I’m sure you know by now that I love to find little ways to earn money just for being on the internet.  If you’re going to be on your computer, you might as well get paid for using it.

I just found out about a site called BeRuby where you can get paid money just for visiting your favorite sites.  Some of may favorite sites include:

• Facebook – $0.005 (half a cent)
• Gmail – $0.005
• Hotmail – $0.005
• Twitter – $0.005
• and many more

So, how does it work?

• Register for BeRuby
• Visit BeRuby first and then click through to sites like Hotmail to get credit for your visit
• Get paid via Paypal when your balance is $10

You also have the option to earn money for registering for various programs and for shopping through BeRuby.  I haven’t really checked out the payout for shopping, but some of my favorite cash-back sites for shopping include Ebates and ShopAtHome.

Don’t Forget:

One of my other favorite ways to earn money from surfing the web is through Swagbucks.

What is Swagbucks? Click here for more information…it’s basically a search engine powered by Google and Ask where you randomly earn Swagbucks, which can be redeemed for prizes such as Amazon gift cards, etc. It’s like being paid to search the web.

Today I have a great guest post from Ann Smarty, who shares some additional ways to earn some extra money from home.

Nine months ago I became mom of my lovely daughter. Naturally I had to stay at home – the initial plan was that I’d return to work in like 6-9 months but now I understand that I am just unable to leave her. I want to watch every minute of her growing up and thus I guess I need to stay at home longer (not sure how long though).

Anyway, staying at home doesn’t mean I can’t make money. I am an Internet entrepreneur and a blogger and I know a number of ways to make money online. The best part of it is that those ways are fun, that means you can make money from those ways you actually enjoy doing!

1. Make money blogging

Most of stay-at-home moms enjoy sharing their new exciting experience by maintaining a blog. This way we build online communities of mothers who help each other, share thoughts and solve some daily household issues together.

Of course, making money blogging is the huge topic that deserves a blog of its own. But in order just to show you the direction, let me just list a few basics. Staying home with little kids, we all have little time to learn something new, but here are just a couple of resources that can be enough for the solid start:

• Google Adsense (as well as other pay-per-click networks) is the simplest and the fastest way to start. Just install its scrip on the site and everything will be done automatically. To learn more about some tactics and tricks of making the most of Adsense, make sure to subscribe and read DoshDosh blog – that can be quite enough to become the real pro.
• Affiliate programs. When I was only starting to make money with affiliate programs, I joined ABestWeb forum and it taught me everything. So look no further, just register it and start reading, asking questions and following the advice.

2. Start Couponing

Most of us, busy moms, are coupon and bargain pros as we make our best to save each cent. But do you know that you can actually make money with bargain hunting?

I recently discovered a cool site called Buxr.com that offers daily and monthly prices to the most active and useful members.

This basically works as follows:

• You come across a good deal;
• You go to the site and submit it there (you’ll need to register for that);
• Other members comment and vote for your deal;
• If your deal is well-received and gets most votes, you earn $10!
• You can thus earn $10 a day.

There are also monthly contests: if you are active enough, you can win without ever submitting a deal.

Just vote up good deals and vote down bad deals. At the end of the day we will announce the winners and losers. If your picks match ours you win points good towards our monthly grand prize!

In other words, you earn points (and money) for making the site better!

3. Make Money Reviewing Products

Making money with reviews has double benefit: cash and the product itself you are reviewing. The only downside here is the huge number of scammers that will make you work and will never pay. To protect yourself from them, browse Scam.com forum that stores plenty of up-to-date discussions on newest scams.

Here are a few legit sites that allow you to earn money by reviewing products:

• GangsterGreed pays money on demand once you have earned more than $10;
• Cash Crate – also check their Contests page for more fun;
• Treasure Trooper pays monthly with $20 payout threshold.

Do you make money while staying at home with your lovely kids? Why not share your experience?

The guest post is by Ann Smarty, a blogger, social media enthusiast and online entrepreneur. You may want to follow Ann on Twitter.

