Some people see Poshmark as a way to purge their closets and get some cash when selling some of their old clothes, while others use this platform as a full-time income generation stream. Flipping items is one of my favorite side hustles. I’ve been using Poshmark for three years. It’s one of my favorite platforms to sell clothing on. If you’ve been contemplating using Poshmark for either purpose but you’re not sure where to start, then this is the guide for you. Selling on Poshmark can be a very profitable venture, and I’ve written an article to make sure you know everything before you get started. Let’s get to it.
What is Poshmark?
In essence, Poshmark is a social marketplace. Founded in 2011, the platform has a reputation for connecting people while offering a straightforward and fun approach to buying and selling accessories, shoes, and clothes. As a buyer, Poshmark connects you to people who sell items you love and enables you to shop from them conveniently. On the other hand, if you have used or new fashion items to sell, Poshmark also connects you with millions of potential buyers.
What Kind of Items Can You Sell on Poshmark?
A few years back, Poshmark was a niche marketplace focused on female clothes, shoes, and luxury handbags. However, today, Poshmark features four listing categories – men, women, kids, and home. You may list items such as wall art, kitchen accessories, etc., in the home section, while the men, women, and kid’s area include listings such as clothes, pants, sweaters, and more.
Items that sell best on Poshmark are cheap or trendy or designer clothes. Items that are in demand sell faster on the platform. According to a recent report I read about Poshmark best-selling brands, Mother, Nike, Levi, and Kate spade came out on top. So, you might want to consider selling items within these spaces.
What Fees Does Poshmark Charge for Selling?
Firstly, Poshmark charges no upfront fee. This denotes that you can list your items on the platform and no charges until the item sells. The fees on Poshmark are straightforward: it withholds 20% of any item sold for over $15 and $2.95 for items below the $15 mark. Although this seems slightly higher than other platforms, I don’t have a problem with it at all.
What to Know About Poshmark Shipping?
Poshmark charges a flat rate of $7.11 for every shipping. Whenever someone orders an item and pays the required shipping fee, Poshmark sends you an email that contains a shipping label. Print the label, attach it to the package using tape or other adhesive materials, and take it to the post office. Although you can use USPS priority boxes for the packaging, a regular brown box should do the magic. Poshmark handles all the shipping costs, so you don’t have to go back and forth with customers about shipping fees. This alone, I believe, is a worthy reason to sell on Poshmark. If you’re a newbie when it comes to selling clothes online, Poshmark makes it easy for you.
Social features of Poshmark
Poshmark Listings Sharing
Sharing is arguably the most frequent way sellers’ buyers interact on Poshmark. Besides the commercial features of Poshmark, using this platform gives a social media feel. It allows you to interact with buyers by sharing yours as well as other listings multiple times daily. This act increases your chances of getting discovered by buyers, gets you more followers, and converts more prospects to buying clients. I recommend sharing items at least once per day. When I first started with Poshmark, I didn’t do much sharing or anything. One day I decide to get serious with it and started sharing other people’s listings. Doing that allowed me to get more followers and make more sales.
Posh Parties
This is an exciting feature that every beginner should leverage on Poshmark. The posh parties are virtual shopping parties that enable buyers to shop for specific items. They drive engagement and sales within the Poshmark space. It lets you showcase your items if they meet the party’s guidelines and themes as a seller. The theme may be as specific as a particular brand name or as generic as men’s fashion. For instance, someone may host an Adidas posh party, so you are to post only Adidas-related items on the space as a seller. These parties are very effective sales-driving strategies.
Payment and Protection
Poshmark protects its transactions with posh payments.” This feature covers the interests of both the buyers and the sellers. For buyers, it guarantees that they receive the exact version of the item they order. Once they confirm the item’s receipt by updating the information on the application, Poshmark releases the payment to the seller. This process takes about an average of three days after delivering the item. Poshmark releases funds to your individual Poshmark account, which you can then withdraw to your traditional bank account.
How to Sell on Poshmark
Selling an item on Poshmark is straightforward and easy to understand. You can either sell using your mobile phone or using their website. I will go over the steps below.
Download the Poshmark app
Your first step is to download and launch the Poshmark application. On launching the app, you can go ahead and set up your profile with the following steps.
Take Pictures
Use your mobile phone or any camera to take pictures of the items you intend to sell. Just like several other online eCommerce platforms, clear images are a given. You must ensure that the pictures you take have appropriate lighting and high quality from multiple angles. Poshmark permits up to 8 pictures for items.
Fill in Description and Titles
Represent your items with the best possible word descriptions without leaving any details out. Besides, ensure that your title is accurate and tally with the item you intend to list. Be completely honest – if there are some issues with the goods, ensure that you include that information while listing your goods. If someone is interested in an item, they will purchase it even with minor defects.
Check Relevant Boxes, Set Your Price, and List the Item
You must ensure that you tick every relevant box to select categories, sizes, and colors. On doing that, you can then go ahead and set your price. Then, list the item.
Share
As mentioned before, ensure that you constantly share your items – at least once daily, depending on how much you want to sell. If you’re going to sell more, increase your sharing frequency.
Once someone buys your item, Poshmark sends a shipping label to you via mail. Print this document, tape it to the package, and take it to the nearest post office for shipping. The buyer has up to 3 days to confirm the receipt of their purchases. Failure to do so within this period will make Poshmark mark the item as received automatically.
That’s it. You’re done. By following this guide, I am confident that you’ll start making enough cash from Poshmark as soon as possible. I don’t sell the most clothes online, but for many months Poshmark is the second-best online selling platform for me. Make sure that you check it out and get started!
Jason Butler is the owner of My Money Chronicles, a website where he discusses personal finance, side hustles, travel, and more. He graduated from Savannah State University with his BA in Marketing. Jason has been featured in Forbes, Discover, and Investopedia.
Facebook is the largest social network on the planet. While this feels like a generic statement, take a moment to visualize 2.4 billion people on the plant spending anywhere from 5 minutes to the average 145 minutes on social media. Facebook is an $826 Billion empire, but it’s also an opportunity for anyone to leverage their audience and make money. Let’s look at how to make money on Facebook and 14 ways people are doing it.
How To Make Money on Facebook in Innovative Ways
No reason to bury the lead. Here are the more unique ways on how to make money on Facebook. As we go down this list, we’ll start with the most interesting money-making ideas and end with the more obvious.
1. Create & Sell Facebook Messenger Chatbots
As businesses use Facebook more and more to engage with their audiences, they’re finding direct messaging to be the most personable. However, unless you’re a large company, most businesses lack the staffing to respond timely. This pain point has resulted in the rise of Facebook Messenger Chatbots.
Suppose you’ve yet to encounter a chatbot or unfamiliar with the concept. Chatbots use Facebook’s direct messenger platform to provide automated responses to a customer’s questions, allow direct purchases, and more. Most questions are 90% of the same inquiries, so why not automate the response? This chatbot technology used to be for multi-million dollar companies. Yet as the technology has advanced and becomes more user-friendly, it’s now available to anyone to build without knowing how to code.
Companies like ManyChat or Falcon let you set up chatbots in less than 30 minutes. It’s something easy to do, but many businesses don’t have the know-how. This problem creates an opportunity to pay big money for someone to build chatbots for them. Consider using a service like ManyChat or Falcon with their pricing structure of around $110/mo and then charging your client $200/mo and pocket the difference?
2. Find Popular Social Media Memes and Turn Them Into Swag
Suppose you’re someone who regularly scrolls through Facebook, finding the funniest daily memes. Consider using your expertise to identify the best memes/jokes/news and creating a graphic to sell on mugs, shirts, art, and more.
