One question I have had about the Metaverse is, “How can I make money in the Metaverse?” I am a big tech nerd so having another side hustle that revolves around technology really piques my interest. So, let’s take a look at potential side hustles in the metaverse to see how we can make more money.
1. NFT Art
The NFT art market is on fire right now! If you do a quick Google search for “NFT art” you will quickly find a news article about a piece of NFT art selling at a new record price. Recently, I saw that someone bought a Bored Ape NFT for about $50 a couple of years ago and they just sold it for $1.8 million!
The idea is to buy some NFT Art and put it in an art gallery within the metaverse. Obviously, your goal is to buy the art for cheap and sell it for a lot.
2. Voxels
What is the heck are voxels? I had no idea until I started writing this article. Yay for learning new things!
Voxels are actually pretty cool. They are the “materials” used to create other items within the metaverse. Think of them as a 3D pixel that can be combined with other voxels to make buildings, clothing, cars, and other metaverse items.
If you are familiar with the game Minecraft, you are very familiar with voxels.
There are stores that are selling voxels to others. This is a prime business model to make money in the metaverse.
The next two ways to make money in the metaverse are wild to me.
3. Construction
There are now metaverse construction companies! Say what?!?!
One company, Voxel Architects, is even making $300,000 per project to help others build buildings within the metaverse. I guess you could look at these construction firms as a new generation of website developers.
4. Real Estate
Real estate has been booming for the major virtual world metaverses such Dencentraland and Sandbox. Because of this, virtual real estate companies have been popping up. You can start helping people list their plots of land and make a nice commission off that sale.
5. Advertising
Just like in the real world, you can create advertisement platforms in the metaverse. People are building advertisement signage on their buildings and so on. Also, real work companies like Nike are building their own little corner of the metaverse to help with marketing for their items.
6. Parcel Rentals
Just like in the real world, people can rent out land or space in a building within the metaverse. Sometimes people will buy land but don’t know what to build so they will rent it out to other people.
I think this is a viable place to start for people who want to start their own store because virtual land is SUPER expensive!
7. Games
Gaming is a massive industry. There is no doubt that will be true in the metaverse. There are platforms being built that are MMORPGs with their own currency and land. Also, you can build games within existing metaverse platforms like Decentraland and Sandbox. People have built arcades with classic games or even casinos. I think building out these games will take a lot of technical knowledge compared to something like building clothes.
I suspect there will be a gaming boom once more virtual reality is introduced within the metaverse. I can imagine bowling alleys, laser tag arenas, and even ax throwing as major destinations.
8. Online KTV (Karaoke)
Apparently, karaoke is a big thing in the metaverse. There is no doubt doing karaoke with friends is a silly but absolute treat. Sadly, it is tough to get everyone together at once. With karaoke in the metaverse, everyone can get together no matter where they are.
So how are you going to make money in the metaverse with karaoke? Well, you can start your own karaoke bar or you can create music NFTs to sell to other karaoke bars. Also, you could start other types of places such as virtual trivia nights or speed dating.
I think there are a lot of opportunities beyond karaoke.
9. Virtual Clothing
Yep, you can buy virtual clothing for your avatars in these virtual worlds. People are making clothing for people to buy so they can customize their avatars. In fact, a cryptocurrency investing firm just bought over $2 million in land within Decentraland’s fashion district just so they can sell virtual clothing.
Someone will need to make the clothing for them to sell. Will that be you?
As we learned in our ‘What is the Metaverse‘ article, sadly, you can’t take your clothes with you from one metaverse to another. But! These clothing pieces are NFTs as well so you could turn around to resale your avatar’s clothes for more money.
10. Collectibles
Just like trading cards (these are in the metaverse now too) or beanie babies in the real world, there are also collectibles in the metaverse. Collectibles range from clothing to a sword to a car and even up to a yacht. These collectibles are all also NFTs so they are unique and cannot be replicated. People are constructing collectibles, out of voxels, that fit within their world to sell on the open market.
11. Data Science
As a data & analytics person, I can only imagine the data these metaverses are collecting on people. Just like in today’s internet, websites can see every click you make on a webpage. I am sure they are doing this same data collection along with where you visit most and so on.
It is easy to say that data science is being used for advertising. It is also used for market analysis. Store owners and landowners want to know more about the people visiting their little slice of digital space. Also, people will want to perform market analysis on others so they know the proper pricing of products or land.
Data Science teams can buy the data from metaverse platforms and put the data into easy-to-digest reports for their customers. This allows the customer to make data-driven business decisions to make more money on the metaverse.
Conclusion
I think there are a lot of really cool opportunities to make money on the metaverse. These are only some of the ways someone can make money in these virtual worlds. I’m sure we will see more unimaginable creative ways to make money on the metaverse in the next five to ten years.
Personally, I also find these ways to make money in the metaverse a little surreal. We are seeing new industries in the real world being founded for a virtual world. It is really cool to see!
Really the metaverse is like today’s internet but in a three-dimensional digital world instead of our current flat web pages. Metaverse architecture firms are just like web developers for today’s internet. A real estate firm is just a domain name provider like Go Daddy. And a virtual world like Decentraland is basically just a web hosting provider for your land plots and buildings like Bluehost is for your web page.
Making money in the metaverse not sounding like the right side hustle for you? Well, check out our Ways to Make Money page. Here we list out 70+ side hustle to help you earn more money.
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!
We all have the stress nightmare where your boss comes out of the blue and says “You’re fired”. That’s it and we spend the rest of the night in a panic. The problem is if it did actually ever happen, most of us don’t have a plan in case we do get fired.
Whether you’re thinking about losing your job due to stress, COVID-19, or any slew of reasons, it helps to have a plan. To lay out a blueprint, if this ever happened to me, here are 10 things to do if you lost your job and need money now.
Immediately Start
First, Take A Breath
It seems silly and not productive, but taking a breath is essential. People are let go or fired for a number of reasons and it’s not always a reflection of you or your work. Some things are just out of your control. Take an hour or take a day to let is sink it so it doesn’t consume you later.
