pockets.

1. eBay

Already one of the world’s most known online marketplaces, eBay has intentionally sought to position itself as the premier place to sell Pokemon cards online. Already with millions of cards sold on the platform each year, eBay’s dominance in the space shows no signs of slowing, as Pokemon TCG sales increased 574% YoY from 2019 to 2020._[2]

With a robust array of listing and safety features and access to more relevant buyers than anywhere on the planet, sellers can rest assured knowing they’ll be hard-pressed to find a better place to offload their prized possessions.

As someone who bought and sold over $100,000 worth of cards on eBay last year, I can attest to the protections eBay offers when compared to alternative selling options. While nearly every place to sell Pokemon cards takes a “buyer-friendly” stance — meaning they default to protecting the buyer during disputes — eBay does the best job of mediating, and will even side with the seller in select circumstances.

2. Mercari

If you’re looking for another good place to sell your Pokemon card collection online, Mercari presents itself as another great choice.

With unique promotional tools, Mercari empowers sellers to get top dollar on their collection in a way that no other platform offers.

Simply set a price for your collection at a point that you perceive to be slightly above the market value of your cards, and then let Mercari incrementally drop the price until a buyer pulls the trigger.

The promotional setup gives your listing an algorithmic boost each time the price is dropped to bring in fresh new eyes to your listing.

Their floor price feature provides downside protection against your collection selling at a price you’re unhappy with.

If a listing reaches the floor point and still hasn’t converted a sale with no promising leads, merely delete the listing, reassess the market value of your cards, and recreate it for a fresh algorithmic boost.

Read More: Mercari Review 2023: What I’ve Learned After $19,000 in Sales

3. TCGplayer

There are selling apps for flipping everything from clothes and jewelry to tech gear and golf clubs — and then there are apps for selling exclusively trading cards.

That’s where TCGplayer comes in.

The largest niche card marketplace in the world, TCGplayer is widely known for its easy-to-use app and price guide that helps novices and experts alike value their card collections. Like eBay, TCGplayer offers a robust suite of seller tools that are well integrated with their price guide.

While the user interface is a bit cluttered and can lead to information overwhelm, the platform remains an excellent overall tool for gaining access to millions of buyers that may have scorned eBay or other selling platforms. A notable feature, TCGplayer Direct offers an Amazon Prime-like experience for buyers providing them a one-stop-shop for millions of cards and free shipping on orders over $35.

4. Pokemon Facebook Groups

Pokemon-oriented Facebook Groups are undeniably one of the best places to sell Pokemon cards online for two good reasons: low seller fees and high purchase intent.

These groups purely exist for collectors to come together, show off their collections, chat, and of course, buy and sell Pokmon cards. Strict care must be taken to closely follow the rules — every group’s will be slightly different — or you will quickly find yourself dispatched from the community on a permanent basis. Acronyms and seller lingo abounds, so don’t be surprised when it all seems confusing at first.

Frequently used terms include:

• FS/NFS: For Sale/Not for Sale
• FT/NFT: For Trade/Not for Trade
• OBO: Or best offer
• G&S: Short for PayPal Goods & Services (the preferred and safest method when paying for cards).
• Pop: Short for population (the number of graded cards in existence).
• ISO/WTB: “In search” of or “want to buy”
• HP, MP, LP, NM, M: Heavy, moderate, or light play; near mint or mint (more on determining card condition below).

The biggest advantage here is the personal component of things. Conversations in the comment sections and/or direct messaging can quickly lead to the sale or trade of cards that might not be publicly listed on the larger exchanges.

5. Troll and Toad

Willing to accept a little less money to forego the hassle of photographing, describing, and listing individual cards or entire lots on the major selling platforms? Troll and Toad is for you.

Among the more recognizable names in the industry, Troll and Toad allows sellers to build a “Buylist” of all their cards. Troll and Toad will then specify the quantity of a particular card they’re looking for, along with a cash offer price based on the condition.

Once your card list is finalized, you’ll ship your cards to their headquarters where they’ll vet the condition and quantity. If everything checks out, they’ll issue cash payment within 5 business days. Any discrepancy or overstated card conditions will result in a decreased payout. (There is some leeway here as Troll and Toad isn’t out to nickel and dime people on subjective card condition determinations.)

A noted bonus, Troll and Toad offers a 25% payout boost if a seller decides to receive payment in the form of store credit. If you’re looking to add a holy grail to your collection, this is a great way to instantly get a sizeable discount towards your future purchase.

Best Places to Sell Pokemon Cards Near Me

While selling your collection online will likely net you the most money, selling your Pokemon cards in person offers the shortest route between you and a paycheck. There may be bit of face-to-face negotiation involved, so a little bit of homework ahead of time can help you set a walkaway point before talks ever start.

6. Facebook Marketplace

A hybrid online/in-person medium, Facebook Marketplace is the best place to sell Pokemon cards at locations near you.

The biggest perk? There are no listing or selling fees when making an in-person transaction.

Merely create a listing, upload pictures, set a price and all the relevant details, and Facebook’s own Messenger system liaisons between you and interested buyers. Stick firm to your asking price, or shoot a little high knowing buyers are likely to seek out a deal. After a price is agreed upon, set a safe meet location and quickly finish the transaction.

Alternatively, you can set up Facebook Shop, add payment details, and get access to millions of potential buyers across the country. You’ll be charged a 5% transaction fee for each item shipped from your shop, but this vastly undercuts the nearly 15% in fees that eBay, Mercari, and similar digital marketplaces collect.

