The Savvy Scot

Personal finance and lifestyle blog

The Passive Income Series – Method 1: Get Paid to Browse the Internet

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Happy Tuesday everyone! Given that the temperature has dropped well below zero degrees in London, Mrs Scot and I thought it would be a good idea to book our holiday. We spent last night (hence no blog post) finalising our arrangements and have successfully booked our first holiday of 2013! In May we will be visiting the Riveira Maya in Mexico for 2 weeks of swimming with whale sharks, cenote diving and general all-inclusive luxury. Oh and we will throw in a trip to visit the Chichen Itza! For those of you who are familiar with My Bucket List, this will hopefully cross two – maybe three – items off the list. We got a great deal and managed to take advantage of the $500 that I negotiated as compensation from United Airlines last year. It goes without saying, I am majorly excited and found it pretty hard to concentrate at work today…. I am like a kid in a candy shop! 😀 If anyone fancies guest posting in May (I know some of you write your schedules waaaay far in advance) then let me know!

Towards the end of last year, I wrote a ten part series called The Change Your Life Series. I quite like writing posts in a series with a common theme; I feel that I have really achieved something by the end of it. I liked writing the series so much in fact, that here is born a new series: The Passive Income Series.

After all, if you are here reading this, you are likely looking for ideas on how to improve your overall wealth. You probably know by now that there are 2 main ways of doing so:

Simple right? Well this series is going to concentrate on the former point: Increasing your income. Over the next couple of months, we will look comprehensively at different ways to earn a passive income; a side hustle of sorts. I don’t want to give away too many of the ideas and topics now, so you will just have to stay tuned to find out more!

Get Paid to Browse

Method 1: Get Paid to Browse the Internet

Sounds too good to be true right? If I am completely honest, before I started researching this post and trying various programs, this was my opinion too.
How does the concept even work? Companies like Qmee install a small plugin to your browser which displays sponsored search results. More often than not, the results that are returned are exactly what you are looking for, but by clicking the link within the widget, you get paid. Essentially, companies like Amazon, Travel.com etc. will pay Qmee (who then pay you) a small fee for each link clicked, just like they would pay out through programs like Google Adwords. Instead of Google taking a cut for providing the sponsored results, the money comes back to you.

Amazing! – How much money will I make? Now this is definitely not a get rich quick strategy, but neither are most of the other passive income streams. I like to think of passive income streams as multiple ‘get rich slowly’ schemes that all accumulate to make a difference to your finances. I used this program over the last month or so and made a few pounds. It didn’t interfere with my browsing activities, (I ignored the results frequently too) yet made me some money that I would otherwise not have had (or rather Google / Bing / Yahoo etc. would have had instead). Like P2P lending and cashback sites, these companies are returning advertising / affiliate revenues back to the consumer… and it is great!

Worth It? While a few pounds might not seem a lot (I don’t actually browse the web that often at home), if you multiply it out over a year and consider other family members’ browsing activities; you could be left with a nice little fund for doing something special at the end of the year. You even have the option of donating it all to charity!

If you are interested in using Qmee (the company that I am now using) here is a short video to explain:

 

Get Paid to Browse – Verdict:

Ease of Setup: Simple (also works on Macs)Ongoing Effort Required: Minimal (Glance at returned results and decide whether to click)
Earning Potential: Low to Medium (est. £60 p.a.)
SavvyScot Verdict: No brainer… Yes! Thumbs Up


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Lovely comments

  11. Matt says

    So let me get this right then… you simply click on an ad that interests you. You don’t have to buy anything, you just click, and they pay you? Seems like a no brainer to me, it’s going on all my browsers right now… and thanks for the tip!
    Matt recently posted..When Should You Buy A House?My Profile

  13. chris_moneyandi says

    Again, kudos on your upcoming holiday James. My wife-to-be is quite annoyed with the amount of work I do lately, will have to book the promised holiday in Sicily (April-May) rather soon…..

    Regarding the post… If you’re planning to do a series, considering writing about odesk.com and elance.com. Some people use that as their main source of income (not a passive one, though). Also, check out Amazon’s Mechanical Turk!

    Cheers!
    chris_moneyandi recently posted..Record shops in London: Where to Buy Music?My Profile

    • savvyscot says

      Cheers Chris! Haha the holiday will certainly soften her up… We have a good system where I write blog updates when Mrs Scot is on her way home… I get home an hour and a bit earlier and it works v well! Odesk/elance etc are definitely on the cards for future parts. And maybe Amazon Turk / Fiverr! Cheers for the input 🙂

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