1. Review Your Finances
Take a look at all the money you currently have. I personally use Mint to see all my bank accounts, credit card debt, and student loans all at once. You don’t need this, but make a list of every dollar in your possession. Look over your finances and get a feeling of how long you’ll last without a paycheck. It may not be pretty, but it’s something you absolutely need to know.
Know how much you need to spend each month, here is an example monthly breakdown:
Apartment & Utilities ($XX)
Food ($XX)
Car Insurance ($XX)
Cell Phone ($XX)
Internet ($XX)
Misc. ($XX)
PS. Also, consider health insurance as a cost. In most cases, your old employer would have provided this for you, but you need to talk to your HR to see how long this lasts. You may need to pick up supplemental health insurance until you get a new job.
Hopefully, you have some sort of Emergency Fund you can access if you lose your job. Your emergency fund will help cover rent/mortgage, food, and those expenses your paycheck normally covers. Most emergency funds should cover 4-6 months of expenses. If you don’t have an emergency fund, start saving up now but the following tips can still help.
I personally have an emergency fund I keep in a savings account, that will last me around 6-7 months. I know many people don’t have that. It took me 5 years to build. However it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done because it provides a mental safety net.
Let’s continue though as if you have $0 emergency funds.
If you just lost your job, you shouldn’t be watching Netflix, Hulu, or listening to Spotify. If you have any kind of subscription services that cost money regularly, you should cancel these until you get a job again. It may feel like a nice break watching Netflix between job applications, but you need to save all the money you can until you’re working again. If you feel this is too hard to do, consider using your parent’s or friend’s account temporarily to save money.
Needless to say, don’t make any crazy purchases thinking you’ll get a job next week when “you really try”. Until you have a signed contract with a company, I’d suggest avoiding the mall and any kind of gift ideas. If you can, cancel any flights, trips, running races, etc. Plus always ask if you can get your money back. It may not always be possible, but every little bit helps!
For me personally, I would cancel my gym membership ($73/mo.), cancel my Spotify account ($10/mo.) since there is a free version, and I’d probably quit investing in my brokerage account ($200/mo.) until I have a steady paycheck.
3. Ask to Defer Payments
During hard economic times, many companies are willing to work with you because they prefer late payments to nothing at all. Student loan services are often willing to reconsolidate loans or defer payments. Banks are sometimes willing to defer a mortgage payment or at least help with options. It often just takes a call and asks.
For me personally, I would call my student loan companies and ask to defer my payments until I get another job. That would save me $537/mo.
4. Budget and Eat At Home A Lot
One of the biggest ways people spend money is food and eating out. If you just lost your job, avoid going out to eat with friends (unless it’s a networking thing) or ordering in. It may not be sexy, but cold cut sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and ramen got you through the dark years, it will again.
You know what you can cut to save money and you’ll see instant savings in your bank account. Remember one of the easiest ways of having more money, is not spending it!
One of the most popular tricks people use to limit spending is paying for food only with cash. The act of seeing the money physically leaving your wallet and the empty vacuum it creates, helps people be more selective with their purchases. I personally use credit cards because I enjoy the cash back, but I can’t argue with the success physical money has in limiting spending.
Start the Job Search
5. File For Unemployment
If you lost your job and actively seeking new work, you can file for unemployment. It varies state by state, but essentially you would file a claim with the Department for Labor and Employment and prove you’re actively looking for work every 2 weeks (depending on your state). Unemployment benefits will pay you a portion (likely small) of your previous salary. This is meant to help lessen the negative impact that unemployment has on the economy. It won’t be a glamorous option and you’ll meet some interesting people, but it will help.
6. Update Resume & Social Media Profiles
This is the time to update your resume with the latest accomplishments, promotions, volunteer efforts, jobs, references, etc. As you start the job search you want to make yourself look as good as possible. However, this isn’t limited to your resume. You should be updating your LinkedIn, Facebook, etc with the latest info so you’re casting a wider net for employers.
Don’t worry too much about how your resume looks, just that the information sounds grammatically correct and makes you look good! Many companies will force to you to copy all the exact same information into their often terrible online web forms. On the bright side, if your LinkedIn is up-to-date, you can always use their “one-click apply” to jobs posted on their site.
YouTube is also a great resource if you use it to better yourself now that you have free time. There are great exercise tutorials on YouTube, classes on coding (if you’re into high-paying jobs), and even brush up on software like Microsoft Excel. Use this opportunity to start a new job with a new skill set!
7. Tell Everyone You Know You’re Looking For A Great Job
It may feel embarrassing for you to tell anyone that you’re jobless. It’s a very vulnerable situation where you feel like something is wrong with you. There isn’t! It’s a normal thing, and job searching is a $200 billion dollar industry. People are constantly moving and switching jobs, you are now just one of them.
In most cases, when you tell people that you’re looking for a job, they want to help! They’ll often share new job openings they’ve heard of, or perhaps make recommendations to people they know in your industry. The fact is your chances of finding a new job dramatically increase when more people are on your team, helping you get a job.
I personally will change my LinkedIn page to “Looking for an Awesome Opportunity” and email my friends and family that I’m actively looking. More often than not, they will understand (because we’ve all been there before) and they’ll want to help!
Some of the best job search tips I’ve ever heard:
I recommend LinkedIn, Google Jobs, and Indeed for job postings. This is what most people use. I often avoid Craigslist.
Always use Glassdoor and read company reviews on how they treat their employees.
If you like a company, stalk their employees on LinkedIn to see if they went to the same schools you attended, clubs you’re in or charities you participate in. Ask them what it’s like there and ask for advice.
Have a salary in mind, knowing how much you need to cover all your expenses.
Make Money Fast When Your Jobless
8. Sell Your Old Stuff for Extra Money
If you just lost your job and looking for extra money, consider selling your extra stuff on Craigslist or eBay. All that extra stuff in your apartment/house like old bikes or snowboards could make a couple of hundred dollars with a new family. That’s a lot of extra ramen noodles! Plus it’s a rewarding feeling getting rid of some of the junk in your life.
9. Write Articles For Money
I write all the time for a blog, but I discovered there are other places on the internet that pay you for writing! I’ve written a couple of articles on Seeking Alpha that pay $35 per article and $0.01 for every page view. It usually comes around $70/article in the long run.
