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?

Building Online Income Momentum

Making money online is actually quite easy....if you have something to offer. And package it in the right way.

That's my current interpretation anyway. Over the last month I've been focusing exactly on that - having something to offer and making it looking appealing enough for someone to be willing enough to pay for it. Well, I've spent a lot time fine-tuning my profiles on PeoplePerHour and Upwork, in addition to looking at the skills I've got to offer and tried to improve them. And it's started to pay off.

I've managed to snag myself a regular resume / CV writing gig with a company out of London, while another company contacted me to help re-write the content of their website. I've also had requests for two one-off projects. So there's clearly been some traction.

Yes, it is still trading time for money. The slower I do a task, the less of a return I'm getting on a per hourly basis. It's not perfect and it doesn't represent my long-term focus of building passive income streams.

But for now, at least, it's a regular income stream that can build into something bigger if I play my cards right. It also helps me to improve my career capital.

So I will still default to Prolific Academic and Postloop for easy and consistent earnings opportunities. They do that very well. But for building my long-term opportunities I will continue to look to build the future.

Progress in Online Earnings

Another week goes by and still not an online millionaire...

Actually, this week has given me a few interesting insights into the world of online earnings. There's just so much information out there pitching variations on the same themes it's sometimes hard to work out what's relevant and what's not.

I'm yet to launch my information marketing product, and maybe there has been a bit of procrastination, but I think I've got a framework to work with now. My goal by the end of the year is to (hopefully) have two or three sites running that allow me to monetize information products, whether products I create myself or those of affiliates. It sounds like a good idea anyway!

Slow inroads into writing online

But I've also found myself with a few added online writing distractions this week. The thing about a lot of these marketplace sites like PeoplePerHour and Elance is that sometimes you put your profile online and leave it there, barely marketing yourself. You kind of hope to be found because either you don't know how to, don't want to or are too lazy to market yourself to your target audience.

It's not really the most reliable way of getting business unless you get lucky. Well, I got lucky. Initially I was offered a one-off content job on PeoplePerHour, playing on my finance background. I completed the task and left it at that. However, the company subsequently came back to offer a daily writing gig.

It's not crazy amounts of money, and I really should have been more disciplined in my negotiations, but once it starts it should provide me with more structure to my online income. It will give me a base level to guide my negotiations from now on. I looked far and wide online and couldn't gauge how much I should be paid. I guess it's all about what the market (or client) will take.

This new gig will also give me something else to leverage for additional clients. I need to build up my portfolio and this will help with that. The daily task shouldn't take me too long either and a few hundred dollars extra per month will be gratefully received.

It will also still give me the opportunity to continue to bid for jobs on the marketplace sites, as well as dipping into Fiverr, Zazzle and Postloop, with the latter very indirectly putting me on the path to a lot of my online earnings. A lot of this is very much down to trial and error. But as is becoming very apparent, at the same time, it's about getting yourself out there.

So I guess it's been a successful week for me online, at least in terms of future business. Maybe more by chance than design, but progress nonetheless. Now I just need to get a handle on the information marketing world and I'll be flying...

Setting Online Challenges

One of the big issues with working online is that a lot of the time you'll find yourself working by yourself, with no boss hovering over you with a carrot or a stick.

The problem with that, of course, is that there are plenty of times you have to be motivated/focused/disciplined and so on. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to do. It's not easy unless you have in place a system or process that makes you accountable, allows you to measure how well (or not) you're doing and challenges you to be more motivated/focused/disciplined and so on.

And so to my challenge for October. I've decided that the path of least resistance is all too easy for me and some of the microjobs I've been investing in, while reasonably enjoyable (e.g. Postloop), aren't moving the dial much in terms of challenging myself or incrementally changing my financial situation.

So my goal for the month is to pause on some of my easier, lower-value opportunities and invest that time in some of the tougher to monetize but more rewarding options. Although I'm not guaranteed to see the fruits of labor manifest in October, I've decided to set myself a financial target of $500 for the month.

