January 2020 Income Report

Welcome back for another monthly review of progress here at The Money Mountain.

If you haven’t been here before, here’s an explanation of why we do monthly income reports. But if you already know, or if you just want to crack on anyway, let’s get started.

Goals for the month?

• Drive some traffic to the business site
• £250 in earned funds (this is going to be our minimum monthly target for the year)

We spent some money on Facebook boosting some of our posts. Not much, only around £20, but it had the desired effect; we drove some more traffic to our site but sold….nothing. Not a sausage. Nada. Nichts. We didn’t trouble the scorers. This prompted a bit of action and debate on our monthly call between the three of us on how we can convert the visits to the site into sales. Content was seen as key and so a blog on the site about whatever it is we’re selling was created. Posts have been drafted and prepped for publication on the site. Let’s see if it has the desired effect!

In terms of actual cash, we added £259.87 so we hit our target. There are also £12.08 worth of stamps to add to that (anyone know someone who is in the market for a butt-load of stamps??). There was also some further investment from Chris in ebay stock (-£14.60); this will be turned into untold riches in February.

Results

Project	Income	Expenses	Total
Matched Betting	189.47		189.47
BeMyEye	10.00		10.00
Stamps / Kantar	12.08		12.08
Surveys	75.00		75.00
Cryptocurrency	126.63		126.63
Ebay		-14.60	-14.60
Total			£398.58

Matched Betting (+£189.47)

This is slowing up a little. Dave is starting to feel the pinch as he got gubbed from Skybet a few weeks ago and in the last week of January Paddy Power pulled the plug on him too. That was a guaranteed £40 every month without even trying so to lose that is always going to hurt. Ben signed up to The Pools, took advantage of their joining offer and got promptly gubbed, which is a new record.

Chris continues to fly under the radar and bring home the bacon, but what with Coral closing their bet club for everyone, it seems the writing is on the wall for matched betting as a whole. It’s been long predicted by those infinitely more knowledgable than us, but it does seem to be getting harder and harder to squeeze a few quid out of the bookies.

We’re considering looking at Each-Way Sniping, but that looks like a lot of bloody work for a few pennies. We’ll report back once we’ve had a look in more detail. For now, if you want to grab the offers while they last, please take a look at our guide to matched betting.

BeMyEye (+£10.00)

Chris keeps plugging away here and it keeps delivering the goods. Another tenner in the bank and a contribution to his 10,000 steps target.

We can’t argue with this one at all. It is consistent. It makes small amounts on a nice, regular basis and keeps the balance ticking over. Anyone can do it. If you’re interested, take a read of our article here.

Stamps / Kantar (+£12.08)

Dave’s bread and butter, this. Every month, without fail he delivers the stamps. We may have to start selling them soon as we’ve got hundreds of them. HUNDREDS. Take a look at how he does it here.

Surveys (+£75.00)

A nice little one hour survey for £75 was most welcome in January. Ben applies for more or less every survey that comes his way although many of them don’t work out either because he’s away or not the right profile. This one was via Skype, so while Ben was in Israel for work last week, he made his excuses on Wednesday night and went to his hotel room for the one hour call to make The Money Mountain £75, rather than his company £millions. That’s commitment to the cause. Let’s just hope his boss isn’t reading.

The real beauty of this one though was the Skype call. Most of these surveys are face-to-face in London, meaning £20 for travel which needs to be deducted, but not this time! We banked the lot!

Cryptocurrency (+£126.63)

Who knows what this is down to? We’ve tried watching it and seeing if it tallies with major events in much the way the gold price or Swiss Franc reacts to any chaos in the world as a safe haven, but we don’t see it. It could be down to anything; people trafficking, drugs cartels, Corona Virus…we have no idea, but whatever it is, it’s nice to see it moving back towards our average buy price and perhaps onwards to a profit! TMM remains unconvinced of it as a store of value or an investment, but we’re in it now, so it’s time to accept our fate!

eBay (-£14.60)

Chris is back on the eBay wagon and off spending our hard-earned on all manner of things. He expects to turn this investment into a profit in February so make sure you come back and have a look to see if he was successful or if he’s up for a disciplinary in-front of other members of the board (Ben and Dave) for squandering company funds!

Total fund value

Thanks to Bitcoin we’ve added considerably to the fund this month, which helps us with our goal for the year to make at least £3000 in 2020, but it can all be snatched away in a heartbeat so the focus is on trying to develop more sustainable channels of income.

With £398.58 extra we’re pretty happy with how we’ve done, and are have renewed vigour for February.

We’re now sitting at a grand total of £4647.66

Plans for next month

We’ve got our next monthly meeting on 22nd February to go through all things Money Mountain related as well as to go through how the business we bought has done in the last four weeks. Of course there is the standard goal of £250 of income and with matched betting off to a good start in Feb as well as Ben having a survey on 13th February (his anniversary…that’s commitment to the cause!!) and Chris surely going to make gazillions out of eBay, it’s looking good.

Ben has also reviewed his Stashbee listing and dropped the price in a hope of encouraging someone to store their drugs in his loft. The space is there, it’s not doing anything, so why not give it a go?!

Keep your eye on the posts throughout the month.