With your new free time, this is probably one of the easiest ways to earn extra money while unemployed. You’ll have lots of extra time and most of the sites I listed pay between $50 – $100 per article.
For me personally, this is my plan. Spend my mornings looking for new jobs and my evenings writing articles. If I can write 1 article a night, at $50 per article. That’s an extra $1,500/month!
10. Side Gigs
We regularly talk about creative ways to make money, but some of the quickest ways to make extra cash are side-gigs. These are tasks that you can do anytime on different established platforms:
Random tasks in your city ranging from moving furniture to assembling IKEA (sites like TaskRabbit)
Many of these could be done in your afternoons while you spending your mornings (often the most productive time of the day) job searching for new opportunities.
Conclusion
Losing your job is incredibly scary, but there are TONS of resources here and online to help you find a new job and supplement your income. Hopefully, this helps make losing your job a bit less scary and aids in setting up your own backup plan!
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!
These were originally written for a trivia night with friends, but they went over so well that I wanted to share with you 37 amusing facts about money you should absolutely know. I will specify, these are money facts about the United States of America currency.
Take a moment to memorize one or two of these facts about money to impress your friends in the future! It might even help you win a trivia night.
1. In the $1 bill, there are lots of secret meanings hinting at the 13 original colonies
You may have never noticed it before but there are lots of little Easter Eggs hidden in the complex design of the $1 bill. They all revolve around the number “13”. (source)
There are 13 steps on the pyramid
13 vertical bars are placed on the shield
There are 13 horizontal stripes on the top of the shield as well
The symbolism continues with 13 stars on the eagle
Extreme detail was used to place 13 leaves and 13 berries on the olive branch on the eagle’s talons. The other talon holds 13 arrows
There are 13 stars above the key on the Department of Treasury seal
2. On the $5 bill, all 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial
However, if you want to read them you will need a magnifying glass. (source)
3. How slang terms about money like “buck” were formed
Here is a breakdown of some of the origins of words we associate with money today. These are often based on historical societies that influenced the way we refer to money (source)
Buck – Back in the day, people used the skin of deer as trade and barter for goods/services. Each skin was referred to as a “buck”.
Fee – this comes from the German word for cattle “vieh“
Shell Out – At one point, Native Americans used shells as currency, and later European colonists adopted the phrase “Shell Out” meaning “to pay”.
Salary – Adopted from the Romans, soldiers at one point were paid their wages in salt. The Latin word for salt is “salarium“. That phrase over time originated “salary”.
Dollar – A Czechoslovakian town called Jachymov minted its own silver coins in 1519, and those coins were called “talergroschen”. The slang or short form of these were called “talers“. This spread across Europe and today, many nations name their currency with some variation of “taler“. For instance, in the United States, we call our currency “Dollars”. Pretty cool right! (source)
4. People underestimate how valuable loose change can be, in 2018 the TSA collected $960,105 in loose change
All that loose change thrown in the bins as you roll through security often gets forgotten and left behind. However, it all adds up and it’s consistently a lot. Making this one of the more impressive facts about money. (source)
2017 – $866K
2016 – $867K
2015 – $765K
2014 – $674K
2013 – $638K
5. One of the grossest facts about money, like bacteria gross
This feels obvious, but something we don’t often think about, “just how many people handle your money before it comes to you…”. Basically, money can contain lots of germs, most of these are harmless but some $1 bills have been known to contain traces of salmonella and E.coli, making this one of the grossest facts about money. However, it seems that older bills (which are cotton-based) usually contain more containments while newer, glossier polymer-based $1 bills remain a little cleaner. (source)
6. The $1 bill is the most circulated bill in the United States
In fact, 48% of the money printed by the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing is just the $1 Bill. Primarily because it is the most common bill, but also because the average lifespan of a $1 bill is just 18 months. Oftentimes you can take a worn-out bill to your local bank and they’ll replace it for you. (source)
7. There is more Monopoly Money printed every year than real money
If you take the combined value of all US money printed each year, it’s between $696M – $974M (most is just to replace old worn money). Yet Parker Brothers reported that the combined fictitious value of their monopoly money, meaning add up all of their orange $500 bills, yellow $100 bills, purple $50 bills, green $20 bills, blue $10 bills, pink $5 bills, and white $1 bills, that combined fictitious value is $30 Billion. That’s with a “B”. So nearly 30x as much monopoly money than US bills created every year. (source)
8. There is an ATM machine in Antarctica
In fact, there are ATM machines on every continent in the world. It just seems strange that there is an ATM in Antarctica. However, there are actually 2 of them. Both operated by Wells Fargo at McMurdo Station, the largest science hub on the continent. That makes this one of the “coolest” facts about money. (source)
9. By law, living presidents can’t have their face on US Currency
This is issued by Congress in 1866, and for the most part, has held true. In the past, usually, only monarchies had the faces of their living presidents. Typically the only time living presidents have been featured on coins is during commemorative coins. George Washington was famous for not wanting his face on US Currency because Kings often put themselves on coins. He thought his face on currency was too much like the monarchy. (source)
10. Benjamin Franklin & Alexander Hamilton are the only Non-Presidents featured on American bills
Mr. Franklin and Mr. Hamilton were important founding fathers of the United States of America, but they are the only non-presidents to show up on US paper currency. Franklin is featured on the $100 and Hamilton on the $10. (source)
11. The phrase “In God, We Trust” wasn’t written on US currency until 1957
The change was approved by President Dwight Eisenhower on July 30, 1956, and put into effect the following year. The phrase actually replaced the previous phrase on US currency “E Pluribus Unum” meaning “One out of many”. (source)
12. The most counterfeited bill is the $20 bill
While the $100 bill is a close second, people are more likely to break a $20 at a store or bar than a $100. Some famous counterfeit money launders took fake $20’s or $100’s to bars during rush hour to buy a drink and pocket the change. While the bartender is rushed, they often didn’t take the time to examine the money too closely. I wouldn’t suggest this though, there are better ways to make money. In the end, most people get caught. (source)
13. There is a $100,000 bill
It’s a gold certificate that features the 28th US President, Woodrow Wilson. However, it was never for public circulation. The Federal Reserve Banks used to use these paper notes to circulate money between the banks. This is one of the most expensive facts about money. (source)
14. The idea of paper money caught on in the 1700s when goldsmiths gave people paper receipts for their gold
At this point in history, most money was coin-based. This started the standard of governments using paper currency as a representative of that government’s storage of precious metals. For the US Government, paper money was representative of the gold supply in Fort Knox. This continued until 1971 when digital currency made the value of money in the world based on “faith” rather than gold. A $20 bill is only valuable because everyone agrees it has value. (source)
15. Digital facts about money, Economists estimate only 8 percent of the world’s currency exists as physical cash
Meaning digital transactions of automated electronic deposits and credit cards transferring funds back and forth are more prevalent than people actually using physical money to pay for things. Think about how much money you spend a month and realize how little of that you’re actually paying with cash. That’s a crazy number to think about. (source)
16. The US Bureau of Engraving and Printing currently only produces $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills
At one point there was a series of $100,000 bills printed but they were only for transactions between Federal Reserve banks. Regular people were not carrying these around in their wallets. The $2 bill is fairly rare, they are only printed by demand and the last one was printed in 2003. (source)
