Retirement Income by Working From Home
Big Z's Guide to Retirement Income Activities
Let me tell you this straight out. Most of the ads you see out there for making money online are just scams. Be especially wary of the ones that ask you to pay first. Last year, I paid $49.95 to buy a book that was supposed to help me make an easy income online. You know what the book said? It told me to buy more of the same book and resell it to others. And that was not the only scam I fell for either.
But now I know better. Most of the work from home and get rich quick schemes are just that. Empty schemes. So unless you know that something is reliable, don't bother.
Nevertheless, the idea of working from home is appealing to someone like me. I mean I am retired. I am home all day, so it would be perfect to have a supplemental income. Being able to work online to make an additional income to supplement your retirement savings is convenient and doable.
So I have tried many things for the past year, and here are some activities that I found:
Foreign Exchange Trading and Stock Trading
OK, so this one is not for the faint at heart. You can make money, but you can lose money too. While I have done my share of quick stock trading like everyone else, I have never actually tried foreign exchange trading (they call it Forex). As I said, it is not for the faint at heart. My old buddy Don said it is not for people like me. But he has been at it since last Christmas and he has managed to stay on the winning side. Whenever he is in a cranky mood, I knew he lost some, but overall, he says he is making quite the second income. And Don is not the only one. I know 4 others, all retired, who have been trading currency. Only one of them gave it up because she could not handle biting her nails all day long.
Don explained the concept to me, so I will try to summarize: Currency is like stock. The values keep changing all the time. But, unlike stock, you can trade huge amounts at a time, up to 100 times your balance. So, if you have $500 in your account, you can trade $50,000 in currency. For example, you can buy $50,000 worth of Euros or British Pounds. So basically you are converting currencies from one (the Dollar) to the other (Euro or Pound or Yen) multiplied by 100. Now, if the Euro goes up by just one cent, you double your money. Of course, if it drops by 1 cent, then you lose half your money. And the market is so volatile that prices keep changing all the time, so you can do many trades in one day and make (or lose) a lot of money. There are graphs and trends that you can follow to kind of put the odds in your favor, and that's how you can end up with a profit at the end of the day. Don says it is easy to spot trends because you have a real-time graph on the screen in front of you, so you can see the price going up or down. He buys when he sees a trend going up, and he sells after he makes $20. Sometimes he misses, and ends up losing $10. He tries to keep it so that half the time he makes $20, and half the time he loses $10. On a good day, he does this for a couple of hours and makes around $50 to $100. He says he averages about $250 a week. But that is Don. He has patience. If you are short tempered, then this is not for you.
Because there is a lot of money involved, naturally there are many companies that offer forex services. Don uses one called Easy Forex. He says he tried others, but he found this one to be the easiest and it offers a lot of information and help to newcomers. Other reputable services are Oanda and Forex.com. If you want to try Easy Forex, please click here. I signed up as an affiliate with them to try to make some extra money myself. So if you want to help me out a bit, please click on this link.
Selling on eBay
This one works if you have something interesting you sell. The product can be something you make, or it can be something you buy and a low cost and resell for profit. Either way, it has to be interesting enough for people to want it and at a low enough price so people will buy it. And it is not just enough to be able to sell it. You also need to be able to deliver it. So you have to make sure you can produce the products fast enough if you have to, and you can ship them to the buyers. Many people make a lot of money selling on eBay. But there is a lot of competition, so make sure that you do your research first. Find out if someone else is selling the same products you are selling, and at what price. There are a lot of articles and books out there about selling on eBay, so I will not go into details. I am mentioning it here though because I know it works.
Resell Someone Else's Products or Services
Basically, you need to connect suppliers with buyers. Most of online services and products are sold this way. Company X wants to sell something, so they offer web users a finder's fee for the customers they bring in. It is commonly called affiliate or referral programs. You see them all over the web.
The easiest way is to find a product or service to market. You can do that easily at specialized websites like Commission Junction, LinkShare, or InnerSell. These sites tell you the products and services available, how much of a commission you will get for selling, and how well they sell.
Now that you have found a good product or service to market, you need to build a website or a blog around it. This will bring traffic to your site, and make users interested in reading what you have to say about it. Your site or blog will have a link to whatever it is you are trying to sell. Whenever someone clicks on the link and buys, you get the commission. The easiest way is to setup a blog, just like this one you are readying. Go to http://www.blogger.com/ and signup for a free blog, and start writing.
There are more ways you can make money online, like writing articles and blogs for companies, filling surveys, and promoting websites. However, I have not tried them, so I am not willing to recommend them at this point. You can do your own research and find out more, but take what you read with a grain of salt. Lots of scams out there.