Websites like Teespring, Society 6, and even Merch by Amazon allow you to easily create fun graphics and add them to shirts, mugs, and more! Some sites have all the design tools integrated; others ask you to upload an image. All you have to do is create a design and direct people to your products. These companies will display what your designs appear like on different products, handle payments, handle shipping, and send you monthly profits. On a $15 shirt, you can make around $7. After a while, these add up while these services handle everything for you.
3. Create & Host Events on Facebook Events Tool
Bloggers, Influencers, and more regularly use Teachable, Udemy, and more to sell online courses and host events for their audiences. Instead of those platforms costing you to play middle-man, let Facebook Events host instead. With Facebook, you can create an event for your audience, send them regular updates, take payments and even host the event through Facebook.
Facebook manages the entire process essentially for free (minus their transaction fees). Yet, you control the whole process. So if you have any skill you want to teach or course to share with your friends, it would help if you considered monetizing it through Facebook’s Event Hosting Tools.
4. Find A New Job on Facebook
Getting a new job feels obvious, but Facebook has expanded its job portal extensively over the last couple of years. Facebook is hoping to compete with Craigslist and Indeed on job postings connected to each company’s Facebook Business Accounts. While this won’t necessarily be a side-hustle to make extra money on Facebook, a new job can make you more money. Check out Facebook’s Jobs Page to see the type of opportunities available on their job board.
5. Join a Sweepstakes Facebook Group and Enter in Bulk
There are thousands of sweepstakes starting daily. While these are randomized for the winners, it’s super easy to play.
All groups of people subscribe to Facebook Groups centered around sweepstakes and enter new games daily. When all you have to submit is an email address, there isn’t much to lose. You can either create a new free Gmail account or use an app like Unroll. me to unsubscribe from any mailing lists you’re inevitably joining.
Sweepstakes may not sound like a guaranteed way to make money, but it’s fun. The more competitions you enter, the more often you are to win. Most sweepstakes offer between $250 – $500 per game. The benefit of a sweepstakes Facebook Group is that you’ll be aware every time a new sweepstake is published.
Part-Time Jobs Centered Around Facebook
Facebook is like a mini digital world, and if you’re good at navigating the social network, you can create tremendous job opportunities for yourself. Many companies/startups/influencers feel they need to be active on Facebook 24/7 and often pay people to help them out in different ways.
6. Market Yourself As A Social Media Manager
If you’re already intimately familiar with Facebook and used to regularly posting fun content, why not consider becoming a Social Media Manager for a company, blogger, or influencer? Social Media Managers seem like an easy gig. Still, it’s a highly sought-after position as many businesses understand they need to regularly engage with their social media audiences but lack the staff and experience to create quality content.
This position typically involves creating exciting content by posts 2-3 times a day, engaging with comments, and regularly creating a positive brand buzz.
While there is a high demand for social media managers, the salary is a bit all over the board. Glassdoor maintains the average Social Media Manager salary of around $38,000 to $72,000 annually. However, even this differs based on how a company values social media. We’ve seen part-time social media managers make as little as $5 to add a couple of social media posts to $150,000 annually for companies that actively use social media to promote their brand. Considering the high rise and adoption of social media, we see this position continually increasing in need and value.
7. How To Make Money on Facebook as a Group Moderator
These aren’t people hired by Facebook to moderate content against the company guidelines, but those hired to manage Facebook Groups.
There is massive money in Facebook Groups. These are private groups that focus on anything from car maintenance to cat lovers. Facebook Groups become a forum for people to collaborate and share like-minded information.
Currently, there are 1.8 billion Facebook Groups with audiences ranging from 2 users to millions. There is a Facebook Group called “HAIRSTYLES” that boasts 6.8 million members alone. What makes these groups successful is removing unrelated/dumb comments and maintaining regular positive engagement using great Facebook Group Moderators. Facebook Group Moderators keep the conversation going and maintains the integrity of the groups.
Often the moderators are the administrators who started the group, but sometimes, they are part-time help. These positions are paid by the group’s administers, typically from the revenue generated from sponsored posts. The pay is generally around $5/hr to $20/hr and widely depends on the size and income of the Facebook Group. These positions aren’t advertised but often offered to members highly active in each Facebook Group.
8. Manage Facebook Ads
Facebook is the world’s largest social media network and not-so-secretly the world’s largest advertising network. Users regularly submit personal information and show Facebook precisely their interests. This information is pure gold for advertising companies looking to target their ideal audience.
While multi-million dollar companies use this regularly, Facebook also allows small businesses to tap their deep user information pool. Yet, many small businesses don’t have an understanding of how the Facebook Advertising ecosystem works. They need experts to run campaigns for them and want to see how their campaign is working. Running advertising campaigns is where the growing career of Facebook Ad Managers comes in.
Facebook makes it easy for anyone to become a Facebook Ad Manager. Plus, there are tons of courses on how to run ads successfully. These courses are available to anyone to learn. Once you pick up the basics, you can start tons of ad campaigns for small businesses. The salary for this position ranges from $50,000 to $80,000, according to salary.com. As your own boss, you can make even more.
9. Facebook Content Creator
Let’s not skip past the many content creators/influencers who make loads of money on Facebook. These are people who build large followings on the social network and regularly produce content for their audiences. These are people like Logan Paul (12,800,000 page likes) and Eh Bee (10,300,000 page likes), who rake in millions of dollars through their engaging videos and posts.
Anyone can become a content creator as it requires zero experience. Here are the ways content creators make money on Facebook.
Videos – Facebook allows you to run ads on videos you upload to Facebook, and those ads will generate a nice amount of income. What’s nice about Facebook is that the ads aren’t usually till the middle of the post, unlike the beginning ads of YouTube. According to these ways to make money, you can make around $7 for every 1,000 views.
Sponsored Posts – These usually involve companies partnering with influencers to showcase a particular product with the influencer. Think about influencers pictured with Bose Headphones and the caption “I love these new Bose Headphones.” While it may be true, those influencers are getting paid for the endorsement. You can make around $5 for every 1,000 followers you have for a sponsored post.
Fan Subscriptions – Following in the footsteps of Patreon, Facebook has launched Fan Subscriptions where audience members can pay a monthly subscription to access exclusive content by their favorite influencers. Yes, Facebook will take 30%, but recurring monthly revenue ads up!
How To Make Money on Facebook Marketplace
The Facebook Marketplace has grown dramatically in recent years. It’s best comparable to Craigslist, where users can buy and sell their stuff. Of course, the platform has grown large enough for companies to sell their products here, but it’s still primarily for individual users.
10. Sell Old Items on the Facebook Marketplace
If you’ve ever sold something on eBay or Craigslist, this is the same. To sell something on the Facebook Marketplace, all you need is some lovely photos of the item, a detailed description, and an enticing price. Most of the items sold on the Facebook Marketplace range from free to $200. You’re also responsible meet with the prospective customer or handle shipping, so be sure to include your time in the price you set.
11. Re-Sell Items on the Facebook Marketplace You Bought Elsewhere for Cheaper
Re-selling has always been big on Amazon but continues to bleed into Craigslist, eBay, and now the Facebook Marketplace. People find an item on sale at Walmart (really any place), purchase it, and immediately list it online for a higher price to pocket the difference.
Typically highly in-demand items do great for re-selling, such as the new PlayStation or products usually out-of-stock in most places. Otherwise, if you find a terrific deal on an in-demand product, consider re-selling as a way to make a little extra money. If you want to make this a full-time job, you’ll have to establish a highly efficient process to make it worth your while.
Send Traffic To Your Website/Sales Page
There are a few profitable ways to make money on Facebook, but the most common way people make money from Facebook is by sending those 2.4 billion people from Facebook to their website or sales page. If you don’t have a website, it’s easy to start a blog and immediately monetize it.