Post images by Annie Mole, silverfox09 and topgold

I have been a member of MyPoints for about a year. Like the name suggests, you earn points for doing various activities such as:

• Read e-mails – 5 points just for clicking on the periodic e-mails that MyPoints sends
• Surveys – 10 points if you don’t qualify, 50+ points if you do qualify
• Offers – some of the e-mails include offers…like sign up for such and such and earn x points – depending on what it is, I don’t usually sign up
• Games – you can earn points when you play their games – I’ve never done this
• Shopping – you can earn points when you shop through the MyPoints site – I’ve never done this, because using the cash-back sites seems a better deal.

However, by just reading MyPoints e-mails and doing a few surveys over the past year (very minimal effort and time), I’ve been able to earn 3 $10.00 BP gift cards and 2 $10 Panera Bread gift cards.

The $10 gift cards require about 1400-1500 points, so I usually qualify every couple of months just from doing the above (e-mails and surveys). They have many different gift cards available like Amazon, BP, CVS/Pharmacy, iTunes, Kohls, Shell, Panera Bread, and many more.

I am also a member of SendEarnings and InboxDollars, but I find that the MyPoints gift cards at seem to add up a lot faster than clicking on the e-mails for the other programs (although one day I will actually get the $30 needed for payout at SendEarnings and InboxDollars).

Have you ever tried MyPoints? What did you think? Are you a member of a similar program that might be worth trying? For more ideas that work for others, please visit We are THAT Family.

As a stay-at-home mom, I try to make a little extra money here and there to help my family with the extras. Some of the ways that I earn money include:

• Surveys – see my review here of some of my favorite survey sites.

• UPromise – I’ve saved about $1530 to date for when my sons attend college. I love this program! Click here to see more info about this free program. When you sign up, make sure you add your store loyalty cards and credit cards to ensure you don’t miss any earnings.

• Swagbucks – I’ve earned about $550 in gift cards so far from Swagbucks. Earn gift cards just for searching the internet. Click here for more info.

• MyPoints – I’ve earned gas cards and Panera Bread gift cards just for clicking through their e-mails and taking surveys. There are many more gift cards available.

• Cash Back sites – Earn money back when you purchase items on the internet

• Prescription Transfer Gift Cards – I try to use one of these whenever I have a prescription to either earn or save money on prescription copays.

• YouData – Earn money each week for viewing ads on the internet. You won’t earn a whole lot, but it’s quick and easy and they pay weekly with no minimums.

About a month ago, Money Saving Mom had a great post on a mystery shopping company called GfK Mystery Shopping. I decided to sign up, even though I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it, since I had two young kids at home with me most of the time. How would I be able to pay attention with the kids tagging along? However, I didn’t realize that I would be able to complete many assignments in the evenings or weekends.

I was accepted into the program and I have done 2 mystery shops for them already. I was just paid for the first shop I did yesterday by Paypal. The shops were fairly easy to complete, and it was easy to add my results online and upload my receipt.

Carrie @ Money Saving Methods also has a lot of great posts about mystery shopping companies that she has signed up with. I just signed up with ICCDS Inc. last week, and I’ve already completed one assignment for them. They immediately sent me offers for a couple more assignments, but I didn’t have the time to complete them…plus they were rather far to drive.

So, if you either have no kids, have kids in school during the day, or have a husband who’s willing for you to do a few assignments in the evenings and weekends, mystery shopping can be a great way to earn some extra money.

Just a note: You are an independent contractor, so any money you earn will be like self-employment income. Make sure you keep all your purchase receipts and keep track of mileage in a central spot, so you can claim expenses against your income when it comes tax time next year.

How do you earn some extra money? For more frugal ideas, visit Being Frugal.

Do you get cash-back when you shop online? If you don’t, you’re missing out on one of the many good reasons to make purchases online.

How Does it Work?

