Unroll Me App Review – The Best 5 Minutes for Your Email’s Inbox
This Unroll Me App Review is going to show you why you should spend 5 minutes every month using this tool to clean up your email inbox. At the end of each month, your inbox will be writing you a thank you letter.
I wonder if it will send the thank you via email or snail mail?
Well, today we will talk about Unroll Me and really just how easy it is to use!
What is the Unroll Me App
To start off this Unroll Me app review, let’s answer a couple of questions as to what the tool does and who the company behind the tool is.
Unroll Me is a free service that allows you to easily (an understatement) unsubscribe from all of those pesky email subscriptions.
After signing in, the algorithm scans your inbox looking for e-commerce emails. Once found, the application lists them out allowing you to decide what to do with the subscription.
Who Is Unroll Me
Slice Technologies is the parent company that owns Unroll Me. They are able to make Unroll Me a free service because they collect data on the e-commerce emails you get. They use this data to, “build an anonymized market research products that analyze and track consumer trends.”
Slice says they strip all of the personal information (name, email, address, or anything else that could identify you) from the data collected. The technology behind Unroll Me is designed to determine if the email is personal or e-commerce. The algorithm completely ignores the personal emails as it searches your inbox.
You can read their blog for more information to see what the data is used for. Some of the research they post is actually pretty fascinating but I am a nerd when it comes to data.
How to Use the Unroll Me App
It literally took me five steps and less than five minutes of my life to unsubscribe from 74 subscriptions. I really could not believe that I was done already!
Choose your email provider and click through the prompts.
The algorithm will run. It searches through your inbox for subscriptions and then spits out a list of them.
Click either ‘Keep in Inbox’, ‘Unsubscribe’, or ‘Add to Rollup’ (I’ll explain that later) for each subscription on the list.
Success!
Was that not super easy? I know! Right?!?!
Oh! I mentioned I would talk about what ‘Add to Rollup’ is. The Rollup is a single email that Unroll Me will send to you at the end of the day. This email will consist of all the content from every email that is a part of the Rollup from that day. I have not personally tried this yet but they say the Rollup email is very digestible and easy to read.
One final tip. If you would like, you can have Unroll Me notify you on a particular schedule to check for more subscriptions that were not in your inbox at the time. I decided to do the monthly reminder.
Why Unsubscribe?
We now live in a world where we are completely submerged by advertisements. The design of these advertisements is to tempt us to spend our hard-earned money on materialistic items.
These ads do not stop with commercials, billboards, or temporarily tattooed to the back of that guy’s head on the bus. Subscription emails also drown us every day with more temptation.
Using the ease of Unroll Me to unsubscribe from these emails trying to derail us from our financial goals allows us to stay focused. This is why you should unsubscribe to these emails.
Also, they are just annoying. Unsubscribing will also help keep your blood pressure down.
Final Take
To wrap up this Unroll Me app review I must say that I really enjoyed my experience with this tool to free me from those spammy email subscriptions.
Look, I understand if you are skeptical because of the data collection. You are entitled to have those feelings!
The algorithm design to strip out my personal information is what sold me to try out the Unroll Me app. I understand if you are still skeptical after hearing that. But hey! As a data guy myself, I do know this technology exists and it is pretty amazing.
Overall, this is a great free service. If you can get over the data collection thing, then I think you will enjoy it just like I did.
There is no bad time to become a blogger. Simply the sooner you start, the larger a blog can grow. In this article, we’re going to show you how to start a money-making blog in under 5 minutes.
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’ve always been fascinated with stock photography as a way to make money. So I decided to try it and share my success as I sold my first stock photo in 10 days as a Shutterstock Contributor.
Honestly, I’ve been wanting to try this for a while since discovering Adam of Team Wallet Squirrel made $1,000 off a single photo (sold multiple times)! A photo he took randomly of the St. Louis Arch while supporting me as I ran the St. Louis Marathon in 2012.
This is my 10-day review as a new Shutterstock Contributor!
What is Stock Photography?
These are digital photos that are sold online, usually for commercial purposes. Sites like Getty Images and Shutterstock are great examples of websites that sell stock photography.
It’s an interesting passive income because all you have to do is upload a photo once, as a digital product, and earn money each someone downloads it! This can occur thousands of times without any additional effort on your part.
