March was brimming with good news: vaccines rolling out, lockdown easing, and the weather improving. It was a fitting backdrop to a very successful month for us at TMM!
Three months into 2021 and it finally feels like we’re getting a bit of momentum. Realistically, though, we have to thank Mr Markets for most of the success.
Summary of result for the month
Here’s the headlines:
Cryptocurrency (+£347.93)
Here’s how our overall crypto position looks since we first started (we didn’t add any more cash after putting in the initial £700ish):
If only to illustrate what a glass-half-empty kind of person I can be, this chart fills me with anxiety as much as it does pleasure.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not going to complain hard about bitcoin being at new highs, and our portfolio having grown over 3x the original amount we put in. However, I keep asking myself if this is sustainable? It feels to me like this is storing up a load of future income reports in which I lament us losing thousands on the stuff.
Still, if we end up back at square-one, then it’s not a big deal. At the very least it’s an adventure, though I can’t imagine wowing the grandkids one day with tales of riding the bitcoin-coaster.
We still continue to plug away in the hope that our foray into mine-on-your-phone crypto: Pi and Bee might one day pay off. Personally, I’m not sure on the latter, but at the end of March, Pi did start trialling the technology for a crypto wallet, which filled me with immense optimism. There’s just a glimmer that Pi could actually materialise as something useful, even if there’s a long way to go before we get there.
Matched Betting (+£219.18)
Matched betting had been a little barren of late. However, we were back on the gravy train in March, with the Cheltenham festival being a particular highlight.
It might have been infamous as one of the covid-spreading events from last year that should have been cancelled, but this year round I was celebrating it for giving me a couple of nice bookie bonuses and an extra place win.
Matched betting remains one of our best earners. It’s responsible for nearly £6k of our total earnings – nearly 2/3 of everything we’ve ever made on this project. We can’t lavish much more praise on it than that.
Surveys (+£121.85)
Surveys are a solid regular money-maker. Somebody the other day said to me that “you’re not going to get rich doing surveys”. I completely agree, but I’m also going to defend them a little too.
I just did a quick sum: since we started this project, the three of us have made a combined £1,577 on surveys (thanks mostly to Ben the Survey King). That does back up the statement that they’re not making anyone rich, but that’s a very useful haul of cash we’ve made which we are now able to invest in other things.
As you know, our favorite is Prolific although I’m once again finally getting near the £50 cash-out mark on YouGov which, although a massive grind, is another welcome few pounds in the pot.
Shares (+£71.55)
This is our second-largest monthly profit from our investment in shares. That’s a function of two things: (1) the market being kind to us as optimism gradually creeps in that the economy isn’t going to be crushed by Covid, and (2) the fact that we keep adding to the size of our holdings. We now have almost £2,800 in shares (split between Blackrock Consensus 85 fund and VWRL).
We will continue with a crude dollar-cost averaging method where we’ll keep adding two or three hundred pounds per month. At the moment we can’t think of a better use for our money.
User Testing (+£13.90)
I don’t think I’ve done any User Testing work in 6 months, but in March I managed to complete 2 jobs. I really don’t mind doing this stuff – it’s interesting and makes a change from the surveys.
The major frustration for me is it’s just difficult getting jobs in in the first place. You can spend 10-15 minutes screening out of jobs, which is frustrating and inefficient. If they could improve the platform, I’d try to do much more of this.
Website Hosting (-£70.00)
This was a reminder that it has been nearly 3 years since we started our blog and our initial web-hosting contract was almost up.
It’s nice to look back and think we’ve been plugging away (moderately successfully) at this for almost 3 years. It’s also nice to think that we’ve renewed the hosting for another 3 years – I wonder what TMM will look like at the end of that period!
If you’re wondering who we use, it’s Bluehost. We’ve got no complaints with the service we’ve had, so signing up for another 3 years seemed to make a lot of sense.
Total value of the fund
All in, it was a cracker of a month:
The progress-over-time chart continues to look decent and, as long as stock and crypto prices don’t take a dive, we should hopefully be hitting £10k soon.
And here’s where all of our money is held / invested right now:
Since last month, cash has gone down 3.5% as a proportion of our portfolio, whilst matched betting increased 1%, stocks and shares 1%, and crypto 1.5%.
Aims for April
Our goals for 2021 continue to be:
- Try to generate an average of £300 per month
- Pursue new investment ideas so we can put our cash to some use.
That’s a tick to the first in March, and a continued cross on the second. We just don’t have time at the moment to come up with bigger ideas that could really propel the project forward. Sometimes life just takes over. For now it’s about keeping our heads down and carrying on making steady progress.
Nice earnings on the matched betting – those days I feel are well and truly over for me although there’s still some money to be made.
Anyway, I’ve finally bitten the bullet and signed up for Prolific and have to say the surveys have been very different and interesting, compared to some other survey websites I’ve tried in the past. Not sure how much I can make from this but a fiver or a tenner a month would be good!