A small bonus to selling in this way, beyond the low fees, is that your listing is algorithmically pushed to potentially interested parties for free (Facebook is the largest harvester of interest-based information in the world, so this is a pretty big bonus). There’s no need to necessarily “pay to play” as you might have to do on other platforms to gain listing visibility over your competition.

7. Local Card Store

A local card store (LCS) may not necessarily give you the best price on single cards, but there are perks to selling here beyond just the dollar figure acquired. Besides the instant cash payout, building a relationship with your LCS can lead to insider leads on stock dates, a friendly phone call when a card of interest hits the shelves, or even a store credit bonus on sold goods if you think you may make a purchase there in the future.

LCS owners are usually resellers themselves, and will reasonably need to make money off any sort of acquisition they make. Expect offers between 50-70% of the true market value of the item, and don’t be offended when they’re not interested in your bulk cards or the entirety of your collection.

At the end of the day, no one has your best interest in mind other than yourself, so don’t be afraid to come back later in the week once you’ve had a day or two to mull over an offer.

8. Pawn Shop

There’s nothing wrong with needing to make money fast if you’re in a pinch.

If you don’t have a LCS available to you, a local pawn shop offers the next most realistic way to sell Pokemon cards in person quickly.

Again, you can reasonably expect offers here at 30% to 60% of market value, and generally only for higher-end cards. Pawn shops don’t have as targeted a clientele that a LCS would have, so they’ll generally only accept more popular cards so they don’t sit on a shelf forever.

Where to Sell Pokemon Card Bulk

If you’re an enthusiast or collector of any kind, odds are you can spot expensive singles or rare cards amongst a stack of low-value items. And while separating those single cards out and selling them one by one is most often how you’ll make top dollar, getting rid of all your common bulk Pokemon, trainer, and energy cards all at once — for any modest payout — is a win.

Fortunately, there are places that offer fairly generous rates for the low-priced cards you’re no longer interested in. Here are the best places to sell Pokemon card (vintage and modern) bulk.

9. Safari Zone

When I first got back into Pokemon after a nearly 20-year hiatus, I quickly realized that gone were the days of buying a single pack at the store for $3. “Hit” rates — the rate at which a premium card is pulled from a pack — were grossly skewed across a large rarity spectrum, and it takes far more opened packs to nab the rarest cards in modern sets.

This inevitably leads to the acquisition of hundreds, nay thousands, of newly acquired, low-value Pokemon cards sitting on a desk in your house. If you don’t collect master sets, or you find yourself with dozens of duplicate cards, the next thing you’re doing is trying to figure out how to get rid of all of it while getting back a fraction of what you paid for it in return.

That’s where Safari Zone comes in.

They’ll purchase just about any modern card (2003 and onward) from you in exchange for reasonably quick PayPal cash payouts or store credit.

Pay Rates (at time of writing):

The cards do need to be in near-mint condition and correctly sorted via the categories above. After that, you’ll just package them up and mail them to their bulk submission center. I’ve submitted rather large bulk submissions twice now and each time the process was super easy and I received my cash payout in about 5 business days.

Fill out their bulk submission form to get started.

*Prices are subject to change based on market value and demand.

10. Sell2BBNovelties

While Safari Zone offers some of the most competitive prices on modern Pokemon card bulk, Sell2BBNovelties is one of the few places that accepts vintage Wizards of the Coast set bulk (sets from mid-2003 and earlier).

The standards are somewhat high as they’re looking for mint condition cards, but it absolves the seller the hassle of selling small-time cards for $0.50 on eBay and having to pack them up and ship them out one at a time. Better yet, they can handle all the volume you have, and you’ll get a speedy payout once they process the order and vet the card conditions.

Selling Requirements:

• Cards must be in mint condition (“No bends, creases, scratches, marks, white edges, folds, etc”)
• No foreign or fake cards (English only)

Pay Rates (at time of writing):

• Holos: $0.15 each
• Reverse Holos: $0.05 each
• Rares: $0.04 each
• Commons/Uncommons: $0.03 each
• Energy Cards: $0.005 each (2 cards for $0.01)

Head to their shop to sell your collection.

How to Get Started Selling (Beginner Guide) 

If you’ve never sold a Pokemon card in your life and know very little about them, you may have a question or two beyond just where to sell them. Below I’ll share several tips for sorting and pricing your cards, and how to get the absolute most money for them.

Sort Your Cards by Set

If you’re unfamiliar with selling Pokemon cards online for cash, start by sorting your cards by set.

If you don’t know from which set a particular card comes, Google quickly becomes your best friend.

Merely type in the name of the card and append its corresponding # from the set, which is most often found somewhere near the border on the bottom left or bottom right.

The search results will quickly illuminate the set from which the card originates.

For example, a search for “Bulbasaur 44/102” reveals that the card was released as a part of the original 1999 Pokemon Base Set print run. It is the 44th card in a set of 102 cards.

Sort Your Cards by Rarity

Once you have your cards sorted by set, it’s time to sort them by their printed rarity symbols. The symbols are found in close proximity to the card and set number.

Both vintage and modern Pokemon cards follow this system, so the age of your cards won’t play a role here.

Unfortunately, the symbols can be quite small and are often hard to see, so it may be easier to reference the chart below.

Pokemon Card Rarity Guide

Symbol	Description	Rarity
	Star	Rare
	Square	Uncommon
	Circle	Common

Now that you’ve got your cards sorted by set and rarity, it becomes a whole lot easier to use one of several available digital price guides.

How to Determine What Your Pokemon Cards Are Worth

While everyone would love to offload their collection for thousands of dollars, sellers need to be realistic about what they’re sitting on and the condition that it’s in. Learning how to assess card condition and pairing that with readily available price data is a prerequisite to getting the most money for your beloved cards.

