What’s Project 500?

This update is quite late, but as I mentioned in my last post I’ve been pretty busy. Results are still slow against my target but at least there’s progress.

Email Newsletter

My newsletter list has 58 subscribers, there’s a constant trickle even though I haven’t been directly promoting it. I haven’t sent a newsletter for a while but I’ve been offered some exciting new freebies so watch this space. Join the newsletter here.

Toluna

I’ve become an affiliate with Toluna, I’m not expecting too much success but you never know plus you get ?20 for joining and ?1 for every person that joins.

Freelance Work

I’m still working on this project and have another meeting on Tuesday which should move us forward, more news on this soon.

Bukisa

Bukisa has been the thing that has been capturing my imagination the most recently. I’ve only made a few pounds so far, but the income is definitely passive, the articles I have published continue to make money with no extra effort. I have 13 articles published so far, my target is 20 by the end of this month.

If you aren’t already aware of Bukisa, then it’s a site where you can publish short articles (250-1500 words) and earn money. Money is earned for pageviews and is calculated by the Bukisa Index, currently the index is $3.65, which means you are paid $3.65 per 1000 pageviews.

So that’s fine, you write an article and you get paid.

If people join your network you are then paid a percentage of their earnings, and a percentage of their networks’ earnings, and the one after that. So that’s the second way you make money.

The third way is the real secret, I only learned this a few days ago so I have no idea how much it works but it could potentially be the most lucrative part. When you write an article you are allowed to include affiliate links. So if you decide to do a review of Call of Duty 5, then you can include an affiliate link to amazon where you’ll be paid per sale that end too. Now, I’m not suggesting you just right articles to make sales, but in some of your articles a link to the product/service may enhance the article.

I’m not going to tell you that you are going to get rich off a couple of articles, but there are plenty of people earning a side income doing this. The income does rise as you add more articles and this income once the article is published is completely passive, you don’t have to do anything more to that article for it to continue earning. In my opinion, this is a fun way to build up an extra income stream for yourself, and the beauty is you don’t need any tech skills at all, you don’t even need to blog to take advantage of this opportunity.

If you feel that you’ve got nothing to lose by giving it a shot you can join my network here.

In December I decided that 2009 was the year I’d start making a part-time income from home. I didn’t have a plan, I still don’t really, but shortly after I wrote about my idea an opportunity came up to work from home managing and optimizing an email list for an online shop.

Working Freelance

I’ve spent a lot of time this month laying the groundwork to make this project successful, the deal is a ‘profit above trend’ model, details still to be hashed out, but I’m happy with the way things are going and hope to bring on a few more similar projects. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the ‘work’ so far, I’ve attended technical/strategic meetings and I feel like my ideas are valued. I can be honest, after all I’m not an ‘employee’ with a job to lose. I can speak the truth even if that’s not the most agreeable. Fortunately the company are very open minded and I’m looking forward to making their newsletter a success and earning myself some hard cash!

Passive Income

I’ve also begun generating a small income from writing articles on Bukisa. Anyone can write articles for Bukisa, you make money from the pageviews your articles receive. I’m spending some spare time going through my archives and choosing some ‘gently used’ articles to polish up and publish for passive income (say that when you’ve had a few!). The thing with passive income is that it’s a slow starter and much of the work has to be done upfront for little reward. This month I’ve only made about $3.50 (approx ?2.50), it’s not going to produce my ?500 target, but it should build every month becoming a nice, passive, contributory element to my ?500.

Affiliate Marketing

I’ve made a couple of sales, only generating a few pence, not great, but I didn’t have to ‘do’ anything, so that’s fine.

Networking

I’ve been putting some effort into networking a bit on Twitter. Not really ‘effort’ as such, quite enjoyable chatting and sharing ideas, you never know what might come up. What is it they say about not what you know but who you know I’m here on Twitter, if you fancy a chat.

Plans for February

I hope to begin getting involved with producing the newsletter, although I’m not sure if that project will generate money in February. I definitely hope to be earning by March.

I have many more articles to assess and decide whether to post them on Bukisa. My aim is to have at least 20 articles by the end of February, I currently have 9.

I’ve been approached about an affiliate marketing opportunity that I need to have a look into.

I’ll be continuing to network and investigate new money-making opportunities.

Bukisa is a way to ‘share your knowledge and earn money’ I joined a few days ago and can already see its potential. You basically write articles and post them to Bukisa (this is very simple, even easier than blogging on your own platform) and then you are paid for people viewing your work. You can also do slide shows, videos and more…

Bukisa also pays you a small cut for signing up friends and family, it’s in Beta at the moment and relatively unknown, and with all these new 2.0 internet things it really does ‘pay to be first’.

How much can I make?

I have done some very basic calculations based on my experience so far (the site pays in dollars, but I have converted it to pounds here);

5 articles on Bukisa – ?9-10 per month

20 articles on Bukisa – ?35-40 per month

50 articles on Bukisa – ?90 – ?100 per month

These are some basic calculations of what *I* expect to make from my articles alone, not including my cut from family and friends.

Further benefits to joining Bukisa

Meet new people
Promote your blog in your profile
Convert Bukisa readers into RSS subscribers
Read/watch great content
Get new ideas for blog posts (reading other people’s work always stimulates my own ideas)

Finally

If quite a few people decide to join we could form a community – friending each other and voting and stumbling each others articles.

This is one of the most promising ways I’ve found to make easy money since I started blogging, once you’ve written articles they stay on Bukisa and can continue to make passive income indefinitely. I don’t know about you but I have written hundreds of articles in the past that just need tweaking, updating and a brush up that can form the basis of a very profitable catalogue on Bukisa

If you decide to join, I’m Eccy100 on there, friend me and I will return the favour and start promoting your articles.