17. The US Bureau of Engraving and Printing produces 37 million notes (paper money) every year!
That is a combined value of $696 million printed every year. Surprisingly, 95% of that money is created just to replace old money. (source)
18. The US. Bureau of Engraving and Printing uses 9.7 tons of ink PER DAY to print money
There are two active facilities used by the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing (Washington DC + Fort Worth, TX) that print money every day and those facilities go through so much ink. Mind you this is high-tech ink with trackable, magnetic, and color-changing properties. (source)
19. Green Ink was originally used to prevent counterfeiting with black & white cameras
It was hard to get the green ink right when people tried to produce photographic copies of the US currency. In 1929 when paper money designs became more standardized and intricate to reduce counterfeiting, the US kept the green ink because they had so much in stock. (source)
20. A single company (Crane and Co.) has always produced the paper to make US currency
Ever since 1775 when Paul Revere used paper from Stephen Crane’s paper mill for some of the United States’ first banknotes. Crane & Co. has been the sole company that has always produced unique paper for US Currency. (source)
21. The original purpose of the Secret Service was to fight money counterfeiting (Protecting Facts About Money)
In July 1865 the US Secret service was formed to fight early counterfeiting at the end of the Civil War. (source)
22. If you want to tear any US Bill by folding it over and over, it’ll take 4,000 double folds
That’s a lot but these things are durable! Composed of 25% linen and 75% cotton, these things take some effort to rip. However, not many people are going to reach the 4,000 fold capacity. Keep in mind it only takes 400 folds before a regular piece of paper breaks. (source)
23. Damaged US currency can only be replaced at a bank if more than 51% or more is attached
If you get a ripped $1 and as long as more than 51% is present, it can be used as legal tender. You can take it to a bank and they will replace the torn currency with a brand new note. You need to have more than 51% so people don’t tear currency apart and turn in two separate notes. This is one of the most “ripped” facts about money. (source)
24. There is more than $1.99 TRILLION worth of federal reserve notes currently in the world
As of April 8, 2020, there are $1.84 Trillion of dollars and coins in circulation. So if you took every US dollar and coin in the world (banks, couch cushions, buried treasure, etc.) and added them all up, it would be $1.84 Trillion dollars. (source)
25. Our money is produced by two different organizations, the US Mint creates coins & US Bureau of Engraving creates paper money
There are two separate organizations that produce the money we use every day. (source)
26. The US Mint produces 30 billion coins every year
The United States Mint creates 1 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, and 25 cent coins. Plus $1 coins commonly referred to as the Sacagawea Golden Dollar Coin, replaced the previous US $1 coin which was the Susan B. Anthony Dollar Coin in 2003. This is one of the most “coined” facts about money. (source)
27. It cost the US Mint more money to create a nickel than a dime
It comes down to size. The US Mint pays $0.1118 cents to produce a nickel, yet only $0.0565 cents to produce a dime. (source)
28. A penny costs more to make than it’s actually worth
It costs the US. Mint $0.0241 cents to create a single penny. That means it costs double to produce a penny than it’s actually worth! This is why there are many petitions to get rid of the penny because it’s literally a waste of money. This is one of the most well-known facts about money. (source)
29. There are ridges on the edges of quarters and dimes because people use to shave the edges for extra metal
Back in the day, people used to shave the edges of coins to gather precious metals (silver, gold, etc.) and combine those clippings to counterfeit new coins or sell outright. It was called “Coin Clipping”. Eventually, the US Mint started to add ridges to the coins to make it easier to spot and deter counterfeiting. Pennies and nickels were never created with precious metals so it wasn’t worth the effort. (source)
30. People use pennies to stop garden pests (One zapping Facts About Money)
It’s an odd thing but some people swear by it. If you bury pennies in the garden, the copper and zinc in the pennies will generate electric shocks for garden pests. Most people use them to deter snails. Nowadays there is more zinc than copper in pennies. This is one of the most “shocking” facts about money. (source)
31. The most expensive US coin is the 1913 Liberty Head Nickel, it sold for $3.7M in 2010
It was a five-cent piece produced in extremely limited quantities unauthorized by the US Mint. So it’s like the rebel of the coin world. There are only 5 in the world ever known to exists and two are in museums while the other three are in private collections. (source)
Even Snopes confirmed this is true. It’s not necessarily because everyone is out there snorting cocaine, but when bills with cocaine residue are counted in a counting machine, those machines move the trace amounts over other bills. So thus lots of money gets coated with cocaine. (source)
33. The average lifespan of a US Coin is 30 years
That is drastically longer than the typical lifecycle of a $1 bill, which is 18 months. Coins are simply more durable. This is one of the most “resilient” facts about money. (source)
34. All US coins have a stamp (Mint Mark) from where they were made
Each coin has a single letter to indicate where they were made. If a coin doesn’t have a mark, it was likely made in Philadelphia since they were the first US Mint and still largest Mint. Today most coins except Philadelphia’s have mint marks on the back. (source)
P – Philadelphia
D – Denver
S – San Francisco
W – West Point
35. The Lincoln Penny is the only coin where the figure faces right
On every other coin, the faces look left. It’s not the most significant finding, but it is kind of interesting for trivia! (source)
36. The US Mint produces more coins than any other Mint in the world
In fact, in addition to all the US coins produced by the US Mint. At times, they have produced coins for other countries as well, making it the largest coin maker in the world. (source)
37. Whenever the US Mint produces coins, they make a profit
There is a difference between what it takes to “make” and coin and how much it is “worth”. That profit is what funds the US Mint and creates additional revenue for the United States to spend on education, healthcare, and other US agencies. (source)
Think these were interesting? It took us lots of time, it would be super cool if you gave these a share to your friends who also like interesting facts about money!
