Last week Shona challenged us to make £100 before Xmas using money-making apps. This week Jon from MoneyShed expands on Shona’s good work and explains how he’ll aim to earn £1000 before Xmas this year.

Well its official, Christmas is nearly here and by now most people will have started their Christmas shopping; some even have finished it. For many people the cost of Christmas will have entered their minds at least once over the last couple of months, and more as we edge slowly closer to the festive period. Credit cards, loans, overtime, putting money away weekly will all be considered as families are expected to spend £796 on average this year to celebrate Christmas.

There are ways to help ensure everyone gets what they want this year without the need to get into debt, work long hours or having to stretch the budget; here you will see how you can easily make £1000 from home just in time for Christmas. When I say earning from home I don’t mean mindless surveys or paid to click sites, I’m talking about earning real money in the quickest time possible using companies tried and tested by the members of The Money Shed – the UK’s largest community site for earning money from home. Each month their members are earning a combined income of over £10,000 each month.

AQA

AQA (formerly 63336) are a text based question and answer service. Their customers text in a question and they use researchers to reply with an answer. Each question answered nets the researcher cash which is paid monthly (as long as the researcher reaches £100 pay out threshold). This is a genuine company for people looking for a regular income stream, it involves applying for a position and an exam to test the applicant for spelling, grammar and punctuation as well as their ability to do the required research in order to answer the questions. The average earnings between now and Christmas are £100-£300.

Web Search Evaluation

Another regular income earner is web search evaluation through LeapForce, LionBridge or Appen Butler Hill. These three companies offer regular, hourly paid, flexible positions from home completing a number of different types of tasks which sees the evaluators conduct research, evaluation and give feedback on search engine results. They measure the relevance and usefulness of web pages against a redefined set of queries. There is an application process for them all which can take a couple of weeks to full complete and they offer a short-term contract which is normally between 6-12 months long; it is then reviewed and a decision made whether to continue your contract.
The expected earnings for this between now and Christmas is £600.

Mystery Shopping

Mystery shopping has been around for many year and sounds quite daunting but it really isn’t. You are paid to evaluate a company based on a set of specific guidelines so the company can ensure their standards are being met and/or make improvements. Over the years, with the introduction of online shopping, mystery shopping has grown from being just an in-person experience to a large virtual one too. Many online retails want not only their website, customer service and user experience evaluating but their checkout, delivery and returns – this means they will pay you to order items and/or return them. Christmas is a great time to be a mystery shopper as you can tick a few presents off of the list as well as earning money for doing it.

Take a look at eDigitalResearch, they have a range of website, mobile site and app mystery shopping opportunities. MarketForce is a great company to be with for instore mystery shopping and they offer a huge variety of opportunities from pubs, restaurants, fast food and bookies, to name but a few. The average earnings from mystery shopping between now and Christmas is £100.

Smartphone apps

As Shona said last week, this is certainly the smartphone era. You can do almost everything from your phone and earning money is certainly one of them. Like mystery shopping, companies are interested to know whether the stores they supply to are showing off their products the best they can – is the newest Disney Blueray at the front of the store or are the prawn cocktail crisps easy enough to find. These apps often require you to pop to a local store, snap up a few photos and answer a few questions then submit it to them to receive your payment. There are many on the market to use though some of them can be phone brand specific.

Bear in mind that Field Agent and Task360 are both iPhone specific with no plans on them coming to Android, so if you are in the market for a new phone and are looking to earn from home then an iPhone is your best bet.

Roamler, Streetbees, Streetspotr, BeMyEye, Clic and Walk and Yoobic are all available on both iPhone and Android offering a multitude of tasks that pay anywhere between £2 and £5+. This could see you earning, on average, anything up to or over £100.

AppJobber

Appjobber is Europe’s leading micro jobbing app; a crowdsourcing app that enables you to do mini-jobs from your mobile phone. It is seeing its members earn £80-£100 every month by spending a few minutes each morning sending in screenshots.

Mindswarms

Mindswarms require you to make a few short videos either on your phone or PC/laptop based around the assignment set, these are normally about 5 minutes long in total so extremely quick to do. They have a reputation for paying extremely well, normally a 5 minute job is paid at $50.

WhatUsersDo, Usertesting and Utest

WhatUsersDo, Usertesting and Utest offer you the chance to evaluate the functionality and usability of websites but unlike mystery shopping, these evaluations are vocal. These companies want to hear your thoughts as you think them and tasks normally take no more than 20 minutes to complete. The payments vary for these with WhatUsersDo paying £8 for a desktop task and £15 for a mobile task, Usertesting pay depending on the individual video and Utest is a little more technical with a more regular payment cycle.
The average earnings from these sites is around £50-£100 between now and Christmas.

There are a few other ways to earn some extra cash in time for Christmas which are more dependent on your circumstances and what you have to offer.

Selling unwanted items

Have a good clean out in the weeks leading up to Christmas; go through your old clothes, DVDs/CDs/Games, child’s toys/clothes and the loft to see what you have laying around that you either don’t want/need or that no longer fits. Then put all your unwanted itens up for sale on eBay, Gumtree or your local Facebook selling groups. Most people will be surprised at how many unwanted items they have just laying around their house.

Offering your services

Can you write, draw, knit,making paint, bake, design websites etc.? If so then there is someone out there who is willing to pay for those services. Websites such as Fiverr and PeoplePerHour are a great way to offer up your skills and get paid for them, these sites are mainly suited to digital work though some companies may advertise local work. Pickle is a phone app which is advertises a variety of work, anything from cleaning someone’s car to designing them a website; both local and remote work is available.
As you can see, we have easily surpassed the original £1000 that we set to earn. You can find out more about everything mentioned on this post over on The Money Shed forum and interact with the members who have been using these methods for years. Go on, have a happy and money filled Christmas.