Great Stock Photography Example
How I Started and Sold my First Stock Photo in 10 Days
I’m not a professional photographer or a good photographer by any means, but I applied to both Shutterstock and iStockPhoto, two top stock photography websites, on the off chance they’d accept an amateur like me.
Unexpectedly, I was accepted to both.
There are other Stock Photography websites out there, you can apply to. Here is a list of the top 10 I discovered in my research, but I’ll only focus on one (Shutterstock) for this article. I assume they all have some similarities.
In order to start submitting photos, I had to understand what stock photography sites were looking for, and sell best. People aren’t going photos of clouds taken from an airplane window.
In fact, they specifically ask you don’t submit photos of clouds. They have MILLIONS of them.
You need to submit photos that could be used for commercial purposes. Some types of photos that sell best are Portrait Photography, Food Photography, Landscapes (usually with people) and fine art photography (artsy). Above all, nice photos with people sell the best!
This helped to understand what stock photography sites were looking for!
Day 2 – Find the Best Photos I’ve taken
Now to inventory what photos I already have. Having taken thousands of photos for fun, I had to assume some were decent.
So I plugged in my external hard drive carrying every photo I’ve ever taken through college, life, and traveling. That night, I went over 4,000 digital photos.
I sat at my tiny desk with Netflix on in the background as I clicked on my computer’s right arrow button nearly 4,000 times to go over every photo I’ve ever taken in the last 10 years. Most of these were taken with a point and click camera, so the quality wasn’t great, but a few gems were discovered. =)
I pulled all the good photos into a folder. I ended up with 100 great photos.
That’s still too many! I had to limit those 100 great photos down to 60 awesome photos, then down to the 30 all-time best photos I’ve ever taken. Later ranking them 1 to 30.
That was hard, very, very hard.
I had to keep in mind, I can’t control how these photos will be used. A family portrait may be used in a prescription depression magazine ad, so I was cautious and respectful to other people in the photos. Plus I would need photo releases signed (and submitted) with any people in them. I could download these online, but I simply avoided people to make things easier.
I was ready to apply to Shutterstock!
Day 3 – Apply to Shutterstock
Yes, you have to apply, they don’t just take anyone with a phone camera.
So I submitted to Shutterstock & iStockPhoto, but we’re still focusing on Shutterstock. Shutterstock was A LOT faster with the review process, taking around 5 business days. iStockPhoto took around 30 days.
I created a profile (basically username, password and verify email address). Then they requested I upload around 14 of my best photos. They would review these for the application process. Yes, it was a process, they have an official review team that reviews each photo uploaded to make sure it matches their quality.
Luckily I already went through and had my top 30 ranked. I added my top 14.
Finally, on Day 9 I get the “You’re Approved” email. I was honestly a little shocked. I knew the photos I submitted were MY best, but there are MUCH more talented people out there with better photography. I wanted to reply back and say “Really? Are you sure I’m approved?”. However, I kept my mouth shut and moved on.
So I hop into their platform and start familiarizing myself with their dashboard. It looks a little something like this and hasn’t changed in the last couple years.
I spent time filling out the rest of the information and verifying who I am for tax purposes. They are very keen on this, in fact, they ask you to submit a photo of your driver’s license to confirm who you are. That part was a little weird uploading a photo of my driver’s license but figured I’ve gone this far.
Remember every photo you upload, even as a contributor, has to be reviewed by their team first, even after you applied with those same photos. I guess it’s a different review team.
I started by selecting my top 8 photos for consideration to sell on their site. Now more work.
Having a nice photo isn’t enough, you’ll need to add categories to describe each photo, such as “travel, nature, urban, etc.”. Then add around 50 description keywords. These are how people search for your photos when they’re looking for a stock photo to purchase.
This part is crucial!
Once I selected all the keywords and categories for each of my 8 photos, I clicked “Submit” to have their team review my photos with those specific keywords. The idea is you’re not using unrelated keywords, have the necessary photo release forms if you’re including people (yup, upload those too), categorizing the photos correctly, and the photos are high enough quality.
Two of my photos got rejected rather quickly. They at least tell me why.
However, the other 6 photos were approved! These are the best photos I’ve ever taken right here. If you agree, feel free to purchase them, but I have no idea what you’d use them for. I just like them.
Day 10 – Sell Stock Photo, Check!