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!
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!
I’ve always had a hard time finding a good list of Amazon Affiliate Website Examples, so here is my personal list of inspiration that I’ve built up over the years. I’ve been itching to create a new website lately as an awesome way to make money, but before I start I thought I would review my list of successful Amazon Affiliate Websites currently making money for some lessons learned.
What is an Amazon Affiliate Website?
An Amazon Affiliate Website is any website that earns money by linking products from their website to the Amazon store. This can be a blog or website that references a product with a link back to Amazon, so customers can purchase that particular item.
The idea is that you are referring customers to Amazon where you gain a commission if a user buys from the Amazon store. This is usually 5%-10% per purchase. Amazon tracks this by a special code from the URL link on your website. Click here to create your own website with affiliate marketing.
Many of these websites use Amazon, along with other affiliate programs to boost revenue. Here is a list of 108 Best Affiliate Programs in addition to Amazon to make money for bloggers and influencers.
22 Successful Amazon Affiliate Website Examples
ThisIsWhyImBroke – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
ThisIsWhyImBroke.com
This is one of my favorite Amazon Affiliate Websites because it’s so freaking cool! These guys gather up the coolest gadgets, gifts, tech and oddities from Amazon and around the web to showcase on their website. These are gag gifts and fun gadgets people love to buy. They likely use an SEO tool like SEMrush to find great blog post ideas. This site uncovers the cool, often hidden, things of the internet and all you have to do is click on one of the Amazon Affiliate links to buy it from the Amazon store. ThisIsWhyIAmBroke works with more than just Amazon, but it’s one of their biggest revenue sources. It’s entirely possible to create a website just like this.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 2.40M Visitors Average Post Length: 10 – 160 Words One of Most Searched Products: Salt Firing Shotgun How much do they make: Around $20,000+ per month from Amazon (source)
How To Start A $5K Blog Free Email Course
A free step by step course with Andrew Kraemer looking at examples of blogs making over $5k, how to set up your own blog and what you need to do to get more traffic.
Join us to get wonderful blogging tips and access to this amazing course!
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ConsumerSearch – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
ConsumerSearch.com
This website started in 2000 as a review website which helped consumers by reviewing different products and offering the consumer the chance to purchase the product. These have become a very popular way for bloggers to create Amazon affiliate websites. It’s a great way to feature products and a good review can be very motivating for someone to purchase.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 1.10M Visitors Average Post Length: 1,000 Words One of Most Searched Products: Bose Sound Bar How much do they make: This site was bought for $33 Million from About.com in 2007 (source)
GiftIdeaGeek.com
This Amazon Affiliate Website is similar to ThisIsWhyImBroke in that the main homepage is set up as an affiliate product page which is perfect selling. The idea is that GiftIdeaGeek focuses on geeky and pop culture referenced products that appeal to that niche. This website uses witty satire to hook the audience into “clicking through” on creative products and if they buy, GiftIdeaGeek gains the affiliate commission. In addition to the homepage, they use a blogroll section to gain SEO and additional affiliate opportunities.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): Unknown Average Post Length: 1,000 Words One of Most Searched Products: Clever Socks How much do they make: Unknown
TheWirecutter – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
TheWirecutter.com
This is a great example of a top-notch review site. They start at the homepage notifying that they make affiliate commissions but provide top-end reviews from independent reviewers. This is great, to be honest upfront. In addition to being transparent, they also take the content is king strategy. I randomly clicked on their “Top Home Projector” post where they reviewed (and linked) to several high-end home theater projectors. Keep in mind that these high priced items produce high commissions. That may explain why they spent the time to write a 5,000 word post on it. This site seems to do everything right in being a prime example of an Amazon Affiliate Website. This site now has over 60 staff members working for it.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 8.10M Visitors Average Post Length: 3,000-5,000 Words One of Most Searched Products: Air Purifier How much do they make: In 2015, this site combined with The Wirecutter made $150 Million in eCommerce sales. So you can get an idea of their commission revenue. (source)
TheSweetHome – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
TheSweetHome.com
This is the sister site to the affiliate marketing site TheWirecutter. Another amazon affiliate website that lists gadgets and gear that the website reviews. They come out and say it on their homepage, they earn money by affiliate commissions. Apparently, this site receives over 1.8M visitors, which is pretty impressive considering this site only started in 2013. I guess the moral of the story is, it’s not too late to start a review website. It also helps to have incredibly long reviews. In fact, their one soda stream review had over 13,000 words. This is a great example that content is king.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 2.50M Visitors Average Post Length: 4,000 – 5,000 Words One of Most Searched Products: Robot Vaccum How much do they make: In 2015, this site combined with The Wirecutter made $150 Million in e-commerce sales. So you can get an idea of their commission revenue. (source)
GearPatrol – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
GearPatrol.com
This is an interesting style review website that reads more like a magazine than a review site. This definitely helps give it some more credit than throwing a up a bunch of products and hoping people read them. It’s interesting that it takes a different approach, rather than writing long content, it focuses on a clean layout and video reviews to show people the product they’re testing, racking in 2.3 million monthly viewers. This is incredibly valuable for people willing to buy, but want to see the product in a video demo before purchasing. Now compare this site to what the site looked like in 2008 (here).
