Another such program is Bing rewards, a point system launched for Microsoft’s popular (though not nearly as popular as Google) search engine. You can earn points in a number of ways without spending money, such as making searches each month, checking out offers, etc. It is important to note that you won’t be racking up points very fast, but every little bit helps, and if you’re searching for things anyway, why not get a little extra on the side?

If you want to sign up for Bing rewards, check it out here. As a matter of disclosure, yes, I get some extra points for referring you!

But that’s no fun.

I try to break every income stream into a daily income measurement. If I do X activity for Y hours, I’ll make $Z per day. Add all of those little projects, side jobs, and fun stuff together, and you have my current annual income. There is, as you might expect, a certain amount of volatility to the calculation. Many of my writing gigs come and go, some are project based, and others are simply one-off articles. I have consistent income as a base, but everything else fluctuates.

One easy way to make extra money is to pick up a part time job, but from what I’ve seen, most part time gigs are unskilled, menial work. I should note that there’s nothing wrong with such work, as money is money, and I’m never one to turn that down when the opportunity presents itself. My wife and I have been dreaming of doing some more traveling this year, but we also have some repairs queued up for the house that we are saving for. That got me to thinking that maybe we could pick up some side work to fund those travel plans and have a more enjoyable year.

This is a bit of a tradeoff. I already have full-time employment through my “hydra” of income sources, so this would keep me extra busy. If I stayed with it too long, I’d simply get burnt out, so the work would have to be temporary. So we looked around and sure enough, there are a number of places hiring for the holiday season, This would mean an extra 15 or so hours a week of work for each of us, but only for a few short months. The pay isn’t great, but we are hoping to get to work together, and even a small hourly wage will still end up being a couple thousand dollars well all is said and done.

That means we get to travel, the house gets fixed, and we aren’t bogged down to something we’d hate doing for a long time. Sounds like a win-win to me.

In that vein, I have been working towards a few one-man operations and a few collaborations with my older brother, a long time web developer who has long made his way towards breaking the shackles of the traditional nine to five in lieu of a more interesting portfolio of careers. He’s a professional beekeeper, for example, along with our current revenue from the portfolio of niche sites.

Which begs the question: Where to expand from here? Finding new business ideas that are small, nimble, and scalable may sound like they are easy to find based on motivational blog posts like the Art of Nonconformity, but I have found that isn’t the case.

The biggest obstacle, surprisingly enough, is finding something fun that makes money. I have heard plenty of friends that tell me that they just love logistical analysis, but you know what? That sounds pretty damn boring. Right now I can pay the bills, but expansion is going to be needed if I want to get where I want to be.

Anyway, the last few weeks has been a time of introspection. I often find myself getting pulled in different directions. I wanted to own a house, so I do now, and with that has come a plethora of additional responsibilities and worries. I also want to travel more. Now. Right now, damnit! But I can’t just yet. I still have to work, still have to budget, and still have to make sure everything at the home base is running as smoothly as possible.

The conundrum really summarizes itself like this: Maintaining a home base costs money. Paying bills costs money. Travel costs money. Which do I want to prioritize? Certain parts of the financial picture cannot be compromised. I have to pay my mortgage, for example, and my last student loan. Thus I need a large enough income to wipe away the necessities and have enough left over to see the world, too.

Ultimately, that leads me down one of two paths. I can go back to my old career and grind out the 9 to 5 for more money, or I can continue to expand my own projects. Certainly the latter is more fun than the former, but it will likely take more time and the outlook is a lot more uncertain.  So far I have found a fair amount of success working for myself, but can I keep the ball rolling and expand out to the point that I can keep a home base of operations while having the financial capacity to head out abroad, too?

Instead, if you happen to enjoy playing Poker when the stakes are low and the play is fun, then it is possible to eek out some extra money each month and sock it away into your savings. There are subscription Poker sites out there that operate legally in the United States under “sweepstakes laws.” What this means for you is that you can play Poker for a cash prize or various items as long as the house doesn’t take their cut off the top (rake). As such, you can enter into a number of tournaments in a month and play for cash without paying for any sort of entry fee.

Now that the logistics are out of the way, here’s how you can get started as a player. While there are a number of sites out there, I play over at Rise Poker. Note that the link you see isn’t an affiliate link and I’m not compensated in anyway for the post, this is simply an exercise in fun.

Once you are signed up, you can enter a variety of qualifiers for cash prizes and/or login to receive a number of “points” each day which can be used to enter a few of the tournaments. If you have played poker at all before, note that in any free game the skill level will be very low, so expect some ridiculous calls and people throwing their chips away for seemingly no reason. The sites make their money by offering up ads during breaks and by offering a monthly subscription option that allows access to more tournaments as well as removing the ads during play.

Extra Disclaimer: I know I stated this before, but to reiterate, I’m not advocating gambling real money with online poker. What you see in this post is free, and so nothing is at risk except a few hours of fun. Enjoy!