Someone liked my photo and bought it! I’m not sure who it was, but I made my first sale on Shutterstock for my “dock” photo taken in New Zealand. Maybe it was my mother, she still has my crayon drawings from 1st grade.
Not sure how they found it, just searching for “dock” won’t really find it. The term “dock” is pretty saturated. They must have searched for some of the additional keywords as well.
I can see how other people may use this as a stock image though. It’s very calming. The only thing missing is some kids running off the end, into the water.
So finding the right keywords for your photos makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE. You should be spending 30 min on keyword research for each photo and don’t be afraid to look at your competitor keywords on similar images.
How much did I make?
Lesson Learned – I was most disappointed that I can’t control the pricing. This is entirely controlled by the website. The cheapest they sell photos for are $29 for 2 photos, so we can assume they sell the basic quality photos for $14.50 each.
From my one download, I made $1.88. It’s not great considering Shutterstock is taking 88% and I’m getting 12% of each sale, but it’s what I have to deal with since it’s their marketplace.
We’ll overlook the fact that I only made $1.88 on one photo, or 12% of the price online.
Some people can make a living off it for sure, but as I mentioned our own Adam in his recent article “5 Simple Ways – How to Sell Photos Online” said he made around $1,000 off one photo of the St. Louis Arch. He uploaded it once and has continued to receive checks from it over the last year.
What I Would Do Differently
Now the photos I uploaded weren’t the highest quality (it was just a 2MP point and click camera). In the future, I would invest in a nicer camera. I’ve been thinking about a camera that would be great both for photography, and video recording.
This would allow me to sell stock photography, stock video and start vlogging for additional money. Personally, I’ve been looking at the Canon EOS M50 Mirrorless Video Creator Kit. It has everything I need for all three, all packaged together!
The only addition to my dream setup would be to add some nice, but cheap lighting stands or ring light to make everything pop and look more professional.
Conclusion
I’m continued to be excited about stock photography even though I only received 12% of the total sale.
I suspect the 6 photos I uploaded won’t do great, but they’ll continue to bring in a few bucks without any additional effort on my part. Plus I can add more as a Shutterstock Contributor now.
Now that I know what type of photography sells best, I can shoot some new photos to sell online as another way to make money! Maybe grab a suit and take photos in conference rooms for the highly popular business attire photos. Every photo I take is just another stream of passive income with stock photography!
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!
In the United States, there were over 550,000 people who tested positive for COVID-19. A number that reached 180,000,000 people worldwide, according to the CDC. While symptoms varied, a common (and weird) symptom became loss of smell. Afterward, some people noticed after their smell came back, it was distorted, making some food smell and taste rancid. This phenomenon spiked thousands of Google searches for the term “Parosmia”. I was one of those who dealt with Parosmia, and while it’s nearly gone. I wanted to talk about Parosmia after COVID and how Parosmia is changing people’s food budgets.
I’ll start with I’m one of those unlucky few with jacked-up smell and tastebuds. I can no longer eat my favorite foods as they now taste like rancid trash. My go-to budget food like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are now a pipe dream as peanut butter tastes like Styrofoam. It’s a rough life, but smells and tastebuds do come back.
When our smell first started to go south for Parosmia, we tried everything to get it back. Including home remedies on Tik Tok which included eating a burnt orange. It did nothing except taste like a burnt orange.
Parosmia Is Just Screwed Up Smell and Taste
Parosmia is common after a viral infection like colds but became more popular due to COVID-19. WebMD says perhaps up to 7% of the people who had COVID-19 developed a distorted sense of smell called “Parosmia.” People discover it about 2.5 months after the initial COVID-19 infection, and it can continue for at least six months.
What’s frustrating is how closely your sense of smell is tied to taste. When your smell and taste are off, it’s surprising how much it affects your entire life.
Imagine 30% of Food Tasting Like Garbage, That’s Parosmia
Here’s the deal. Having a screwed-up sense of smell is terrible, but Parosmia takes it to a new level. For most people, it takes the scent of specific food profiles and replaces them with the smell of rancid garbage.
Weirdly, the smell is of the same rotten garbage. Like my brain forgot what 30% of food smells like and replaced it with a generic smell of rotten garbage. For example, I’ve noticed that everything from Pizza to a McDonald’s Big Mac to a moldy wet towel has the same horrible garbage smell.
When things smell like rotten garbage, they also taste like rotten garbage. This has significantly changed my weekly grocery list!