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 3.30M Visitors Average Post Length: 100-500 Words One of Most Searched Products: Alera Elusion Series Office Chair How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make
DogFoodAdvisor – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
DogFoodAdvisor.com
This is a testament that design isn’t everything. Look at their homepage. There is one, very cute puppy, but nothing else. I’m not sure how this site is successful, but from looking over their latest articles, they are receiving regular viewers and comments. Something is working. Then again, people do love their dogs.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 1.30M Visitors Average Post Length: 1,000-1,500 Words One of Most Searched Products: Dog Food How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make
BabyGearLab – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
BabyGearLab.com
So combine a review site and something people everyone loves, like babies. Imagine all the confusion new parents have when they bring a new baby into the world. What do they do, what do they need, what is the best? BabyGearLab solves that by reviewing baby stuff and helping parents understand it and buy it. This site has been around since 2011 helping parents through the impossible decisions of what is best for your baby.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 234.10K Visitors Average Post Length: 6,000-10,000 Words One of Most Searched Products: Convertable Baby Seat How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make
BestCovery – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
BestCovery.com
Review sites continue to be an impressive way to make an affiliate commission. This review site doesn’t even niche down, their tag line is “Discover the Best of Everything”. From my initial review, they continue the streak of long content to rank high in Google. In doing this, they list multiple items really pushing their 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on picks. All conveniently with their own price tags linking to Amazon. With only 152 thousand monthly visitors, it’s not as much as other sites, but they continue to push out new content and gain new Facebook users. Anyone with a blog knows, it’s hard to get Facebook users, so they’re doing something right.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 152.10K Visitors Average Post Length: 4,000-6,000 Words One of Most Searched Products: Best Epoxy How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make.
BestReviews – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
BestReviews.com
This is one the cleanest designs I’ve seen of an Amazon Affiliate Website. It has a very professional look for a review website, but they don’t overcrowd you with product reviews right off. This site really sets itself apart with their actual videos and reviews inside of their test center. You know these testers are actually testing the product rather than copying a review from another site or making things up. It’s so legit that I will likely be back to this site for future reviews for my purchases. It really gains your trust with the photos and videos even though you know they are making money through the affiliate commissions. Plus they buy all the products themselves and never accept any products from the manufacturer to maintain objectivity, but when you bring in 3.1 million visitors per month, you can buy a few items to review.
It’s so legit that I will likely be back to this site for future reviews for my purchases. It really gains your trust with the photos and videos even though you know they are making money through the affiliate commissions. Plus they buy all the products themselves and never accept any products from the manufacturer to maintain objectivity, but when you bring in 3.1 million visitors per month, you can buy a few items to review.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 3.80M Visitors Average Post Length: Around 1,000 Words + Videos One of Most Searched Products:Best Hair Bleaching Products How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make.
KidsTabletswithWiFi – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
KidsTabletsWithWiFi.com
This is an Amazon Affiliate Website that has really niched down into specifically, as the name implies, kids tablets with Wifi. These are high priced items that produce high commissions in a huge market, children. What is the best tablet for kids? Do you give them an iPad? What if it breaks? Is there a cheaper option? These are all questions that this site helps with. It runs like a blog, but with a relatively simple design. It’s hard to tell if they have produced much new content because they don’t include dates with their blog posts. However, this site is just one blog, with three additional pages for “Best Tablets for Kids”, “Kids Tablet Reviews” and “Kids Tablet Comparisons” all of which are likely keyword researched names. It’s likely the niched down keyword research to bring in the traffic, because the content while good, is relatively short with 300-500 words per post.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 1.80K Visitors Average Post Length: 400 – 600 Words One of Most Searched Products: Fire HD Kids Tablet How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make.
LongBoardReviews – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
LongboardReviews.net
Another example of an Amazon Affiliate Website that niched down to long boards. These are like skateboards but longer and meant to cruise, going longer distances than skateboards. It’s a relatively simple website that loads the user with tons of products from the homepage but highlights the lack of comments per review (usually 0 – 2 comments). The typical length of an article is 300-500 words so they are relying on their specific niche for traffic. Not bad for a “.net” domain as they are less common than their popular counterparts “.com”. It’s not the best example, but I’m going for a range.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 2.70K Visitors Average Post Length: 400 – 600 Words How much do they make: The website sold in 2016 on Flippa for $5,275. Usually a website sells for a year’s worth of revenue. So we can expect this site to make around $500 per month (source)
FootballSnackHelmets – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
FootballSnackHelmets.com
This is one of the most niche markets I’ve ever seen. It’s gems like these that make me confident the right keyword research in the smallest of niches can lead to a successful Amazon Affiliate Website. I’m not saying this specific site is successful though. They have only 2 blog post with minimal content for each “Football Snack Helmet”. It seems like someone had great intentions to set up an affiliate site with a clean design but forgot about it after 2 blog posts, ending in June 2016. This is one of the easiest examples that you could set up in a weekend.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 2.20K Visitors Average Post Length: 100 – 300 Words One of Most Searched Products: Cleavland Browns Kids Uniform How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make, but we anticipate it’s seasonal and reliant on the US customer base.
OutdoorGearLab – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
OutdoorGearLab.com
This site is owned by the same owners as BabyGearLab.com so you’ll notice some similarities. It’s a really clean site that looks more like REI’s website than a review site. They generate tons of organic traffic for each review category like ski gloves combines all of their test products (amazon links), test experiences, reviews and opinions so that the review pages reach around 6,000 words. This is a great way to do a review page in my opinion to combine the word length of each review into one huge, helpful page. Plus keep in mind that people love outdoor gear. It’s insanely fun to go outdoors but you never know if you have right equipment. To figure out what’s right, these outdoor review sites help immensely!
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 1.60K Visitors Average Post Length: 5,000 – 7,000 Words One of Most Searched Products: Arc’teryx Jacket How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make.
TopTenReviews – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
TopTenReviews.com
This is an older site (2003) with some heavy domain authority. That explains the crazy amount of content this site contains. It’s helpful though when you have 350+ employees. This isn’t a small enterprise, and they still utilize the Amazon Affiliate network to monetize their site. They use long and wordy articles to review products, maximizing the SEO of each page. The biggest difference from this site and others is the amount of digital content these guys review. Their digital content ranges from Antivirus Software to Credit Card processing. This isn’t a typical Amazon product, but digital content can earn affiliate commissions through other sources than Amazon. Amazon is a great resource to monetize your site, but it’s definitely not the only way.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 12.80M Visitors Average Post Length: 3,000 – 5,000 Words One of Most Searched Products: Best Printer How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make.
