There's more to free money than quidco

Today's Grab

I jumped onto Quidco again today planning to run my way through another bunch of small freebie offers.  I was suprised to discover that after just 2 days the well seems to have run dry! I'm sure there's a couple of deals on there that I've missed, but I'm not keen on spending large chunks of time trying to find them.

There is still more to be had on quidco, but I'm also not keen to outlay any more cash at the moment, so I expanded my search a bit.  I took a look at the moneysavingexpert forum and quickly discovered a clear winner.  ING Direct are offering £20 to any new customer opening anyone opening a cash saver account.  To claim the cash I just need to deposit £1 before march 31.  Looks great, I'll mail them a cheque tomorrow.  Even better, I see no reason why I can open an account in my wife's name as well.

I'll open just the one in my name today and then give it a few days before opening the other, just in case ING are against this sort of thing.

Quidco Tracking

The other dissappointment I've had with quidco lately is the tracking.  Up until my cheapo runs of the last 2 days everything had always tracked within minutes.  However I've found about half of the recent ones haven't tracked yet.  I'll give it another few days and then raise an issue with quidco about them.  Could be good in a way, as I'll get to report back on what their enquiries process is like.

The Tally

The £1 I'll be sending to ING tomorrow isn't really spent, as I'll be pulling it back out as soon I get the bonus.  It won't be in my pocket though, so I'll take it off my cash in hand and add it to my expected earnings.

Cash in hand: -£47.87

Expected Earnings : £148.12

Net Position : £100.25

More little wins

Today's Grab

I found yesterdays sign ups pretty painless, so I didn't think to hard today and just went through some more of the little ones on quidco.  I went for these ones.

Plum Offers, Sign up,£0.80

Flatmateclick, Registration, £0.85

EmailInForm, Survey, £0.85

MoveMe, Sign up, £1.00

Just Rewards, Survey, £1.10

GMI, Sign up, £1.30

For a total of £5.90

A couple of quick notes. I found the EmailInForm survey long and tedious, only bother doing this one if you are keen.

The GMI is a survey site for computer types (I'm a programmer so I fit) that promises money for doing surveys.  Their speil is interesting, if I'm reading it right then doing 5 surveys will net me $50 USD.  I'm not mad keen on surveys, but that doesn't sound too bad.  I'll report back on this one later.

The Tally

Cash in Hand : -£46.87

Expected Earnings : £127.12

Net Position : £80.25

Quantity vs Quality

Today's Grab

There a ton of smaller cashbacks on quidco that I've just skipped past when looking before, but I figured there's good money there asking for me to take it. To make the process as painless as possible I downloaded google toolbar and entered my details into the autofill section. This means that on most sites I can just click the autofill button to automatically populate the registration form. Once set up I went to quidco and started clicking. Here's the deals I signed up for today.

O2, 4 x Sims, £0.60

Lands End, Newsletter, £0.15

Secret Sales, Registration, £0.25

Maxi Muscle, Free Catalogue, £0.25

My Pix, Newsletter, £0.30

Ibood, Newsletter, £0.40

T-Mobile, Sims, £0.50

InstantWin4Now, Signup, £0.56

Pampers, Signup, £0.60

Opinion World, Signup, £0.70

UKPrizeDraw, Entry, £0.75

So a total of £5.06 for today.

Unsubscription Spree

Did a bit of housework unsubscribing from the free trials I signed up for last week.  The only slightly tedious one was the Experian Credit Reports, which required me to actually phone up to cancel.

The only other thing I need to do today is watch 'The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull', one of the movies I got from block buster.  =)

The Tally

Cash in hand : -£46.87

Expected Earnings : £122.06

Net Position : £75.19 

I love the weekend

The day after Friday

Didn't get a post up yesterday, I'm thinking Friday night posts are probably going to be pretty rare.  After a healthy sleep in and bacon and breaky to speed my recovery, I figured I should take up another deal.

Today's Grab

Jumped onto quidco again for a look around.  I thought I'd go for a deal where I didn't have to outlay any cash, so I've ordered a SIM from Tesco.  They mail me out a SIM, I stick it in my phone and call them to activate it, they give me £3.  Ordering was simple and I didn't need to hand over card details. Giddy up!

The Tally

Cash in hand:  -£46.87

Expected Earnings : £117.00

Net Position : £70.13

Photos for Nothing

Today's Grab

I've got a million digitial images sitting on my hard drive that I seldom look at, so today's deal works out pretty well.  Sign up to snapfish via quidco and you get £3.50 as a sign up bonus when you place you first order.  But here's the great part, your first order of up to 40 photos is FREE! Though you do have to pay £0.99 for postage.  This deal might not have the cash value of the last two, but it's still great!

