Winter is truly upon us. We’re still working away like hamsters in a wheel. Could we produce a successful month?
Actually, it has been mixed. Step this way and I’ll tell you all about it.
If you’ve been here before, skip this section
We say it every month: this section is just for first timers (if that includes you, then welcome to our humble site).
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.
Goals for the month?
The goals for November were as follows:
- Make 4 item sales in the business.
- Get the fund back above the £4k mark.
The first didn’t go so well. We made 2 sales, which is a little short of the mark if we’re honest. It seems that the new business is going to be more difficult to get off the ground than we first thought. On the positive side, we’re learning a lot about selling things online – even if some of the lessons are in what not to do!
Our second goal went rather better. We did creep over the £4k mark again, but dark, dark clouds are looming, and I’ll tell you more about that below (it’s in the Matched Betting section, so pay attention).
Results
| Project | Income | Expenses | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matched Betting | £171.84 | £171.84 | |
| BeMyEye | £15.00 | £15.00 | |
| Stamps / Kantar | £9.96 | £9.96 | |
| Cryptocurrency | -£96.61 | -£96.61 | |
| £196.80 | -£96.61 | £100.19 |
Matched Betting (+171.84)
We’re slightly up on last month’s total.
We were helped with some good betting opportunities in the month. The rugby world cup came to a close, and the premier league continued in full swing.
Again, most of our profits came from just persisting with the standard bookies’ offers.
Matched betting continues to be the biggest driver of profits for the fund and one that we’re still believers in. If you’re not involved in this then you really ought to check out: Matched betting: is it legit, and is it worth it?
But it’s not all good news, two very ominous clouds are looming. First, it’s clear that the bookies are tightening up their policy on matched betting. I, for one, have some serious reservations about what matched betting is going to look like in 2020. Offers are drying up, and whilst I used to have bookies emailing me all the time trying to incentivise me to put on a bet, those offers are now few and far between. I’m not positive on the future of this activity, though hopefully it will still be possible to eek out some earnings from it.
The other thing that worries us is an event that has happened in December. Dave had a significant amount of money in Betfair and it has all been STOLEN in a sophisticated scheme. At the moment Dave is trying to sort this out with the exchange and see if he can get a refund, but their customer service department has been about as helpful as the proverbial chocolate teapot.
As a December incident, the loss hasn’t yet been recorded in the fund’s figures, but unless we get a refund this is going to wipe around £500 off the fund. That’s really bad news and will put the fund back to its June level. We’ll bring you a whole separate article on this in December if a refund isn’t obtained.
BeMyEye (£15.00)
Chris generated yet another payout from his BeMyEye efforts.
If you’re not familiar with this, it’s essentially a mystery shopping app that you can install on your phone and make a bit of pocket money through. Check out our article on it for more details.
Although nobody is going to get rich using it, Chris has now made £272.66 from this since September 2018, and that’s nothing to be sniffed at. Around £40 of that has come from people signing up through our ‘refer a friend’ link, and earning themselves a £1 bonus in the process too!
Kantar (£9.96)
Another book of stamps was accumulated in reward for helping with the TNS postal survey. This month, however, we did actually find a use for two stamps. We used them in helping sort out our business bank account for our new venture.
Cryptocurrency (-£96.61)
You’ll recall that last month we were celebrating the first month where holding bitcoin had given us profits. That came after two months of heavy losses.
Well this month the feeling was back to one of deflation, as the price once again declined. In a big way….
Investing in bitcoin has proved to be an utter disaster. We’re now down £263 on our initial investment. That’s a loss of 38%.
To be fair, our timing couldn’t have been worse. We certainly seemed to get carried away in Bitcoin euphoria when we invested and have ended up looking pretty silly in the process.
They say a picture paints a thousand words. Get a load of this next one:
That chart paints a pretty sorry tale of our investment in Bitcoin. We might as well hang on a bit further now and see if we can recover some losses, but we’ve well and truly had our fingers burned.
Overall total
Amount at the start of Oct: £3,917.67
Income: £196.80
Expenses: -96.61
Total value of the Fund at end of Oct: £4,017.87
We’ve climbed back above the £4k mark, but only barely. We once dreamed of being at the £5k mark for Christmas, but that’s a distant dream.
What’s on the agenda for December?
Two goals:
- Activate a marketing plan for the new business and get 4 sales by the end of January (it’s proving tougher than we thought)
- Cross our fingers and hope that we don’t lose £500 in a fraud incident on Betfair.
That might make things sound a bit bleak, but we’re feeling positive overall. No matter how the year ends, it has been a good one.
Let’s see where we can get to by the end of the year with our fund total. But we’re waiting with very sweaty palms on the verdict of Betfair customer services!
As always, get in touch in the comments below with your thoughts and ideas. What do you want to see us getting up to?