TomsHardware – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
TomsHardware.com
Do you remember 1997? That’s when this website was created. You could maybe tell from the website homepage that looks more like About.com than a review website, then again they have over 1.5 million pages indexed. Don’t make the same mistake I did, this isn’t a door and sink hardware company, this is computer hardware for hardcore nerds who build their own computers. I’m sure this site is at the forefront of every build-it-myself computer geek out there (I’m one ). The site is now owned by Purch, the same people who own TopTenReviews. These guys have really got a good handle on successful Amazon Affiliate Websites.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 47.50M Visitors Average Post Length: 500 – 1,000 Words One of Most Searched Products: Best Gaming Monitors How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make.
CarSeatAnswers – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
CarSeatAnswers.com
It’s really simple and plain websites like this that make me happy! If something this plain can bring in so many visitors, than someone creative and design oriented like me can do better, right? CarSeatAnswers focuses on keywords like “Car Seat Answers” and “Car Seat Guide” and “Which Seat is Safest for a Baby’s Car Seat” then writes 700-1,000 word articles with no photos except for the Amazon Products sold throughout the article. This is one of the simplest example, but it still brings in visitors even with a small amount of domain authority. It gives you hope though, that you can easily create a successful website, right?
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 3.40K Visitors Average Post Length: 300 – 500 Words One of Most Searched Products: Best Car Seat How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make.
KichenFaucetDivas – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
KitchenFaucetDivas.com
This was one of the first Amazon Affiliate Website Examples I ever came across. I thought it was incredibly simple before I saw some other websites that were even worse. A lot of it is what you would expect. A wordy homepage with a couple of pages in the menu bar that all resemble more keyword targeting than actual helpful navigation. I keep wondering if they actually reviewed all those different kitchen sinks, because that would be a lot of work installing and disassembling numerous sinks to see how they work. Likely not, their “About Us” page just says a “Mother of two” which tells me as the reader, if you’re not putting your name on this, your reviews are probably just as generic. Usually, if an “About” page doesn’t list a name or company, I assume that the website is just as generic.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 30.20K Visitors Average Post Length: 300 – 500 Words One of Most Searched Products: Best Kitchen Faucet How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make.
LiveLongerRunning – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
LiveLongerRunning.com
I read this title and expected an awesome community of runners sharing their glory stories of braving the snow and rain to log in miles. Instead I’m directed to a boring treadmill site. This site is about 5 pages and a couple of additional pages for reviews for treadmills. The reviews are the only pages with any kind of lengthy content and those are still only around 800 words. The main redeeming quality about this site, is they are focusing on high price items so even a single sale of a treadmill is a nice commission. This is another example of a website you could make in a weekend. It’s motivating though because you know you can do better, right?
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 11.10K Visitors Average Post Length: 500 – 1,000 Words One of Most Searched Products: High End Treadmill How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make.
PickMyShaver – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
PickMyShaver.com
This is a review site that focuses on high-end shaving equipment to have a nice mix of lower end and higher end shavers for a nice variety. It’s a simple/clean website design with lots of photos to help people understand the variety. Each review is decently long, but nothing to rave about. What is impressive is each review has a good amount of comments that are answered by the website owner. That tells me that the owner is monitoring this site and probably adding new content. A site like this wouldn’t be too hard to maintain. I’m thinking, maybe they add a new blog post once a month.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb): 41.90K Visitors Average Post Length: 800 – 1,000 Words One of Most Searched Products: Best Electric Shaver How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make.
100DaysOfRealFood – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
100DaysOfRealFood.com
This is a great example of an Amazon Affiliate Website that’s not a review site! It’s actually more like a food blog that recommends certain products through their blog and resource pages. With 1.6 Million Facebook Likes, Lisa Leak (owner) has become an authority on “real food” and uses this platform to sell other things like her own cook book. This example is more for a traditional blogger who wants to start monetizing their website rather than creating a review site.
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 407.60K Visitors Average Post Length: 500 – 1,000 Words How much do they make: She doesn’t list how much she makes on her blog.
InflatableHotTubGuide – Amazon Affiliate Website Example
InflatableHotTubGuide.com
So this is a niche I guess. This is an interesting example of a site built around a high price item that I could see people willing to buy online rather than a store. This doesn’t leave a lot of room to expand into other hot tub areas, but if your focus is “inflatable hot tubs” then go for it. I can’t imagine they update it too often, the last time seems to be August 2015, but what’s new in the world of inflatable hot tubs?
Monthly Visitors (SimilarWeb) : 967 Visitors Average Post Length: 500 – 1,000 Words One of Most Searched Products: Cheapest Inflatable Hot Tub How much do they make: I don’t know how much they make.
29 Other Amazon Affiliate Website Examples
These additional websites, while different, follow a similar pattern of the previously mentioned. It’s a great list to reference what others are doing in the niche website world with Amazon Affiliates.
101birthdaygift.com – Products like ThisIsWhyImBroke
Thank you
Thanks to some helpful Reddit users, One Man’s Brand and Niche Site Project for some of the inspiration to make this list of 50 happen!
What I learned from 50 different Amazon Affiliate Website Examples
This list is pretty freaking significant with so many lessons learned. I hit on many of these in individual reviews but here are the highlights.
Keyword Research is Key – is the single most important thing you can do. If your keyword is too broad, it’ll get lost in the sea of other websites and if it’s too narrow, no one is going to visit your site.
Review Sites Are Popular – There are a couple exceptions, but most of these successful Amazon Affiliate Websites are just review sites that give people an idea of what the item is like before they buy. There is definitely something to it.
Content is King – The more successful websites had content that was around 1,000 words per post. Google identifies this as better content and it’ll help your search rankings. It can’t just be gibberish though, it helps if you break up the content into 6-8 different sections so it’s easy for the user to navigate while still being lengthy. I used to think 300 words was good and 500 was above and beyond. I’ll likely spend even more time on articles and aim for around 1,000 words per article like my most popular article “Robinhood App Review” at 1,500 words.
