The Diplomats’ April Side Hustle Report

Another month is in the books and the NBA playoffs are in full swing.   Each month, after working our “9-5” that is anything but that, we do whatever we can to side hustle and earn a few extra dollars.   We are as motivated as ever to earn every extra penny we can and truly make every dollar count!   April was no different and we emerged with busy season with a little more time to side hustle.  Did the extra time translate into greater income?  Let’s find out.  Here is our April Side Hustle report.

The side hustles

Ebates – We’re pretty sure most people are familiar with Ebates, the website that offers cash back and coupon codes for nearly all major online retailers and travel sites.  In addition,  each new user also can receive a free $10 gift card upon sign up (yes an affiliate plug), which is an added bonus.  The two of us always visit Ebates prior to making an online purchase to see if we can earn cash back by visiting the website through Ebates or using one of the listed coupon codes.  Since we travel a lot for work, we will access the hotel and rental car company’s website through Ebates first to earn a few extra dollars on the business trip.  We really mean it…it is EASY money for a simple additional step in the online shopping experience that maybe adds 10 seconds to your transaction.  Here is our April summary for cash back earned from Ebates:

Lanny – $9.07 – Still churning out dollars, but not as much as last month.  I wasn’t able to screen shot my “profile” on 4/1, but here it is as of 4/5.  Most of my activity was from hotels and rentals cars (small benefit of traveling for work).  In total, I have almost $425, and looking to break that once a pending item, settles.  See below’s snip from their website:

Bert – $0 – Once again, another $0 month here for me.   While I always check Ebates before purchasing things online, I compare the cash back rewards on Ebates to Swagbucks to see which offers the better rate.  Obviously then, I pick the better rate.  Lately, this has been on Swagbucks.  Also, the decrease in Ebates earnings is due to the fact I have done less online shopping, which is never a bad thing!

Swagbucks –  One of our longest tenured side hustles.  In fact, Lanny has earned over $1,000 in Swagbucks in his career.  Every day the two of us our battling and challenging each other to make sure we hit out minimum “Swagbuck” goal.  Trust us,  the earnings build up quickly!  Swagbucks is a website the provides gift card or cash rewards for performing activities on the website.  The activities include using their search engine, answering surveys, answering polls, watching videos, printing off coupons, shopping (similar to Ebates above), signing up for different offers, etc. Bottom line is that there are a ton of different ways for people to earn!   Here is our referral link if you would like to give it a try as well!  Here is how much each of us earned from Swagbucks:

Lanny – > 2,972 Swagbucks or $29.72 – Two months back over $20 and damn, was I close to hitting that $30 mark!  May has 31 days, so I am hopeful on that.  I was able to do one cash out during the month and have already cashed out again in May.  The way I was able to monitor the total amount earned was take my end of previous month lifetime amount and subtract out my lifetime amount at end of month (found in the activity section of your account).  May’s goal is to cross $30, and I am damned determined to get there.

Bert – > 1,714 Swagbucks or $17.14 –  This isn’t my best month by any stretch of the means; however, it was an improvement from the previous month (which wasn’t that hard to do).  Sadly, I spent a lot of days in the car traveling for day-trip meetings at work, so I could not earn during the day.  Then, I would be too exhausted to engage in Swagbucks at home.  I  am working towards finding a better system in May and may have stumbled onto something this month.  I better see an improvement in May and expect to cross at least 2,500 Swagbucks!

Ibotta – Ibotta is one of our favorite apps because it is so easy to use and barely adds any time to your routine shopping experience.  It is so easy to earn money that they even give you $5.00 just to sign up!  The app allows you to earn cash back from nearly every grocery store and many of online retailers.   Before shopping, you scan the available rebates on thee app and see which items you are planning on buying.  Some example of rebates that may be available any given week are $.75 for a protein bar, $1-$2 off of cereal, $1.00 for purchasing a certain type of coffee,  or $2-$3 back for purchasing beer or wine!  And finally, after months of disappearing, the $1 per Uber ride promotion has returned!

