Summary of result for the month
Cryptocurrency (+147.38)
Finally Bitcoin went up in value, ending April on a price of over £7,000 per bitcoin. So at long last we recovered some of our losses.
Shares (+£29.93)
We made £23.39 gain on Ben’s purchase of 265 units of Blackrock Consensus 85 fund.
But Chris dipped his toe in the market too this month and bought 3 units in an exchange traded fund: VWRL for a total of £185.37, and that too had gone up in value by the end of the month, adding another £6.54 of gains to the pot.
Chris intends to drip further amounts in to VWRL over the course of the next two months, making use of free investing costs through a ‘regular investor’ option at the broker he uses, Interactive Investor.
Who knows what Dave is planning.
The other thing worth a mention here is that in April when the price of Oil hit a crazy low (BBC news link), we very nearly bought an Oil ETF. We eventually pulled out on the basis that we didn’t really understand what we were buying – as it invested in oil futures, and it all proved a bit beyond us.
I regret checking this, but we nearly pressed the ‘trade’ button to buy that particular ETF (CRUD) when the price was $2.32. At the time of writing, it closed at $3.17. Had we been ballsy enough to do it, we’d be sitting on a £150+ gain. However, for all we know that could have gone the other way.
Surveys (+£25.00)
Chris and Ben both got going on Prolific this month. It’s really rather good.
Ben will tell you more in a future article, but it offers reasonably paid surveys, screens you for them neatly and seems to generally work very well. We’re fans and I can see us doing more of this over the lock down period.
Prolific – our new friend.
eBay (+£17.26)
Chris made a couple of sales from his stockpile of goods which are almost certainly going to remain unsold until social distancing ends. It’s not a good time to sell goods that people use for team sports.
Usertesting (+£15.75)
Like a comfy pair of slippers, Usertesting is there when you need them.
Review websites, record yourself doing it, and get paid $10 for each job, which is typically 15-30 minutes long. It’s moderately interesting and, in Chris’ view, it beats several other earnings methods.
The downside is that their screening system is lousy. You find yourself having to click through 20 eligibility surveys in order to land a single job – often answering the same questions. Doing the jobs is fine, landing them is the annoying bit.
Stamps / Kantar (+£12.08)
Dave does stamps. That’s his 21st month in a row of making this same amount of stamps. Consistency at its finest.
Matched Betting (+£10.00)
With no sport, there was no matched betting and none of us ventured into the silly territory of betting on the obscure events that were still on (though I hear that table tennis was quite popular with punters).
We squeezed out £10 of bonuses, but that was it this month. If sports don’t pick up this summer, it could be a strange one…
Topcashback referral (+£7.50)
Dave referred me for a TopCashback account around 18 months ago (and we recently revamped the article on cashback sites). We only just remembered about the referral bonus and it felt as good as finding money down the back of the sofa!
Football Index (-£0.23)
Football Index could represent a scraping of the barrel. We got a nice referral from our buddy, Weenie over at Quietly Saving which gave her and us nice £10 bonus, but we remain quite sceptical as none of us can see how it makes any money. We had to remind ourselves of our motto “Earn From Our Money Mistakes,” and just pile in.
At the end of the month we were sitting on a small loss, although at the time of writing this months update, we’ve moved into positive territory thanks to some Bundesliga action and Harry Kane deciding to take on the sponsorship of Leyton Orient match-day shirts and then give the space away to a number of good causes. As three Spurs fans this confirms what we knew all along: the man is just fantastic in every sense.
The spreads on this thing are vast and it somehow pays out dividends, but it isn’t clear to me how we get our hands on that cash. I can only assume that they want to encourage a trading environment and make their money on the spreads, but it is a very curious one – especially as who is trading right now when there is next to no football? It is classified as gambling rather than an investment, so there is no CGT or income tax to pay though, so that’s a bonus…let’s just see if we make any money out of it?!
Total value of the fund
So, let’s see where all that brings us to at the end of April:
Breaking the £5k mark is something we’ve been looking forward to for a while. Sometimes, looking at the following chart, I find it hard to believe how far we’ve come:
And, returning from last month, here’s our doughnut diagram summarising where all of our money is:
Aims for May
May is an interesting one. The Bundesliga is starting up again, so there are a few matched betting opportunities to take advantage of, but I guess we need to tread carefully so as not to arouse too much suspicion given all of us have been dormant from the moment football was called off.
Chris and Ben will keep plugging away with Prolific and any other survey site willing to throw a few quid at us. Focus Force has gone very quiet and while there are surveys and research being promoted and emailed out, they are quite unique in their criteria. We’ll keep looking and applying and hope that they throw us a bone here or there.
We’ll have to have a bit of a conference call fairly soon too, to decide what we’re going to do about our business and when (possibly even whether) we want to resurrect it?
Like the rest of the UK, we’ll be watching the news like a hawk for the merest crumb of good news that might mean we can get out and about properly. There’s a mussels and chips with my name on it at our local fish restaurant as soon as we get the nod!
In the meantime, keep your heads down and noses clean. There’s a war on don’t you know?
Hah, thanks for the mention. I see how you’re confused with the Football Index.
Have you checked out your Transaction History so you can see the dividends paid out for your players?
Erling Haaland is showing an 11% gain in price in your portfolio. If you want to sell, you Add a Sell Order, so if someone buys, it’ll be at a price close to the Buy Price. It’s not worth using Instant Sell because of the spread.
Spreads will narrow however, as the buying and selling is going to be revamped in the coming weeks, to include Bid prices so it’ll be closer to investing in that way.
I’ve started doing some matched betting and will be happy to make a small profit by the end of the month.
Stay safe and keep up the good work with all those income streams!
Sorry for not replying sooner. It’s more confusion about how the platform makes any money and how it can deliver sustainable profits for the “investors.” We’ll be keeping a close eye on it and once we start to move into any serious profit (%-wise), then we may cash out and take the profit to do something else with. I am terribly cautious and do not normally put money into something I don’t understand, so I am watching this like a hawk – it’s only a few £, but it will make me very grumpy if it goes south as I broke my golden rule.
It’s good to have the football back properly, isn’t it? There were a few good offers on Der Klassiker tonight, so I’ve come out of that just over £20 up, which is always nice for 10mins work. How about you? Did you take advantage of all the offers tonight?
About £15 profit for me from last night’s matches so not bad.
Hear what you’re saying on Football Index. I think they make their money from the 2% commission they get on all sales and also on interest on people’s deposits. They will shortly be charging commision on people’s bids too (not on normal buys).
I’m 13% ROI at the moment but am reluctant to really put in any more capital (maybe just a bit more…).
Love it! £15 closer to the magic number! It is a little difficult to maintain discipline on Football Index…it is so much like the stock market; and there, The Trend Is Your Friend. It took a lot of strength not to put the few £ we’ve got left in the account into more Harry Kane shares in the last couple of days, although what I’m waiting for, I’m not sure!
Let’s see what this week brings and roll on 17th June!! £££££