Assessing Card Condition

Subjective in nature, accurately determining card condition is an essential skill that one need become proficient at.

A mismatch between the seller-stated condition and buyer assessment can lead to deep dissatisfaction, refund requests, and nasty feedback on public-facing profiles.

Christian at TheGamer does a good job of highlighting the types of damage one should look for when looking at card condition.

Once you have a pretty good idea of how to spot objective types of damage, it makes it easier to make a somewhat accurate determination of the overall condition.

Card Condition Guide

• Near Mint to Mint (NM-Mint) = Few to zero easily detectible imperfections such as nicks on edges, corner whitening, or light surface scratching. For holographic cards, it is generally acceptable to have minor imperfections such as superficial scratching, print lines, or clouding.
• Light Play (LP) = A card in this condition will have several minor imperfections such as nicks, minor scuffing, edge wear, clouding, and/or light scratches.
• Moderate Play (MP) = A card in this condition has significant wear including diffuse edge wear, nicks, scratches, clouding, or scuffs.
• Heavy Play (HP) = A card in this condition is defaced in a way that could make it unplayable in tournaments, even in a sleeve. This damage will include heavy wear such as creases, dents, scratches, bends, scuffs, ink, water damage, clouding, and/or other types of damage.
• Damaged (DMG) = A damaged card is altered in a way that it is most likely unplayable in tournaments, even in a sleeve. This damage may include heavy wear, creases, dents, scratches, bends, scuffs, tears, inking, water stains, and/or other types of damage.

Use Third-Party Websites to Determine Market Value

Once you’ve determined the condition of single cards — or the general condition of an entire set — it becomes much easier to forecast an accurate market value for what it is you’re trying to sell.

TCGplayer has a great set-by-set price guide where you can get a rough idea of the current market value of the card. (Use the drop-down box to change sets). The price information is based on their own marketplace sales history, so there may be little to no data for exceedingly rare cards.

If you believe you have a card that falls into that category, check eBay comps to see if a similar card has sold in the past 3 months. If more than one has sold, take an average of the recently sold listings and try to factor in which direction the market is moving.

If prices have trended upwards recently, it may be wise to add a 5 to 10% market adjustment in response to scarcity or demand. If prices are trending down and you’re motivated to sell, you may need to choose the lower side of the current market value during sale price determination.

Sellers often tend to optimistically overestimate the condition of their cards in hopes of fetching higher sales values. It may be prudent to use a condition “range” like the Sold Venusaur listing shown above. In the listing title, the seller states the card is in LP-NM condition (light play to near mint), with a conservative estimate at one end and an optimistic estimate at the other, helping alleviate perceived condition mismatch between buyer and seller.

Getting Your Pokemon Cards Graded

In the course of researching the market value of your card, you may have come across “graded” cards that seem to be fetching large premiums over cards in seemingly mint condition. This is no fluke.

Over the past 30 years, a number of third-party grading services have popped up to authenticate and grade trading and sports cards. Pokemon cards are certainly no exception. In fact, the multi-six and seven-figure cited examples in the opening paragraph of this article were PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) graded cards that scored GEM MINT 10 on a condition scale of 1 to 10.

Popular Pokemon Card Grading Services Include:

• PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator)
• BGS (Beckett Grading Services)
• CGC (Certified Guaranty Company)
• SGC (Sportscard Guaranty Corporation)

The paid professional grading insight and card authentication service can cost anywhere from $15 to $500 or more for a single card, but the added value can be well worth it when it comes to sale time.

For example, the 1st Edition Base Set Charizard in mint but ungraded condition would likely have fetched somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000 to $40,000 on eBay, assuming HD photos highlighted every nook and cranny of the card. The verified authenticity and gem mint status sent the sales price soaring past $400,000, making it only 1 of 121 known cards in existence to have achieved that grade.

That said, card grading requires a small to moderate learning curve, and it may be wise to consult an experienced submitter, check out a YouTube tutorial, or even ask questions in a Pokemon Facebook group before submitting a card(s) to a service.

Best Practice for Sales Listings

As an experienced seller, there are certain tactics I use to almost always get at or even above market value at any of the places to sell Pokemon cards online. A little prep work and attention to detail can help you consistently beat out other sellers for access to buyers and make the most money on your cards, collections, sealed packs, or other memorabilia.

Clean Your Cards

It sounds silly, but it absolutely matters, especially when selling old vintage Wizards of the Coast singles that may have accumulated dirt, dust, and grime. Pokemon cards are famous for accumulating little dark dirt circles that adhere to the back over time.

Simply grab a *very* lightly damp cloth — preferably microfiber — and gently wipe away dirt or deposits in a circular motion. Try to distinguish between dirt and damage before wiping as you can further exacerbate damage if it is already present. Immediately dry the card as moisture will eventually warp its surface.

Take Excellent Photos

Perhaps the most commonly made error in the entire seller universe is uploading absolutely garbage images. Take the time to ensure you have sufficient lighting and a quality camera available to snap decent photos. Almost every modern smartphone has a camera of good enough quality to take excellent photos. Sufficient natural or even added artificial light/flash is encouraged so long as it does not intentionally or unintentionally obscure or hide damage on a card.

You don’t need to overdraw attention to every single flaw, but crisp, sharp images from several different angles that fairly represent the card condition are essential for a successful buy-sell arrangement.

Learn SEO

Each selling platform is a search engine of sorts. Search engine optimization (SEO) helps you design your listing in a way that optimizes how many users end up finding your card or product. Keyword-rich titles and descriptions that maintain relevancy to the potential buyer will help your listing surface in search more frequently on nearly every platform. Here’s a simple eBay SEO guide, the advice from which will translate nicely to just about every other platform.