Everyday Foods That Smell & Taste Terrible With Parosmia
Here is a list of foods that smell and therefore taste terrible, taken from my personal experience and the numerous Parosmia Facebook/Instagram Groups that have popped up since 2019.
Each person seems to have slightly different degrees of how bad foods are and what causes their rancid smells, but here are the common culprits.
Foods That Smell & Taste Terrible
Chicken
Eggs
Bacon
Onions (bye-bye Pizza & Pasta)
Garlic
Fish
Beans
Peanut Butter
Coffee
From personal experience, these foods taste terrible. Even if you force yourself to eat through the terrible rancid taste, I’ve learned your body still finds a way to reject it. I won’t go into more detail there but think bathroom.
Bacon was terrible with Parosmia. I could immediately tell while cooking, but I had to try. I can confirm the normally delicious bacon tastes awful with Parosmia. Life Sucked.
Most of this is trial and error, as the Parosmia community cannot find a common denominator for what makes certain foods smell rancid.
Even if you remove all of these items from your house, it’s still a challenge ever going out with friends.
I find myself at restaurants going through the ingredients of each dish and trying to avoid those mentioned above. A tedious process where onions and garlic make most dishes impossible to avoid. Then the process of explaining the complex nature of Parosmia to your waiter in hopes of substitution is enough to make me want to crawl under the table.
Foods That Seem To Be OK With Parosmia
I’ll start that most food will always taste a little off with Parosmia. There is no way to get around it. Simply your nose is broken so that food will feel a little off.
The best you can hope for is food tasting tolerable because asking for food to taste good again is like asking to fly.
Here is my weekly grocery list with parosmia. It’s nothing special but has become a safe haven for my deteriorated taste buds. It’s heavy on fresh fruit, ramen noodles, and protein shakes.
When we first got parosmia, we did a lot of charcuterie boards. We incorporated lots of fresh fruit and experimented with different combinations to see what worked for our smell and taste buds.
Here is my Parosmia grocery list for my family:
Bread
Milk
Apples
Strawberries
Grapes
Cuties
Diced Tomatoes
Mozzarella Cheese
Potatoes
Eggs
Mac & Cheese
Ground Beef
Cereal
Protein Shakes
Ramen Noodles
These have seemed pretty safe for my family, but I’ll add that anything sugary like cereal is also OK. It appears that sugary foods mask any rancid taste.
I know most people will balk at the surgery cereal, but it pretty much saved me when my smell and taste first started to skew. It was the only thing I could eat without gagging. I used sugary cereal as a base and started to branch out and experiment with other foods from there. However, as you may expect, the sugary cereal was KILLER on my diet, and my workouts had to compensate heavily, which was great for walking with Stepbet. So learn from my mistakes for your grocery list.
I’ve added a protein shake to most of my meals to get my daily protein since I can’t eat chicken like I used to.
Bland Food Is Your Friend, But So Is Spice
At first, I only ate bland food with simple ingredients. I figured I could swap out ingredients to find which foods caused the worst reactions. Learning from trial and error became second nature during Parosmia.
HOWEVER, as you may expect, my family had a short tolerance for bland food. It was safe, but the monotony was draining our morale. So we discovered an unexpected craving, spice.
Let me preface, myself and my family is NOT a fan of spicy food. We were total wimps when it came to any heat levels. Yet, spice became a welcome addition to all our meals that breathed new life into our meals. We used bottles of spices like red chili pepper for the first time since we bought a spice rack. It was an incredible discovery!
Our Favorite Meal During Parosmia
In addition to buying Ramen noodles in bulk for their bland, safe flavor, we practiced with different recipes at night to find new flavors that friendly to our pallets. Here is one of my family’s favorite recipes.
Homemade Pizzas – Take Nann Bread as your crust. We usually top with store-bought pasta sauce, but it’s packed with onions and garlic. So we create a homemade sauce with a can of diced tomatoes and blend them into a sauce with red pepper flakes. The heat helps with the bland flavor. Then add fresh mozzarella and oven-bake for 12 minutes. It’s great!
BONUS Tiramisu Crepes – I honestly don’t know the recipe because my girlfriend did them as a surprise and they were amazing. However, if you message us on Twitter I’ll see what I can do.
My girlfriend made these amazing tiramisu crepes. The sugary treat was perfect for parosmia but perhaps a little unhealthy. However, it tasted wonderful, and that’s a rare luxury for when everything else tastes terrible.
