Building Up Alternate Income

 

In my continuing quest to be debt-free and on the road to financial independence, I’ve been utilizing various tools to build up income streams besides my day-job in financial services (2 years and counting down to eliminate everything). I’ve never had a credit card or credit card debt, so the road thus far has been relatively painless, I just have our (GF and I) car, and my student loan ($15,000, I was so floored when I first got this, but I’m thankful anyway, some have more).

Here’s what I have in the mix. I write 3 articles a week over at Nesteggr. I also write an article once a week over at Helium. At first, the penny-here penny-there from my Helium revenue seemed pretty sub-par and not worth my time. Over the past few months, however, I’ve had a few front-page features as well as continuing revenue from old articles, and so I keep on writing. I’ve also utilized a bit of woot arbitrage, if I think the margin is great enough I’ll buy something on woot and sell it locally for a reasonable mark up (15-20%). Finally I bring in some extra lunch money through a couple of pay-to sites (Play this game right, don’t give out sensitive information, use a PO box and dummy email/phone number).

I enjoy doing this for a variety of reasons. I can do it anytime, anywhere. It hardly seems like work if you sit down at your comp and the mood strikes you to write. These sources have also been instrumental in knocking down debt at a much faster pace, and as such I’ll have my loan and car paid for (if all goes to plan, cross your fingers) within 2 years.

What creative ways do you have to knock down debt?

-Xias