The app is very easy to use and Ibotta makes it easy to redeem cash as well and the process takes less than a minute after you complete your purchase.  You simply scan the receipt, select the rebates that were purchased during that shopping trip, and then receive the credit within 24 hours.   If you would like to try the app, we included a referral link in the banner below our monthly summary and at the beginning of the paragraph.

Lanny – $1.25 – Sadly I am starting to realize, which may be a good thing, with travel for work – this reduces my iBotta (hopefully this means my groceries are reduces as well though!).  In total, I’ve earned over almost $200.00 in cash back from the app.  However, I highly URGE you to sign up. Yes, sadly we do get a referral kick back, but this is by far the EASIEST way to get cash back.  Further, the beer, wine categories make it fairly simply to rack up (usually $1.00 – $3.00 for a 6-pack and/or bottle of wine, eh, I’m Italian and Irish).  Additionally – supplements like vitamins are a bigger cash back piece as well.

Bert – $5.00 –  I’ve rebounded here with Ibotta after a few slow months.  The reason it has decreased since our peak last year was due to the fact we’ve really ramped up our shopping at Aldi.  The lower cost products (without sacrificing quality) easily offset the cost at a regular grocery store + Ibotta discounts.  But we can’t purchase all of our products there and luckily for me, the items we purchased at other stores had great Ibotta discounts on them.  So I was able to earn $5 in cash back this month and I am well on my way towards cashing out soon.

Selling Household Items

Lanny – $0.00  – I have sold nothing, again, for the fifth consecutive month.  Busy season just ended and it’s time to get back in the saddle.  Further, one should see 5 benefits of getting rid of “stuff”, I know I own too much crap in my life that is consuming space, time and resources.  In the end, the idea is that the items sold or donated will add value to someone else’s life, as that’s the purpose of owning something, to add value.

Bert – $0 –  Sadly, another zero dollar month for one of my side hustles here.  I thought I was going to have a nibble or two as well.  During the month, my wife and I replaced a bunch of light fixtures in our house and listed the old fixtures on Facebook Marketplace.  They are gold and slightly outdated, but we were hoping that someone would want a good deal on a fixture for the right price.  But clearly we did not identify the right price haha  So we are going to lower the price in May and see if anyone is interested in buying.

Total April Side Hustle Income: 

Lanny: $40.04, total of $734.91 since tracking on the blog!

Bert: $22.14, total of $541.00 since tracking on the blog!

Diplomats Side Hustle Total: $62.18, Cumulative Total of $1,275.90 since tracking on the blog!

9 thoughts on “The Diplomats’ April Side Hustle Report

  1. Nice progress guys. As Tom mentioned, keep directing that toward additional income producers.

    Also, have you guys used TestBirds yet? It’s great. I’ve been using it for a few months now, and will look to do a review soon.

  2. Great work you guys! Here in Holland we don’t have much of those apps/cashback/gift card thing. You do have some online enqueting/clicking things but for me those are precious minutes I won’t get back and I dont believe its really worth the time. I maybe wrong ofcourse but I’m still looking for a sidehustle that fits me…

    • Robot –

      Dang! We are lucky and are able to let it run in the background, do quick/fun surveys while watching sports, being on the phone, etc.. Sometimes it’s hard figuring out things to do when being a fun public accountant. Hah. I hope you find something that suits you. Into physical labor? Ton of things to do for that.

      -Lanny

  3. Nice month! I finally got an Ebates check a couple months back and was really excited. I need to carve out time for Swagbucks. I spend time on the internet anyways, may as well make some extra dough. The only thing I’ve done is create an account and felt marginally accomplished. 🙂

    • SMM,

      There it is. Your first Ebates check. I remember how exciting that feeling was haha Agree with Swagbucks. It was tough to build it into my daily routine, but now that I have, I love using the program. The good news is you have Step 1 completed. Now, you have to move on to the next part of earning some Swags!

      Bert

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