12. Share Links in Facebook Groups To Your Site/Services
If you’ve ever been a part of a Facebook Group, you’ve inevitably seen several posts that point to links to someone’s site or services. These are common strategies. Sometimes they work; sometimes, the post is irrelevant, a group moderator will immediately reject the post when you want to post links in a Facebook Group.
Moderators will sometimes accept posts if you’ve already established yourself as a helpful member of the group and your post/link is relevant to the topic of the group. Please know that it has been increasingly challenging to get links in Facebook Groups, so you need to be compelling. If successful, you can add links to your website where users can purchase goods or increase your website ad revenue.
Alternatively – You can use affiliate links to send Facebook Group traffic to a company’s affiliate page, where you can earn a commission if any users make a purchase. Here is a list of the best affiliate programs.
13. Share Links on your Facebook Business & Personal Profile Page To Your Site/Services
It’s infinitely easier to post links to your website or services on your own Facebook Business Page and Personal Profile page. While you won’t likely have as many followers as a Facebook Group, you will have more control of the content and message. Anyone who clicks on your links can travel to your website, where you can monetize their engagement.
Alternatively – You can use affiliate links to send traffic from your Facebook Business Page or Personal Profile Page to a company’s affiliate page. You’ll earn a commission if anyone makes a purchase. If you want to know what that looks like, here are 50 Amazon Affiliate Website Examples that utilize social media to bring people to their money-making sites.
14. Purchase Facebook Ads
We’ve mentioned Facebook Ads earlier, but rather than working for someone else. Consider learning Facebook Ads to help send traffic to your website or company affiliate program. List articles like 37 Fun Facts About Money do exceptionally well. Many companies do this to make more money when people come to their website than their Facebook ads cost.
Consider a Facebook Ad Campaign costs a company $1,000 a month, but the people that click on those ads generate $2,000 a month in revenue. That Facebook Ad Campaign has a profit of $1,000 every month!
You can make a significant amount of money utilizing the highly customizable Facebook Ad platform. These can be for your products, services, or even a simple landing page for affiliate programs to earn an affiliate commission.
This article originally appeared on Your Money Geek and has been republished with permission.
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Are you looking for a new way to make money online? Do you also want to turn your love for video games into a profitable side hustle? Let’s understand how much do twitch streamers make before you begin.
If getting paid to play your favorite games sounds like a dream, you should consider starting a Twitch stream. Of course, before embarking on any new online venture, you need to ask the important questions: Is it lucrative? How much do Twitch streamers make, and is it worth your time to become one?
To answer these questions, we have to start with the basics. Here is everything you need to know about what Twitch is and how streamers make money with the platform.
What is Twitch?
Twitch is an online platform dedicated to live streaming. It began as Justin.tv in 2007 as a way to let anyone broadcast content online. Gaming quickly became one of the top categories for both viewers and creators, so in 2011 the category was separated from the original platform and rebranded as Twitch. In 2014, the original Justin.tv shut down, and the Twitch portion was sold to Amazon.
Although most users are still gamers, the platform has expanded to include an array of content creators. You can find artists, fitness enthusiasts, computer builders, and a wide variety of niche entertainers live streaming their content on the platform. The possibilities are endless.
Streaming on Twitch is a popular and rapidly growing side hustle. The number of Twitch users doubled during the pandemic, with people turning to online work for both an outlet and a way to make extra money from home.
How Do You Make Money as a Twitch Streamer?
To start making money on Twitch, you first need to get your stream set up and organized, and then you need to work towards becoming a Twitch Affiliate.
To achieve this, you need to stream for at least 500 minutes on 7 unique broadcast days in the last thirty days, have at least fifty followers, and maintain an average of three concurrent viewers over the thirty-day period. This sounds easyenough, but it’s more complicated than it seems to get three or more people to watch your stream regularly. There are some tricks to it, and if you work hard at it, you can become a Twitch affiliate in less than thirty days.
How Much Do Twitch Streamers Make?
Once you achieve affiliate status, you can start earning money by playing your favorite video games. There are four main ways that affiliates make money: subscriptions, cheering, affiliate marketing, and ads.
Subscriptions
Most Twitch Affiliates first start earning money with subscriptions, commonly called subs. Subs are a way for fans to show support and appreciation. There are three subscription levels, and streamers make different amounts of money based on what tier someone subscribed with.
Tier 1 – $4.99
Tier 2- $9.99
Tier 3 – $24.99
The revenue is split with Twitch, so streamers will only make half of each sub’s subscription cost (i.e., $2.5 for every tier 1 subscription). Most fans only subscribe at the tier 1 level, so most streamers make about $2.5 per subscription. If you only get tier 1 subscribers, you would need approximately 425 subs per month to be above the Federal Poverty Level. According to Twitch Tracker, only a little over 120 streamers meet that criteria. It’s important to note that Twitch Tracker is flawed, as only streamers who have volunteered to disclose their statistics are featured. However, it’s the only source of data available.
One cool thing about subs is that all Amazon Prime users get one free subscription per month with their Amazon Prime membership. If you are a new affiliate, you can probably get some family members and friends to subscribe to you with their free Prime sub. That’s the easiest way to start making money on the platform.
Cheering and Bits
Cheering is another easy and popular way to earn money on Twitch. Fans can buy bits, Twitch’s virtual currency, and then “cheer” with them when their favorite streamer does something complex or entertaining. Bits are only worth a penny apiece (though it costs more than that to purchase them, as Amazon takes about 20%), and most fans cheer in 100-bit increments – though that’s not a requirement. Fans can cheer as little or as many bits as they’d like.
Twitch streamers can also monetize with bits by adding extensions to their stream that allow viewers to pay for a particular action to happen. Most of the extensions will play a specific sound or make something pop up on the screen. Each streamer controls how much each action costs and usually sets them between 50 and 100 bits.
Ads
One way that Twitch Streamers can make a paltry amount of money is through ads. Once a streamer reaches affiliate status, a pre-roll ad will automatically start playing when new viewers check out the channel. Twitch shares the ad revenue with the streamer, but unfortunately, if you don’t have many viewers, it will be so low that it’s almost negligible.
After doing the math based on my own streams and revenue, I determined that most Twitch Affiliates earn about one cent per average viewer. New affiliates who only get between three and ten average viewers per stream will only make between three and ten cents in ad revenue per stream.
However, as your average viewership increases, your share of ad revenue will increase as well. Streamers who can draw fifty or more average viewers can make 2-3 cents per viewer, and streamers who draw huge crowds can make even more. Even so, ads are not the primary source of income for most streamers.
Affiliate Marketing
A final way that Twitch Streamers make money is through affiliate marketing. Once you become an affiliate, you gain exclusive access to Amazon’s Blacksmith program, which is really just the gamer’s version of the Amazon Affiliate program. The advantage to joining the Blacksmith program is that you earn higher commissions on certain items, and you don’t get kicked out after three months without a sale.
With the Amazon Blacksmith program, you can set up an extension that adds your affiliate links directly to your stream. If viewers click those links and make a purchase, the streamer will earn a small commission.
Affiliate marketing is not limited to the Amazon Blacksmith program. There are various affiliate programs designed specifically for streamers; and others that lend themselves to streaming. Streamers can drop an affiliate link in the stream chat, in a panel, or even in their discord server.
Although it’s possible to make money via affiliate marketing as a small streamer, it’s not likely to be a top income source. To earn money with this method, you need to attract viewers, and those viewers need to click your links to purchase an item. If you are only attracting a handful of viewers each stream, the odds that one will click your link and make a purchase are incredibly low.
How Much Do Streamers Make with These Methods?
