by Kenneth Andrews

Created on: December 16, 2009   Last Updated: August 03, 2011

So, you need to make some extra money fast, and with ease. Why? Well, perhaps you've just lost your job, or perhaps something in your home has broken down resulting in an expensive repair bill. Or perhaps you just need some extra cash for Christmas or birthday gifts. Let's take a look at a few ideas for generating some easy cash.

There are three basic ways to make money. Selling things, providing services, and investing money. It's reasonable to assume that you need to make some extra money because you don't have enough right now, so let's discount investment for the moment - it's also not a great way of making money fast unless you go for really high-risk ventures.

Selling

If you decide to make some easy extra money by selling products, you have two choices. You can sell your own products, or other people's. You can get a job selling other people's products any time you want - companies are always looking for salespeople, even on a casual or part-time basis, but you may have to work on a commission-only basis. Which means you have to believe in the product and be very sure that you're going to sell enough to make it worth your while.

The problem with selling other people's products is that you're going to end up with a smaller portion of the profits from each sale, whether it's a novelty tie or a conservatory that you're selling.

So many people in pursuit of an additional income stream will attempt to sell their own products. Whether that's the stuff they've found in their attic, or products they've created (often involving greetings cards and craft products. Beads feature heavily). The advantages are clear. You get to trouser all the cash from each sale, you'll care about the products you're selling because you've invested your own time in producing them, which will hopefully lead to you selling more.

Not only this, but sites such as eBay have made it so easy to promote your products to a huge target market that there really is no need for anyone even slightly creative to ever do door to door sales again. Which is a good thing, because no one likes being summoned from their bath to hear about double glazing.

The drawback is that you will of course need to invest in the materials to make your products, which in the case of handmade jewellery (a perennial favourite sideline for the crafty), could be considerable and could take a little while to recoup. So while it's a fairly easy way to make extra money, it's not necessarily particularly quick.

Services

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