Every time I’m about to make a purchase online, I shop through a cash-back site and get a % of cash back on my purchase. For example, say I want to purchase a book at Borders.com. I’ll check the cash-back % amount at some of my favorite sites such as:

• Big Crumbs – I would get 4.8% of my purchase back in cash
• Ebates – 4% back plus a $5 sign up bonus if you open a new account and make a purchase within 30 days
• ShopatHome -  4% back, plus a $5 bonus if you open a new account
• Cashbaq – 4% back plus a $5 sign up bonus, if you open a new account
• Mr. Rebates – 4% back
• UPromise – 3% added to my UPromise college savings account – click here for more information about UPromise.

Once you’ve decided which cashback site to use (based on which offers the highest cash-back), search for the name of the store and click through the store link to shop. It’s very important that you click through the cash-back site, since that’s how credit is determined for your order.

I used to shop through UPromise for every purchase, until I found out about some of the other sites. So, now I usually shop through the site where I get the largest return. So, for my Borders example, I would probably shop through Big Crumbs.

Please note: Each cash-back site lists various online coupon codes that you can use when you shop. If you have a coupon code that you use that’s not listed on the cash-back site, you may not get any money back. For example, when I used the free shipping coupon at Snapfish back in December, I did not receive cash back on my order, even though I shopped through Ebates, since it was a code they didn’t list (and because of that, Ebates didn’t get paid by Snapfish).

So How Do you Get your Cash?

• Big Crumbs – You will be paid monthly by Paypal around the 15th of the month. There is a $5 minimum required for payout.
• Cashbaq – Need at least $10 payable in your account (includes the bonus amount). You will be paid by check or Paypal around the 20th of each month.
• Mr. Rebates – Need $10 in “Available Rebates” to cash out. Payments are made by check or Paypal around the beginning of each month.
• Ebates – “Big Fat Checks” are sent via check or Paypal every 3 months when your account balance is at least $5.01, excluding bonus rewards.
• ShopAtHome – Checks are sent out monthly once you reach the $25 payout minimum.
• UPromise – The order will show up in your Upromise account a couple of days after placing your order. It will show up as pending until Upromise is paid. Once it is paid, the money can be transferred to your 529 plan during your quarterly transfer.
• Frugali - Payout via ACH, check, Paypal, or Google checkout when you reach the $25 minimum.  Get a $5 bonus for joining.

Using a cash-back site is how I save even more money while shopping online.

Last week, Amazon had a sale on kids’ shoes. The prices were pretty good with free shipping, so I bought a couple of pairs for my boys to grow into. But, the best part was…they didn’t cost me a dime. Why, you ask? Because I had earned enough Amazon gift cards from Swagbucksto pay for them.

What is Swagbucks?

Swagbucks is a search site, where you can search the internet on any topic, and you receive results using Google and Ask.com. Periodically, you will be awarded a Swagbuck during your search. The Swagbucks are in denominations of 1-1,000. You can then redeem your Swagbucks for items such as an Amazon gift cards (my favorite), Starbucks GC, ITunes GC, etc.

How Do you Earn Swagbucks?

• Search with Swagbucks and periodically, you’ll win Swagbucks. I can usually win at least 10 Swagbucks a day, just by doing my normal searches.
• Swagbucks often releases free Swagcodes. Often, they’ll be available for a limited period of time. You can subscribe to their blog, newsletter, become a fan of them on Facebook or a follower on Twitter to increase your chances of getting the free Swagcodes.
• Invite friends to search on Swagbucks, and you’ll earn Swagbucks when they do up to 1000.
• Daily Polls – Earn 1 Swagbuck each day just for taking a second to vote in the daily poll.
• Shop in the Swagstore and earn 2 Swagbucks for every $1 dollar you spend. I, personally, have never shopped through their store, since I prefer to earn cash-back through Ebates, ShopAtHome, Big Crumbs, or UPromise.

