Money & Finance updates

#33 - Invest $5k into my Roth IRA ever year until I turn 30.(2/4) - Put in my 2011 investment today.
#36 - Make a spreadsheet with 2 months worth of receipts to create a loose budget (Completed).
#37 - Change over to a zero-balance budgeting mentality (Completed).
#41 - Finish consolidating half.com books (Completed).

#40 - Develop a low-maintenance, passive-income side-hustle

Well, this item has taken a big hit.  I mentioned last time that my articles on Bukisa were earning between $0.20 - $0.30 a day.  Well, in December, Bukisa changed from having in-house payouts to utilizing Google's Adsense.  Bukisa already used Adsense ads, but now instead of being paid through paypal from Bukisa, our revenue goes directly into our personal Adsense accounts. The Bukisa payout level was $10.  The Adsense payout level is $100!  Also, I am no longer making any residual income on a daily basis (ie, per view income) and am only making per-click income.  At a total of $2.11 so far since December. 

Bummer.

So, I'm not really sure how to improve these earnings.  I'm branching out a bit as I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket, so to say.  So far, I have written a few articles for InfoBarrel which also utilizes Adsense as well as Amazon Associates (the amazon affiliate program).  My articles there have a total of 100 views combined, but I am still working on building my article base.

I've been back-linking using RedGage which also earns a bit of money... only about $0.80 in the last 3 months, but that amount will grow as I add more articles and photos.

I've also started reading a few blogs to get the ideas rolling of other ways to start passive income streams.  A few of the blogs include:
http://www.my4hrworkweek.com/
http://www.murlu.com/
http://www.escapingthe9to5.com/

http://cashcampfire.com/

I hope to continue to learn about passive income and find an inspiration (and motivation) to start a larger project.

#42 - Obtain at least 1 box of books to sell on half.com

I actually did this a few weeks ago.  I got a box of Wicca and spiritual books that I listed immediately.  This is a category of books that always sells well.  I've already sold 4 or 5 of them!  I am going to mark this as completed.

#40 - Develop a low-maintenance, passive-income side-hustle

Well, my Bukisa account finally paid off - with my first payment!  $10.44 in my paypal account as of this weekend.  This is really just the beginning, but I am making approximately $0.25 - $0.30 a day from my articles on the site.  Not going to sustain my life anytime soon, but it really cool to watch the money accumulate!  I have some ideas for new articles brewing that I have to take action on.


My forays on Half.com continue to amaze me.  The books I figure will never sell in a million years are the first ones out the door.  The month of October always brings an up tick in sales for some reason, and I have listed some new books in the past month.  This year so far I have a profit of about $175.  It is still just a hobby, but it is nice to see some reward for my efforts.

Surveys and Mystery Shopping are still fun, but not really considered passive since they do take up a chunk of my time.  Still, I've made about $25 mystery shopping (plus a few free meals) and surveys have kept me from going into debt to amazon.com. :-)

#39 - Track Survey, etc revenue

I have been tracking survey revenue as well as my mystery-shops in a google spreadsheet for 2 full months now.  I think I am on track to continue with this practice!

#34 - Research Auto Insurance and possibly combine plans

Well, well, well.  This one falls under the category of "easier said than done."  It would save us money to combine our auto insurance and be insured under one plan.  However, for Mike and I to be on the same plan, we would have to be married or we would have to change the titles on our cars (a possibility of marriage is really that far down the line, I suppose).  From my research, it sounds like esurance would have allowed us to have us both on the same plan, but they were not cheaper than if we just keep our current plans.  So, this item is finished.  The research took me about 3 days, which were not entirely wasted as I did learn a lot more about the process that is involved for having 2 people on the same plan (even if it did not work out).