Wow! I can’t believe October is over already. Halloween really snuck up on me, but I had a blast taking my 3 year old son out trick-or-treating. This year my son was a dragon, and my daughter (1 year old) was a skunk. They are so much fun at this age!
Anyway, since my second full month since starting this blog has come to an end, it’s time to share my income for the month. As I did last month, I’ll tell you what I’ve done this month, followed by how much I earned, and I’ll wrap it all up with the plan for the next month.
What have I done this past month?
This past month, I have mostly been working on the Xtreme Internet Marketing Program from Shoemoney.There were two other things that I planned to do this month that I never actually got around to.
- Freebie Trading
- Surveys
This month It has really become apparent that I don’t have a lot of time to work at building alternative income streams. Because of this I made a conscious decision to pick a single project to focus on. That project was the Xtreme marketing program mentioned above. As a result I made the decision to reduce the posting frequency on the blog. I’ve also put off getting involved with Freebie trading and surveys in favour of spending time on the xtreme marketing Course.
So How much did I make???
$0.00.
Sorry to disappoint you (and me) but I didn’t earn a single penny this month. Although it is disappointing to not see any cash, I’m investing my time to learn strategies that will hopefully pay off in the future. One of the things that drew me to this course (besides the fact it was free), is that each lesson ends with a list of action items to force you to do something with the information that you learn each week. I’ll keep you posted with my progress and thoughts on the course.
What’s up for next month?
In November I’ll continue to work on the Xtreme course. I’m currently about to start week 6 of the 12 week course, but I’m going to try to complete it this month by spending less than a week on each section. Even though I’ll be focusing on this course, I still hope to make some money in November when the completed tasks from the course action plans start to pay off.
Is marketing in forums a viable method of generating an alternative income? While working on my Shoemoney Xtreme course this week, one of the actions was to sign up on various forums and add an affiliate link in several posts on each forum.
I ended up spending several evenings on this task. I found many forums related to the niche I was looking at but each had rules to prevent posting of any links, especially when you stand to profit.
In the end, I finally realized that this is one task that I would be better off skipping over. I’m not sure if it was just the niche I was working with, but it seems to me that it would be very difficult to make any money by marketing in forms.
The weekly Action Plans in the Shoemoney Xtreme course are great motivation for taking consistent action, but this particular task made me realize that sometimes, it’s best to realize when you’re in a hole and move on before too much time is wasted.
If you have any experience with marketing in forums, let us know how it worked out for you?
The third and final cheque from my online survey experiment came in today! $25.50. So Opinion Outpost definitely seems legit since I’ve now received three payments from three different survey panels.
This cheque from Opinion Outpost arrived yesterday (Oct 20/09). I had submitted the request for the cheque back on Sept 22/09. At the time when I requested the cheque, Opinion Outpost had indicated that it would take 4-8 weeks to arrive. It took exactly 4 weeks for the cheque to arrive. This is at the low end of the specified wait time which is good, although I should mention that it did take longer than either of the other two survey panels.
The cheque from Opinion Outpost was written in US dollars which is unique among the three survey panels I tested (the other two paid in Canadian dollars). This is good for me as a Canadian, because the US greenback is typically worth more than the Canadian Looney. Unfortunately, at the moment, the two currencies are almost on par so I won’t see much of a boost, if any, based on the currency exchange rate. In fact, the foreign exchange fees, will likely make it a wash.
As with Survey Lion, I was a little disappointed that I had to wait for a paper cheque. The good news is… Opinion outpost has recently announced a new payment delivery method… Amazon gift cards. The problem is, as a Canadian, I can’t purchase things from Amazon.com. There is an Amazon.ca (Canadian version) but …
1) I don’t think the Amazon.com cards can be redeemed at Amazon.ca
2) Assuming I could redeem the card at Amazon.ca, they don’t have nearly as much merchandise as Amazon.com (mainly just books).
3) I just don’t like the idea of being restricted on how I can spend my earnings.
While the Amazon.com gift card is a good idea and will remove some overhead in the payment process, I’m just not a big fan (even if I could use it in Canada). If I’m going to spend my time completing surveys, I expect to receive a cash equivalent payment. Gift cards are too restrictive. Opinion Outpost is planning on eliminating paper checks which would kill any incentive I had to participate. Hopefully they will come up with an additional form of payment (perhaps Paypal) before they say goodbye to checks?
To see the reviews of the other two survey panels, check out the the GreenfieldOnline review and the SurveyLion review. If you’d like to sign up With Opinion Outpost to start earning money now, you can signup here.
Today I received a check in the mail from Canadian viewpoint. At first I couldn’t recall who Canadian Viewpoint was or figure out why they’d be sending me a cheque. That’s when I noticed a reference to surveys and the name SurveyLion.
