March is here! We’ve even had the occasional warm day here in the UK. And it’s not just the weather that’s a cause for optimism. March has been another cracking month for our finances!
Here’s how we did.
What is the purpose of this report?
Most of you now know the drill here, so you can skip this section, but if you’re new then read on whilst we explain what’s going on here.
If you haven’t read our ‘About Us’ page then you probably should. It explains this whole crazy idea, but in essence, we’re just three fairly regular guys from England trying to make money on the side of our regular day jobs.
Income goes into our collective fund where it is earned over and above our usual monthly incomes. So that’s nothing from salaries or our existing personal investments. We’re looking for stuff over and above that. The sort of side-hustles that anyone can pull off if they’ve got the time and energy (and in some cases desperation).
The purpose of publishing these reports is so that you can see how well (or badly) the fund is doing. And we think that’s important for two big reasons:
- The whole purpose of this blog is for us to try money-making methods so that you can see what works and what doesn’t. The best way to prove what’s working and what isn’t is obviously to share our earnings (or lack of them) from these various sources.
- Secondly, we’ve done something that we think is a blogging first. We’re giving all of our readers a 10% stake in the fund – more details on that in this post. And naturally, we think you’ll want to receive regular reports on how that’s going for you.
Simple enough? Let’s crack on and talk about how this month went.
What were our goals for the month?
March was supposed to be the month where we began to push forward our online business idea, whilst also spinning the various plates that keep making us dependable income, right here and now.
Did we achieve that? Well, we certainly kept the plates spinning, but we made almost no progress at all with our online business idea.
In fairness, none of us realised that we were in for such a matched betting bonanza with the Cheltenham festival, and that ended up taking a lot of time to get to grips with!
Results
| Project | Income | Expenses | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Be My Eye | £21.00 | -£2.20 | £18.80 |
| eBay | £20.30 | -£5.90 | £14.40 |
| Matched Betting | £614.30 | £614.30 | |
| Surveys | £15.00 | £15.00 | |
| Kantar / TNS (stamps) | £12.08 | £12.08 | |
| Charity Donation | -£50.00 | -£50.00 | |
| £682.68 | -£58.10 | £624.58 |
Matched Betting
This is the 4th month that we’ve been matched betting. In that time, the three of us have made a combined income of £2,152.72 (excluding expenses).
Had we not discovered match betting, we’d be sitting on a lot less cash by now. It’s well over 80% of the fund total!
Reflecting on our journey through matched betting, it’s fair to say that it has been a mixed blessing. Clearly it has allowed us to make some sizeable money in quite a short space of time. Money that otherwise I can’t see ourselves having made this quickly through any other method.
But it has also taken a lot of our time and energy. There’s no doubt that if we hadn’t been matched betting we would be further along with our other business ideas, which we’re probably more excited about in the long term.
But alas, it’s hard to sit here on over £2k worth of earnings and scoff at the run we’ve had. It has been really good, and we can’t recommend it enough as a way to make some cash.
It’s even better for us this month, as in Feb we paid up a year’s subscription to online betting service and general time-saving-superstar Oddsmonkey. We genuinely use it to do the vast majority of our matched betting and it’s the way we learned what we were supposed to be doing. It’s such a key part of how we’re making money that we’ve done a review of Oddsmonkey on this site, if you’re thinking about taking the plunge too.
Ben has also been busy comparing the betting exchanges. Another key part of the equation in making money matched betting. I’m more of a Smarkets guy, but he’s very much in the Betfair camp. Both are excellent, though.
BeMyEye
Like an old familiar friend, BeMyEye mystery shopping app keeps the earnings rolling in!
It’s not spectacular stuff, but we’ve now earned nearly £200 on BeMyEye, net of expenses.
And incredibly, £5 of that has come through referring other people to the app. When someone uses our invitation code in the BeMyEye app review, they get an extra £1 when they complete their first job, and so do we!
Thank you again to anyone who has done this and helped out the site. It might be only a tiny bit of income, but it all helps! We’re glad you’ve been able to bag yourself an extra £1 too!
Jobs on the app are patchy and most of the time it seems to be a famine or feast situation. However, in March there were a couple of lunch-time gigs that generally involved trips to supermarkets or to chemists to check what was in stock. Not thrilling stuff, but it kept the pennies coming in.
eBay
We’re back on the eBay reselling trail this month! As you’ll recall, Chris has about a million pairs of football boots still awaiting sale after his eBay reselling trial and finally he managed to get a couple of pairs shifted!
Two more pairs of boots went in March, and both of them turned a profit! At some stage when all of the boots are sold, he’s going to revisit whether the whole exercise was worth the time and effort!
In the meantime, a room in his house smells like a changing room with all the odor of the boots that are gathering there. Lovely.
Kantar / TNS – stamps
What more can we say about this one. Yet again another batch of stamps came in. Last month we mentioned that stamps are going up in value soon, so now is an excellent time to be getting hold of them.
We’ve still got no idea what we’re going to do with the stamps long-term, but for now we’ll keep adding them to the fund.
Surveys/Focus Force
We’re in a love-hate relationship with surveys! Generally, we love getting the money but we hate actually having to do them.
There’s only so many times we can continue answering questions about how many credit cards we’ve got before we go clinically insane…..
But Ben is the hero when it comes to doing these and, though he’s well on his way to life in the asylum through doing them, he brought a tidy £15 in from it in March.
Charitable Donation
This one is a biggie for us. We’ve been screwing around with this website making money and having a bit of a laugh, but in March we heard the sobering news about a friend whose wife has cancer.
She was raising funds for a cancer charity and it inspired us to decide to dip into the fund in order to make a decent donation of £50. It might only be a relatively small amount we’ve donated but it has definitely given her fundraising a push and perhaps our donation will help us find a way to stick it to the big C once and for all one day!
In practical terms, we’ve used part of the reader share for this donation. We set aside 10% of our fund for the reader and have therefore dipped into that. Hopefully, dear readers, you don’t begrudge us using some of the share for such a worthy cause. We’re still on course to have a fair bit more in the reader share for our 1 year anniversary and we’ll be looking at ways to involve you in how we use that.
Overall total
Amount at the start of the month: £1,830.66
Income: £682.68
Expenses: -£58.10
Total value of the Fund at end of January: £2,455.24
The project is now 9 months old! That’s the gestation time for a baby. And in true awkward-Alan-Partridge link style, we’ve given birth to a baby of our own in this little project now.
We’ve hit on 7 or 8 great, dependable ways of making regular money and it’s working out pretty nicely for us. Of course, Matched Betting continues to be the main source that’s fueling our progress, but we’re hoping to use the capital we’re building up to branch out into other ideas.
What next?
Right, no messing about in April. The objectives are simple:
- Progress our online business plan. Flesh out the idea, define our sales proposition and start sourcing suppliers.
- Stick it to the bookmakers with matched betting as we welcome the Grand National and the next rounds of the Champions league!
Let us know your thoughts
As always, if you’ve got any comments, questions or ideas on how we can make money on this site then get in touch.
Are we going about this the wrong way? Are we missing easy opportunities? Have you got any money making suggestions you think we should try? Let us know in the comments below.