Ways to earn extra cash

[Brad243480]

Does anyone know of any legitimate ways to earn some extra income, preferably online?  Are most of these things scams?

[MediumTex]

Shop for new account bonuses at banks.  That's good for $200 or so a year.

Take defensive driving for the car insurance discount if your state offers it.

Look at what you already know how to do and use your imagination for novel ways of applying it.

[Wonk]

1. If you can, freelance and/or moonlight your skill set.

2. Set up a blog and monetize it (many resources out there for this).

3. Sell an investment newsletter (kidding of course...)

[smurff]

Beware of selling things on eBay:  The rules have changed dramatically since their good old days.  Ebay now favors large, big name corporate retailers who want to dispose of excess merchandise outside of their own venues, as well as Chinese-based companies that sell large volumes of the kinds of cheap stuff that Americans (though not necessarily people in many other countries) can simply buy through these companies' traditional outlet, Walmart.  Fees have gone up while service has deteriorated.

Since just before boss Meg Whitman left (?2007?), there have been quite a few traumatic changes the company has inflicted on  sellers, to the point where (on the negative side) many sellers have either gone out of business or bankrupt and (on the positive side) many sellers have learned the wisdom of having more than one venue and others have had to go out on their own and start up web businesses to accomplish what eBay no longer can do. 

You can still sell on eBay as a small seller, and they still have lots of eyeballs from customers checking out stuff on the site.  It's just not as easy as it used to be, domestic and international buyer fraud has become rampant, and protections that used to be there are either not reliable or no longer there.

Also, because eBay changed its business model, many online selling venues that are quite good have sprung up to serve the markets eBay threw away:  Etsy, Bonanza (formerly Bonanzle), etc.

[smurff]

1. If you can, freelance and/or moonlight your skill set.

Try elance.com if you're a writer, designer, programmer, consultant, researcher, etc.  They even have a way for you to have your credentials verified for the benefit of your potential clients.

[Storm]

If you are good at writing, and want to make ridiculously low wages (although some of their top writers make $60 an hour, most probably make closer to minimum wage USD), check out http://www.demandmedia.com/

Basically what this company does is find Google search terms that aren't generating hits, then decides how much it is worth in advertising to have a freelancer write an article that will give those people information, and pays them between $3-10 to write it.  So, for example, when they find out that 2,000 people searched for "how to set up a pony ride with no ponies", they might realize this is an untapped market, hire someone to write the article for $10, then put ads on it and hope the ads generate more than $10 in click-revenue.

If you want to read a fascinating article about it, here is one:  http://www.cjr.org/feature/in_demand.php?page=all

Frankly, I like to write, but I don't want to write for chinese sweat-shop wages.