Expect Your Food Budget To Increase
One of the most significant ways my food budget has increased is that meal prep has become significantly more complicated.
It seems that anytime I reheat meals in a microwave or oven, the reheating causes food to have more pungent rancid tastes. So we no longer do many leftovers. Most of our meals are cooked the night off.
Also, purchasing all the ingredients from scratch makes food taste a little fresher but comes at a premium price. It’s not terrible, but something to be aware of. Luckily we have a couple of different income streams that make this easier.
Parosmia Makes Eating Healthy Difficult, but Not Impossible
Admittedly Parosmia initially caused me to gain significant weight because the foods I’m used to eating, Pizza, Pasta, Chicken, became intolerable.
I clung to the sugary foods that provide some sense of flavor. Eventually, as I learned more, I introduced more fresh fruit and learned to cook meals from scratch to control all the ingredients.
So I turned a horrible Parosmia experience into a learning experience teaching new skills and introducing more fresh ingredients into my diet.
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!
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!
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!
The following is a guest post by Lyuthar Jacob, a log editor at Dealslands UK. He is the type of geek who loves to write about Marketing, Money Saving, and Finance.
Who doesn’t like to have easy cash? You can earn money online with ease. There are many ways to achieve your set target to gain money without belabour. When it comes to making money online, there are certainly thousands of ways to earn easy money within the comfort of your home. So, if you are interested to earn money online, knowing the right kind of platform in accordance to your interest and passion is always crucial.
Following are some of the quick and easy tactics which you can start using today itself to make money online fast.
Join Affiliate programs
If you started a website or blog out of passion, you can earn a significant amount of money from it by joining some of the best affiliate programs. In this, all that you need to do is market other brands within your site’s pages. When you partner with such business, you have to mention their product or service and link those using a unique affiliate code received from the brand. Whenever someone buys a product or service through your link, you will make extra money.
It is advisable to partner with the companies that are related to your content. For instance, if you are a financial advisor, join an affiliate for financial products like credit cards, investment account, insurance, etc.
Use your skill to teach online
Everybody has some skill. If teaching is the one in your case then it can help you make money online. You can go for tutorials regarding anything that you like starting from cooking, dancing, freelance writing or sketching and what not!
Moreover, for this, you can find many platforms like Udemy, Teachable, or Skillshare where you can upload your course learning through videos, images, text, etc. Next, use your content to build customers and accept payments. You can also build one of your own with the help of the software like ClickFunnels and other platforms. Make sure to deliver valuable content to others and in turn people will happily pay you to learn it.
Sell old books on Amazon
You can buy old books from various sellers or other online platforms. After having a potential book to sell, navigate to Amazon and look for its actual price. You have to then decide what price you expect with respect to the condition of book. Make sure you don’t end up incurring any loss as you also have to pay Amazon’s fees of $2.35 + 15% of the sales price . If you are making money now with such old books, list them in your seller account. This is something lucrative which can be done part-time or in the weekends to make extra money. There are other platforms also such as Bookscouter, eBay, Half Price Books, etc which can help you sell old books and earn money.
Earn through freelance writing
If you have the creative talent of writing, you can earn money online by creating content for other websites or blogs. The income of bloggers and influencers vary widely. A report from Glassdoor shows that a blogger’s average income ranges from $19K to $79K.
Another survey of 1,000 bloggers interpreted by Blogging.com found that 17% of bloggers are able to maintain their lifestyle with the money that they earn. However, in this competitive world,you need to deliver 100% quality content to reach up to such a high level. Moreover, content writing has really built its importance. So, with tons of writing jobs available, it is easy to start writing, develop your skill and earn money.
Income online through photography
Photography is something which many people love to do. So, if you have such a passion for photography and you can capture eye-catching images, you can use this skill to make money online. You can list these images on stock-photography websites like Adobe Stock and Shutterstock. Then, you will receive payment when somebody purchase the right to use your image.
You don’t need to capture pretty snaps always. Remember, what you require to be unique is just original content. Also, it is crucial to edit the photographs professionally and store into certain file formats. Apart from photography, you can use other skill like sketching or painting, photoshop, etc. to make extra money.