Even with all of these monetization methods, the harsh reality is that most streamers won’t make a lot of money. Small streamers may get a handful of subs and a few cheers, but they won’t make enough to quit their day jobs. Although there is no solid data on how much Twitch Streamers make, the reality is that most don’t make a lot. Many streamers don’t even make enough money each month to reach the payout threshold of $100.
The streamers you hear about making millions of dollars, like Ninja (here’s Ninja’s Net Worth) and Disguised Toast, graduated from Twitch Affiliate to Twitch Partner.
What is a Twitch Partner?
A Twitch Partner is a streamer who can draw an audience. Partners have contracts with Twitch that give them exclusive access to various tools, including more emotes, priority support, and access to special promotional opportunities to help grow their channel.
To apply for the Partner Program, you need to stream for 25 hours on 12 different days and reach an average of 75 viewers during the last 30 days. Unlike an affiliate, a partnership is not guaranteed. Twitch manually reviews all applications to its Partner Program to decides whether the applicant is a good fit. Many streamers have to apply numerous times before they get accepted. Twitch doesn’t offer any further clues about what they are looking for in Partners outside of saying they want streamers who will be role models for the community.
According to Twitch Tracker, there are about 46000 Twitch Partners. That means less than 1% of all streamers have reached partner status, where streaming on Twitch becomes profitable.
How Much Do Twitch Partners Make?
Twitch Partners make money in much the same way as affiliates, with subscriptions, ads, cheers, and affiliate marketing. However, as they have far more average viewers per stream, they tend to make a lot more money on these four methods.
There’s also one additional way that Twitch Partners make money, and that’s through sponsorships.
Sponsorship
Sponsorship is when a brand pays an influencer to promote their product. As Twitch Partners can draw a large audience, brands like to pay them to use their items and sell them to their viewers. Some Twitch Partners have been sponsored by gaming companies, clothing companies, chair companies, and various other industries. Top streamers make the majority of their income via sponsorship deals.
Although it is possible that you can score a sponsorship opportunity before becoming a Partner, it’s not likely. Please be careful of any company that claims to offer a sponsorship but makes you pay for the product in advance. In that case, you are not a partner, you are a customer, and the business is preying on your desire for brand sponsorships to sell you their products. Please don’t let them take advantage of you.
How Do Twitch Streamers Get Paid?
Twitch affiliates get paid the month after they reach the $100 payment threshold. If you reach $100 in your account during May, the payment won’t be processed until the 15th of June. It generally takes 3-5 business days to process, so you should receive the payment around the 20th of June. The payment will cover all of the money you earned in May as well.
Unique Ways to Make Money as a Streamer
Although most Twitch streamers make money via the methods addressed above, they aren’t the only ways to make money. There are a variety of ways to make money online using your Twitch stream as a marketing tool.
Donations
Donations are the easiest way for non-affiliated streamers to start making money. All you need is a free Streamlabs account and a PayPal account. Streamlabs has a menu that allows you to configure your PayPal information securely. Once you have that setup, you need to add a link to it in one of your Twitch panels. Viewers can then click on the link and send money to you directly via Paypal.
Keep in mind that although the setup is easy, getting people to donate to you is not. As a small streamer, it won’t be easy to convince a few viewers to donate. However, difficult doesn’t mean impossible, and if you are creative, you can find ways to entice viewers to donate.
Discord
Some streamers make money by monetizing their discord servers. Many who go this route offer access to the general discord for free and lock specific channels so that only those who pay can view them. These locked channels may offer exclusive access to content in a popular streamer’s discord or additional partnership and collaboration opportunities in a stream growth discord. Others don’t offer any free access and make users pay for a general invite. They may even offer tiers so that higher-paying members can access more content.
Others may monetize their discord servers with affiliate marketing and merchandising. Instead of having people pay to join, they draw their Twitch viewers. Then use the server as a sales funnel for their products.
It’s not easy to monetize a Discord server. It can be challenging to grow the server to a point where people would want to pay to access it. However, for those who don’t want to rely solely on Twitch for income, it can be worth the effort.
Merchandising
A lot of gamers create branded merchandise and use Twitch to promote these items. Gamers may create merchandise with their catchphrases, emotes, or logos on them. Although some create the products themselves, most utilize print-on-demand platforms to handle sales and delivery. A site like Teepublic is perfect for making an online store to display and sell your gaming merchandise.
Other streamers use Twitch as a way to advertise their freelance services. Graphic designers, crafters, and artists of all types broadcast their creative process to promote their online business. Users who show interest in the work can pay for commissions on platforms such as Fiverr.
Youtube
It’s weird to say that Twitch streamers monetize via YouTube, as the two platforms are technically competitors. However, many streamers use both. Although it’s against Twitch’s terms of service to live stream to both platforms simultaneously, you can upload content to YouTube that you streamed on Twitch after 24 hours. Many streamers use Twitch for a live platform, then edit and upload the videos to their YouTube channel. This allows them to monetize both platforms and lets them reach a larger audience.
How Much Do Twitch Streamers Make?
Showcasing all these methods of making money online with Twitch is to answer the big question. How much do Twitch streamers make? And clearly, the answer is that it varies wildly. There are so many money-making opportunities on the platform that it’s impossible to say how much streamers make average.
However, one constant and important thing to remember about streaming on Twitch is that you will not make money quickly. It is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Many gamers decide that they want to turn their hobbies into a side business and think they will earn a lot of money immediately if they plug and play. That’s not the case. If your primary goal is to earn extra cash in your spare time, streaming probably isn’t the best option. Instead, it would help if you looked into side gigs like pet-sitting, driving for Lyft, completing chores with TaskRabbit, or freelancing with Upwork. These side hustles are great ways to make extra money quickly.
Streaming is not an easy way to make money. It can be extremely profitable, but you need to put in a lot of upfront work to start earning any money. However, if you are a passionate gamer and serious about building a community, it’s a gratifying undertaking.
This article originally appeared on Your Money Geek and has been republished with permission.
This is easily one of the most creative ways to earn extra money if you have the opportunity. I did this in college and will go over everything from how I signed up to be an extra, how it went, and as the headline suggests, how I made $80 a day being a movie extra.
Movie Extras Are The Non-Speaking Background People In Movies
This is not a guide on how to become a movie star, I have no idea how to become the next Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts. I’m strictly focusing on how to become one of the non-speaking people in the background of a movie because all those “normal” people in movies are all paid to be there. These people are called movie extras. Their job is typical to be the “normal” people in the background of movies.
How I Stumbled Into Becoming A Movie Extra
During the fall/summer of 2009, I worked as an intern in a Landscape Architecture firm in Des Moines, Iowa (don’t pronounce the “s”). This was the year Iowa had a number of tax advantages for movie companies and many of those companies made their way from Hollywood to Iowa to shoot big-budget movies.
My design firm was located on the second floor of a build with vacant space on the first floor that a casting company set up temporary shop. It wasn’t a grand Hollywood looking renovation, but rather a modest set up where you could tell they were only in Iowa for the tax reasons. Yet still professional. Don’t think creepy abandoned building.
It was a big deal in my office that this casting company opened up shop, so about 5 of us during lunch went downstairs and checked it out. The casting company was super friendly and asked if we’d want to submit our info for potential projects. We were like giddy schoolgirls thinking this was our chance to become famous, of course, we said yes.
Signing Up To Be A Movie Extra Was Easy
Now since then, I’ve heard people spending hundreds of dollars on headshots and all that. For me, it didn’t cost us anything. It was a quick 15 min process where we filled out some forms that were primarily about our physical descriptions “height, weight, hair color, eye color, etc.”. Afterward, they took a couple photos “headshot/body shot”. Just our regular look/style, no Zoolander Blue Steel or anything.