You may recall that SurveyLion is one of three online survey panels that I reviewed. You can check out the original review of SurveyLion here or the follow up review here. In the last review, I mentioned that I had not yet received the compensation that I had requested. I had submitted the request for the cheque on Sept 22/09. At the time when I requested the cheque, Survey Lion had indicated that it would take 4-6 weeks to receive the cheque. As I am typing this post, it is October 16th. That means it took 3 weeks and 4 days to receive the cheque; Less than the 4-6 weeks specified.
It does indeed look like it is possible to make money by creating Surveys for SurveyLion.com! I would have preferred an online payment method for quicker delivery but under 4 weeks is still perfectly acceptable.
The other two survey panels reviewed were GreenfieldOnline and OpinionOutpost. By comparison, I had received compensation from GreenfieldOnline in less than 24 hours thanks to their online method of payment (paypal). I’m still waiting on the cheque from OpinionOutpost but you’ll be the first to know when that comes in.
If you’d like to see some additional comparisons between the three survey panels, please check out this post.
Last week, after freeing up some time, I was able to focus on my Shoemoney Extreme Internet Marketing course. I’ve learned about niche selection (selecting a topic or target market) and affiliate marketing (promoting products or services of a partner in exchange for a commission). The best thing about this course are the action plans you are provided with that promote taking action on the information you learn. The following are just two examples of specific tasks that I have been working based on Shoemoney’s action plans.
- Niche Selection – I performed some research for selecting a Niche and narrowed my choices down to a couple. Electronic gadgets and repair, and movies. These are topics that I am passionate about and believe I could spend a lot of time researching and writing about without losing interest. These are pretty broad niches so I will need to work at focusing on more targeted and specific niches that I will stand a chance at competing for online. The Shoemoney course will help me do this over the next couple of weeks
- Affiliate Marketing – One of the affiliate marketing tasks I was working on last week was to sign up for three affiliate networks that would be able to hook me up with products and/or services to promote. I was able to sign up for two accounts. One with Clickbank and the other with Paydotcom. Both of these networks offer mostly electronic products such as e-books and membership sites. The commissions are relatively high from these networks (50%-75%) but there doesn’t seem to be much that relates to the niches I’ve selected above. I have been trying to find additional affiliate networks that could hook me up with physical products that actually relate to my chosen niches. The problem is that these networks expect you to have a website related to the product up an running in order to qualify as a network member. Since I don’t have a related website yet I can’t sign up with these networks. I might need to target networks I want to sign up with and just start creating an online presence in the niche so I can go back and sign up with the network later.
I’ve been spending some time thinking about how to select a more specific niche in which I will be able to find related products and services to promote. Ideally these products and services would operate through affiliate networks that I am qualified to work with. This is proving to be a little tricky but in the next couple of days I plan to have a product or two selected that I can begin (or at least work towards) promoting.
I’ve actually had some uninterrupted focus time to think about these things. You see, this weekend was Thanksgiving here in Canada. We spent a couple days with my wife’s family at my brother in laws acreage. Then, on Monday night we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for my family. All in all it was a good weekend, lots of turkey and fun was had by all. But one particularly good thing was that with all the driving and relaxation time I had this weekend, I was able to concentrate on these things with out the normal distractions such as kids and the internet (to name a couple).
Lessons Learned
I’m learning that it sometimes makes sense to take a step back from actively working on projects. This weekend, by avoiding distractions and thinking big picture, it’s really allowed some of the concepts I’ve been reading about to percolate into my brain. Another thing I’m learning is how easy it is to become plagued with inaction. Even now, as I work on these Shoemoney action plans, I keep finding myself wanting to do more and more research on every step. The key is to continue to take action every day. One thing that seems to be working for me is that I force my self to do something every day. I’ll allow myself to research options for a given task as long as I make a decision and execute within a day. This way I’m always progressing and don’t get stalled for weeks or months at a time. Later this week I’ll touch base and let you know what progress I’ve made through out the week.
I’ve been thinking about the difficulty that I’ve been having focusing on taking action toward my alternative income goals. Especially after yesterdays post, I’ve realized that something needs to change.
I have decided to cut back on my posting frequency to this blog. I’m afraid that the time I’m spending writing posts could be better spent focusing on my alternative income efforts. I’m not giving up on the blog though. I plan to continue to post one or two posts per week.
Besides the benefits I hope this will have on my other projects, I fully expect that it will improve this blog as well. The more action I take on other projects, the more lessons I’ll learn and be able to share here. Rather than posting a lot of fluff, I intend to find real ways of making money so that I can provide readers of this blog with proven and actionable directions that you can reproduce.
Are you ready to make some money? Stick around. It’s going to be fun!