Make social media your business
If you like to post your pictures or love blogging about the food that you taste, travel scenes etc., you can make money out of it now. If you have a decent number of followers on Facebook or Instagram, just approach companies in your niche and they will be happy to advertise with you. This is a win-win situation for both of you as you will be earning from your passion and the brand gets to tap a new audience and potential customers through something unique.
Build an online community
You can also monetize your online community to earn money online. Build a community through blogs and social media platforms where similar-interest people are gathered. Also, you can build an online forum and ask people to pay for membership. You can use such mediums to promote and sell yours or other’s products and services. If you are passionate about something and also like to engage with people that have the same passion, this is something you should certainly consider for earning well.
Take an advantage of Google Adsense
When you visit any website, there are always Google ads popping up here and there. You can also add these to your site’s page. Moreover, it is very simple to set them up on any basic website. If you have a website or blog, you can create a free Google AdSense account. After that, Google will provide you with a unique code which you can paste onto your website. Google can then track your page algorithm, traffic, and the visitors directing from your page, etc. Once your website start attracting a decent amount of traffic, it can be a very lucrative way to make money online.
Avail sponsorship on your posts
If you have large social media audience or a website, you can make money online fast through pursuing sponsored posts and ads.
How does it work?
Companies (like Viglink) are always looking for bloggers and website owners to advertise their product or service. So, if you have a huge following, don’t miss this opportunity to make money online in very convenient way. Moreover, the figures in which you will be earning depends on your popularity. So, don’t compromise on the quality of the content that you are creating for your audience. It will eventually let you earn huge.
Manage SEO and social media ads for clients
Another great idea to make money now is managing ads for the clients. Due to the increasing demand of digital marketing, each and every business needs SEO for popularity.
If you’ve a decent extent of knowledge in this regard then you can manage the social media accounts of brands or run Facebook ads, paid ads on YouTube or Google, etc. to make money now. If you master this art and start attaining huge conversion rates, you can make money online fast and that too in a hefty amount.
If you are thinking to make money online, the aforementioned tricks are easy to tap. Moreover, they need negligible or very less amount of investment. So, what are you waiting for?
Start earning money with these quick and effective approaches now!
I laugh because I’m going to hit on some of the age-old “renting vs owning” debates, with these lessons learned, but I won’t say which is better. Although you can probably tell from my comments throughout my letter. There are some things I wish I’d known, ideas I learned from renting experts like RENTCafé, and things I learned the hard way.
What I Would Tell My Younger Self About Renting
Dear Younger Self,
I’m 31 and still have never “owned” a home, but I have rented the past 5 years as an adult and 3 years before that in college, learning A LOT! Please make better choices than I/You did.
1. Always ask if there is a better price on rent. Many times there are deal or specials going on in an apartment complex that the leasing team doesn’t necessarily offer up front. However, a simple question of “can you do better?” will produce AMAZING results. I’ve received some amazing deals on apartments just because I asked that one simple question.
Also never quit asking that question, even when renewing your lease ask if they can do better. Sometimes, just sometimes they’ll come back with “I went to ask my manager and we can lower your rent for $100”. It never hurts to ask.
2. Maintenance is included in your rent, don’t hesitate to ask for needed repairs. I used to be so nervous about submitting maintenance requests not wanting to be a problem tenant. Even the small things like a slow leaking drain. I would go to the store to buy Draino to fix the drain myself. However, that’s not your responsibility. Maintenance is there to supply their own Draino to fix their building, it’s not your responsibility. Take advantage of your maintenance team for all those concerns. When in doubt, just ask your maintenance team about something and 9 out of 10 times, they’ll fix it.
3. When looking for Apartments, Studio Apartments are pretty great. To save you a couple hundred dollars, absolutely go for a studio apartment. They save you money, easy to clean and force you to assess what’s important enough to keep and throw away.
4. Location is everything. Think about those Uber receipts, where will you go every weekend and what personality type are you. If you’re a social person, you will absolutely hate living in the suburbs with a cheaper apartment. It’ll take you forever to get downtown to meet people and you’ll likely cancel plans to just stay home and avoid traveling. The extra money is worth it to live where you want to be.
5. Higher views are nice, but they don’t matter. Lots of apartment complexes make you pay extra the higher your apartment is. So someone on the 8th floor will pay more than someone on the 3rd floor. It’s not worth it, lots of times your blinds will be closed to block the sunlight glare on the tv. A better view only matters 5% of the time you live in an apartment.