Pay Attention to Fees

Nothing crushes your potential selling profits faster than fees. It’s why a number of experienced sellers avoid some of the bigger platforms in favor of niche selling on Facebook once they’ve learned the ropes and built a database of fellow collectors over the years. As a beginner seller, or someone who just wants to quickly offload a collection, eBay or Mercari may be your best bet, but it still doesn’t hurt to be cautionary about listing upsells.

Bold font. Second category listing. Subtitles. Disproportional promotion campaigns (when compared to final sale price). They’re all upsells some of the larger companies will offer to pad their bottom line. In some select circumstances, it may be beneficial to use them, but by and large, you’re better off passing on all of it and focusing on a great listing with superb photos and a clean, keyword-rich card description.

(I share several other helpful selling tips here.)

Tips to Avoid Getting Scammed

Like in any selling industry, there are several ways in which, as a seller, you may find yourself SOL. Here’s how to make sure it doesn’t happen to you.

• Only accept official payment methods. Every single one of the best places to sell Pokemon cards for money has rules/accepted ways in which a seller can receive payment. If you frequently flout those rules, it will come back to bite you. More often than not this happens on the buyer side, but sellers aren’t immune either. Chargebacks, fake checks, and gift cards schemes are but a few of the many ways rogue buyers will try and con you out of your cards.
• Meet in a safe space. Police station parking lots or bank lobbies work great, especially for high-dollar transactions (whatever that means to you).
• Cash is king. If meeting for an in-person transaction, cold hard cash is second to none. No fake checks, no chargebacks, no falsified returns, no swapped cards.
• Document everything. If it’s not in writing (or photographed), it never happened. Document everything and take great pictures of anything you sell (including the packaging/shipping process). I’ve had buyers submit bogus returns with fake/replaced cards where I ultimately kept the final sale price/no refund was forced by eBay or any other platform…all because I took comprehensive photos of my pre-shipment process. It only takes getting burned one time for hundreds of dollars to never make this mistake again.
• Be the consummate professional. While nearly every selling platform is “pro-buyer” when it comes to disputes, appeals and/or case reviews are often done by a subject expert that has varying levels of discretion when it comes to rendering a judgement. If your online chat history shows abusive or accusatory behavior, I’d like to think your odds of winning a closely-contested case are not as high as they once were. On several occasions, eBay/Mercari representatives have scrutinized chat history when making a ruling, and anything you can do to tip the scales in your favor is a no-brainer.

At the end of the day, common sense really does go a long way. If something seems off, or there are more red flags than you could possibly shake a stick at, move on. It’s not worth getting burned just to chase a few more dollars.

The post 10 Best Places to Sell Pokemon Cards for Cash appeared first on DollarSprout.

This year is setting up to be no different. In fact, it’s likely to be one of the best years — for workers — on record. 

“They’re pulling out every stop they can think of. They’re raising wages. They’re offering an increased number of jobs with benefits. They’re offering flexible schedules. They’re literally offering entry-level job seekers the opportunity to go to college and have it paid for,” says Ian Siegal, CEO of ZipRecruiter, in regards to employers chasing after workers in the already competitive, pandemic-riddled job market._[1]

Macy’s and Amazon have gone as far as to offer sign-on bonuses as high as $3,000 just to log hours over the next few months._[2] 

If you’re out of a job, looking for more hours, or simply searching for new opportunities, you’ll be happy to know that the holiday season – coined the “hiring season” – is just around the corner.

From traditional seasonal jobs at retailers like Kohl’s and Macy’s, to packing and delivery oriented jobs with shipping companies like FedEx and UPS, all the way to online jobs with tech giants like Amazon and Radial (eBay’s parent organization) – large companies are offering perks beyond just a high base salary to lure in potential workers.

12 Companies Hiring Seasonal Workers at $15 Per Hour (or More)

1. Target

Target announced it is hiring an additional 100,000 new team members for its over 1,700 stores, distribution centers, and fulfillment centers across the world.

There are job openings in logistics, sales, cashiering, inventory management, and food services (some locations have cafe’s on-site).

Employees receive a 10% discount on Target merchandise and get 20% off wellness (grocery-oriented) purchases. Target’s On Demand initiative also aims to allow workers with inconsistent schedules to pick up hours more flexibly._[3]

Seasonal workers also get access to free mental health and virtual doctor visits during their employment period. 

Current Openings:  100,000
Pay:  $15.00 per hour (higher in select areas)
Apply:  Search Target Job Openings

2. Walmart

Like their giant commerce competitors, Walmart has upped the pay ante by offering a needed 150,000 seasonal workers an average wage of nearly $17 per hour (up to $34 per hour) to help with their retail, curbside and online positions. With nearly 5,000 locations, 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a store — meaning your daily commute doesn’t have to present as a lump of coal this holiday season. 

Associates have realistic pathways towards career advancement — 75% of salaried store management began their careers as hourly employees — and Walmart currently offers 100% tuition and book reimbursement through their Live Better U program.

If you transition to a full-time role, additional perks include:

• Paid time off
• No-cost counseling
• 401(k) with a 15% match up to $1,800 yearly
• Parental leave and more

Current Openings: 150,000
Pay:  $15 per hour and up
Apply:  Search Walmart Job Openings

3. UPS

UPS hires package handlers, drivers, and  “driver helpers” to help with the holiday rush. That rush applies to hiring too, as UPS says they’re looking to go from application to “hired” in 30 minutes or less for the 2021-2022 holiday season._[4]

According to a company spokesman, “over 74% of seasonal workers wanted their temporary position to turn into a long-term job” — a huge positive for someone looking for lengthier opportunities. 

