If the Money Diaries section on The Money Shed has taught me anything it is that everyone works to a different pace and everyone seems to earn money online in very different styles.
Personally for me, earning £700 online last month was a bit of a slog, and going from that straight into earning £900 this month is driving me slightly insane... but, I feel as long as I follow some rules that it should all be ok.
Rule 1:
Avoid the burnout
If I had say £200 to earn each month purely on Surveys, logic says to me that they don't cash out instantly on all of them and I need to be wise to that. So I need to earn that money by creeping up on it slowly. Doing survey after survey and never seeing the money appear instantly is a sure fire way to kill any mojo you had going into earning that target.
This is not exclusive to surveys either, it is important that you try and reach these goals in the easiest way possible for you and your lifestyle. If I wanted to I could just do 2 hours every night on 63336 and hit this target, but I don't want to. I play squash once a week, go out with friends and family and generally don't want to be stuck at a computer constantly. If I did 4 hours a night, every night for 2 or 3 weeks I would easily hit any target I was after but again, I would easily hit burnout. So it is important to have a mixture of normal lifestyle and earning money online.
Rule 2:
Expect the Unexpected
One of the riskiest things of being self employed and earning money online is that unless your doing things like making YouTube videos like our friend on this site then you are at the mercy or others to provide work for you. If no clients want Surveys done, then there is no work. If no brands wants Field Agent to go out and check on how their store display looks then there are no tasks for you to do. Having a plan B to fall back on is always good if one of your main sources of income dries up. A good example of that I suppose is that Roamler offers me regular work each and every Thursday doing flower tasks but Field Agent pays more generally but their work is very ad-hoc. It FA has no tasks, it doesn't matter as Roamler can earn me £25 a week anyway. Those of you that do NeoBux/Gifthulk etc have a lot of backups there and no doubt flutter from one site to the next based on which one is working for you the best.
Sometimes the rug will be pulled out from under you when earning online and you can end up in a 'oh crap' situation. This happened to me a few years ago when ChaCha pulled out their operations in the UK http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/27/qa-site-chacha-cans-uk-expansion-after-poor-user-take-up/ and a regular income I had had every month and become TOO reliant on suddenly was gone (we literally had a few days notice!). Looking back at it
we were paid 3p (Yes 3p!) a question to answer questions for ChaCha but it used to bring in a sizable chunk of cash each month for me and suddenly I was left trying to scour the Internet for other work from home schemes which would bring the same amount of cash in.
Rule 3:
Be Flexible
When I say flexible I don't just mean be flexible in the way you go about earning money online. I mean from the very very start. Ever the resources that you use to find out ways to earn cash online. I have used numerous sites on the Internet that have nothing to do with earning money online but has a community on them of people who just wanted to earn. Sites like Netmums [http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/] and UK Business Forum [http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/] will introduce you to a community of people who want to earn cash online. Frugal sites as also very good as people post on there about ways to they earn and again you can be exposed to methods to earning cash (or even saving cash) that you never thought of.
It is still important to be flexible in terms of your approach to working online as well. Last month when the Appen Google Glass jobs came in paying £30 a time for what was about 45 minutes work I knew it was work I had to jump at and so even though I had to do it at unsociable hours I knew it was worth it as to get offered the work (and to keep getting offered it) was a big thing so it is very important that you are flexible and if a task or job comes up that you can fit in somehow, it may be worth putting that extra effort in to do it.
Rule 4:
Stay part of the community
I thought I would add this one as I can't stress just how important it is. Staying part of a community site where members share ideas and methods to earn money online is VERY important as when some news breaks about a particular company suddenly having openings or a user is able to refer people to a company who can offer them a way to earn money online it is important to be part and stay part of that community. I can't count how many times I have had a referral into something by someone I have met via a forum or community site. Far more than just randomly Googling I can say that much.
Rule 5:
Have your eyes on the prize!
Always remember what the point of earning money online is. Maybe it's to pay a bill of take the family way on holiday.
It doesn't remember what it is just remember it!! Make it your computer background or stick it on the fridge. It will keep you motivated when you feel like giving up!
Rule 6:
Staying the course
Starting at the 'bottom' with things like, say Roamler where you have very little access to paid asks but as you level up you get access to more regular higher paying ones is a good example of where persistence with be rewarded.
Blogging is something that required amazing persistence. The amount of beauty and mummy blogs that appear and then die after a few months when the owner finds out it was much more hard work than they imagine it would be is really quite high. Blogging is a challenge as you are required to make organic content and then market that content yourself. It takes a LOT of time until you start building up relationships with other people in your niche who help promote your site if you are lucky. If you get blogging right it really can reward you but you have to be willing put the work and effort in.
Even running The Money Shed requires persistence. A forum will typically take 18 months - 2 years until you find out if there is a market for it. It's no good deciding there isn't after 6 months and closing it down as you won't have exposed enough to potential users. You need to show persistence in terms of your marketing. Try something, see if it works. If it doesn't then change it or try a different tactic. All these things take time and like with Blogging it will take quite a while to find what works for you.
