Social Investment Networks

The historically hard-to-break wo
rld of investing in stock markets and currencies has been cracked wide open. Today there is no need to be a fat cat or fund the yachts of Wolf of Wall Street style stock brokers. You can do it all yourself with the help of online market trading platforms.

Having spent many hours researching this new opportunity, I’ve been experimenting with the two biggest platforms: Plus500 and eToro.com.

Both offer free practice accounts, and Plus500 also give you a free £20(without depositing) which is worth taking up. Overall I prefer eToro with over 4 million users worldwide. It was recently featured in the BBC 2documentary “Traders: Millions by the Minute” and the Financial Times.

One of the best things on eToro is the CopyTrader feature. This lets you literally see, follow and copy the investments of other top performing traders.

Follow George’s complete guide to trading on eToro to learn more. I think $200 is a good amount to get the most out of the learning curve by trying out a few different markets. If nothing else you’ll learn a great deal about various investments and industries.

Warning: trading can be volatile and you can lose money, so don’t throw your life savings into it!

Sell your notes

If you don’t mind sharing your notes with other students it’s a great way to generate a little extra cash. There are sites out there that you can upload your notes to, along with your price, and then when another student downloads them you get paid.

Sites like Notesale are free for you to list your notes but tend to take a cut of your profit in order to handle the marketing etc so that you don’t have to go out there and promote your notes yourself.

You will most likely have to upload PDFs but it’s worth it for the return and you can submit handwritten notes but you’re likely to make more money if they’re typed up.

Review websites & apps for cash

Well it seems like you’re pretty nifty with a web browser, so perhaps it’s time to turn pro and browse websites as a paid and fun job!

Introducing UserTesting.com – a new platform that pays everyday people to review all kinds of websites. Each review takes around 20 minutes and bags you $10 (£6.50) via Paypal.

Simply sign up here, complete a test review and look forward to receiving websites in your inbox.

The ‘Disney Vault’ secret

To keep demand high across generations, Disney Studios carefully restrict the supply of some home release classics. They are locked away in the ‘vault’ for 8-10 years before being released for a short unspecified time.

Buy them in this window at normal retail price and you can turn a nice profit when they go off sale for another decade or so.

For example, in 2011 you could buy Beauty and the Beast on Blu-ray 3D for just £24.99. In just a couple of years it was on Amazon for a staggering £74.99!Importantly, not all Disney releases are subject to the vault and only the true classics will maintain such demand.

Right now there are just 2 titles out of the vault which I would recommend snapping up. They are Bambi Diamond Edition Blu-ray andCinderella Diamond Edition Blu-ray.

‘Get Paid To’ sites

Similar to making money from online surveys, GPT sites reward you in cash and vouchers for completing various offers or activities online.

The most popular sites today are Toluna,Swagbucks and InboxPounds.

Exciting update! We’ll soon be launching our own GPT service for our readers. Invites will be limited and UK only, please join our mailing list if you’re interested in hearing once it’s live:

Start your own website

If you’ve ever seen the film The Social Network then you’ve most likely had your brain spinning as to what website you can start-up to make you billions.

And of course there are lots of stories out there about successful students who have started a site while at university, or even bought a domain name and later sold it for 1000s.

In fact, Save the Student is one such example of a website started at university by Owen Burek in his first year, which has since grown into a full-time and successful enterprise.

Read Owen’s 4-step guide to setting up a website if you’re interested in finding out more. It’s really not that difficult to get started and there are plenty of opportunities to make money online.

Write and publish a Kindle eBook

If students are good at anything, it’s researching and writing. With theAmazon Kindle store, anyone can publish an eBook and make money.

And the Kindle app is now available on almost any device (laptops, iPads, smartphones and yes, Kindles) so your global market is huge!

List your book for £1.49 – £6.99 and you earn 70% of the sale. Considering Amazon is the ultimate selling machine (and remember people are looking to spend), that is a fantastic deal.

The key to success with eBooks is to create value, and write non-fiction. Simply bundling information you have researched and complied on a common problem (eg. ‘secrets’ to finding a job) and then presenting it in an easy to digest format (an eBook) justifies someone spending a few quid on it.

Another big tip is to have a great cover designed so it stands out, and once your book is live on the Kindle store it’s really important to get some reviews so it shows up higher in results. Encourage readers to leave an honest review at the end of your book.

The best thing about this lucrative idea is that once you’ve invested the time (say 20 hours), you’ll earn a passive income for years to come! For a step-by-step guide to publishing and earning with eBooks, see “How to write a nonfiction eBook in 21 days“.