Bearing in mind I have other ventures on the go and I've only ever got close to $100 in a week once before, it's going to be a stretch. But unless I push myself (and publicly) I'm going to default back to the false economy of some of the easier options.

As Tony Robbins likes to say: "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."

So I'm excited to see what I can learn about the online space over the month. And what I can learn about myself. 

Postloop Review: Online Income Idea

One of my first endeavors in the “trying to make money online” world was the world of Postloop. I mentioned it in a previous post so I won’t go into all the details again. Here’s the previous post: Postloop Forum Writing. To be perfectly candid, It’s not the most taxing of options, which is a big plus. You write comments on forums and blogs. Simple.

It’s also open to people around the world. So as long as you pass the test you’re not limited by your geography.

I’ve probably made about $150-$250 since I signed up for it last year (apologies the screenshot below only has the details of recent months). It’s also the sort of thing I default back to once in a while. As you can see I’ve been fairly sporadic recently

Latest Withdrawals

Date	Status	Points	Amount
Jul 18th, 03:35	Approved	618	$30.91
Apr 19th, 09:06	Approved	114	$5.72
Apr 12th, 06:08	Approved	122	$6.12
Apr 5th, 21:11	Approved	143	$7.15
Mar 22nd, 10:21	Approved	151	$7.55

Now that I've dabbled with it for a while, I thought it would be great to discuss it once again in the context of the good bits and the challenges.

Good bits

·         It’s really a very simple way to earn money. You write a few sentences on a forum or blog, you collect points and you get paid. In cash. In your Paypal account. It really is that simple. They pay quickly and haven’t missed a payment with me.

·         There’s a bit of a community. You see a lot of the same writing monikers and avatars popping up on a variety of forums you might regularly post on. It’s not like you actually know these people but you are often familiar with their narrative and it sometimes feels easier to “converse” with them. So it’s kind of like a community…

·         There’s always work – within reason. As long as there are blogs and forums to sign up for, there is work that can be done. You have just got to have something to say and simply put that to paper.

Challenges

·         It doesn’t pay great amounts. Ignore any of those YouTubes that tell you how easy it is to make $100 a day. It’s not. Yes, you can make more if you have referrals signed up (and again for transparency, if you do sign up via this blog it will be as a referral, so thanks!), but even that isn’t going to make you big money any time soon. At best, you’ll be making $5 a day, and that’s only if you put the time in to write comments on lots of forums and blogs. I’ve never had the time or energy to do that, but don’t let that stop you.

·         You're limited to how many comments you can make on a forum/blog. Occasionally, you’ll get a blog that allows for an unlimited amount of comments to be written in any given day. But more likely you’ll be only allowed five comments in a “Postloop day”, though if you time your writing right you can get another five in once they reset the clock. So unless you are subscribed to a large number of sites you can clearly see your number of entries (and earnings) capped for the day.

·         Some sites go offline. Some of your favorite sites may go offline, meaning that you won’t be able to make comments on them (and get paid) until they go back online. If they come back at all. Again, this also limits your earning power. There used to be two soccer forums on there that I found very easy to write on, and hence was making a few easy pennies that way. Unfortunately, both forums disappeared and bang went the easy cash.

·         Don’t expect all your favorite hobbies to be there all the time. You may well have a real interest in Italy or the NBA or disasters around the world. But it’s very hard to consistently find lots of forums to write on that you’ll genuinely have an interest in. Some don’t interest me in the slightest, while some are completely random at best. If you start forcing yourself to write stuff you’ve no interest in it can just become a bit of a chore. You may also find yourself penalized by the forum owners if they think what you’re writing is just plain nonsense.

One thing is clear: you most certainly won’t be retiring on your Postloop earnings alone. But there’s nothing wrong with having it as part of your portfolio, and I would recommend using it as a supplement to earnings you make elsewhere. 

If you are looking for a few easy dollars and your ability to write forum posts is passable, give it a shot. Click: Postloop - What's It All About.