Income Report: June

Well, the slow walk to freedom continues.

Because I'm less keen on trading my time for money I've turned down few writing gigs. I'm not sure whether this is the way to go (maybe I should be keeping my eye in) but it's allowed me to work on my blog.

The trouble with my blog is that it's currently on Godaddy and I've decided that I need to transition it to WordPress. Better SEO, themes, plugins and so on.

But at least I got Finance Job Hunter up and running. Even if I have to transfer the hosting, I still have the content and the ideas to work with. I also signed up to Infolinks as a monetizing tool.

All of these ideas are all part of my goal of futureproofing my world, or at the very least being more prepared for what the external world throws at me.

So, how was the month?

Resume Writing: $0. Completely side-stepped my most consistent earner. I'll do one or two this month, and I need to keep the skills fresh for my bigger consulting business goal. But the trading time for money situation isn't ideal at the moment.

Additional Writing: $0.  Nothing here for me.

Dividends: $203. Still a fave approach for me and I continue to buy dividend-yielding exchange-traded funds to grow this passive income stream. If you want to better understand the principles, I recommend The Snowball Effect: Using Dividend & Interest Reinvestment To Help You Retire On Time. It's one of the lower risk ways in which to build passive income.

eBooks: $8.  Things have ticked up slightly, though some marketing would clearly be good for my portfolio (Beginner's Guide to Online Side Hustles, Cryptocurrency Job Hunting for Non-Techies, The Simple Guide to a Winning LinkedIn Profile and Craft a Winning Resume).

Interest: $17. This is consistent, though if I worked my funds a bit better I'm sure I could improve this figure.

Vouchers: $127. This isn't something I've thought about counting in the past. However, I realized that I've effectively been converting credit card points into cash. The points are turned into supermarket vouchers with a cash value. So every time I convert some, I'll record them in this monthly data. It's money after all.

Other: $2. It's hardly going to change the trajectory of my finances, but I've signed up for doing surveys on UserCrowd. The company occasionally sends invites to my email inbox while I'm watching a bit of mindless TV. They only take a minute and are about $0.20 a time (so far), so it's no big deal either way.

Total: $357. We're not talking big numbers here. It's lower than most of my months. But it does make me conscious about the importance of finding ways to generate income and how I can add a few dollars here and there when I try.

Income Report: November

I'm glad I'm doing this process as it gives me transparency.

Unfortunately, what this process hasn't been able to do is to shake up the mix of my incomes. I need other tools and levers for that.

My grand goal of lining up Christmas promotions and the like on Zazzle has fallen flat - at least, so far.

But I can definitely see 2017 offering up a few new opportunities online and offline. I'm planting the seeds now...

So time to review things:

Writing
Resume Writing: This remains my most consistent provider. Actually, it's virtually my only provider at the moment, but let's not split hairs.... Each month seems to be an improvement on the previous one. That probably won't happen with a quiet December, but November has been my best month, even with my hit to the UK pound.

Translated into dollars I made $2,190, that's 14% better than October's figure. I've worked quite a lot on the resume writing and the coaching, and I've made sure that I've kept better records as well. I may have lost out on certain monies coming to me in the past because of my slackness.

It's working out okay at the moment.

Article Writing: $0. I've been weighing up the return on my time here and for the moment at least it doesn't pay me to spend too much time in this space. I've used some of my articles in the past to leverage different opportunities, but I've traded a bit too much time for money here in the past.

Surveys
Prolific Academic: $13. Pennies but, hey, it's easy.

Other
Mmmm....My focus on diversification is falling short....

Outcome
So there you have it: $2,203 for November. No bad and I've finally broken through the $2,000 barrier.

I'll give myself a score of B+ this time. That's partly down to hitting new heights, but it's also a reflection of what I've been doing in the background.

I've been re-working some sites, which will properly go live in the new year. I spent quite a while looking at Google Adsense, listening to passive income webinars and researching different income ideas.

I've also almost completed my first proper Kindle book, again with the intention of launching it fairly soon. That's really the first step into the passive world. Everything I do now is too active for my long-term business model goal.

And there's the small matter of a possible offline job that would completely shake a lot of this up. Job or not, I'm still going to work towards the financial freedom principle and passive income.

I'm quite excited by what the next few months might bring.

Income Report: October

Another day, another dollar...

I may not be diversifying as fast as I would like but I'm certainly being more consistent with my main income driver. But more on that later.

The difficult bit with the way I approach all of this is that I have so many incredible ideas. But I have no time to put in place any of my end of year ideas. Again, step by step.

My offline income still sucks. But that's another story.

So let's take another look at things.

