“And in the fourth month, the mountaineers finally stopped sodding about at base camp and began their long overdue ascent”.
That’s right people, October heralded the long awaited exit out of debt and in to positive territory. And it’s about time too, four months in the red would have been more than a little bit demoralising. But those days are behind us and we’re finally building a stash!
What is the purpose of this report?
Now, before we go any further, I’m mindful that there might be a reader or two who is new round here. Let’s hope so anyway, we could do with all the readers we can get right now.
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 the 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.
But enough chat. Step this way. Let me talk you through how this momentous point of profitability was reached in the glorious month of October.
Why were we in the red in the first place?
For those wondering how we got so disastrously in the red in the first place, let me take you back to July, when we started this website. Although we tried to minimise the cost as much as we could (see our guide on how to build a professional looking blog as cheap as possible) we spent a total of £122.50 getting us up and running.
That was decent value when you consider that it included 3 years of quality WordPress hosting with market-leading provider, Bluehost*, 1 year of domain registration, and purchase of a website theme. But it left a hole that we’ve been clawing our way back out of ever since.
But this month we’ve stormed out of the hole thanks to a whopping overall gain of £73.36 – our most successful month to date. And because I know you love a chart, here it is in all its glory:
Income
How did we rake in our record income haul this month? Well, it was thanks to two old favourites and one new entrant:
| Income | £99.92 |
|---|---|
| Be My Eye | £52.50 |
| User Testing | £7.42 |
| Ebay | £40.00 |
BeMyEye
Firstly, BeMyEye is the gift that seems to keep on giving! This month found a glut of London-based jobs being loaded onto the platform and these were gladly snapped up by yours truly. Most of them were done on my lunch break but some were even done after work on the way home. I snapped those bad boys up in a show of greed that even Gordon Gekko would’ve found distasteful…
Side note here: one of the missions took me to a vaping store, which I found a thoroughly strange experience. I’m not a vaper (or standard smoker) myself but it seems that the vape store has become a recent phenomenon with plenty of these popping up on the high street recently. I can confidently report that these shops don’t seem to have anyone in them and how they’re making money I really can’t figure out. Perhaps they’re glorified money laundering operations. It seems like most of the stuff that they’re selling could just be bought online (or in a newsagents without the need for a dedicated shop). Anyway, time will tell if these things last – personally I can see a fair few of them closing. But I digress…
Other BeMyEye jobs this monthly mainly revolved around checking London food retailers. One of them even took me to the scenic sights of the Tower of London, which was a pleasure to visit on a sunny day – I attach my bad photographic attempt below.
I’ve now earned over £130 through the BeMyEye app (here’s my write up on it) and I really rate it as a useful way to make a little extra cash. Realistically though, I doubt if I’ll have many more months where I’m pulling in this much from it. In fact, I can see my earnings from this source declining quite a lot over the winter as the prospect of chasing round mystery shopping in the freezing cold looks significantly more unappealing.
UserTesting
I’ve been chipping away at this one for a while now, and finally wrote up my experience in a blog post during October.
Like BeMyEye, it’s a method of earning money that I really rate. And mercifully, you can do it from the comfort of your own home. I only managed to get one job done this month, but it brought in $10, which converted to £7.42 when I’d suffered the exchange rate conversion (including PayPal currency conversion fees, which I’d love to find a way round).
I’m hoping that my fellow project members Dave and Ben might also get onto this method over the coming months.
Ebay
This is the first time we’ve had any earnings in from this source so far. It’s something we’ve been thinking about as a way to earn money and so we decided that October would herald the Ebay Upselling Challenge!
Truthfully, this challenge hasn’t gone exactly to plan. We were supposed to have it wrapped up within the month but only Ben achieved this. Chris is lagging behind and has bought his items but is yet to sell them. Worse still, Dave managed to preoccupy himself with finishing moving house and then spending a week in the US and bought nothing at all.
So it has now become a head-to-head between Ben and Chris, and we’ll bring you more on that in November. But suffice it to say that money has been made! £40 was earned, but then we also had associated purchase costs, ebay fees and postage of £26.56. Still, a profit of £13.44 on just one item is pretty tasty and we’ll take it.
| Expenses | -£26.56 |
|---|---|
| Ebay | -£26.56 |
Overall total
Amount at the start of the month: -£40.62
Income: £99.92
Expenses: -£26.56
Total value of the Fund at end of July: £32.74
Man of the month
I’ve notice that my fellow bloggers have dropped this section from their reports. That’s possibly because, for the 4th month in a row, it’s no contest. I’m the winner as I made the most income. My strategy of using BeMyEye and UserTesting continues to pay dividends.
Expect this section to be dropped in future income reports if I’m not writing it. 🙂
What next?
Now we’re in positive territory and have registered a really good month in October, the challenge will be to try to keep the momentum going. Here’s what we’ve got planned:
- Dave is going to get his side earner of free stamps going again. He didn’t earn any this month, having changed address and needing to wait for this to be updated in the Kantar/TNS system.
- Chris is going to complete the sale of his items in the Ebay challenge and see if he can beat the profit that Ben has registered. It’s going to be a tough ask.
- All of us are going to start investigating matched betting.
Out of all of the above, matched betting is the main priority this month. Perhaps we won’t get it up and running within a month, as it seems quite complicated. But we’ve got to get our heads around how it works. All of us have read about other people who seem to be making money through it and it has got to be worth a shot. More on that as we figure it out!
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.
*Note that this is an affiliate link to Bluehost. If you browse and buy something through this link then it doesn’t cost you anything – you’ll still pay the same competitive price you would otherwise. But it does give us some affiliate income. Which might dig us out of a tight spot here.