With pay starting between $15 and $22 per hour, temp employees can further boost their earnings by electing to participate in the company’s Earn and Learn program, which pays up to $1300 every 3 months towards an employee’s higher education expenses._[5]

Current Openings:  100,000
Pay:  $15 to $22 per hour (certain locations offer weekly bonuses of $100 to $200)
Apply:  Search UPS Job Openings

4. Teletech

Teletech helps larger retailers by providing tech support throughout the holidays with a network of work-from-home assistants.

They’re currently looking for about 450 work-from-home customer service representatives to help large e-commerce retailers track, fulfill, and troubleshoot orders.

Current Openings:  about 450
Pay:  $18.00 per hour and up ($19 per hour once licensed)
Apply:  Search Teletech Job Openings

5. JCPenny

J.C. Penney’s is looking to add around 25,000 new cashiers and sales associates to their 875 retail stores in the United States. They’re also hiring operations associates to help with backroom inventory and merchandise replenishment._[6]

Perks are location-dependent but include up to a $3 per hour “Premium Hour” boost for high-demand periods, 25% employee discounts on merchandise, and unlimited $300 bonuses for referred employees._[7]

Current Openings:  25,000
Pay:  Up to $17.00 per hour (with Premium Hour incentives) 
Apply:  Search JCPenney’s Job Openings

6. Kohl’s

Kohl’s is getting in on the seasonal action and opening its doors to about 90,000 new sales, freight and distribution associates. Kohl’s sales associates typically help stock merchandise, provide customer service, fill online orders, and assist with credit operations.

Their freight and distribution associates typically help with order packaging and delivery.

Kohl’s also announced a new bonus program this season for associates who work with Kohl’s through the holidays. Employees will be eligible for bonus payments from $100 to $400. Associates also receive a 15% store discount and get paid weekly — a convenient perk for those needing near-immediate cash flow. 

Current Openings:  90,000
Pay:  Up to $15.00 per hour (with all bonus incentives included)_[8]
Apply:  Search Kohl’s Job Openings

7. Radial

Radial is looking to fill over 27,000 open positions in its fulfillment and customer service centers. Workers help source and send the surge of orders the company is expecting over the holidays.

Wages for Radial’s seasonal workers are location-dependent but start at $15 per hour and go higher from there, according to a company spokesman. They provide some of the highest-paying seasonal jobs available. Employees will also have the opportunity to be brought on as permanent team members.

Current Openings:  27,000
Pay:  $15 per hour and up
Apply:  Search Radial Job Openings

8. Williams Sonoma

Looking to trade your time for a little bit of money and a hefty discount on products you love? Williams Sonoma has a deal that will be pretty hard for some kitchenware lovers to pass up. Williams Sonoma Inc, the parent company for popular brands such as the Pottery Barn and West Elm, is hiring up to 7,000 for its seasonal work-from-home positions.

According to the company website, perks include: 

• 40% Discount on most merchandise
• Monthly performance bonuses up to $500
• $250 bonuses for referring friends and family
• $300 bonus for perfect attendance during the holidays
• Fun contests/rewards and recognition programs
• Paid Training from the comfort of your home
• Overtime, overtime, overtime
• Opportunity to convert to benefited status within 90 days!
• Pay = $15.00/hr

Expect these jobs to go fast.

Current Openings:  7,000
Pay:  $15 per hour + several bonus opportunities 
Apply:  Search Williams Sonoma Job Openings

9. FedEx

FedEx is looking for 90,000 new packagers and drivers this holiday season. They’re additionally looking for 500 roles in data science and IT. If you think you can handle a warehouse or brave the elements, or have computer smarts, FedEx is positing jobs with wages up to $19.50 per hour for all shifts (morning, day, evening, and overnight, with premium pay for full-time workers). 

Select customer service and courier gigs also offer sign-on bonuses between $1000 and $2000._[9] 

Current Openings:  90,000
Pay:  Up to $19.50 per hour + incentives 
Apply:  Search FedEx Job Openings

10. Macy’s

Mac’s is looking to fill nearly 100,000 seasonal jobs between their retail storefronts, fulfillment facilities, online chat jobs and over-the-phone customer service roles, and nearly 1,000 support staff for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and other holiday events.

Notable perks include: 

• Up to 20% merchandise discount
• Flexible scheduling
• Regular, optional overtime shifts
• $500 employee referral bonus
• Additional $2 per hour weekend bonus program
• Path to Growth Incentive
• Quarterly bonus offered to qualifying colleagues

Current Openings:  97,000
Pay:  Up to $15 per hour (with incentives)
Apply:  Search Macy’s Job Openings

11. Amazon

It’s no surprise that one of the world’s largest companies is looking for some serious manpower this time of year. Specifically, they’re looking for help filling 40,000 new corporate and tech jobs and 125,000 full and part-time fulfillment and transportation jobs. 

“Seasonal roles offer an average starting pay of $18 per hour, sign-on bonuses up to $3,000 and an additional $3 per hour depending on shifts in many locations, plus the opportunity to transition to long-term careers,” according to the hiring announcement._[10]

While Amazon has caught flak in the past for their hiring and pay practices, the new wage and bonus offerings are amongst the highest we’ve seen for seasonal workers, especially those interested in continuing work after the holidays. 

Current Openings:  165,000
Pay:  $18 per hour and up
Apply:  Search Amazon Job Openings

12. 1-800-Flowers

1-800-Flowers, alongside companies like FTD, are looking for customer service associates to help with the surge in holiday flower requests. Employees would be helping fulfill, track and troubleshoot the large volume of orders coming through during the Christmas, New Years, and Valentine’s Day season (no need to worry about a crash course on becoming a florist although those positions are open too).

