Online shopping voucher? What am I supposed to do with this? I need money not an online shopping voucher! An online shopping voucher isn’t going to help me pay my rent or my dentist bill or get my car fixed. What now!?
You may have an online shopping voucher as a payment for doing surveys, as payment for doing little jobs on Mechanical Turk, as payment for other online activities you’re involved in, or you may have received an online shopping voucher as a gift. What you need, though, is money.
Assuming that your online shopping voucher payment or gift is, for example, an Amazon shopping voucher (Amazon has a wide variety of products to choose from, and it is the way anyone but those who live in the U.S.A. will be paid by Amazon Mechanical Turk if one does little jobs on the site), then here are
10 Ways to Make Money from an Online Shopping Voucher
- Get cash from your family or friends: check with your family or friends if they would like to order something from Amazon for themselves or as a gift that they soon need to get someone. Tell them if you get it for them it’s going to cost them less than if they got it themselves because you’ll charge them only 80% or 70% – or whatever – of the real cost. Yes, you lose a bit of the value of your online shopping voucher, but at least you get cash from your family member or friend!
- Resell what you buy with your online shopping voucher: sell to family or friends or sell at a flea market, perhaps along with other things you also or already sell at flea markets. You could buy lots of the same thing or type of thing, preferably little things that all come in one box or packet, and could sell the items individually for the same price you bought them for, or perhaps for even slightly less (at least you’re now getting cash in return). Even repack these little things into inexpensive multiple smaller packets or attractive packages, and resell the things for slightly more than you bought them for.
- Make money from your writing: use your shopping voucher to buy a book like a Writer’s Market book so that you can find lists of places that may buy your writing.
- Make money from your photos: use your shopping voucher to buy a book like a Photographer’s Market book so that you can find lists of places that may pay you for your photos.
- Make money from making and selling homemade jewellery: buy beads or other items you need for making jewellery, make jewellery items, and sell the homemade jewellery items to friends and family or at a craft market or online.
- Learn how to make something you can sell: buy a book that will help you learn how to make something that you can sell – if you don’t have much money to get the materials or other items needed to make these things, perhaps choose a book on how to make money from upcycling things you already have lying around your home. Also, see the previous way to make money from your online shopping voucher – perhaps get some beads or other jewellery items and a book on how to make homemade jewellery.
- Learn to do something that you can offer as a service from home: use your shopping voucher to get a book or two that will teach you a new skill, and then once you feel comfortable that you know what you’re doing, start offering (advertise) those services from home and then do the work to make money from home!
- Learn how to make money online: your shopping voucher can help you purchase a book or two that will help you learn how to make money online or from blogging.
- Buy an item that can help you make money: buy something like a camera, or some tools – or even some items you can use to decorate or better package things you already sell, making those items more attractive to your potential customers, thus maybe increasing sales of those items.
- Use your online shopping voucher to buy something you would usually buy anyway: How does this make you money? It frees up the cash you would have spent buying those things at your local stores. This is also a good idea for buying gifts. Instead of buying birthday gifts, other special occassion gifts, or Christmas presents, get them with your Amazon gift voucher. The money that you would have spent on these usual items or gifts can be used towards something else instead, like paying your rent, paying your dentist bill, or getting your car fixed!
There you go; stop being so sad or upset about “only” having an online shopping voucher when what you really need is cash. An online shopping voucher can help you make money.
© Copyright Teresa Schultz 2015