Personally for me, earning £700 online last month was a bit of a slog, and going from that straight into earning £900 this month is driving me slightly insane... but, I feel as long as I follow some rules that it should all be ok.
Rule 1:
Avoid the burnout
If I had say £200 to earn each month purely on Surveys, logic says to me that they don't cash out instantly on all of them and I need to be wise to that. So I need to earn that money by creeping up on it slowly. Doing survey after survey and never seeing the money appear instantly is a sure fire way to kill any mojo you had going into earning that target.
This is not exclusive to surveys either, it is important that you try and reach these goals in the easiest way possible for you and your lifestyle. If I wanted to I could just do 2 hours every night on 63336 and hit this target, but I don't want to. I play squash once a week, go out with friends and family and generally don't want to be stuck at a computer constantly. If I did 4 hours a night, every night for 2 or 3 weeks I would easily hit any target I was after but again, I would easily hit burnout. So it is important to have a mixture of normal lifestyle and earning money online.
Rule 2:
Expect the Unexpected
One of the riskiest things of being self employed and earning money online is that unless your doing things like making YouTube videos like our friend on this site then you are at the mercy or others to provide work for you. If no clients want Surveys done, then there is no work. If no brands wants Field Agent to go out and check on how their store display looks then there are no tasks for you to do. Having a plan B to fall back on is always good if one of your main sources of income dries up. A good example of that I suppose is that Roamler offers me regular work each and every Thursday doing flower tasks but Field Agent pays more generally but their work is very ad-hoc. It FA has no tasks, it doesn't matter as Roamler can earn me £25 a week anyway. Those of you that do NeoBux/Gifthulk etc have a lot of backups there and no doubt flutter from one site to the next based on which one is working for you the best.
Sometimes the rug will be pulled out from under you when earning online and you can end up in a 'oh crap' situation. This happened to me a few years ago when ChaCha pulled out their operations in the UK http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/27/qa-site-chacha-cans-uk-expansion-after-poor-user-take-up/ and a regular income I had had every month and become TOO reliant on suddenly was gone (we literally had a few days notice!). Looking back at it
we were paid 3p (Yes 3p!) a question to answer questions for ChaCha but it used to bring in a sizable chunk of cash each month for me and suddenly I was left trying to scour the Internet for other work from home schemes which would bring the same amount of cash in.
Rule 3:
Be Flexible
When I say flexible I don't just mean be flexible in the way you go about earning money online. I mean from the very very start. Ever the resources that you use to find out ways to earn cash online. I have used numerous sites on the Internet that have nothing to do with earning money online but has a community on them of people who just wanted to earn. Sites like Netmums [http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/] and UK Business Forum [http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/] will introduce you to a community of people who want to earn cash online. Frugal sites as also very good as people post on there about ways to they earn and again you can be exposed to methods to earning cash (or even saving cash) that you never thought of.
It is still important to be flexible in terms of your approach to working online as well. Last month when the Appen Google Glass jobs came in paying £30 a time for what was about 45 minutes work I knew it was work I had to jump at and so even though I had to do it at unsociable hours I knew it was worth it as to get offered the work (and to keep getting offered it) was a big thing so it is very important that you are flexible and if a task or job comes up that you can fit in somehow, it may be worth putting that extra effort in to do it.
Rule 4:
Stay part of the community
I thought I would add this one as I can't stress just how important it is. Staying part of a community site where members share ideas and methods to earn money online is VERY important as when some news breaks about a particular company suddenly having openings or a user is able to refer people to a company who can offer them a way to earn money online it is important to be part and stay part of that community. I can't count how many times I have had a referral into something by someone I have met via a forum or community site. Far more than just randomly Googling I can say that much.
Rule 5:
Have your eyes on the prize!
Always remember what the point of earning money online is. Maybe it's to pay a bill of take the family way on holiday.
It doesn't remember what it is just remember it!! Make it your computer background or stick it on the fridge. It will keep you motivated when you feel like giving up!
Rule 6:
Staying the course
Starting at the 'bottom' with things like, say Roamler where you have very little access to paid asks but as you level up you get access to more regular higher paying ones is a good example of where persistence with be rewarded.
Blogging is something that required amazing persistence. The amount of beauty and mummy blogs that appear and then die after a few months when the owner finds out it was much more hard work than they imagine it would be is really quite high. Blogging is a challenge as you are required to make organic content and then market that content yourself. It takes a LOT of time until you start building up relationships with other people in your niche who help promote your site if you are lucky. If you get blogging right it really can reward you but you have to be willing put the work and effort in.
Even running The Money Shed requires persistence. A forum will typically take 18 months - 2 years until you find out if there is a market for it. It's no good deciding there isn't after 6 months and closing it down as you won't have exposed enough to potential users. You need to show persistence in terms of your marketing. Try something, see if it works. If it doesn't then change it or try a different tactic. All these things take time and like with Blogging it will take quite a while to find what works for you.