My First Project (aka Movie)
About a month after we all signed up, I got a call on my cell phone. Mind you, this was a month of hearing nothing, so the call was unexpected. I guess this is the way it goes. You sign up and wait.
The call was brief and happened a while ago, but this was roughly how it went.
Casting Agency: “Hey Andrew, this the Casting Agency (I don’t remember the name), we were going over headshots with the director of a new movie and we liked your look. Would you be available to be an extra, a non-speaking role, on May XX (don’t remember this date)?
Me: “Oh Hey! That’s cool! What movie is it?”
Casting Agency: “It’s called “The Experiment” with Adrien Brody about the Stanford prison experiment. You know about regular people taking on the roles of prisoners and guards for a psychological experiment. We’re shooting a scene at a café, it will be an all-day shoot and we’ll pay you $80 for the day. Are you available?”
Me: In my mind, I’m thinking HOLY MOLY I’m going to be hanging out with Adrien Brody, this is awesome. Yet I played it cool. “Yea I can be there”.
How Being A Movie Extra Actually Goes
It was easy to spot the café where I needed to go. It was an upscale coffee shop in the middle of a nice strip mall in an up and coming part of Des Moines. I recognized it right away because it was surrounded by large trucks lugging movie equipment and barriers that stopped people from going anywhere near the coffee shop. Needless to say, this coffee shop wasn’t getting any actual customers, it was completely rented out and filled with silent movie extras already inside miming fake conversations to look “normal”.
Apparently, a trick with experienced movie extra actors, those who get there extra early to get the best parts closest to the action. I didn’t know this.
After I parked, I walked up to the café but was sent around to the back alley where the cast/crew area was set up. It was there I met about 10 other extras who were eagerly waiting to be told what to do.
Waiting was the keyword because the life of a movie extra is primarily waiting around all day.
The first 4 hours of the day were the crew setting up the café, checking the lighting, and running through the scene without actually filming. As the “additional” movie extras, we waited patiently for someone to tell us what to do and tried to catch glimpses of the café whenever the alley door opened. Some people (who’ve done this before) brought books, but most of us gossiped about what was going and sharing stories of other movies they’ve been in.
As An Extra, I Only Did One Thing All Day
About 5 hours in, the assistant director asked for some people. My hand shot up instantly. I was dying of boredom. I didn’t know what needed to happen but anything was better than sitting.
My job was to walk in the background outside the cafe so there was normal movement outside the window. In a straight line, I had to walk 20 feet. That was my moment of movie glory!
To give you a mental description. The scene was a mental flashback of the main character in this coffee shop. So while you would see the hero in the coffee shop talking, surrounded by “normal” looking movie extras in the coffee shop. There was a view of the window looking outside, probably in the corner of the shot. That was me, I was one of 6 people walking on the sidewalk past the coffee shop to make the outside look “normal”.
I sat 5 hours, to do a 5-second walk outside a coffee shop window in the background of the background of the actual café scene.
After I did my walk, well a couple of times for a couple of takes and after the assistant director told me how to make my walk look casual. I was done and went back to the alley.
The only other activity came at the end of 7 hours when they were packing up to do a night club scene. They asked for volunteers who wanted to join and while I offered (along with everyone else), I was the 7th person when they only needed 6.
That was the end of my acting career. The moral of the story, movie extras need to show up early and act fast to get in the good scenes.
Remember Your Scene May Get Cut, Mine Did
If you ever watch movie commentary, some actors remember doing some of their best work in scenes that never made it into the final movie. Well, I bought the 2010 “The Experiment” movie online, even though you don’t really own the digital movies you buy. I recognized numerous Iowa qualities, but my coffee shop scene never made it into the movie. Yet I still got paid.
They Handed Me A Check for $80 That Day
I remember when they were packing up that day. I asked if they needed anything else. They were super nice, but said no and handed me a check for $80. That was it! However because I showed up and was there if they needed me, I got paid.
If You Want to Try Being A Movie Extra, Here’s What To Do
Many elements of my story are pure luck, but don’t let that deter you from trying. Check websites of professional (non-sketchy) casting agencies in your area. They’re most likely in larger cities. Ask them point-blank that you’re interested in being a movie extra and what you need to do. I’m not sure it’ll be as easy as taking your photo and done, but each casting agency will let you know.
Once you’re in their database, you’ll be on their list for a while and will never know when or if they’ll call. Each new movie may be looking for something different or something you uniquely have. There is no way of knowing.
In fact, I received a call from the same casting company 4 years later having never spoken to them since. They called in 2013 after I started my job in Denver and asked if I could be in LA in a week. I immediately thought about how random it was but kindly responded no. In hindsight, maybe I should have tried it, but either way, it’s a unique way to make money and a fun experience.
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
I’m not going to downplay it, being an Amazon Affiliate is great! It allows you to share products and every time someone purchases a product from your link, you earn a commission. So we’ll give you a step-by-step guide into how to become an Amazon Affiliate. We know how because we already set it up for ourselves!
Benefits of Being An Amazon Affiliate
We became an Amazon Affiliate to earn a commission on the Amazon products we were already linking on our website. Afterward, we started to earn real money that has totaled nearly $500 so far from our affiliate sales!
That’s just us starting off! It’s nowhere near what other sites are making with their affiliate sales.
Websites like ThisIsWhyImBroke.com, an Amazon Affiliate example on our 50 Successful Amazon Affiliate Examples list were making $50,000 a month from affiliate sales! It’s now likely a lot more as they’ve only gotten larger.
In 2015 the websites The Wirecutter and The Sweet Homemade a combined $1.5 Million in e-commerce sales. There is a lot of potential here!
You Need A Website
Amazon doesn’t want you to add Amazon product links in social media accounts or in email links. They want their links to be a natural part of your website, so you NEED a website.
Not a third-party platform like blogger or anything. Those third-party sites have their own rules that restrict how you can use your own content. Plus they will plaster your website with ads to generate themselves money off your own content. You should have your own website you control.
Luckily setting up a website nowadays is incredibly easy, cheap and still remains one of the best ways to make extra money for you. Our guide to Starting Your Own WordPress Blog/Website was built for people wanting to make extra money blogging.
Our recommendation is to start your website/blog sooner rather than later (here are 106 website ideas). The longer your blog exists, the more preferred treatment it’ll receive from Google as an established blog.
How To Become An Amazon Affiliate – Approval Process
The approval process on how to become an amazon affiliate is pretty straight forward, which they call “Amazon Associates”. We’ll run through the sign-up form to give you an idea of what it looks like!
CLICK SIGN UP
First, go to the Amazon Associate Homepage and click “Sign Up”. You’ll be asked to either sign in with your existing account (that’s what we did) or Create An Account.
For us, as an existing Amazon member, I used my same account. No information crossed over, they just use your account to identify you.
ACCOUNT INFORMATION
This asks for general information about you or your business. It’s your name, address, and telephone number.
Basically, Amazon Associates isn’t available in every country, so they want to begin by verifying your location is in an approved area.
WEBSITE AND MOBILE APP LIST
Amazon would like to know which website is yours. This is where you enter your website name. They’ll review your site to verify the content matches their guidelines. Add them here (yes, you can have multiple websites under your Amazon Associates account).
When you enter a website, they will ask you to confirm that none of your websites are geared toward children under 13. You will not be eligible to display banners, widgets, special links, or other ads from Amazon Associates if your site has a kid focus (cartoons, kid toys, etc.).
PROFILE
This is where you tell Amazon a little more about your website. You’ll provide a website description, what type of items you’re planning on promoting, how you currently drive traffic to your site, and how you currently market and monetize your website.