You’ve heard me talk about not having enough time before. Today I’d like to dig a little deeper into the thoughts I have on the subject and share what a typical day looks like for me these days. I’ve realized that there are more things that I want to do with my time than there are hours in the day. I believe that it’s important to set priorities and make sure that you allocate time to those priorities. This is the only way to ensure you make the most of the time you’re given.
This is really an exercise for myself to identify my priorities and ensure that I’m satisfying them, or at least working towards satisfying them. If I find something is out of balance, I may need to make some changes.
My Basic Priorities
- Provide for my family
- Spend time bonding/interacting with my kids
- Spend quality time with my wife
- Participate in hobbies and activities that I enjoy
My Typical Day
- 7:00 – 7:30 Wake up, shower, grab a bite to eat and get ready for work
- 7:30 – 8:00 Wake the kids up (if they haven’t woken up on their own yet) get them dressed, feed them something and get us all out the door by around 8:00.
- 8:00 – 8:30 Drop the kids off at day care and drive to work
- 8:30 – 5:30 The bulk of the day is spent at my day job. I usually eat lunch at my desk and work about half of my lunch hour while checking personal email or reading blogs for the other half.
- 5:30 – 6:00 I usually leave the office between 5:30 and 5:45 which puts me home right around 6:00 most days.
- 6:00 – 6:15 Fortunately my wife gets off work earlier than I do and picks up the kids from daycare. She also usually has supper waiting for me by the time I get home. This is really helpful, unfortunately the kids can’t wait so late to eat so I usually end up eating by myself when I get home.
- 6:15 – 7:30 After I finish eating I cram in as much fun time with the kids as I can. This is tough because we also have to squeeze in a bath during this time.
- 7:30 – 8:00 My wife and I each take a kid and get their teeth brushed, read stories and put them down for bed.
- 8:00 – 8:30 I try to help my wife out during this time with some light housekeeping duties. This usually consists of cleaning up after the kids and maybe taking out the garbage.
- 8:30 – 9:30 My wife and I spend about an hour together each night. Usually just unwinding and watching a TV show.
- 9:30 – 12:30 At 9:30 my wife usually goes to bed. This is the time for me to focus on this blog and all of my alternative income efforts. I usually call it a night by around 12:30. These days, the computer I work at lives in our bedroom (the old office is now my daughters bedroom) so I end up working in the dark to avoid disturbing my wife’s sleep. I can’t wait until our basement is finished so I can have a proper space for conducting business.
How Does This Relate to Priorities
The first three of my basic priorities, are being satisfied with the schedule listed above although I’m not spending as much time with my family as I would like. The fourth priority is even being covered to some extent in the evenings after 9:30.
It’s a little depressing that of the 17.5 hours I spend awake, 10 hours (from the time I leave the house til the time I return home) are spent at the office. The good news, is at least this is in alignment with my priorities. In contrast I only have just over an hour and a half with my kids per day (the mornings rushing out the door don’t count) and an hour with my wife. The three hours at the end of the day is an effort to create alternative income streams that I hope can someday eliminate my dependence on the day job. The idea is that this can free up time to spend with my family and maybe even take up some hobbies for myself.
About My 3 hours in the Evenings
I’m a little disappointed with the amount of progress I’ve been able to make with my three hours per night during the last couple weeks. I usually complete my blog posts by somewhere between 10 and 11 o’clock. By this time I’m pretty tired, and lately I’ve been convincing myself that the last hours or two of my day is best spent conducting research by reading blogs and forums.
I’m going to have to come up with a way to be a little more productive with this time. As I’ve mentioned before, the way to accomplish goals is through regular and consistent progress over a period of time. I can’t afford to let things stall at this point.
As I write this, it’s quarter past 11 pm. I’m going to spend the next hour or so taking action on my ShoeMoney Extreme course. Consistent progress…
As usual, I spent some time in the basement this weekend. Things are really starting to come together and I can feel that I’m making some real progress. I’ve finished the insulation and vapour barrier. I’ll be calling for my vapour barrier inspection by the city this week. This will be the second last inspection I need to get… the next one will be the “final”. I’ve got a new fan on order to replace the exhaust fan that sits between some floor joists beneath the main floor. The problem with the one I have is that it is too tall and hangs below where the ceiling will go. The new one is shorter so it should sit higher and allow for a continuous ceiling.
In other news, we bought a new dishwasher.The one we have is less than six years old but the handle has broken, the upper rack has broken (and falls off if you try to pull it out) and it is extremely loud. Last week my 3 year old son actually asked me if it was the air compressor making all that noise. The installers put it in with two sections of hose for the drain, which has leaked from time to time. The joint for these two sections is underneath the kitchen floor in the joist spaces not far from the fan mentioned above. I don’t want it leaking after I put the ceiling up so I decided this would be the perfect time to replace the dishwasher since I need to pull it out to replace the hose anyway.
