Extra Income Archives - Page 49 of 56

$6,523 in January Extra Income and GOALS

February 1, 2013 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 88 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hey everyone! I can’t believe it’s February already. Felt like it was 2012 just the other day 🙂 2013 has been off to a great start and I don’t think I’ve been this happy in a long time. Things seem to be going well so far this year and everything is falling directly in place.

Yes, you read that correctly, I beat my goal that I made in December, and I made $6,523 in extra income in the month of January! After expenses, I made $5,823 for the month of January. I thought the goal that I set was pretty high since I made $5,570 in December (and thought that was hard). I still can’t believe that I am doing so well, when just one year ago my extra income was at around $100 per month.

EDIT: I finally made my post on How To Start A Blog – Tips for a Beginner, so check it out! This will be another multiple post series.

I will say that this is not all super easy. Well, none of it is. I spend enough time to make this a full-time job on top of my already full-time job. Luckily, I do enjoy what I’m doing so it’s not like I’m dreading anything. My goals that I have are also a great motivator. I just keep thinking about how badly I want my student loans gone, and also how badly we want a new house next year. Read further on my Extra Income page to check out my other extra income updates.

This is proof on my extra income since some of you have asked (I did edit the image to make it smaller). This is for the month of January and before some fees and expenses (expenses were around $700 and included a major giveaway that I hosted, PayPal fees, etc.) being taken out. The other income categories that are listed below were mainly just cash I received from my sister for rent. $6,198 plus $325 in rent equals $6,523.

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How To Become a Virtual Assistant

January 29, 2013 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 62 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

How do I become a virtual assistant? That is a question that many of you asked, especially after I wrote my post last week titled What Does a Virtual Assistant Do? Now that we’ve cleared up some of the roles that you can fill as a virtual assistant, we, of course need to cover how you can become one yourself.

Many of you send me e-mails and leave comments saying that you’ll never reach the level of extra income that I have, but I definitely want to know that you are wrong. Just last year I was looking up at all the big bloggers and thinking the same thing “How nice that must be to have all of that extra income.” But now I actually have a decent amount of side income, and I’m still trying to increase my extra income even more. There’s always room for improvement!

Related content:

Recently, I detailed all of the different ways that I make extra income and I also recently talked about how to get into freelance writing. I hope all of my posts have been helpful. I have many more planned still also. I plan on talking about starting your own blog, finding your niche and everything else. If there is anything that you would like me to cover, let me know.

A lot of you have asked how I found my virtual assistant positions. I will start off by saying that I am not an expert in this area, and I had to do research for this post in order to help you all. I am learning about everything at the same time as all of you. So, while I have not tested everything myself, I am almost 100% positive that these ideas should work for you. [Read more…]

$3,340 in Extra Income, Life, Wedding Updates

January 28, 2013 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 52 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

We’ve been spending too much on eating out.

Happy Monday everyone! Yesterday, I went to the bridal show and it was a lot of fun.

W did tell me over the weekend that his parents said we can get married on his grandmother’s property! I am so happy! It’s way better than any of the outdoor venues that we’ve seen, and it also has meaning behind it. I don’t think I could be any more happier. It’s the perfect place for an outdoor wedding.

Now that we know we will be getting married there, I also have some adjusting to do to our Wedding Budget. I priced out tents yesterday at the bridal show, and I decided that instead of spending $4,000 on a clear tent that I like, I will instead just get a normal white one that is around $1,000. Woohooo!

We did also decide that even though we won’t be paying for a venue, we do want to donate/give some money to his grandmother and the trust that she made for the property (there is a trust for the family that she made for the property) in the amount of probably $1,000 or $2,000.

I also found a caterer who does BBQ (WHOOHOOO), tables and chairs for rental, made appointments at a couple of places to shop for dresses (a lot of places were offering 10% off yesterday if you made an appointment right on the spot), a fish eye camera photo booth that I’m in love with, and other things. It’s nice to see everything actually coming together. Planning everything has been a ton of fun and I know I’ll be sad when it’s over. At least I can have fun for the next year with this 🙂

Also, don’t forget to check out my sister’s blog, FITnancials. I’m helping run it, while she is the writer. This blog has been going pretty well and I’m still excited about it. My sister is a new writer but seems to be doing well. She’s still learning about the whole blogging thing but is starting to get the hang of it.

I wanted to say thanks again to everyone who commented and e-mailed me about my reconnecting with family post. I really appreciate everything that everyone has said.

Spending:

We did spend a lot of money in the past week. We bought a treadmill in the beginning of the week. We ended up buying the ProForm 600c For $810 altogether. We bought it right from the manufacturer and saved a lot of money. No sales tax, free shipping, and 4 year warranty. The same treadmill was going for around $1,200 (if you included the warranty and sales tax) at the sporting stores around here.

The warranty is a good one too, they will come to our house and fix it, no need for us to mail it to them, which is what some warranties were. I can’t imagine having to undo the whole thing and mail it in, so I’m glad we won’t have to do that.

We also spend some money on clothes. Yes, I know I said that I didn’t want to buy anything, but I already went over my $100 a month clothing budget. I wanted/needed some work clothes and went to Banana Republic. You can all just guess how that went!

Extra Income (does not include salary from our jobs):

The $3,340 was for the past two weeks since I did not do an extra income update for last week. I did good again in the past two weeks. Still waiting on a couple of payments but I’m pretty positive that January will be better than December, which is great because December was awesome.

I do have some goals for the blog and some general ideas for how I will increase my income even further. Yes, of course $5,000 a month is great, but I want to aim higher and see where I can get this!

One of my main goals is to start working more on affiliate income. I make a little bit in affiliate income every month, but I want to diversify more into this and have my extra income become more passive. I will be making a post on my affiliate income goals soon! For now, will you tell me if you do affiliate income and what I should know? Any tips, opinions, etc. would be awesome.