6. It’s OK you don’t remember your Leasing Agents name, they’ll be gone in 6 months. Every time I apartment shopped, I created a great relationship with the Leasing Agent for the building. However, every time I did, 6 months later someone new would replace them. All that goodwill built up is instantly gone. The turnover rate for these positions is incredibly high.
7. Roommates are amazing, but living on your own is way better. I spent 3 years living with 2 amazing roommates (one of them was Adam). It was great to come home every day and chat with each other about our day and hang out. So I thought about living by myself would be lonely, it wasn’t. Living on your own is awesome! Once you live on your own, you’ll never go back! Lol
8. Constantly call your utilities to ask for better deals, there usually are. Once a year I call Xfinity for my internet and ask for a better deal and every year they find me one. Again it never hurts to ask.
9. You’re not likely to get your entire deposit back no matter how well you clean. I’ve been in apartments where I kept it spotless and even my parents helped clean when I moved out. However, no matter how well you clean, some apartment inspector will ding you for the smallest things and keep all or part of your deposit. While it’s not worth the effort of cleaning, you should still do it. Just know your deposit is likely gone.
10. Neighbors suck, so invest in earplugs, eye masks, and moderately noised fan. No matter where you go, you’ll have neighbors that every once in a while play music too loud or launch laser lights into your apartment as an afterthought (it happens). Unless this happens all the time, a set of earbuds, eye mask, and a fan to help drown out the noise are essential and help you avoid confrontations while your neighbors are drunk. It’s much better to speak with them in the morning.
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!
A little over two years ago, I invested $300 in Lending Club. I was curious to see how the world of Peer-to-Peer Lending worked. This was different from investing in the stock market, because I became a mini-bank by lending microloans to people paying of credit card debt, home renovations, a new car, and multiple other reasons people take loans. All while I earn interest as they pay the loan off.
How Investing in Lending Club Went?
When I started 2 years ago, I choose to individually select which micro-loans I wanted to invest in. I knew, like a traditional bank, some loans may default and you lose money. So I took the time to research each loan application and Lending Club gives you a detailed credit history to choose from.
I specifically looked at their credit history, what they want to use the loan for and history of delinquencies. As well as their debt to income ratio. If these look good, then I help crowd-fund this microloan and invest $25 (typical) to the loan. Once it gets fully funded (below is 96% funded), the money will be taken out of my account and given to the borrower and I’ll receive payments back over 36 months (term of the loan).
You can also use Lending Club’s own rating system that’s “A-E” with “A” being borrowers with a great credit rating and likely to pay back their loan but have a lower interest rate. All the way down to “E” which don’t have a great credit rating but have a higher interest rate. Lending Club has since discontinued rating “F-G” because too many of those loans were defaulting and they wanted to clean up their platform. I still have some “G” loans grandfathered in until they’re paid off.
Over the last 2 years, I choose all of my individual loans manually. This was a huge time waster. Plus letting money sit in your account un-invested isn’t making money.
Last week I switched my account over to automatic investing so once I received enough money back in my account ($25), it’ll automatically reinvest into loans that meet specific criteria. I’m a bit more conservative on the loans I prefer because I want to avoid bad borrowers who default, which typically have a lower “D-G” rating.
Here is how I have my Lending Club automated investing currently set up. My account will prioritize “B” rated loans, followed by “A” and “C” loans. The solid colors are what I’m currently invested in and the hash lines are what my automated investing settings are currently at. Since each loan takes 24-36 months, it’ll be awhile before they even out. Remember, I just turned on automated investing last week.
How Much Money After 2 Years of Lending Club?
Since I started in February, 2016 and invested $300 it’s been fairly consistent (compare stock market stats). Typically every month I received an average of $3.05 per month. For 2.4 years (currently June, 2018), that would be around $85.4, but that’s not the whole story since I’m constantly reinvesting the extra cash and some loans defaulted.
Deposited: $300 (How Much Cash I Invested in Lending Club)
Total Loans: 30 (I invested in 30 loans at $25 each, including reinvesting)
Principal Received Back: $427.51 (Those 30 loans paid me back $427.51 so far, still ongoing)
Interest: $87.96 (Of that $427.51 received back, $87.96 was interest)
Default Loans: -$28.03 (2 loans defaulted and didn’t pay me back the full amount)
Total Profit after 1.5 years: $59.93 or 9% annual interest
*Interesting to note that some people were diligent and paid off their loans early, however you don’t earn extra interest if they choose to do this.