Spent some time playing with the kids as usual, which is always a lot of fun. I didn’t get around to any yard work though. The lawn is getting out of control again. The good news is there’s probably only one more mow for the season… the bad news is winter is coming.
Saturday afternoon I got pretty sick. I think it was exhaustion. I was working away in the basement when my vision started to blur and I started feeling really lousy. I spent the rest of the afternoon laying down and was in bed for the night by around 6. This no doubt has to do with the lack of sleep I’ve been getting for the last several weeks. I’ve been spending my evenings working on my alternative income pursuits and this, blog which is cutting into my sleep time. I’ll have to monitor the situation to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand. However, I may have to make a few changes to make sure I don’t burn myself out. I’ll keep you posted.
Hope you had a great weekend
Mark
I’ve been looking forward to this post since the day I started this blog. It’s my first Monthly Income Update!
One of the things I most enjoy about the blogs I read, is when the blogger shares regular updates on their progress. The more detailed the better. When you’re working towards a goal, it helps to find people with similar ambitions and follow their progress. This is a great source of motivation.
One example is personal finance blogs that provide net worth or debt reduction updates. Another is fitness blogs that provide updates on weight loss. I hope to do the same for others interested in alternative/passive income.
What have I done this past month?
This first month, as you might expect, the income was pretty small. I purposely set out to earn some income using a platform that I knew had the potential to produce some instant results. Online Surveys. The thought process here was that I would establish a baseline on which to measure success going forward. The way I look at it is, if each month I make a little more than the month before, eventually I will reach my goals. making sure I earn money in the first month gives me a target to shoot for in the second month.
I also started an experiment to see if I can earn some money with Freebie Trading this month. Beyond that, this month was spent on researching alternative income sources and writing posts for this blog.
Without further adieu, here are the numbers…
Online Surveys
$41.50
Freebie Trading
$0.00
Total
$41.50
That’s it. It’s not a lot of money but it’s a start. The beauty is that I can use that money to invest in additional income streams. As the months tick by, I expect that the monthly income posts will continue to report more income form more sources. Along the way I’ll explain all the details of where this money is coming from and what I did to get it.
I should let you know that this money was earned starting on August 19th. So that’s a little more than one months worth of income. I decided to include that extra week and a half into this months update anyway since it is my first month, and the earnings are small.
I didn’t mention the $25 that I also received from Moola.com this month. That’s because it was actually earned previously and I only just received the payment.
What’s up for next month?
I may complete a survey or two if I happen to find a high paying one that I am likely to qualify for. However, I don’t intend to spend very much time on those. I’m going to continue to work on freebie trading and expect to produce some results for the next Monthly Income Update (MIU). Lastly, I’m going to be working through the Shoemoney Xtreme course and hope to have a niche website setup before the next MIU.
The target to beat for next month? $41.50. Wish me luck.
How much money did you make in your first month? Let me know in the comments.
I recently wrote a post about challenging yourself. In this post I created a challenge for for myself to complete that week. Time has really gotten away from me and I now realize that it’s actually been two weeks since I wrote that post.
What was the challenge?
The challenge was to generate some traffic to this blog by commenting on other blogs, and by setting up a twitter account. The idea was to overcome my fear and get the word out about this blog.
How did I do?
As I mentioned above, I forgot to post on my progress at the end of the week which isn’t good. However, I did comment on a few blogs and a forum and that was able to generate several visitors to this site. This was done in that first week so I did meet that aspect of my challenge. Unfortunately, I have not set up a twitter account yet. I won’t consider this a failure because I did manage to get my name out there and pull in some visitors to this site.
Final thoughts
I don’t have a lot of time to work on my alternative income streams and I’m a little concerned that twitter would only add to my distractions. I read another inspiring post today about a tool for encouraging people to tweet about blog posts. The post was written by Pat over at The Smart Passive Income blog and even though it was about the tool, it’s another example of the power of twitter. Basically, the post explains how by using this tool, eight of his readers spread the word about his blog to about 40,000 other twitter members. Impressive. I really think I’m going to have to at least give twitter a try.
I must say that I am excited about what this blog and setting up challenges is doing for me. Even though I only completed half of my challenge, the key is that the blog is doing it’s job and holding me accountable to what I say I’m going to do. If it wasn’t for this blog I probably wouldn’t have created the challenge in the first place, let alone feel obligated to follow through. To keep the ball rolling I’m hereby setting another challenge for myself to get a twitter account up and running by the end of next week. Let’s see if I can follow through this time!
Today (as I write this post) it happens to be the last day of the September which marks the end of my first full month blogging! Shortly, I’m going to post my very first Monthly Income Report. This will be the benchmark on which I measure my alternative income revenue going forward.