Temporary employees with good track records and great attendance are often invited to stay on as permanent team members.

Current Openings:  10,000
Pay:  $15 to $17 per hour depending on the position 
Apply:  Search 1-800-Flowers Job Openings

“Temp” Jobs Can Lead to Full-Time Opportunities

Many of the seasonal jobs posted are temporary (to help with the holiday rush) while others help fill vacant full-time positions; many have great benefits.

Having your foot halfway in the door, even in a temporary role, is a great way to secure a more permanent position and advance your career.

Related: 5 Financial Mistakes to Avoid This Holiday Season 

The post 12 Seasonal Jobs Hiring at $15 per Hour or More appeared first on DollarSprout.

My anecdotal shopper opinion confirms it’s true. Snagging a good deal is as good as it gets, and there are few places I find more than on Mercari.

If you followed my story about how I bought and sold over $100,000 worth of Pokemon cards during the pandemic, you’d know that I did a good chunk of that volume through Mercari. Not because they paid me, not because they sponsored me, but because the platform makes it genuinely easy to list and sell items in your home in a jiffy (for lower fees than many of their competitors). 

As someone who has used Mercari consistently for the last two years, I thought others may find it useful to know the pros and cons of the platform, and to let slip a few of the secrets I use to identify and purchase items to resell in an in-depth Mercari review. 

What Is Mercari?

Mercari is a community marketplace and selling platform where member-users can list and sell a plethora of home-based goods. Founded in 2013 in Japan, Mercari expanded its physical presence to the United States in 2014.

Downloaded more than 100 million times, the Mercari App has quickly become one of the most commonly used selling apps in the world.

Over $100,000,000 in transactions take place on the platform each month.

Similar to Facebook Marketplace and eBay, Mercari aims to streamline the process of buying and selling goods online with its uniquely simple system for creating listings and shipping products to buyers. 

Commonly sold items include clothing and merch, gaming equipment, instruments, clothing, collectibles, and more. 

Sell Your Items

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DollarSprout Rating 4.5 of 5.0 stars

Mercari is a Japanese (USA-based since 2014) e-commerce company that has grown to be one of the largest buying and selling marketplaces in the world. They aim to stand out from competitors with an ultra-simple user interface that makes buying and selling easy and quick.

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Pros

• Legitimate and safe to use.
• Buyer and seller protection.
• Low selling fees.
• Quick and easy to use.
• Local pick-up and shipping options.
• Automated systems helpful (when working correctly).
• Responsive and helpful customer service.

Cons

• Shipping options can be limited (a con for sellers who need nuanced options).
• The app can be glitchy at times.
• Can be difficult to navigate the app/website to report problems.
• Automated systems can occasionally fail.
• Not meant for high volume sellers.

Is Mercari Legitimate? 

Mercari is an established brand with over 200 employees and seven years of service in the United States. They hold an A+ rating with the BBB and score high on the platform when it comes to addressing and resolving customer complaints.

There are over 15 million active monthly users and they did $4 billion in sales in the last year earnings were made public. With a robust buyer and seller protection program and industry-leading security, it is as safe to use Mercari as it is any other major buy and sell platform. 

Reviewer’s take:

I have personally sold over 90 items worth a cumulative $28,000 and have had 0 issues to date (I did have 1 buyer try to create a fraudulent return, more on that below); I was able to quickly withdraw my earnings each time via direct deposit.

Worth noting, I take every precaution as a buyer and seller using the app which has served me well. Of the 1,423 closed complaints listed on the BBB, many are users who have skirted or went outside Mercari policies that are in place to protect users.

Getting Started (How Mercari Works)

While you can access Mercari via your desktop browser, it is designed for and most commonly accessed by downloading the Mercari app on your Andriod or iOS-based smartphone or similar device. 

Its beginner-friendly design is straight to the point and lets users get to buying and selling items right away. 

How to buy items on Mercari

My favorite part about Mercari is how simple it is to use the platform. Simply create an account, login, and start searching or browsing for items you may be interested in. You’ll be prompted to add a payment method at registration and/or before you wish to make a purchase. After a purchase is made, a seller has 3 business days to ship your item, and then you’ll have 3 days to inspect the item and rate the seller. If the item checks out, give the seller an appropriate review. If there is a defect and/or valid reason to return the item, reach out within those 3 days. 

This is critically important. Mercari will automatically complete a transaction 72 hours after an item is shown as delivered.

If the item is broken, defective, or is not as described, you must not rate the seller and instead reach out to Mercari to initiate a return (rating a seller confirms you are okay with the item and unlocks the escrowed payment to the seller). 

Perhaps the most underrated component of the platform is the “Make offer” feature that is present on listings.

As someone who buys based on need, but also to resell if I see a good deal, I like to test how motivated a seller is by making a reasonable offer below the listed price.

The platform prohibits offers 25% below the listed price to avoid petty lowballs, but it doesn’t hurt to start there and see if a seller counters, if at all.

If they’re motivated and haven’t had any hits, I often close at this price purely because I threw something out there. 

Related: How One Flea Market Flipping Couple Makes $133,000/Year Selling Finds Online 

Reviewer’s take:

In essence, you have the ultimate buyer protection when using Mercari. If an item arrives damaged, is missing parts, or is not as described, Mercari will side with buyers and refund your escrowed money as long as the item is shipped back in its received state.

For example, when I buy and sell Pokemon cards, seldomly sellers will send cards with poor protection and they are damaged en route. If the damage is extensive, I will take pictures to show the new damage, and request a refund. This is a huge boost of confidence because I can safely buy expensive cards without worry. Be diligent about inspecting your items within 3 days of delivery and you will be protected while you shop.

