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. 

53 Work At Home Online Opportunities...And other Fiverr Gigs

I'll get to the 53 Work At Home Online Opportunities element in a second.

But the thing about 'living' online is that there is so much out there that you didn't realize existed (or even realized that you ever needed!). That in itself is a charm and a curse. Is it useful? Is it relevant? Am I killing brain cells and time or am I genuinely adding value to myself?

That's the world I'm still learning to navigate as I look at earning more online income. There are a lot of good strategies out there which may have value for me in the future; there are plenty that make absolutely no sense to me at all. In the meantime, I'm having fun learning and falling at every turn.

And in my endeavors to build more in the way of income streams online, I've spent quite a bit of time on Fiverr, pitching my wares there and learning how other people are making money there. There are people pitching all kinds of services there. You need a logo? It's yours for $5 (well, $5 plus a bit of Fiverr commission). You need an article written for you? This is the place to go for the cheap and cheerful.

Make money online by being smart

The problem with the approach in many cases, though, is the extent to which you are trading time for money. If it's a gig that takes five minutes to create, then brilliant -- you've earned your $5 (minus commissions) in five minutes flat. But if you've got a gig that doesn't allow you to upsell any other service, and it's not taking just a few minutes to do, then you could be working an hour or two for $5. And that doesn't work out well in my head -- I realized that after a bit of trial and error.

It's true that different parts of the world have different costs of living and some people are actually able to make a decent living by being ultra efficient. But for someone like me with a lower work ethic than a lot of people I've got to work out whether I'm really making the most of my time online.

And then there are gigs like this 53 Work At Home Online one that fits perfectly into the model. It's created once and can be sold multiple times. You are, in reality treating Fiverr as your retail outlet. Your Amazon, if you will. Ok, you don't get the traffic in the same way, and you will have to promote and manually send out your work by yourself, but it's a great way of using the Fiverr system without spending hours upon hours in creating a service. It's an approach that I'm adopting.

At the end of the day, making money online is very much about having the right systems in place that will allow you to leverage other people's time, money, energy and platforms. It's about working smarter as well as harder. Time for me to practice what I preach.

Online Progress Report

So my journey into the online earnings space continues.

This week has been fairly mixed in terms of successes. Having signed up for the writing site Scripted a few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to have been accepted for a couple of writing streams there. I’ll review the site here in due course, but essentially if you have a ‘specialist’ skill or knowledge you can sign up for work streams aligned with those talents.

The interesting thing about earning money online is that there’s plenty of trial and error involved. You can plant the seeds weeks, months or maybe even years earlier and only now start to see the fruits of your labor. Such is life.

And that’s how it’s been with some of my Fiverr gigs. A couple of them that have been on the site for much of the year and have barely attracted any interest, and yet one gig (unsurprisingly connected with ways in which to make money) has attracted a disproportionate amount of interest. The lesson here is to find what works and what people are interested in, and invest the time in those areas.

I’ve also learned that you’ve got to be quick. That doesn’t mean putting together a haphazard, sub-standard offering, but you’ve got to appreciate that other people may work along different time horizons to yourself.

This reared its head this week when I bid for a job on PeoplePerHour. Essentially, it was for reviewing and re-writing a CV and the accompanying cover letters. Two days after putting my bid in I received a request from the buyer requesting a bit more information on me. 

Foolishly I decided to sleep on it and respond in the morning. It wasn’t as if I was rushed off my feet or anything, it was simply that I didn’t prioritize things correctly. I woke up this morning to find out that the job had been given to someone else even before I had responded. You snooze, you lose.

So for now I’m going to work on the various existing online opportunities I have, plus see what traction I can get from Scripted. And I’ll also apply a bit more urgency to situations as well…

Fiverr Review: Buy and Sell Marketplace

I kind of have a love-hate relationship with Fiverr. That's why I wanted to provide a review. 

For those that aren’t familiar with the site, Fiverr is a marketplace that links buyers looking for specific services with those willing to provide those same services. Graphics and design, online marketing, video and animation, business services and so on are all part of the mix. And all of these services are provided for $5.

Strictly speaking, you are charged a bit more than $5 (something like $5.50, I think), but the very essence of it is that if you are a buyer you can get something very cheap.

From a money-making perspective, anyone can look to sell their services on the site. If you have a talent of some sort you might have found your marketplace. You could offer to write blog comments, create a logo, do a voice over and so on.

So what do I love?

Well, as someone that has their own business interests there are a lot of things I either don’t want to do or simply can’t do. So if I want to outsource something really basic (like the design of my business cards) it’s actually pretty cheap to use someone like Fiverr.

From an income-generating perspective, you can stick some “gigs” on the site and earn money when a client wants your services. It’s that simple. You can also offer supplementary services and increase your revenue. For example, you could offer to review someone’s resume and your supplementary service could be to review their cover letter as well. You get a rating from the buyer based on the quality of your offering and speed of response. A good rating can enhance your reputation and allow you to sell more products.  

So what do I not like so much?

As you can imagine, if you’ve got a great service to offer, you may end up really underpricing yourself. Some of the services on there really don’t make sense to me. Offering to write 500-word articles for $5, for example, really does seem cheap – and particularly as you actually get closer to $4 once Fiverr takes its cut.

Admittedly, some sellers use it as a way to attract clients to other higher-price services. A "bait and switch" approach, if you will. But a lot of people on there don’t. Some are willing to work really hard for not a lot of money.

You’ve got to remember that you’re only earning (less than) $5. So if you’re putting a lot of time and energy in to complete a job, you've got to justify it to yourself somehow. If you are in a low-cost economy maybe it makes sense. For a lot of people it doesn't. In many ways the pricing structure is a race to the bottom. 

Those that do best on this site either manage to get buyers to buy plenty of supplementary gigs or have gigs that don’t require much additional work at all (e.g. I have a “white paper” on there which I simply sell to people for five bucks without doing any extra work).

Another problem as a buyer of the services is that the quality isn’t always the best. The business cards that I mentioned earlier weren’t great. The seller took ages to respond and kept on delaying. I guess he was doing dozens of others at that low price so probably wasn’t that bothered.

How have I done?

It took me a few months to see any traction at all on my two gigs. One service is related to career guidance, the other to do with personal finance coaching. To date I've made about $30. It's not a great sum but this income generator sits in the background as far as I'm concerned, particularly if I can sell more of my white paper for no extra effort. 

Admittedly, I haven’t been as active as I should in marketing the services on social media either. Still, in recent months I have seen some take up on the offerings and I look forward to this idea being a sleeper for me.