You’ll end with “You Agree to the Terms and Conditions of the Associate’s Program Operating Agreement“. We linked to it here in case you want to read it beforehand.
They want to know you’re a legit company and how you plan to use their affiliate program. This is all understandable.
If you’re wondering about that first question “What is your preferred Associates Store ID”. All your affiliate links will have a unique identifier in them to identify you. These are typically the name of your business in some variation. Depending on what you enter.
Here is what our unique Associate’s Store ID looks like. This is displayed in the URL anytime you click on an Amazon link from a website associated with Amazon Associates.
START USING ASSOCIATES CENTRAL
That’s it! You can start right away while they are reviewing your application.You may notice they added some numbers or changed your Associates Store ID slightly. This is just because it has to be unique.You can enter your payment and tax information at this point, or wait till after you made a couple of sales. You want to try to make some sales soon though. They state that if you don’t make a sale in 180 days, they’ll deactivate your account and you’ll have to reactivate it. Honestly, though, it’s not that difficult to reactivate your Amazon Associates account.
It’s really nice that they let you start right away! The process on how to become an Amazon Affiliate is really easy.
Now Explore & Create Some Links
At this point you have access to the entire Amazon Associates interface, so let’s give you a quick peek to what this looks like.
On the main dashboard the most important metric is the “Earnings Overview” this graph represents how many times people have clicked on your links and the commissions you’ve earned so far.
In the graph above you can see there are an average 10 Amazon Associate links clicked on every day, but no affiliate sales in the last 30 days. It happens…
Fastest Way to create an Amazon Affiliate Link.
While the Amazon Associates interface has some nice tools, it’s not the quickest way to create Amazon Links for your affiliate account. The quickest way to build an affiliate link is while you sign in to your Amazon Associates account, go directly to the product page you want.
You’ll notice a new thin toolbar at the top of your Amazon product pages. Amazon SiteStripe is a mini toolbar that’s easy and excellent at creating affiliate links for your Amazon Associates Account.
You may notice that I circled some of the gibberish in the URL.
This is the item number, the unique identifier Amazon uses to identify its products. Typically when you go to an Amazon product page, you’ll see a really long URL. That’s basically all useless. You can delete all that extra stuff after the item number and it’ll be the same page. Removing all that extra stuff is a clean way to build your Amazon links.
That’s it for how to become an Amazon Affiliate, you have a link you can add to your site and start making money!
Careful, Your Amazon Affiliate Will Be Deactivated If…
Amazon is known to deactivate accounts without warning and making it terribly difficult to reactivate your account. To avoid this, follow these well-known rules of the Amazon Associates program.
Don’t use your own affiliate links to make personal purchases
Don’t use affiliate links in emails, social media, eBooks, or anything except your personal website or YouTube channel.
Avoid using any kind of link shortening like Bitly. Amazon links can be long and that’s ok. Amazon has its own link shortener service like in the image above. It works great!
Simply don’t ask people to click your links to support you or offer incentives for clicking your links.
You can’t use Amazon’s trademark. You may be working with them but you do not have permission.
Amazon is constantly adjusting their price so if your website doesn’t include the latest price. It’s considered false advertising and breaks their terms of service. It’s safer to avoid mentioning the price altogether.
We can all admit that the Amazon Associates program has many rules so be careful. We’ve personally found it best to play it safe and only add Amazon Associates text links to our blog.
How Successful Bloggers Make The Most Money With Amazon
We’ve been fortunate to collaborate with many successful bloggers with Amazon Associates accounts. While most of their success involves building a great website, we’ll share some of the great tips they’ve offered.
From Day 1 Build An Email List – As a website owner, your email list is the most valuable thing you own because you can notify your readers about new posts. Unlike social media which will limit your announcements, email lists reach your entire audience.
Most bloggers use ConvertKit as their email service, it’s made for bloggers and incredibly easy to use. This will give you the tools to add email signups on your website, manage all your email subscribers and let you send out creative emails to your audience. Use this ConvertKit Referral Code to use the service for free until you exceed 1,000 email subscribers.
Create Posts People Are Already Searching For – Before you spend hours writing 20 blog posts, find out what people are currently searching for on Google. There are tools like SEMrush that let you type in your blog idea keywords like “Southern Wyoming Fly Fishing” and it’ll return with how many people search for that term on the internet every month and the number of other articles on the subject.
The trick is to find popular keywords that have low competition. Use this referral for a free trial of SEMrush to discover the perfect keywords for some future blog post ideas. This will help you build popular posts, which attract more people and more people equals more affiliate revenue.
Promote Great Posts – Sometimes you put in a lot of work for a great post with some perfect affiliate links but no one visits your site. Consider some of the many great and cheap promotion opportunities on Fiverr. It’s a hub of SEO specialists, social media promoters, and copywriting gurus who will help you out for as little as $5.
Good Luck Future Amazon Associates!
Affiliate Marketing continues to be one of the best ways to make money. Yet, Amazon is only one popular affiliate program, here are the 108 best affiliate programs to consider when building your website. There is no limit to the number of programs you can join.
Glad this gave you a little insight into how to become an Amazon Affiliate! Please share this page with your friends who you think should join the Amazon Associates program and sign-up for our email list below for future updates to the program!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Teespring Review: Make Money Designing Custom T-Shirts
This is the second time I ever tried Teespring, but my first time writing a Teespring Review. As a designer, this is a fun way to earn extra money by designing fun tee shirts and other gear. You essentially design funny/clever t-shirts and then market them to be sold.
What is Teespring?
Teespring is a legit website where you can design custom tee shirts and other apparel such as hoodies, socks, mugs etc. using their proprietary online design software. Once you create a custom design, you can share a link with your friends who can buy your t-shirt design directly on Teespring. The money, printing and shipping are all handled by Teespring.
The difference between Teespring and other custom t-shirt design places is the shirts aren’t actually made until you have a minimum order.
This way you don’t have to buy a bunch of shirts you’re not sure will sell or not. Thus filling your garage full of crappy shirts. All you do is create the design and TeeSpring handles all the orders, payments and shipping once a minimum amount of shirts are sold. Then you as the designer get a small profit off the orders sold.
Is Teespring Legit?
Absolutely! We’ve personally used Teespring and found numerous positive reviews about the company. They’ve been around for years and built up a solid reputation. Even Forbes mentioned them as a great way to make money by selling well-made t-shirts and other gear.
Yes, Teespring Pays You!
The biggest bonus to Teespring (and why I wanted to write this Teespring Review) is that once you get the minimum amount of orders. You as the designer get a cut of the profits for creating the design!
Teespring handles all the heavy work (collecting money, printing, shipping), but since you are the one that created the shirt design and marketed it, you get a portion of the money made. Of course, Teespring takes their share, but you get yours too.
It’s a unique sidehuslte if you’re a creative type that can create some clever t-shirts and market them.
How Does Teespring work?
Head over to Teespring and hit “Start Designing”. It’ll ask you to create an account with them. It’s just the basic name, email, and password. They don’t ask for any payment information when your first setting up an account or first creating a shirt design.
You’ll then be asked to “Pick Your Canvas”. They have a number of options since they originally started. You can create unique/clever designs on a wide variety of items including:
Canvas Prints
Beach Towels
Phone Cases
Wall Tapestry
Posters (12″x24″) & (24″x36″)
Flags
Indoor Pillows
Socks
Apparel
Stickers
Tote Bags
Mugs
I am going to focus on t-shirts for this Teespring Review since that’s what they’re famous for.
I select apparel. This takes you immediately to their online design software where you can create a completely unique t-shirt design from scratch.
It’s a bit intimidating, I just created a basic word print design (I find inspiration from Amazon’s funny shirts). I obviously didn’t get too crazy, but you have a lot of options for what you can do including uploading your own custom designs.
