Just over 2 years ago I lost my job thanks to some company remodelling, and as a result I faced financial hardship for the first time in my life. Whilst the first two months of this was incredibly difficult, I knew that I had to find a way to get my hands on some cash, until I could find another job. The first step that I took was to follow a good friend’s who told me that here in Florida home equity loans are good value and relatively easy to attain. A home equity loan is like a second mortgage which basically extracts value from your home which you can take as a lump sum, and then renegotiate your mortgage, given that Florida has something of a housing bubble, homeowners have lots of equity here.
Following my equity loan, I was forced to find other ways to make ends meet until I finally got a job, and here is how I did it.
Freelance Work
The internet is rife with opportunities to make some extra money blogging, or even a stable income and despite my lack of computing know-how, I decided to give freelance work a try. This proved to be a great decision and within just a few weeks I was writing articles for a number of websites online. The freelance sites that you can find have huge amount of job opportunities available from writers to graphic designers, virtual assistants to social media campaign managers, a great way to make some money straight from your home.
Buying and Selling
After selling everything in the house that I no longer needed, I decided that I would start trying to sell some more things online, which I could pick up for a low price. Books are my thing and so I decided that I would start selling books on my eBay page. The way I did this, and you can do it with anything that you like, was to head to thrift shops and markets, armed with my cellphone. Each time that I found a well-priced book, I would scan it on my phone, to see how much they were selling for online, assuming the price was higher online, I would buy the book and then go make some profit.
Connector
My freelance work gave me an idea which turned into a real money spinner, connecting people. How it works is like this, you see a client asking for a freelancer to design a website for them, at a budget of $1000, you bid for the job, and then hopefully you win. When you win the gig, you head to a website such as Craigslist and offer $800 for a new website. Once someone bites on Craigslist, you simply forward them the requirements of your client from the freelance site, and then deliver them their website, they pay you $1000, you pay the designer $800 and you have $200 in your pocket just because you connected people.
There are always ways to make more money, you just need to get creative.