Extra Income Update---Part1

I read a  post the other day from  Tyler Tervooren.  It was a fine motivating piece.  It does not directly relate to large families, but it does relate to finances. Long ago in the dark ages, I studied Entrepreneurship in college, so I have always been interested in starting a side business.  I know many of you are interested in getting a little extra money to help care for your family.  So I am starting a series on earning extra income.  This is the first part in this series.
 
I have taken advice like Tyler's.  I have been working on some extra income options that have low to no start up costs.  This will be my first update.  The concept that Tyler discusses is starting a side business that does not cost more than $100. If it cost more, you don't do it. It is a great little article, you can check out his website here.  The article I am referring to is located here.  I think it is an excellent article.  I highly  recommend read it.  Also, be sure to check out part two.

Photography is  a hobby of mine, so I decided to try to make some money from it.  I already own a digital camera, no cost there, so I really only have my time in this. Here is what I have been doing.

I went out and signed up for accounts on Dreamstime and iStockphoto.  I uploaded several photos and even had some approved.  Here  are my profiles/galleries:

Dreamstime

iStockPhoto



I have actually done better than I expected from these two sites.   If I had the discipline to spend more time taking and submitting photos, I could probably do OK making a few extra bucks.  I decided I would try to go with a theme that  i was interested in.  So I chose football.  Here is my top selling image on both sites:

10 Yard Line

Honestly, I had no idea that this image would sell like it has.  I even sold an extended license to this photo, which resulted in a single $12+ sale.


All in all, I have made at least $200 in microstock photography by only putting half an effort in it. Maybe I should try a little harder at this and see out it works out.  Really when you look at the small amount of time I spent doing this it is not too bad.  The beauty of microstock is that it is residual.  In other words, you can sell the same image over and over again without really doing anything.  Now, you could always go back into the image and add new keywords to keep it fresh in the list, but it is not required. I need to come up with a few more themed ideas.  Do you guys have any ideas?  Please add them to the comments below.

If you wish to get started in microstock selling, I would suggest you start at Dreamstime.  They have a community base that is very helpful with ideas and help.  Also, I think they were a little easier to get accepted.  If you do decide to try it, I would appreciate you using my banner link below using me as a referral.  Also, don't forget, please add me to your Google+ circle....

Go Get Yourself Some Cheap Eyeglasses!!!

I guess you can't hear me sing my ZZ Top themed title.  That is probably for the best.  Weather you have a lot of people in your family or not, this is a great tip.  A friend pointed me to this site...www.zennioptical.com.

This is one of the best money saving tips that I have received in some time.  I have three children and myself that wear glasses in my family.  Rather than test my theories on my children, I decided to try it on myself first.

What you will need is  your prescription from your eye doctor.  This will usually and a few numbers on it.  My lovely wife stopped by our eye doctor and asked for our prescriptions. They printed them out and handed them to her.  We were on our way to savings!  The only problem you may run into is if your PD distance is not listed on your prescription.  This is a measurement in millimeters.  The way I understand it, it is the distance between the center of your pupils. If your prescription does not list your PD distance, download the ruler on the Zenni site to figure this out.  You can also have a friend measure this for you.




 Late one night I visited the website and created an account.  I put in all of the information required.  Then I started browsing for frames.  The frame selection is listed by cost or type.  Since this was my test, I chose some cheap frames and after all of the options I had $12.95 in my eyeglasses.  Add $4.95 for shipping and voila, two weeks later I had my new glasses for about a whopping $18.00!  That is some savings compared to the $300 plus I pay at the eye doctor.

So I tried them out for a few weeks.  I have to say that I was very pleased with them.  So now for the kids.  I went back to the website ordered two for the kids and another set to keep at work for me.  I still check out of their website for less than $60 for three pairs of glasses shipped!


Some people will say that they have progressive lenses or bifocals and this won't work for me.  I passed the Zenni info on to another friend.  He has progressive lenses and decided to give Zenni a try.  He ordered a pair of glasses from them and received them for around $50 shipped without any issues.  He normally paid almost $600 for his glasses at the eye doctor.  He has since ordered several pairs and has not had any complaints.

People, please check this out, it can help save you large amounts of money for your family. If this is for you, it is worth it!

Have a great day....until next time.

Buying Clothes for A Large Family

There are eight people in our family.  That includes two teenagers.  Everyone knows that clothes are expensive.  We always try to stretch our clothes dollar to get the most clothes for the least amount of money.

One way we do this is to shop the end of season clearances.  I know this is not a big secret, but it we doit with a little twist.  We shop at Kohls.  We always get advertisements mailed to us that can get us up to 30% off of our total order.  That my friends is a fantastic deal.  Let me give an example....


I have to wear "business casual" dress at my office.  This is really nothing more than a pair of dress pants and a button down collar dress shirt.  I regularly check the Kohls clearance rack for dress shirts, just part of my strategy.  One day I was strolling through my local Kohls when I found this shirt:

The $1.00 shirt!!!!

You will never guess what I paid for this shirt.  The shirt was marked down to $1.00 on the clearance rack and we also had a 20% off coupon.  So for this shirt alone, we only paid 80 cents! Honestly we get things cheaper here than we can get second hand.  Then we can hand these down to the younger kids.


Now I will admit that is probably the cheapest I have ever purchased at Kohl's.  Although, I regularly get shirts there for between $5 and $10 easily.   The same goes for all the kids clothes too.   We will be documenting some of the purchases we get as we continue to find bargains.

One of the great things about Kohl's is that they provide some of these great deals online too.  Don't forget to check the clearance section online! Please check out the link below to help out our blog.