Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Goodbye 2008.........Hello 2009!

Although the end of one year and the beginning of the next is an entirely arbitrary point in time, it is customary at this time to look back on the year that has past and to look forward to the coming year. And, indeed, why should I be any different! So I thought I would look at my last year of trying to make extra money and to think about what I hope to achieve in 2009.

Goodbye 2008........

Well, at the beginning of 2008 the only knowledge and experience of making money online was selling on Ebay. Over the course of the year I gradually gained knowledge and experience of a number of ways of making money online, as well as generally establishing an online presence. I began with online surveys and have signed up with pretty much every survey panel I could find. This was followed by cashback shopping and paid to click sites.

I did attempt to expand my Ebay activities to include buying stuff wholesale, then selling it on, but I was barely covering my costs. Poor choices of items may well have been the cause of this. Nevertheless, I came to the conclusion that I do not have the money available to risk losing it, so I abandoned this plan and decided to concentrate on selling stuff I find in the house.

I then decided that I would put together a website with the hope that this might make me a little extra money. I used Google Page Creator and created Extra Cash Review which gives information on making money online. Over the year my site has grown as my knowledge has grown. Since then Google have announced that they are winding up Page Creator so that they can concentrate on Google Sites - existing sites created and hosted through Page Creator will be migrated to Sites. So I have put my plans for updates to the site on hold for now.

I then went on to establish 2 blogs - this one was originally intended to be just a means to promote the website, but has taken on a life of its own.

Since then, amid a global financial crisis, I have been experimenting with various means of making money on the net including Squidoo, Hub Pages, Helium, Zlio shops and affiliate marketing.

Over the course of the year I have made approximately £700 - most of this has been from Ebay and surveys.


.........Hello 2009!!

So what will the coming year bring? Well in terms of making money online, here are some of my aims:

  • To be more focused and to organize my time more effectively - I will actively seek out methods to achieve this. Regular readers of this blog will know that finding that finding enough time to do everything that I want to do is a constant challenge for me!
  • To increase my online earnings to an average of £300 per month by July 2009.
  • To promote my blogs with a view to increase the Google Page Rank to PR2 at least by the end of 2009 and the Alexa Rank to above (or below, depending on your point of view) 100,000.
  • Once Google finally get around to migrating my site to Google Sites, then I will update it, expand some sections, reduce the size of others (that are of limited interest outside the UK) and radically change the advertising banners/links so that they fit better with the site. I will then embark on a campaign of shameless self-promotion to increase traffic.
  • I am now up to 3 Zlio shops, although 2 are still very much work in progress. I have not made any money from these as yet, so intend to promote these to increase traffic substantially and hopefully get some sales. I am hopeful that these will provide some sort of on-going income.
  • Put more time into writing articles on Helium, including writing for the marketplace and competitions to see if I can actually make some money out of it.
  • I intend to start a third blog, this time on a paid blog network - more about this on a future post.
  • Although I have very little money as an affiliate as yet, I intend to pursue this further - I will put more effort into researching products to sell before I do any more.
Well, let's see how many of these I have achieved by December 2009. Whatever your ambitions are for 2009, I hope that it is a prosperous and successful year for you.

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