Writing
Resume Writing: This figures continues to increase month by month. Last month my revised figure was $1,852 (vs. my initial $1,700 estimate). For October it came to $1,925. That's about 4% up and heading in the right direction.

Again, it was a nice combination of resume writing plus coaching.

It's still taking up more time than I had planned but it's working out okay at the moment.

Article Writing: $0. Must do better. As things stand, there's not anything on the horizon for this month so I'm slacking here.

Surveys
Prolific Academic: $8.50. A bit rubbish really....

Other
Postloop: $0. Death to Postloop and the fact that it took $12.50 of my earnings. Yep, it closed and didn't give me a chance to cash out. Boo, hiss!


Outcome
So there you have it: $1,860 for October. Not great about either of the last couple of months but it's pretty consistent enough.

I'll give myself a score of B this time. I didn't increase my income (again) but I have been working on my website.

I'm still working on a few different initiatives. One of them is to support finance people in their job hunting goals. It's taking a little time to gain traction but I'm confident that I can use what I've earned elsewhere to build my own busiess.

It's about the long game, isn't it?

Income Report: September

I see a bit of a pattern with these reports.

I am very good at defaulting to the same old, same old online income drivers but haven't yet been able to break free into this new and exciting world that I'm targeting.

I know that it may take time but it's definitely important that I stretch myself in a few new areas. I've had one (albeit very minor) income stream start to wind down this month.

That's reason enough for me to look long and hard about building momentum elsewhere. Step by step.

My offline income is also still in transition so it's important that I keep rolling up the sleeves and get stuck in.

So let's take another look at things.

Writing
Resume Writing: I'm writing this based on estimates again but my reckoning my income was slightly shy of last month's but still better than earlier months. My initial estimate is $1,700. I'll be correcting it if it's wrong again but that compares with $1,815 last time. It was also a better combination of writing and coaching over the month, which is something I like.

So still some decent momentum here but fundamentally it's taking up more time than I would like. That is, I'm not momentising elsewhere as much as I would like.

It's going to remain my income anchor for a little while longer.

I've put a proposal in for resume writing and career coaching at a local university, so I'll wait to see how that pans out.

Article Writing: $100. Mmm... Well, I had assumed big numbers in the writing space but I haven't written for my old default for a few months now and it's really time I got back to working there. I've had a few PeoplePerHour gigs and that's about it.

As things stand, there's not anything on the horizon for this month but you never know.

Surveys
Prolific Academic: $13. Well, better than the previous month's $1. I don't really expect it to add up to much as it's purely "downtime" money so I'm happy to pick up a dollar here or there if it's available. In fact, I'm now targeting it as my Christmas gift fund.

Other
Postloop: $2 (estimate). I quote myself from last month: "But it's always there in the background if I need it." Well, it's closing down at the beginning of November! In many ways that's good because I was defaulting to it when I really should have been doing other more constructive things.

But it was one of the first sites I used to earn money online so there's a slight sadness about its demise. But onwards and upwards.

Outcome
So there you have it: $1,815 for the month compared with $1,871 for August - subject to final resume income numbers coming out

I'll give myself a score of B+ again. I didn't increase my income but I did diversify it slightly with more article writing.

Looking ahead, I've got some potentially exciting things happening in coming months. For one thing, I found myself doing a webinar last week with a lady that's putting together her own online summit.

I'm currently prepping my website so when she does launch her product, people will be directed to my site and I'll be able to capture email addresses and offer up services.

I'm also thinking about what good's and services I can put together for the holiday season.

I don't expect any major earnings excitement in October but I'm hopeful of some momentum going into 2017. 

Prolific Survey: A Great Online Survey Site

If you look hard enough you can always find ways to earn money online. Don't get me wrong, sometimes you have to put the time in to get very little in return. But sometimes it seems like taking candy from a baby (albeit still a small candy...).

I don't tend to get excited about the world of surveys. They seem to take forever and you really don't get a lot in return very often. The one survey site I do like to have plenty of time for, however, is Prolific Academic. I signed up to be a survey participant back in December and I've been fortunate enough to get signed up for quite a few surveys.

The surveys themselves tend to be academic in nature (hence the name of the site) created by universities all over the world, so some of them are actually quite interesting. Face perception, the relationship between the multiple meanings of ambiguous words, apparel shopping, your willingness to buy a solar charger were all among them.

From experience, they tend to take anywhere from a few minutes all the way up to 30 minutes to complete. They also pay from about $1 a time up to about $6, if you are really lucky in being part of the right demographic -- not a bad return for a survey. The minimum checkout level is around $7.50 (essentially it's denominated in pound sterling and so has a checkout at GBP5.00) and gets paid through PayPal. It just seems like a win-win to me.

So take a look -- there are far worse ways to earn a few dollars online than Prolific Academic.