The Tally

It's occurred to me that my current method of showing cash in hand and expected earnings makes it less than clear exactly where I'm at, so I'm adding a third value to show my net position.

Cash in hand : -£46.87

Expected Earnings : £114.00

Net Position : £67.13

Hitting my target in just 2 days!

Today's Grab

I'm very happy with the deal for today.  Lunarpages is a web hosting company with a basic plan including a domain name for just £35.88/year.  Hit the site via quidco and you get a £60 sign up bonus.  That's £24.12 of easy profit and I've actually been meaning to get a hosting package for a while anyway.

Smashing the target

In just 2 days I've hit my self set goal of £30/week and made up for the short fall last week.  I'm sure I'll have to venture away from quidco sooner or later, but for now it's really coming up with the goods.

The Tally

In yesterdays blog I said I had £1 I could pull out of jackpotjoy, turns out I should have read the T&C, they wanted me to wager another £40 or so before I could withdraw so I've just gambled the last of it away.  Means another quid taken from my cash in hand.

Cash in hand: £-45.88

Expected Earnings : £110.50 

Starting strong

Today's Grab

I fell short on my cash goal last week, but I did spot a couple of likely options.  One of these was a signup bonus for Jackpot Joy.  Quidco will pay out £25 for a signup and deposit of £10.  You do have to wager at least £10 so you can't just put the money in, pull it back out and run.

Still, I figured £10 in and £25 out sounds a good deal, and I might even win.  Only minor wins meant I used 9 of my 10 quid to hit the wager requirements.  That leaves me £16 ahead.  Not bad for 5 minutes work!

The Tally

I've ventured into territory where I've outlayed money to get a larger return.  Should work out well in the long run, but for now it drives my cash in hand into the negatives.

Cash in hand: -£9

Expected Earnings: £50.50

Fancy a movie?

Todays Grab

I've seen some potentially good earners out there, some of the the bingo sign ups look good.  I want to be sure I know what's going on though, so I'm playing safe again today.  I've signed up for 2 weeks of Dvd's from blockbuster.  Not a bad payout at all for a signup at £7.50.  I've placed an order for a couple of Dvd's so I'll have something to watch this weekend too.

A bit short

I've fallen short of my £30 per week target thanks to a couple of days off.  I've got some ripe plums I'm eyeing off for next week to get my average back up though.

The Tally

No money in the bank yet, but the expected earnings are on a steady rise.  Looking forward to it turning into a steady stream to the cash in hand figure.

Cash in hand: £0

Expected Earnings: £25.50

A few days off

My Excuse

I was slack and idle on Friday and Saturday.  I'm on a train back to London now (I love that the trains have wifi) having enjoyed a lovely and relaxing weekend with my wife in York and Whitby.

Todays Deal

I'm signing up for a 7 day trial of napster today for a £5 bonus.  The eMusic subscription was an easy way to score a sign up bonus, but the music choice was somewhat limited.  With luck Napster will prove better, but if not I'll still be ahead.

Ground to make up

I'm trying to hit a target of at least £30 a week.  Not doing anything for a couple of days hasn't helped but I'm confident I can find a winner tommorrow to get me back up to par.

The Tally

Cash in hand: £0

Expected Earnings: £18

It all adds up

Mp3's from EMusic
How much would you expect to pay to download 25 of the latest music tracks? £25? £10? FREE!?!

Why even settle for free when you can get paid to download music you want anyway? I'm pretty chuffed with today's find, £4 for signing up with eMusic on a 14 day trial. I found this through (you guessed it) quidco.

It all adds up
You may be thinking that all these little bits of cash I'm getting aren't worth the effort, but it does all add up. If I can keep finding 1 little bonus like this each day I'll have around £30 extra in my pocket each week! As for the amount of effort, so far it's been pretty low. Five minutes tops. I spend more time writing this blog. =)

Protect yourself from spam
For anyone thinking of emulating me and getting a bit of spending money for themselves I have a recommendation for you. Create an alternate email address. I signed up for a free one from Yahoo and am entering it as the email address for anything I sign up for. This way I can be sure I won't have to worry about spam at my normal email address

The Tally
The Equifax and Audible deals from the previous entries have both now tracked, so I know the sign up was successful. It can still take some time for it to show up in my account though, so I won't count it as cash in hand until I've really got it.

Cash in hand: £0
Expected Earnings: £13