I was impressed with the variety in Teespring’s online software program, it really was impressive. It’ll work great for beginners if you don’t have your own design software like Adobe Illustrator. This is what their online software looks like.
Once you finish a design, Teespring will let you set the price for how much you want to sell the shirt for. You could set the price for $50 per shirt if you’d like. It may be more than people want to buy a shirt for, but it’s up to you.
You’ll start off with Teespring’s recommended sell price.
In addition to what you set the price at, Teespring will show you how much of a profit you’ll make based on the number of shirts and the selling price. So simple economics, the higher price you set and the more you sell, the more profit you’ll make. In the Teespring Review example below, if 7 shirts are purchased, I would make $70 or $7 per shirt if I sell for $23.99.
After you set the price, you will create a profile on your new shirt design. This is what people will see when they view your shirt on Teespring.
T-Shirt Title
Profile
Custom URL
Take some time with this. Giving your campaign/shirt description a clever description can really help sell shirts to people on the fence.
If you want to check out the t-shirt design I did for this Teespring Review, go to Teespring.com/i-am-a-blogger-teeshirt where you’ll have the option to buy. It’s very basic. I like to set the bar low for you to create your own amazing shirt design!
That’s it. Now anyone can see your shirt and buy it. The biggest thing from here is sending the link to your friends, post on your blog or share with your social network to buy the new shirt.
A popular strategy I’ve seen, create a clever t-shirt idea for a specific niche of people. For instance, the famous “Don’t worry I’m a ______” tagline. To give an example, I’ve seen “Don’t worry I’m a Nurse” and people created specific facebook ads for people who listed their occupation as “Nurse”. I believe it’s been really successful.
Teespring Review Pros
You only have to create the design, Teespring will handle the creating/paying/shipping info on their end. This is a huge space saver from the days you had to store tee shirt inventory in your garage.
You get paid per t-shirt. You can set your own price for your designs and that profit goes to you. So if you LOVE creating tee shirts, you can make quite a bit of money.
Their design software is pretty easy to use.
If you’re organizing shirts for a large group, you can create the shirts on Teespring and have everyone pay on their own via the link you send. Way less chaos.
Teespring Review Cons
Even if you create the best t-shirt design ever, you have to market it completely on your own. Meaning you have to email it to all your friends or create Facebook ads to drive traffic to Teespring’s website for people to buy your t-shirt. You’re basically selling Teespring’s t-shirts for them.
You’re limited on the amount of space you can design on the front/back of the shirt. This makes it easier for Teespring to print onto shirts, but prohibits super creative designs that take up the entire shirt. So no sleeve designs or anything like that.
Teespring Review Conclusions
I like the idea of Teespring. It allows you to quickly create a custom t-shirt design to share with all your friends for them to buy. However, it doesn’t seem to be set up for a permanent side hustle. There are a lot of better/easier ways to earn more money.
Once you create the t-shirt design, it takes A LOT of effort and marketing dollars to get those shirts to sell. So unless you have a particular network of people who are willing to buy a specific t-shirt, I wouldn’t recommend this as a permanent side hustle.
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Today we have a guest post from Kate at Money Transfer Comparison. Her website helps people get their hands on the best foreign currency accounts. Today she wrote an article for the Wallet Squirrel audience on how to get started selling on Amazon as a side hustle. Let’s read what she has to say.
How to Start Selling on Amazon as a Side Hustle
Over 30 million Americans and countless people in other countries around the world have already lost their jobs because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There might be more of them in the future as the recession becomes worse. And even if you are one of the lucky ones who are still employed, your salary might take a dip. And don’t forget that prices will likely grow fast and hard.
All in all, now is the time to get all the side hustle income you can. Amazon is one of the prime providers of such. It’s not only launching an Amazon affiliate website that can help you make money on this platform. Becoming a full-fledged seller is a much better route if you want to make substantial money.
How to Find the Best Products to Sell on Amazon Today
The first thing you need to do in order to become an Amazon seller is to choose products to sell. If you are planning this business as a side hustle, there is no point for you to develop a personal brand. Instead, you should start selling products that already exist. This will allow you to get straight to selling as you will be able to use existing listings. You also won’t have to promote the products from scratch and try to generate reviews.
When you are starting out, you should focus on products that are likely to sell well. Amazon itself will help you with its Best Sellers list.
Also, use price-tracking tools like CamelCamelCamel. They will allow you to track the volatility of the product’s price. You should always choose the most stable option you can. This will reduce your risks as you won’t have to worry about sudden price drops that will make you lose all your revenue.
As to the precise product you should sell, pick something you have easy access to. First of all, do some calculations and research. You need to determine how much money you can spare to build your initial stock. From there, see what kind of products you can afford to buy.
Do Not Fall for the Private Label Hype
Many sources recommend building a personal brand to increase your profits as an Amazon seller. It used to be a valid strategy. However, today the platform is packed with personal brands that all sell the same cheap poor-quality products.
Unless you can afford to splurge on developing a good branding package and invest in high-quality products, starting your own venture like this will be a waste. Instead, make use of a well-known third-party brand by selling its products.
If you want to succeed as a seller today, you need to think outside the borders of your own country. Of course, local sales are good. However, you have more opportunities by offering your local top brands to people from different countries. They usually don’t have access to such products, so the demand should be higher.
That said, to become a global seller on Amazon you simply need to register and list your products in chosen foreign marketplaces. Amazon offers a variety of tools that will help you through this process. You can even synchronize your listings and prices across marketplaces and translate product descriptions using built-in services.
All in all, the only work you’ll need to do yourself has to do with money management. You’ll need to research permits and taxes you’ll have to pay as a seller depending on the location. Also, you’ll need to develop a strategy for shipping the products. The cost of shipping might make selling to some countries unviable from the business point of view.
Finally, you need to decide how exactly you are going to get paid. Amazon offers some payment management options for global sellers, including the Amazon Currency Converter. However, that solution is expensive and has some hidden fees. Using third-party money transfer services will be a cheaper option for the majority of sellers.
How to Collect Revenues from Your International Amazon Sales
With the Amazon Currency Converter, you might lose as much as 4.5% of the money your customers pay. This is definitely unacceptable because the revenue margin on such sales is low by default.
Bank wire transfers are out of the question because they are even more expensive. Depending on the country, such transactions might cost up to 10% of the transfer volume. No buyer will agree to pay such a hefty extra charge on something they can buy cheaper from a different seller.
PayPal is a popular payment processing service, but it does have many cons. Those include but aren’t limited to high transfer costs and bad customer service for the sellers.
The best solution for global sellers, at the moment, is offered by money transfer platforms. Companies like TransferWise, WorldFirst, Moneycorp, and OFX, to name a few, specialize in providing cheap international transfers.
Money Transfer Companies for Online Sellers
A Global Amazon Seller will benefit most from using a service that allows one to create multiple foreign currency accounts. For example, WorldFirst, one of the leaders in the money transfer industry-renowned specifically for its multi-currency accounts, enables online sellers to open USD, EUR, and CAD accounts in nearly every part of the world. Moreover, it even allows for creating foreign currency accounts for sellers in China and Japan.
WorldFirst was recently purchased by Alibaba, so it’s not surprising why many of its services are targeted toward online sellers. With a multi-currency account, a seller will not avoid paying huge fees. They will also get a chance to exchange currencies at near mid-market rates. WorldFirst has one of the lowest FX margins on the market right now. It also has those margins fixed, similar to TransferWise, which is another good money transfer provider online sellers can use.
In the end, the choice of a money transfer company should be determined by your location. These companies offer different rates and terms in different countries. Therefore, you should choose the one that will suit your future customers best.