Let me tell you this straight out. Most of the ads you see out there for making money online are just scams. Be especially wary of the ones that ask you to pay first. Last year, I paid $49.95 to buy a book that was supposed to help me make an easy income online. You know what the book said? It told me to buy more of the same book and resell it to others. And that was not the only scam I fell for either.
But now I know better. Most of the work from home and get rich quick schemes are just that. Empty schemes. So unless you know that something is reliable, don't bother.
Nevertheless, the idea of working from home is appealing to someone like me. I mean I am retired. I am home all day, so it would be perfect to have a supplemental income. Being able to work online to make an additional income to supplement your retirement savings is convenient and doable.
So I have tried many things for the past year, and here are some activities that I found:
Foreign Exchange Trading and Stock Trading
OK, so this one is not for the faint at heart. You can make money, but you can lose money too. While I have done my share of quick stock trading like everyone else, I have never actually tried foreign exchange trading (they call it Forex). As I said, it is not for the faint at heart. My old buddy Don said it is not for people like me. But he has been at it since last Christmas and he has managed to stay on the winning side. Whenever he is in a cranky mood, I knew he lost some, but overall, he says he is making quite the second income. And Don is not the only one. I know 4 others, all retired, who have been trading currency. Only one of them gave it up because she could not handle biting her nails all day long.
Don explained the concept to me, so I will try to summarize: Currency is like stock. The values keep changing all the time. But, unlike stock, you can trade huge amounts at a time, up to 100 times your balance. So, if you have $500 in your account, you can trade $50,000 in currency. For example, you can buy $50,000 worth of Euros or British Pounds. So basically you are converting currencies from one (the Dollar) to the other (Euro or Pound or Yen) multiplied by 100. Now, if the Euro goes up by just one cent, you double your money. Of course, if it drops by 1 cent, then you lose half your money. And the market is so volatile that prices keep changing all the time, so you can do many trades in one day and make (or lose) a lot of money. There are graphs and trends that you can follow to kind of put the odds in your favor, and that's how you can end up with a profit at the end of the day. Don says it is easy to spot trends because you have a real-time graph on the screen in front of you, so you can see the price going up or down. He buys when he sees a trend going up, and he sells after he makes $20. Sometimes he misses, and ends up losing $10. He tries to keep it so that half the time he makes $20, and half the time he loses $10. On a good day, he does this for a couple of hours and makes around $50 to $100. He says he averages about $250 a week. But that is Don. He has patience. If you are short tempered, then this is not for you.
Because there is a lot of money involved, naturally there are many companies that offer forex services. Don uses one called Easy Forex. He says he tried others, but he found this one to be the easiest and it offers a lot of information and help to newcomers. Other reputable services are Oanda and Forex.com. If you want to try Easy Forex, please click here. I signed up as an affiliate with them to try to make some extra money myself. So if you want to help me out a bit, please click on this link.
Selling on eBay
This one works if you have something interesting you sell. The product can be something you make, or it can be something you buy and a low cost and resell for profit. Either way, it has to be interesting enough for people to want it and at a low enough price so people will buy it. And it is not just enough to be able to sell it. You also need to be able to deliver it. So you have to make sure you can produce the products fast enough if you have to, and you can ship them to the buyers. Many people make a lot of money selling on eBay. But there is a lot of competition, so make sure that you do your research first. Find out if someone else is selling the same products you are selling, and at what price. There are a lot of articles and books out there about selling on eBay, so I will not go into details. I am mentioning it here though because I know it works.
Resell Someone Else's Products or Services
Basically, you need to connect suppliers with buyers. Most of online services and products are sold this way. Company X wants to sell something, so they offer web users a finder's fee for the customers they bring in. It is commonly called affiliate or referral programs. You see them all over the web.
The easiest way is to find a product or service to market. You can do that easily at specialized websites like Commission Junction, LinkShare, or InnerSell. These sites tell you the products and services available, how much of a commission you will get for selling, and how well they sell.
Now that you have found a good product or service to market, you need to build a website or a blog around it. This will bring traffic to your site, and make users interested in reading what you have to say about it. Your site or blog will have a link to whatever it is you are trying to sell. Whenever someone clicks on the link and buys, you get the commission. The easiest way is to setup a blog, just like this one you are readying. Go to http://www.blogger.com/ and signup for a free blog, and start writing.
There are more ways you can make money online, like writing articles and blogs for companies, filling surveys, and promoting websites. However, I have not tried them, so I am not willing to recommend them at this point. You can do your own research and find out more, but take what you read with a grain of salt. Lots of scams out there.
posted by Big Z at
11:57 AM
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