Do you want to help your kids or grandkids pay for college when it’s time for them to go? Or do you already have a Sallie Mae student loan that you’d love to get help paying for? Then, UPromise is perfect for you! It’s a free program where you earn money for college just by doing the things that you are already doing – like buying groceries and toiletries, buying/selling a house, shopping online, etc.

As a SAHM of 2 children, I find it difficult to find the money to save for my boy’s college (although I do also save on my own). I discovered the UPromise program about 8 years ago, and have earned $1,458 so far. I haven’t done it all on my own, since you can invite friends and family to help you out. Both my parents and my in-laws also use UPromise to help send my boys to college. As you earn money, it is held in your UPromise account. Each quarter, your money will get transferred into your Upromise 529 account (you have to open that separately).

There are many ways to build up your earnings. How does it work?

• Sign up and link your loyalty cards and credit cards (so UPromise can keep track of your earnings).

• Shopping Online – when you shop online, simply go to UPromise’s website first (or install the Upromise toolbar for Internet Explorer, and it will tell you when you are shopping on a Upromise website). You can search for either an item that you plan on purchasing or the store. Click through the link, and when you make a purchase the % earnings for that store will be deposited into your UPromise account.

• Ecoupons – Each month UPromise has some Ecoupons available that you can load onto your grocery/drug store loyalty card (I have CVS, Kroger, and Meijer). When you purchase that item, the amount of the coupon is automatically added to your college earnings without you having to clip any coupons (you do have to use your loyalty card at check-out).

• Grocery/Drug Store Savings – UPromise has several partners where you can get additional earnings when you shop at the grocery/drug store. For example, you get 3% back when you purchase Nestle products, 2% for Beech-Nut baby foods, 2% for Listerine, etc.

• Gas - When you purchase gas from Exxon/Mobil gas stations, you get a penny per gallon. You need to make sure that your credit card is registered on the UPromise site to get the rewards. Or, you can use a linked Speedpass.

• Upromise Credit Card – we signed up for the Upromise credit card and use it for practically every purchase we make (we get 1% of our purchases in UPromise earnings). We ALWAYS pay our balance in full each month, and it works for us, because we still have a budget that we adhere to. I keep careful track throughout the month of how much we’ve spent in each budget category through Microsoft Money. Having a credit card does not work for everyone, though.

• Other services – Get insurance quotes and save $5 through Liberty Mutual or $2 through Insurance.com. If you buy or sell your house through a Upromise-affiliated agent you earn a percentage of the home sale price. You can get a mortgage through Chase or Quicken Loans and earn 0.25% of your loan.

There are many additional ways to earn through UPromise. Check out their site for other ideas. Earning for college through UPromise works for me. It helps my family to save for my boys’ future just by shopping, getting gas and other things that we have to do anyway. For more ideas that work for others, visit Rocks in My Dryer.

How do you save for college? Do you already use Upromise? If so, what are some of the best ways that you have found to save?

In order to earn a little bit of extra money for my family, I started doing online surveys about 4 years ago.

Opinion Outpost

• Method of payment: Points – 10 points = $1.00 – check mailed to you
• Usual per survey amount: 20 – 30 points
• Amount required for payout: $5.00 (50 points)

Valued Opinions

• Method of payment: $ – which are then redeemed for gift cards
• Usual per survey amount: $1.50 to $4.00
• Amount required for payout: $20.00

Pinecone Research

• Method of payment: $ – paid through Paypal
• Usual per survey amount: $3.00
• Amount required for payout: no minimum – you are paid after every survey
• They only accept new members at select times throughout the year. If you ever see a banner for signing up on a website click through then and join (and I’ll post if I see openings).