Tips for Buying on Mercari

Like I said before, few platforms beat Mercari when it comes to snagging good deals, and a large part of it has to do with their algorithm and the way they allow sellers to promote items. 

• If you’re a flipper or reseller, allow “Price Drop” notifications. I strategically “Like” a numer of items I am interested in, especially if the price drops below a certain point. Where Mercari allows sellers to automatically price drop items by 5% each day until it sells, I get notifications when items I am watching keep dropping. If it falls below a certain pre-determined threshold, I’ll snag it. 
• Read listings closely and look at pictures carefully. If a seller deceitfully tries to hide something, you’re protected by Mercari’s generous buyer protections, but if you misunderstand and/or don’t look closely enough at an item, your return may not be approved. Do your due diligence. 
• Be active. Listings are sorted algorithmically, but a large part of that algorithm is undoubtedly chronological freshness (hence why they allow sellers 10 boosted items every 24 hours). If you’re looking to snag good deals, you’ll best find them under the “Newest” filter in the top right portion of the app. 
• Save searches. As a reseller, I like to set up “Saved Searches” for items that I may be interested in; I’ll get a notification when something matches my predetermined criteria and I can decide quickly whether or not to pull the trigger. 
• Be a courteous buyer. A seller has to wait to receive their funds until an item has undergone its post-delivery inspection and they are rated. Quickly review your purchases and review sellers accordingly. Again, do not rate a buyer if you have an issue with a purchase. Contact Mercari with any concerns or to initiate a return if something is wrong with an item before rating the buyer. 

Mercari Coupon Codes

Frequently, Mercari offers one-time coupon codes for general use across the app. Most often I see $5 off coupons hit my account several times a month. Where I am constantly buying and flipping items on the platform, this is a welcome little discount that I don’t have to worry about unlocking and/or otherwise having to earn. It’s literally just a free $5 credit to use towards your purchase. There is no code entry necessary. 

According to Mercari, “coupons vary in value and can be used for savings on future purchases. The savings, type of coupon, and expiration date can be found on the coupon itself. You can easily check to see if you have any coupons and when they expire by going to your profile > Settings > Coupons.”

There are no current coupon codes available at the time of writing. (I’ll update this section if/when they become available). 

How to sell items on Mercari 

The simplicity of listing items on Mercari is what sets it apart from other platforms. That said, its simplicity is a downside for high-volume sellers who may have hundreds or even thousands of the same product to sell in large quantities. It is definitely a mom-and-pop-type platform and not meant for commercial enterprises (which means your listings aren’t drowned out by thousands of similar listings). 

How to Make a Listing 

Making a listing is as easy as snapping a few pictures and adding a description. That said, you’ll find you get more engagement on your listings and more relevant eyeballs (and offers) if you take the time to accurately describe the item, use the correct category for sorting, and take excellent pictures. 

I like to use as many photos as Mercari allows, which is 12 at the moment. Pictures are a seller’s best friend. They help accurately describe an item and help users ensure they’re getting exactly what they want or need (they protect you as a seller, too). 

Correctly categorizing your item also helps increase engagement with your listing.

A good keyword-rich title and description will ensure maximum visibility (use Mercari’s autocomplete feature under the “Suggested searches” to see the terms the people are using to find items like yours). Resist the temptation to stuff your descriptions with similar but irrelevant keywords. Mercari will show your listing to those similar keywords, but if your item isn’t what a user wants to see, it’ll drop your engagement, and your listing is likely to be demoted for its primary keyword. More isn’t necessarily better. 

Tips for Selling

• Pay attention to shipping weights. There’s nothing more annoying than getting to the post office and not having enough postage and having to cancel the label.  
• Be honest. I have a 5-star review for all 102 transactions. As a result, my conversion rates and final sales amounts are higher as a result of providing a great customer experience. You will make more money as a seller being courteous, and working with buyers when there are issues with your order. Sometimes you’ll lose small battles to win the longer, more profitable, war. 
• Be accurate. Great titles, descriptions, and a useful category choice will increase engagement with your listing. Mercari wants to show engaging listings so it’s likely you’ll get an algorithmic boost over similar listings (assuming timing isn’t a variable) if yours is as accurate as possible. 
• Use their “Promote” features. Their daily 5% allows for an algorithmic boost and more eyeballs on your listing. Best of all, it’s free. If a user “Likes” your item, you can then offer a custom discount to those users. Both are extremely powerful selling techniques that aren’t available on many apps. 
• Use their “Smart Pricing” feature. Another killer, seller-friendly weapon. I tend to price my items on the high side of what the market seems to be paying for similar items. I’ll then use the price drop feature to move down towards the average/slightly above average market price. This helps prevent demonstrably low offers and ensures I get maximum dollar on all my sales. 
• Take pictures as you package the item. As previously mentioned, great pictures help protect you as a seller. Of 102 transactions, one of my buyers tried to create a fraudulent return by stating the item I sent him was not the item that arrived. I had taken pictures of my items as I package them and append the label and presented those to Mercari when the buyer tried to send switched-out trading cards in a return. Mercari sided with me as a seller, granted me the escrowed money from the sale, and banned the buyer from the platform.

Reviewer’s take:

Mercari gives sellers unprecedented access to potential buyers. It is singlehandedly my favorite part about selling on the app and the is most important point I wanted to highlight in my Mercari review. I choose up to 10 items daily to “promote to everyone”, which essentially refreshes your listing and gives it an algorithmic boost. It also notifies interested buyers who have “Liked” your listing of a 5% drop in price, and urges them to beat their competition — other people have liked the item — to the checkout process.

