by Natalia Jones

Created on: April 17, 2009   Last Updated: April 24, 2009

Many of us would like to make a few extra dollars each month. Especially with the state of the economy, personal finances have become foremost on everyone's mind. There are countless ways to make extra income, all it takes in most cases is a little imagination. The following ideas will point you in the right direction and soon you will see opportunity in every interaction.

1) Make money online. If you spend a lot of time online, consider ways to convert your time spent into cash. There are several sites that offer to pay for filling out surveys for instance, but beware of sites that ask you to pay anything upfront. Legitimate job sites should never ask you to pay for membership. The aim should be for them to pay for the service you offer not the other way around. There are also sites that pay you either through small upfront payments or via a revenue sharing program for submitting articles to their database, these include Helium, Associated Content, Ehow.com and About.com

2) Sell your stuff. Several websites cater to the needs of those who have items for sale and they make it easy to market your items for sale to a wide audience. The most popular are www.ebay.com and www.craigslist.com A traditional garage sale serves the same purpose but targets your home area instead.

3) Consult. Maybe you have specialist skills or knowledge. You can teach a language, share sales techniques, or teach others how to green their homes and offices. There is a market for every conceivable skill. Your task is to figure out where that market is and how you can reach them to deliver your service.

4) Offer a service. One way of boosting your income is to offer a service that you can deliver while holding on to your day job. Maybe you can babysit on the weekends for some added cash, or offer a house cleaning or ironing service.

5) Use you car as an advertisement. Companies pay for ad space all the time, but now you can benefit from their marketing budgets by making your car available to them as a driving advertisement. You can earn anywhere from $100 to $500 a month for wrapping you car and driving where you would normally go anyway.

6)Rent a spare room. If you have an extra bedroom or a basement that can accommodate a renter you are sitting on a few hundred dollars extra a month depending on your area and the size of the space available and amenities included (if you are close to public transport for instance) maybe even more.

There are many ways to make some extra money, but like everything else there is a tradeoff involved. It could be your free time or maybe your privacy (in the case of renting an extra room). You must weigh the benefit of the added income stream against any costs involved, including lifestyle changes to determine if the method you are exploring will work for you.

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