Mix High & Low Price Items, but Lean Towards High Price – if you’re doing all this work to push people towards a certain product, make sure that product is worth it. It doesn’t make much sense to review a $5 item with 1,000 words. You should lean towards those higher price items that will give you higher commissions. Remember, you get a percentage of the sale, not a flat fee.
Get People To The Amazon Store – Many of these websites that had more sales, sent more people to the Amazon store. It’s a numbers game, the more people you send the Amazon market place, the more that will buy.
Conclusion
Affiliate Marketing is easily one of my favorite income streams from our list of ways to make money.
Just imagine how much you could start investing if you owned or two of these niche sites. The thing is, it’s completely do-able. I have the skills (most people do) to create something like this. I am so freaking pumped to start my next niche website! I’m using these lessons learned to start my keyword research now. I’ll follow up on my progress in the upcoming blog posts. I really hope this helps you as much as it did me. It’s really inspirational to see how others are making additional income online with niche websites!
Am I missing any good Amazon Affiliate Website Examples I can add to this list?
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!
Over the last 2 years, I’ve done SO much writing for this blog. I wanted to branch out, stretch my creative muscle and financial know-how writing for a larger publication that pays per article (here’s a list I made of 20+ websites that pay you for writing). I started out on the financial website Seeking Alpha since it’s commonplace now for me to write/talk about finance. Here are the blueprints to How I published my first article on Seeking Alpha and got paid.
First, What’s Seeking Alpha?
Seeking Alpha is an online financial journal for investment research covering stocks, bonds, assets classes, ETFs, and investment strategies. It looks a bit like this.
Why Write for Seeking Alpha?
Anyone who is first starting out as a freelance writer should start with a small publication, getting their feet wet and then lead into larger publications. You shouldn’t expect to be published in the New York Times with your first article.
I heard other bloggers talk about writing for Seeking Alpha so I looked into it. I even heard it was easy to get published on Seeking Alpha. So I decided to start small (FYI, it’s not that small).
Seeking Alpha has TWO different publishing platforms. One is like a blog where you sign up and they’ll publish any article you write to your own “mini-blog” and the other is for exclusive articles that Seeking Alpha will pay you for. I discovered that was MUCH harder to get published on.
What does Seeking Alpha Pay-Per-Article?
Every article exclusively published on Seeking Alpha receives a base payout of $35 PLUS $0.01 for every page view. So no matter what you get published, you will receive $35 and if it’s widely viewed you’ll receive $10 per every 1,000 page views.
The higher the page views, the more money you make. Plus there is no timetable for payments, so you’ll continue to receive paychecks from high visited articles for months.
The average article on Seeking Alpha makes $68.79, meaning the average article receives 3,379 page views. It’s way more then what Ebates pays.
Here’s How Writing for Seeking Alpha Went Down
Don’t expect it to be easy
I went into this thinking it was easy (like the other bloggers said) so I spent a little time on my first every article. After recently selling off a majority of my portfolio to pay off my car, I sold my position in Coca-Cola first. So I figured I’d write about that.
My first article was titled “3 Reasons Why Coke is Basically Just Backwash Now”. I spewed out some opinions, ran up about 600 words and hit submit. I submitted it to the “mini-blog” AND their exclusive article submission platform that actually paid per article.
Well, it was published to the mini-blog no problem, that was easy! However, I discovered it’s MUCH harder to get published in their exclusive journal where they pay-per-article. Here was my first Rejection.
HOLY CRAP, that is not easy, they flat out rejected the article. I honestly wasn’t expecting a rejection and it kind of hurt. I REALLY wanted to give up. I only tried again I made it a goal to get paid for an article in my May Income Report. Stupid goals.
I only tried again because I made it a goal to get paid for an article in Income Reports. Stupid goals.
They gave me some great feedback though, so I revised my article and tried again.
I revised my article and re-submitted
I have to admit, they at least read the article close enough to give me valuable feedback. I’m pretty sure if I ever went back to school to get my MBA, I’d submit all my articles to Seeking Alpha before my professor.
So I narrowed my focus more and concentrated on one of the reasons why I wanted to abandon Coca-Cola. I narrowed down my focus to the health movement and how the Soda Tax is affecting the soda industry. I sourced every thought with hyperlinks and fleshed out opinions replacing them with facts. I was quite proud of my article.
It still wasn’t enough, Rejected.
SERIOUSLY! Was this the editor for Berkshire Hathaway? I had over ten sources and a well-written piece covering an interesting topic. However, they wanted more on how it specifically affects Coca-Cola. My article should cover how exactly is A is affecting B and how it relates to C. So they wanted to get in the weeds with how exactly is the Soda Tax directly affecting Coca-Cola and how is the company responding to the growing health concerns.
All illusions that publishing to Seeking Alpha was easy, were now shattered. I started going finance ninja and pulling stats.
I revised my article once more and was accepted!
I spent more time looking through Coca-Cola’s financial reports, understanding how the current 8 cities who passed a “soda tax” have affected both their tax growth, the decline in soda sales and future growth of the tax. As well as read Coca-Cola’s Letter to Share Holders about the future of the company and their responses to the current cities enacting the tax.
I now had a pretty good idea now how the Soda Tax is affecting Coca-Cola and Seeking Alpha loved it.
YES! The final article is now published on Seeking Alpha, Coca-Cola And The ‘Soda Tax’. In the first 2 days, it’s received 1,340 views which equals $48.40 ($35 base pay + $13.40 for page views).
As well as receiving over 38 comments, primarily from people who REALLY hate taxes.
Conclusion
It’s exciting to think of oneself as a finance writer, once you’ve been officially paid for an article to be published. There is so much that goes into an article that gives it substance and obviously a bit more difficult than I originally imagined. However, the process I feel is similar to other freelance writing jobs if you want to earn extra money.
I will absolutely do a couple more Seeking Alpha articles in the future. Maybe once a month, it’s a great learning opportunity, and I’m all about residual payments from page views as a new passive income stream. Although in the future, I’ll use a tool like SEMrush to find popular keywords that can get more page views and more passive income. =)
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!
One question I have had about the Metaverse is, “How can I make money in the Metaverse?” I am a big tech nerd so having another side hustle that revolves around technology really piques my interest. So, let’s take a look at potential side hustles in the metaverse to see how we can make more money.