*The two loans that defaulted were 1 “F” rated loans which Lending Club has discontinued and surprisingly a “B” rated loan which shows that even highly rated loans can still default.
Conclusion
In the last 2 years, Lending Club has made about 9% annual interest. That’s not bad and significantly better than a 1% savings account. Yet still less than the 11% annual interest I’m seeing in my stock portfolio.
The biggest downside to Lending Club is your money isn’t liquid, meaning once you invest your money in a loan, it’s there until 24-36 months till the loan is paid off. That’s not too bad though, if you’re a long-term investor, you invest your money and forget it. So it’s not a big deal.
Overall, I’ve had a good experience and will continue to keep a little money in Lending Club to see how it does during a market downtown when everything crashes. Until then, good luck investing!
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!
Yes, it’s Day 137 of when we started the Epic Niche Site Battle. A competition to see who could build a better niche affiliate website between myself and Barnabas over at SerialBoss.com. So far I’m doing well considering.
The rules were simple, we would start on January 1st of 2018 and see who could build a better site. This meant who’s site could get more visitors, earn more money and gain more email sign-ups would be the winner. This is in addition to both of us running our other main blogs to show how difficult it is to balance side gigs like this. Time management is key.
My Day 137 Update
I officially launched my affiliate website on Day 68 of this year. I’m not revealing the name of this site since we don’t want to affect traffic rankings, but you’ll just have to believe me that it’s up.
What I can tell you is that it’s an affiliate website centered around holiday gift ideas. The main page is loaded with awesome gift ideas and the blog post (only 1 so far) is focused on “List Posts” which normally do well with SEO. The idea is the more people who visit the site, more sales are made and that’s how the site generates income.
Website Visitors So Far?
I’ll admit I haven’t been able to put in much effort into this affiliate site since its creation on Day 80 because most of my attention has been focused on WalletSquirrel.com, but without too much initial marketing. It’s somehow found steady traffic.
This is the visitor trend since it starts on March 10th. It picked up about 45 views a day on average since its start. Honestly, that isn’t great, but considering how little attention I’ve given this site (maybe 1 hour since the start), it’s better than I thought. Especially with a bounce rate for an affiliate site.
How Much Money Has it Made?
So with an average of 45 views a day, you can’t expect this website to gain much money. All of my income is through affiliate links which are perfect for me. I’ve noticed I make a lot more on affiliate links than banner ads. Plus I really hate the look of banner ads, so I didn’t include any on this new site.
It’s only had a few sales, but most of the income is merchants paying me for the clicks through the links I have on the affiliate website. I’ve been using Viglink for all my affiliate marketing tracking. Since March 10th, this affiliate site has made $5.90. Wahoo, I gained some pennies. =)
Yes, $5.90 isn’t much but considering the 1 hour I’ve put into this site since starting it on March 10th, it’s pretty great. Plus that income is pretty consistently $0.40 a day. That’s actually really impressive since its so consistent. It gives me a lot of motivation that it will do well if given more attention.
How Many Email Addresses Has it Gained?
One thing I can absolutely do better on is collecting email address. I only have one email opt-in form on the contact page. So far this has only collected 10 email addresses. That’s pretty awful. There are plenty of tricks I’ve learned recently on Wallet Squirrel to gain more email addresses. I’m looking forward to trying all of these.
Just curious, are you tempted to sign up for Wallet Squirrel’s email list from our Opt-In form below? If not, why not?
How Is the Other Guy Doing?
Even though I’ve trailed off on my effort for this new affiliate site, I’m still way ahead of Barabas who just got his site up last week. ;P
However, I’ve only written one blog post on my affiliate website and he’s already written 10. We took different approaches with him writing a bunch of content first then publishing the website. I did the opposite by adding content after the website was launched. It’s funny how people do things differently.
I’ll compare the stats of our websites side by side once he has had a chance to market his site a bit more. In the meantime though, I’m ramping up to write 3 more blog posts and started using SEMrush to do some awesome keyword research and backlinking to make the site more popular. Stay tuned to see how we compare against each other!
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!
Unroll Me App Review – The Best 5 Minutes for Your Email’s Inbox
Unroll Me App Review – The Best 5 Minutes for Your Email’s Inbox
