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.
I’d like to wrap up the survey experiment that I conducted from mid August through to mid September. I learned a lot about taking surveys and I’ve spent some time doing some data analysis that I’d like to share with you. I’ll show you how the three survey panels tested stack up against one another, how much money I made from them, and which one is my top pick. Finally I tell you my opinion on whether participating in online surveys is worth while.
Generally speaking, taking surveys was a good experience. I spent just under 8 hours taking surveys in total during the course of the month. Some of the surveys were interesting, and some were a waste of time. In the end, I’ve learned a lot about what can be expected of online surveys as an alternative income method.
Quantity
I received 50 surveys in total. Only a few came from Survey Lion while a little over half of the remainder came from Greenfield Online and the rest coming from Opinion Outpost.
Time Spent
By far I spent the most time completing surveys for Opinion Outpost. Despite the large difference in the number of surveys received, the time spent completing surveys for Survey Lion was actually very similar to the time spent on surveys from Greenfield Online. One important thing to note here is that Greenfield Online only offered compensation on about half of their surveys. This puts the surveys from Greenfield into two distinct categories… Compensated and Uncompensated (To be fair, Greenfield online does provide sweepstakes entries for completion of what I’m calling “Uncompensated” surveys). The graph below indicates the time spent completing surveys (in minutes) from for each of the three panels.
You can see in the graph above that by skipping the Uncompensated surveys from Greenfield Online, you can significantly reduce the time spent filling out surveys. Since no true rewards are offered on the Uncompensated surveys, this strategy does not have a negative impact on your earnings.
Compensation
This is the most important part to me. How much money can be earned completing surveys online? Which survey panel offers the best compensation? Before we tackle these questions, take a look at the graph below. This graph shows how many surveys were completed for a cash reward (Credited) vs how many did not provide a cash reward (Not credited) either because the survey could not be completed, or, in the case of some Greenfield Online surveys, because no cash reward was offered.
Now on to those questions above. How much money can you make by taking online surveys? Well, In my one month completing surveys for these three panels I managed to earn a total of $41.50 in return for my 8 hours spent completing surveys. Not great, but not bad considering the effort required. Lets be honest, it’s not difficult to sit at your computer and answer a couple of questions. Lets take a look at how the earnings break down.
The graph above portrays the earnings I received during the course of the month. Perhaps the most interesting is the difference between Survey Lion (only delivered 3 surveys) and Greenfield Online (delivered 26 surveys). Despite Survey Lion delivering less than 1/8th the surveys, I actually received 2.5X the reward. Opinion Outpost’s surveys provided the most compensation but they also required the most time to complete. The best way to do an apples to apples comparison is to compute the effective hourly rate for each panel. To do this, I divided the total time spent filling out surveys by the amount earned from each survey panel.
Notice that I’ve once again split up Greenfield Online into two categories. The first one considers the effective hourly rate if all surveys are completed, while the second one indicates the effective hourly rate assuming the “uncompensated” surveys are not attempted. In this comparison, Survey Lion is the clear winner at just under $10/hour. Opinion Outpost and Greenfield online came in pretty close with Greenfield online taking the edge when uncompensated surveys are omitted.
Conclusion
Survey Lion takes first place in this comparison. Even though their website design wasn’t the prettiest, and they only delivered a small number of surveys, they gave me the opportunity to complete them all. They didn’t play any games like making me spend several minutes filling out a survey only to tell me I didn’t qualify (both the others did this). Even with only three surveys, I still managed to earn nearly as much cash as from the highest payer, Opinion Outpost.
Opinion Outpost receives second place. Opinion outpost had the best website design without question. In terms of effective hourly rate, Opinion outpost came in ahead of Greenfield online by about a buck and a half an hour but only if the unpaid surveys from Greenfield Online were omitted. Opinion Outpost also provided enough surveys to make it possible to earn a larger reward relative to the other two panels.
Greenfield Online comes third. The poor effective hourly rate was disappointing. After omitting the unpaid surveys from the results, the effective hourly rate only slightly beat out Opinion Outpost (by $0.12/hour). Combine that with the minimal number of compensated surveys that I was actually able to complete and it’s apparent that this panel just wasn’t worth my time. Only 6 bucks for the hole month. To Greenfield Online’s credit, the paypal compensation delivery method is a great feature. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to out way the points above.
Are online survey panels worth the effort? Maybe. Sorry for the weak answer but it really depends on what you’re after. If you enjoy filling out surveys and want to earn a couple bucks while having a little fun, then absolutely! If you’re intention is to bring in a bunch of extra money to pay the bills or generate some extra spending money, probably not. You’d probably do better by picking up some overtime or taking on a second job. The effective hourly rate and quantity of surveys do not offer lot of income on a monthly basis. That said, I am pleased that I decided to give online survey taking a go. I now Know what online survey panels have to offer. I’ve proven to myself that it’s possible to earn money online, which will have a huge impact on my mindset going forward with other forms of online income. And finally, I’ve earned a couple bucks to help me bootstrap my Quest for Quiescence. I’m trying to do this with little to no money out of pocket. The money from completing surveys during this experiment will cover the few bucks I’ve spent to start this website plus leave a bunch left over to spend on something else. Will I continue to complete online surveys going forward? Probably not. There is no recurring or passive aspect associated with this method of making money and it takes up a significant amount of my time. I’d prefer to invest in something with the potential to be a little more passive.