Buzzback Market Research

• Method of payment: $ – check mailed to you
• Usual per survey amount: not sure
• Amount required for payout: no minimum – you are paid after every survey

My Survey

• Method of payment: Points – 1,000 points = $10.00 – check mailed to you
• Usual per survey amount: 10-30 points for short survey; 100+ for longer ones
• Amount required for payout: 1,000 points ($10.00)

Your 2 Cents (now Toluna)

• Method of payment: $ – check mailed to you
• Usual per survey amount: $1 – $5
• Amount required for payout: $10.00

Survey Savvy

• Method of payment: $ – check mailed to you
• Usual per survey amount: $2
• Amount required for payout: no minimum

Lightspeed Panel

• Method of payment: Points – 575 points = $5.00 – paid through Paypal
• Usual per survey amount: 75 to 150 points
• Amount required for payout: 575 points ($5.00)

Harris Poll Online

• Method of payment: Points – 800 points = $5.00 GC
• Usual per survey amount: 30 points for shorter; 100+ for longer
• Amount required for payout: 800 points ($5.00)

Synovate Global Opinion Panels

• Method of payment: Points – 5000 points = $5.00
• Usual per survey amount: 50 points for shorter; 150+ for longer
• Amount required for payout: 5000 points ($5.00)

Click here to join SendEarnings. You get a $5 bonus to sign up, and you earn a little bit of money every time that you click to read e-mails from this company. I have earned about $12.50 so far, and the payout is $30, so I have a bit to go to get my check, but it’s really easy to click through. You can also get more money from doing offers and surveys, but I don’t really do them.

Ebates has increased some of the cash back amounts for various companies for holiday shopping. Some of the highlights include:

• Overstock.com – from 4% to 6% cash back
• Disney.com – from 3% to 6%
• Home Depot – from 3% to 6%
• Barnes & Noble – from 4% to 8%
• Victoria’s Secret – from 2% to 4%
• Dell – from 2% to 4%
• Walmart – from 1% to 2% – last year I shopped online at Walmart for Black Friday items, so I wouldn’t have to wait outside in the cold.
• North Face – from 4% to 8%
• Gap – from 3% to 6%

If you don’t already have an Ebates account, you can earn $5 after your first purchase through Ebates if you sign up through me. Click here to sign up.

How Ebates Works

• Sign in to Ebates
• Search by item or by store to find what you’re looking for
• Ebates will show the stores where you can find the product as well as any coupon codes that can used for the transaction
• Click through the link to shop
• Ebates will credit your account with the % of purchase applicable to the store (for example, earn 6% back at Overstock.com)

A couple of weeks ago, I found out about YouData. It’s a new company that is letting you decide who gets your attention for advertising and you get paid to look. I joined about 2 weeks ago, and I’ve already gotten paid $7.70 through Paypal just for looking at some ads and clicking through to a few sites.

Here’s how it Works:

• You sign up for a YouData account (you will need to list your cell phone number, since they will text a code to verify your account…that’s the only text that I received from them)
• You create a MeFile (which includes basic information about you, like gender, birthday, etc…no personal information, like name, address, etc.)
• You can check the YouData site for ads or download their viewer.
• When you view an ad, you get paid to view it or click through to the website.
• The site has a great demo video that describes how it works. I love the idea of getting advertisers to pay me for viewing their ads.

Whenever I have to search the internet for something, I use Swagbucks (powered by Google and Ask). Every time I search, I have a chance to earn Swagbucks. Normally, they come in 1, 2, 3 and 5 bucks. However, Swagbucks recently introduced MegaBucks, where you can earn 10, 20, 50 and even 100 SwagBucks for each search. Starting today and every Friday after today, Swagbucks will be giving away 1000 Swagbucks in Mega bills. So, if you win 100 Swagbucks with one search, that’s $10 in Amazon gift cards or $10 in Starbucks gift cards!

Once you get 45 Swagbucks, you can earn a $5 Amazon gift certificate. There are other rewards that you can earn, such as a Starbucks gift card, Target.com gift card, etc. Since it takes 45 Swagbucks to earn $5, each Swagbuck is worth about $0.11. If you need to search for something anyway, you might as well use Swagbucks and earn something .

Click here to read more about some of the best tips for winning Swagbucks.

About a month or so ago, I was taking a prescription medicine that was quite expensive (about $40 for a 3 week supply with my insurance). In order to save money (since I hadn’t planned on it for my flexible spending account), I used prescription transfer coupons to get some gift certificates for the drugstores where I was buying my prescription.

