Lessons learned making 20k this year w/ beermoney

This year has been absolutely chaotic, weathering my first stretch of unemployment since 2007, discovering this subreddit accidently, earning enough THROUGH the layoff to not end in financial ruin and then transitioning beermoney to what it should be, side income. I am back to full-time work, and it has been nice not to obsess over every single User Testing screener or Prolific study. I have learned quite a bit, so I wanted to share my perspective on how the last year has gone for me.

For perspective, I posted THIS thread earlier this year. It went into my process, backstory, etc. https://www.reddit.com/r/beermoney/comments/1bg894i/this_sub_saved_me_for_real/

1. Focus on finding employment. This was obviously the end goal as I have a family and am in my 40s, but there was a part of me after being laid-off that thought MAYBE, JUST MAYBE this could be sustainable. The first month was amazing, and I made about 70% of my full time income, so it seemed like if I just pushed harder and scaled more, I would get there. It proved to be close to, if not completely impossible. The days became too long and those on this forum (and others) who said that this type of work should really just be side-income are correct.
2. Relying on this kind of work for a full-time income is possible short term, but not sustainable. This is probably not shocking to most of you, but the frustration that comes with this kind of work, inspite of being 'your own boss' is maddening. The main things you have to watch out for, aside from ambigious thottling on various sites, is the ebb and flow makes it hard to count on. Which brings be to my next point.
3. Optimize your workspace. I went a bit crazy, to be honest, but I had multiple monitors, tons of bookmarks and tab setup, lots of browser extensions, and a tablet to do simple surveys on Qmee and similar while I was trying to earn on the computer.
4. Have primary and secondary earners. Time is literal money in this space, so having primary and secondary earners is a must. If the primary earner is not hitting that day, move to something like Swagbucks, Qmee, even mTurk to grind some income while you wait for a Prolific study or a User Testing session. This secondary earner is really a dark horse in this method.
5. Even then, have a backup. My backup turned out to be super important. It was Clickworker and Field Agent doing in store audits. Yes, I had to spend gas money to get there, but I would often route a list of 4-7 store audits in my 100 mile radius and would do THOSE on the weekends when UT, CCR and Prolific are generally slow. This allowed me to bank some weekend dollars going into the week, keeping my numbers more attainable.
6. Set a earnings goal number and quota. I had a initial goal and a stretch goal daily. My initialy goal was $120 and my stretch goal was $200. I had to do WHATEVER I could to get to my initial goal, as that was the number I needed on a weekday to be able to pay basic bills without having to completely destroy my savings. I had only a 3 month expenses worth of savings in my account before I would have had to tap into my retirement (which as someone who has a family and is only 20ish years from retirement, was a hard pill to swallow)
7. Don't forget taxes. Even with my overall desperation, I kept about 35% of everything I earned out for taxes. It may not be enough, or maybe I'll have something I can dump into savings once I get all my 1099s. We will see!
8. Create custom feeds on reddit to keep tabs on the landscape. I have two, one called The Gigs which are all the subreddits for places like Prolific, User Testing, Connect Cloud Research, Swagbucks etc. I would monitor this throughout the day to see if there was anything hot or worth attention. The other was called The Hustle, which included subs like r/signupsforpay, r/passive_income, r/remotework, r/TELUSinternational etc. I would go to these to check on other potential revenue streams and see if there were remote jobs I could potentially work.
9. Focus on the money on the table, not chasing affiliates. If you have things that are working for you (for me that was User Testing) make sure you hit that hard instead of signing up for 100 sites and trying to spam people and reddit with your affiliate codes and links. This takes way more time than you have if you have bills.
10. Cash out the moment you can. Don't keep money sitting in Prolific or CCR. Cash out when you hit any minimum and have that money in your own account. Goes without saying.

I have made a bit over 20k this year, mainly between February and July. User Testing was my primary earner, with Clickworker, Prolific, Cloud Connect doing heavy lifting. dScout, mTurk, Qmee, Swagbucks, Serpclix, Yougov, Intellizoom, Ivueit, Field Agent, UHRS and a few others also chipped in.

Anyway, I felt an obligation to share some of my journey because so many of you helped ME when I was in my worst spot. I am now gainfully employed, things are settled down, and I hop on to beermoney sites every so often to earn a little extra, like it's intended to be!

submitted by /u/Connect-Ganache8549
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/beermoney/comments/1gyvft8/lessons_learned_making_20k_this_year_w_beermoney/