This psychological tool is crazy effective at boosting sales.

Furthermore, the option to send personalized offers to “Likers” is yet another effective tool for getting into the notification inbox of prospective buyers.

Shipping Your Item

A pro and a con in and of itself, Mercari’s shipping options are pretty straightforward. Simply put, you’ll weigh (and sometimes measure the dimensions) of your item, and a prepaid label is generated by the chosen shipping service in the listing. 

Mercari offers the following shipping carriers:

• USPS
• FedEx
• UPS

They even have a “do it all” option where you can drop your item off at a Mercari Pack and Ship location (The UPS Store) and they’ll take care of packing and shipping the item (this comes at a hefty premium than your economy services so I’d only do this if you’re in a hurry/don’t mind the substantially increased shipping fee). 

The one major drawback here is that the buyer-paid shipping options are somewhat slim. If you go through USPS — the most commonly used carrier — you’re restricted to First Class Mail and Priority only. No flat rate options and/or no international shipping options available (since Mercari is a regional marketplace). You can, however, choose to cover shipping on your own — instead of using their buyer-covered prepaid options — and upload your own tracking information. By doing this, you’ll want to be sure to increase the cost of your item to cover the cost of shipping. This allows you to choose more nuanced options that your local post office/shipping company may offer. 

Mercari Fees

Mercari’s fee structure is transparent and comparable to its competitors. 

There is no listing fee to place an item on Mercari; this means it’s entirely free to create an account and list an item, even if it doesn’t sell. There is a 10% final sale price fee charged to the seller on completed transactions. Lastly, there is a 2.9% + $0.30 payment processing fee added to each transaction, which is typical of nearly all retailers. 

Mercari Fee Summary: 

• 0 listing fee for items. 
• 10% final sale value fee.
• 2.9% + $0.30 payment processing fee. 

Reviewer’s take:

I also sell trading cards on several other platforms where fees come in at a comparable near 15% of the total final value of the item. Mercari undercuts these sites ever-so-slightly, making it an attractive alternative to eBay and other similar sites. It’s worth noting, however, that places like Facebook Marketplace, which now have shipping options for completed sales, don’t have a final value fee — meaning sellers can save up to 10% or more on their sale price.

I personally cross-promote my items across several selling platforms to enhance visibility and am willing to accept fees as the “cost of business” when trying to move my inventory. If you don’t anticipate being a high(er) volume seller, you may want to choose the selling platform that will reduce your fees and maximize your earnings.

Withdrawing Money

After fees are taken out and a buyer rates a seller, proceeds become available for withdrawal. Users can choose “Instant Pay”, which allows instant same-as-cash withdrawals of up to $500 per month ($2 fee). 

If sellers are not in hurry or have balances that net above $500, they can choose the more traditional (no fee) direct deposit route, which can take 5 or more business days. 

“Invite a Friend” Promotion

Mercari is currently offering a promotion called “Get $30.” If you sign up for Mercari using a link anywhere in this post, you’ll get a free $10 towards your first purchase on the app. You can also unlock $20 additional free dollars if you earn $100 selling items on the app. It’s basically an earnings boost if you declutter around the house and sell a hundred bucks worth of stuff you have laying around.

Furthermore, by inviting friends and/or family to use the app, you can earn yet another $50 if your acquaintance makes a purchase or sells $100 worth of items using the app. 

Reviewer’s take:

I haven’t personally used this feature to date. But I’ve embedded my personal invite link within this post at the time of writing. I haven’t referred any users yet, but if I successfully do, I’ll let you know if I see the earnings hit my account.

Contacting Mercari

Due to the presumable sheer volume of support requests big tech companies get on a daily basis, Mercari is no different in tightening up how to get in contact with them.

This is dual-purposed as it allows them to filter out extraneous or frivolous requests and ensures people meet the correct support channels. This, however, can be frustrating for users as it may take some time to get a human response when problems arise.

As it stands, you can contact support: 

1. Through the website: Click through the prompts on their Help Center until it takes you to a contact form.
2. Through the app: Click “Help Center” in the app, go through prompts until it directs you to a contact form.
3. Via telephone: 888-325-2168
4. Through email: contact@mercari.com
5. On Twitter: @mercari_app
6. Live chat: Mercari does not offer live chat support at this time.

Reviewer’s take:

Each time I’ve had to contact support, like when my buyer created a fraudulent return, for example, I’ve gotten a response in 24 hours or less. Often I’ll hear back within the hour. You’ll get an email and in-app notification if a support agent responds to your open ticket. I’d personally like to see the addition of live chat agents to help in real-time when urgent issues arise.

Mercari Review: My Final Thoughts 

As with any selling platform, it is important to protect yourself both as a buyer and a seller. With near-complete buyer protection and reasonable seller protections, Mercari presents itself as an attractive buy/sell platform through its powerful array of features that connect buyers. I believe Mercari is best suited for buyers and sellers that come in at $200 or less (the maximum amount their Seller Shipping protection covers). 

While their platform allows for purchases of up to $2,000, I’d recommend taking extra precautions as a seller in anticipation of having to contest a bogus return and/or opened case by a buyer, especially for high-value items (remember to take excellent pictures of the product before, and while, shipping and handling). 

Lastly, make sure to track your expenses and document your earnings. You’ll need to report profits to the IRS as earned income and Mercari will automatically issue a 1099-MISC after $600 in sales. Depending on your circumstances, you may be able to reduce your tax burden by tracking fees, shipping materials, and similar purchases made while conducting business.

Related: 41 Easy Ways to Make Money Fast 

The post Mercari Review: What I’ve Learned After $28,000 in Sales appeared first on DollarSprout.