If you would also like to save money on prescriptions, I noticed that there were some great prescription transfer coupons in this Sunday’s paper.

• Rite Aid – has a printable coupon for a $30 Rite Aid gift card for a prescription transfer. I believe you can only transfer (per person) once every 6 months to receive this. They also have a paper coupon in the Super Coupon Savings flyer from this Sunday’s paper.
• Walgreens – has a coupon in this Sunday’s flyer for a free $25 Walgreens gift card with any transferred prescription or click here for a printable coupon.
• KMart – has a coupon in this Sunday’s flyer for a free $10 KMart gift card with the purchase of a new or transferred prescription.
• Target – has a coupon in this Sunday’s flyer for a free $10 Target gift card with the purchase of any new or transferred prescription.

Over the summer, I had read several places where you can go to search for unclaimed property. I’d read it, and think that I always keep track of my money, so I wouldn’t have anything out there.

However, for some reason I did a search at MissingMoney.com. I actually did have some returned insurance premium that I had never claimed. I’m still not sure what exactly it was…maybe renter’s insurance refund from when I moved…and they couldn’t get my new address?? It was about $115, so a nice chunk of change .

The MissingMoney.com website is free to search and free to claim. It searches a national database, so you only have to search once for multiple states. Ladies, I would suggest that you search under both your married and maiden name, if you have both. You might be surprised what you will find. I know I was.

One way that I try to earn some extra money is by using Swagbucks. It’s basically a search engine (powered by Google and Ask.com) where you can search for anything on the web, but you earn Swagbucks while you’re searching. Once you get 45 Swagbucks, you can earn a $5 Amazon gift certificate. There are other rewards that you can earn, such as a Starbucks gift card, Target.com gift card, etc. Since it takes 45 Swagbucks to earn $5, each Swagbuck is worth about $0.11. If you need to search for something anyway, you might as well use Swagbucks and earn something .

Here are some things that I’ve learned from searching.

• You can earn between 1 and 5 Swagbucks when you do a search. I don’t believe that I’ve ever earned 4 or 5, but I have gotten 2 or 3 a couple of times before. 1 Swagbuck is the norm.
• You can earn Swagbucks multiple times per day. I think I’ve won twice per day at the most (but I’ve read of others winning up to 4-5 times per day). I usually can win once in the morning and once in the afternoon/evening. So, once you’ve won once in the morning, and you have another search engine that you can also use to earn money, you might want to switch to that and then come back to Swagbucks in the afternoon.
• You are also limited to up to 20 searches per day that are eligible for Swagbucks. So, once you’ve searched 20 times, you can switch to another search engine where you can earn some more prizes.
• Just a note…most of the gift cards are delivered electronically via e-mail…which is great for a company like Amazon. You can just load the gift amount as a balance in your account. But…you want to be aware of it for a company like Target, where you might not necessarily be shopping online.
• You can also earn Swagbucks by shopping through the site, but I have never done that. I would prefer to get money in my UPromise account or cash through Ebates instead.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve taken surveys with various companies in an effort to earn some extra money. I was pretty consistent in doing surveys for Harris Poll Interactive and Erewards (more on this one later…since it’s a great earner for Upromise money). However, I’ve now been reading up on many other survey companies. I’ll create a list of some of the survey companies that I like later, but I wanted to focus on Opinion Outpost for now.

I don’t know if I’m just in the target market that they’ve been looking for later, but I have qualified for 11 surveys since I signed up in late May, and earned about $39.70. Usually survey pay averages about $3 a survey, and they will send you a check in the mail as soon as you reach $5 in earnings. Of course, you don’t necessarily qualify for every survey, but if you don’t qualify, it doesn’t take much time to do the screening questions. Sometimes, they’ll even mail you a sample of the product they’re asking about for you to try.

Just as a note: they list the pay in points…10 points = $1.