How to Promote Your Amazon Listings Without Spending a Fortune
Now that you’ve registered your Amazon Global Seller account and set up an international payment processing account in preparation for your first sale, you need to make sure that sale happens. To that end, you need to promote your products effectively.
This would be a challenge if you sell the same products as other sellers. In this case, you should do your best to make your specific offer stand out. Try offering the product in rare colors or add a discount coupon for future purchases.
Making your product offer unique might not be an option, but there are other online marketing tactics you can use.
Ideas for Promoting Your Amazon Products
Encourage reviews. Positive reviews sell, so your product listings must have those. Of course, they must be verified reviews. But you can use different tactics to encourage your buyers to leave those reviews. For example, offer a discount for the next purchase or include a small gift.
Make your product reviews professional. Selling on Amazon might be a side hustle for you. However, you need to make sure that your product pages look fantastic to attract attention from buyers. Optimize product descriptions for keywords using simple tools like Google Keyword Planner. But you also need to make descriptions that sound interesting and offer detailed info about the product. All the while, those keywords must be an organic part of the text. If you are no expert in creative writing, consider commissioning descriptions from a professional copywriter.
Take to social media. Promote your Amazon listings on social media, both through your account and ads. You should also post in groups popular with your targeted customers. You can also launch contests, like asking customers to share your post and offer a free product to the one chosen randomly.
Involve influencers. Any good marketer today understands the value of influencers. They do not only allow you access to a wider audience. They also increase your product’s credibility because people who follow them already trust their opinions. The only problem might be that involving influencers might be too expensive for you at the beginning. You’ll need to be sure that this would be worth the expense.
Final Thoughts
The COVID-19 pandemic has already launched a wave of at-home entrepreneurs and their number will only continue to grow in this recession. Selling on Amazon is one of the side hustles that can truly make a difference for you in this situation. In fact, this business might be able to help you stay above water if you lose your main job.
But in order for your Amazon listing to be successful, you need to treat it like a real business. Take the time necessary to market it well. Make sure that your product pages stand out among competitors by giving better product descriptions and pictures. Offer additional services and, above all, sell internationally. Reaching out to customers abroad will increase your opportunities greatly. And with modern money transfer services, you’ll be able to get revenue from these deals, instead of losing all of it in international transaction fees.
How this Machine Operator Started to Earn Extra Money Streaming on Twitch
I first heard about Twitch about five years ago and to be honest I thought it was the stupidest idea ever. I thought the idea of watching someone else play video cames sounded like the biggest waste of time. Then I learned that people actually pay others to watch people play. I mean, who honestly would have thought you could earn extra money streaming on Twitch? I would rather just play the video game myself.
About a year later in 2016 news came out that Amazon was going to buy the streaming service for almost one billion dollars. I couldn’t believe it. I finally decided to check out what all of the hype was about.
To my surprise, I was very amused. It was so fun to watch StarCraft videos and learn more about the game I thoroughly enjoyed. To this day I still enjoy watching people play games I enjoy playing. This still includes StarCraft and most recently Call of Duty: Warzone.
Personally, I have always wondered what it takes to get started on Twitch. So once I heard that today’s Side Hustle Spotlight, Tom Siegrist, streamed on Twitch, I knew I had to ask him about it. Luckily for all of us, he agreed to share his story with the Wallet Squirrel family as well.
Back in 2015, Tom and I worked together at one of the country’s major retailers. He might know this but he also gave me the courage to get my photographs into a small Colorado artist only consignment shop. Let’s read what he has to say.
1) Tell us a little about yourself. What do you do for your 9-5 job? What is your side hustle?
My name is Tom Siegrist. I am a machine operator at a mail-order food kit delivery service. I joke that it is for people that want to eat healthily but are too lazy to shop for everything themselves. My side hustle is that I stream video games on Twitch.
2) What motivated you to earn extra money streaming on Twitch?
I got into streaming when I walked into a gaming lounge and all the TVs on the walls had people playing video games and recording themselves. I had no idea how they did it or even what IT was they were doing so I asked the manager about it. He told me all about Twitch. From that moment it was a goal of mine to start streaming.
3) What did you do to get started with streaming?
As far as what I bought to stream and my start-up costs if you will, I bought an Xbox One X and a webcam. The new consoles come with the software needed to stream already installed. However, I wanted my stream to be nicer than what the consoles are capable of doing. For that, I needed an external video capture card ($160) and a laptop nice enough to handle the workload of streaming which, at the time, cost me $950 (cheaper options were available).
4) What platform do you stream on? Why did you choose this platform?
I have an Xbox One X, a Nintendo Switch, PS4, and a PC. I stream from them all. Initially, I owned just a PS4, but when I decided to start streaming it was when the Xbox One X was released so I decided I wanted the most current console to stream from.
As for why I got the other systems I decided that I want my stream to be as open as possible. All consoles are great and have really fun games, I want to play them ALL MUAHAHAHAHA!
5) What is your weekly time commitment to streaming? Do you have an overall estimate of how long it took to get where you are (follower/viewer wise)?
I stream for roughly 3 to 4 hours a day on days I work my day job. Then I stream roughly 7 – 10 hours on my days off. I have been doing this for the last two years.
6) What is your favorite part of streaming?
My favorite part of streaming is the relationships that I have been able to build with people from all over the world. I am by no means a big streamer, but I do have people that have been watching me for a long period of time. I have never met them in person but it doesn’t matter, they stop by and we get to hang out as long as they are there.
7) What challenges have you run into so far?
Challenges? Good lord too many to name, I have NO idea what I’m doing when it comes to computers and technology so this was/is an abrasive learning experience, to say the least. Every step I’ve taken to advance my stream has had obstacles. When I FIRST started streaming from my Xbox all I had was a capture card and a crappy laptop, only to find out that the laptop wasn’t compatible with the card so I needed to get a NEW laptop. Then when I started streaming my internet plan wasn’t NEARLY enough to stream on (streaming is a data MONSTER) so I had to upgrade my internet plan. Everything you see on my stream (Follow alerts, sound queues, scene transitions, overlay, etc) took COUNTLESS hours of watching how-to videos on YouTube, as well as A LOT of help from my more technologically savvy friends.
8) What games do you specialize in? Do you recommend any games for people to get started with?
I wouldn’t say I specialize in anything really. I do play a lot of 1st person shooters (Halo, Apex Legends, COD: MW) to name a few.
As far as what I would recommend getting started with, it’s easy to pick a popular game like Fortnite or League of Legends, but it’s more important that it be a game you have fun playing. After all, once you get a following it’s really not about the game as much as it’s about being in the streamers company while they are playing the game. Sure some of them may stop by to see you play, but they will come and go quickly, once you have a loyal fanbase they will come by simply to visit with you!
9) Do you have any games you are looking forward to?
The Last of Us Part 2 looks amazing (the first one was great).
10) Do you have any advice for anyone looking to get into streaming on Twitch?
Advice? Grind. This is going to take a while. Success will not come overnight. It’s going to take work. It’s going to take sacrifice. It’s going to have to be your top priority.
To find success to earn extra money streaming on Twitch, make sure you are playing a game that you love because you will have to do it for a long time to get anywhere. Also, take chances, your stream is only limited by your imagination. It’s like having your own tv show written, directed by, and starring YOU! Don’t be afraid to get crazy with it. For a long time, my hair was dyed pink and I wore a chicken on my head (I still have Mr. Cluckles).
11) Shameless plug. Tell us where we can buy your book and where we can follow you. Feel free to brag why you are the best!
I go by Ryowashu. I am the strangest streamer on Twitch. You can find me at www.twitch.tv/ryowashu
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