If you liked this post please let me know in the comments. And why not take advantage of regular updates via my RSS feed? It’s free!
I’ve been reading a lot about internet marketing for a while now. I think that Internet marketing has a lot of potential to provide passive income streams after some initial setup. I’m really excited about giving internet marketing a try, but the problem is that its such a broad topic, I’m having a hard time getting started.
What is Internet Marketing?
Internet marketing is the practice of utilizing various aspects of the internet in order to convince an audience to perform a desired action. Basically, we can use all the things we love about the internet; websites, blogs, facebook, twitter, youtube and so on, in order to get people to perform actions that will eventually lead to money in our pockets.
What is the appeal of Internet Marketing?
The great thing about internet marketing is that once you establish a presence online, there are a number of ways to make money. You can sell ad space, create and sell your own product, or become an affiliate for someone else’s product. The options of implementing such models are limitless. Best of all, there is a very low barrier to entry in Internet Marketing. All you need is a computer and an internet connection, and you’re off to the races. Once, you’re on the net, there are plenty of free services available that can get you started with internet marketing for free.
How to get started?
Ahh, there’s the Million dollar question. One thing I like about internet marketing is that there’s loads of great free information available. The problem is, how do you sort through it, pick a method, and get started? I’ve been reading as much as I can get my hands on from all over the place. I’m learning a lot of high level stuff but not that many details (although I am getting better at finding the more detailed information). I’ve got a pretty good idea of a strategy I’d like to implement but I want to make sure I understand more of the basics of Internet marketing before I dive in.
A while ago I signed up for a FREE 12 week introductory course on internet marketing. Shortly after signing up for this course, other commitments started piling up on me and I ended up putting it aside. However, now that I’m getting serious about generating some alternative income, I’ve decided to get back into it. The course is called The ShoeMoney Extreme Internet Marketing Program. ShoeMoney is a popular and very successful internet marketer who received fame and fortune after creating a successful website selling ring tones and other stuff for cell phones. The program seems like a good starting point. It introduces several different approaches to internet marketing and how to implement each. To me, the best thing about this course is the fact that each chapter ends with a list of action items. This should help to ensure that I take actions on the lessons I learn.
For the next little while, in parallel with Freebie Trading, I’m going to be studying this free course and learning as much as I can. Hopefully by the end of it, I’ll have my first internet marketing website up and running. As always, I’ll keep you updated with my progress.
One alternative income stream I’d like to create for myself is a real estate rental property. Lots of people have been making money in real estate for a long time. There are many ways to make money with real estate by the model I’m most interested in is a rental property.
Why a rental property?
Cash Flow – Rental properties provide cash flow. A revenue stream that continues to come in month after month. There are other models in real estate that many people follow but they usually involve a large capital investment or a lot of time in exchange for a large lump sum of money. These models do not appeal to me at this time.
Tax Deductibility – Here in Canada, interest paid on mortgages for a personal residence is not tax deductable. However, interest paid for investment loans are. One popular tax savings strategy is to invest cash into paying down the mortgage on a personal residence. The equity that is built up in the house can then be used as collateral for a tax deductible investment loan. This loan can in turn be used to purchase real estate. This is an effective way of essentially making a non-tax deductable mortgage tax deductable.
Diversification – Most of the methods for creating alternative income streams I’ve been looking into are internet based. It seems like a good idea to try something in the “real world”.
As good as real estate investing sounds, I’m having a difficult time getting my foot in the door. We built our house just over 5 years ago. In that time, the real estate market in our area has seen tremendous growth. We recently had our house appraised and the value came back at double what it cost us to build! With all the extra equity we suddenly have built up in the house, we decided to set up a re-advanceable Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC). Basically a revolving line of credit that’s tied to the equity in our home. As we pay down the principal on our mortgage, the limit on the line of credit grows, up to some percentage of the value of our home. This created a large sum of credit , suddenly available for a worthy investment. Once the HELOC became available (or perhaps a little before) I immediately started looking for an investment property. The problem is, the entire real estate market here (not just our house) is really expensive right now. It turns out, the money I’ve accessed with our HELOC is simply not enough to get into a decent rental property in our city.
The next option is out of town real estate. Or, how about out of country? I’ve been referred to a real estate agent in Florida who has been passing on some really interesting properties. A 1,200 square foot condo, about two years old, in Florida, is selling for around $50-$60K. Something like that would fetch around $250-300K here. This got me really excited, but as I’m beginning to realize, when your looking for cash flow, the cost of the home isn’t all that matters. You have to think about rental rates. Rental rates in Florida are much lower than they are here. So much so that when you consider taxes, utilities, condo fees etc, even at $60K, It seems like there wouldn’t be much left for cash flow. To make matters worse, in today’s low interest rate environment, interest rate increases are very likely which would reduce the potential for cash flow even more.
I’m still interested in finding a rental property to generate some monthly cash flow, but I think I’ll need to do a lot more research before I’m ready to put equity from my home on the line. Would you consider investing in real estate right now? Submit a comment and share your thoughts.
