Opinions and Copywriting

One way of making extra cash which has really become popular within the last few years is writing informative articles or giving opinions. Marketing companies will pay for people to give their products the right kind of exposure, for example to review products or services favourably (or simply impartially!) or just to spread the word online about a particular product or service. Search engine optimisation is one example of this, where companies will employ copywriters to use certain keywords which will bring their products and webpages further up the list on search engines, thus directing more people's attention to them. Often, no experience is needed: it is more important to have a good grasp of language and grammar and access to a computer.

Organisations will also pay for people's opinions. Often these are marketing companies who are interested in finding out what people think about certain brands, or in identifying social or commercial trends. Sometimes this can take the form of survey completion, which will generally be quite a low paid job (usually no more than a pound per survey in the UK, unless it is quite long). If a person has the time and patience to keep going with these surveys however, they can add up to extra income, although they cannot really be considered a reliable source of income. Occasionally survey completion can lead to invitations for focus groups and similar, which can be more highly paid.