Food:

No meal plan YET again this week. We are doing pretty bad with this but we talked last night and really want to save as much money as we can. This entails us eating in! I plan on looking up some recipes and really putting my Pinterest skills to use (ha!).

Being healthy:

We finally bought a treadmill! I am so happy and cannot wait for when it arrives. I know a lot of people say that I will never use it, but I definitely think I will. We are pretty much complete with our home gym now. We will have a treadmill and bought the weights and everything else earlier this month. The total was a little less than $2,000 for everything. Definitely expensive, but with a 4 year warranty, it all seems well worth it.

I really want to lose some weight and get more healthy/toned. I hopped on the scale the other day and got pretty scared. This is good motivation though. STOP EATING DEEP FRIED FOODS MICHELLE!

How’s your spending, working out and extra income going?

Time Management According to Strengths

January 24, 2013 BY Jordann - 27 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Time management is something that I’ve struggled with for a long time. I’ve struggled with it, mostly because it just seemed so easy to everyone else to just go go go all day long.

I’d listen, envious, while people talk about how they would get up an hour or two earlier in the morning to exercise, or get some work done, or just simply enjoy a leisurely breakfast. I’ve often harboured fantasies about waking up with the sun, pulling on my running shoes, and setting off into the misty morning for a few quick miles before work.

Unfortunately, when the alarm clock jolted me roughly from sleep, I would, consistently, hit the snooze button repeatedly until I’d snoozed away all chance of extra early morning productivity. I simply can’t bring myself to leave my cozy, comfy, warm bed in the morning. Nothing could rouse me from my slumber.

I spent a long time lamenting this feature of my behavior, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t do what came to other people so naturally.

**Finally, I’ve realized and accepted that at this point in my life, I’m just not a morning person.**

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What Does a Virtual Assistant Do?

January 22, 2013 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 84 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

What do virtual assistants do? How did you start with your virtual assistant work? What does a virtual assistant do? How much does a virtual assistant get paid? These are all questions I am asked often. I am definitely not an expert, but I do want to share what I know. My extra income posts seem to be a hit with everyone so far.

If you haven’t read them yet, please read a super long summary about my extra income, 75 Ways To Make Extra Money, Ways to Earn Extra Income Part 1, and then of course So You Want to Be a Freelance Writer?

Virtual assisting is something that I recently started doing. It doesn’t comprise a very big percentage of my extra income, but it is still something. I like to be diversified just in case anything does happen to one of my other extra income streams (yes I realize that I am not fully diversified because a lot of my extra income is earned online – just in different ways).

Now even though it does not comprise a very large percent of my income, making some extra money by being a virtual assistant is nice. I can work from home and can see results immediately.

A virtual assistant or freelancer (for the sake of this post, the terms will be interchangeable) helps a business run, all while staying virtual (most likely at home or at their own virtual assistant business). You can be contracted for one project (such as blog design) or it can be a continuing job such as replying to e-mails and comments.

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So You Want to Be a Freelance Writer?

January 15, 2013 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 134 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Last week I finally started my Ways to Earn Extra Income. A lot of you have questions, and today I figured I would continue my Extra Income series with how to become a freelance writer or a staff writer. A lot of you seem very interested in this. For the sake of this post, a staff writer = freelance writer, just to make this all easy.

Before September, I never thought I would be staff writing, and I never even thought about it. But once I began, I really started to enjoy it. I really love to write (yes, I do realize that I’m not the best and I probably should proofread more, but I do like to talk), and writing for different blogs was fun for me.

And I’m not going to lie, the money is nice also. Being able to write about topics that I enjoy, from the comfort of my home is great. I try (yes, try) to throw all of my extra money towards student loans, since I do have a $38,000 student loan payoff plan that I am working on.

I believe I started freelance writing in September of 2012. I DID make mistakes though. I signed up for way too much, and as a result, my own blog suffered. I feel like the content on my blog wasn’t the greatest when I had signed up for so many staff writing assignments. Luckily, that did not last long as some of the assignments were only short-term.

Then I ended up stopping a couple of others and right now I am at my perfect amount. Taking on too many writing assignments at one time was definitely a mistake that I made.

My tips on how to become a freelance writer:

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$940 in Extra Income, Life Updates and 2013 Goals

January 14, 2013 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 39 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Happy Monday everyone! Another Weekly Update post. I hope you all enjoyed my St. Thomas and St. John pictures in my weekly update post from last week. Also, don’t forget to check out my sister’s blog, FITnancials, that I am helping run (she is the writer).

I also have a $399 cash or tablet giveaway that will be up on my blog later today. Please come back and check that out!

Didn’t do a whole ton this past weekend. Time flew by and we wasted a lot of time relaxing. Should have been more productive! Spent Saturday relaxing and at night watched Gangster Squad. It was good! Ryan Gosling definitely was just an added bonus in the movie 🙂

Then on Sunday spent about 5 hours looking for homy gym equipment, and then about 3 hours setting it all up.

2013 GOALS

I realized the other day that I didn’t make 2013 goals yet. Yes, I made my 2012 and 5 Year Review – So many GOOD things post but I didn’t actually list any goals for this year. So here we go:

1. Pay off ALL of my student loans.

My goal is to completely wipe out the $38,000 of student loans that I graduated with in August. I’ve been calculating it (yes, I do this all the time) and they are still on track to be completely gone by March or April of this year. April will be the latest and lets just hope that nothing changes and takes me off from this schedule.

2. Get super fit.

Now that we plan on having everything that we need to work out in our basement, we definitely should have no problem with working out and getting more toned. Me and W plan on making a workout schedule for ourselves and are super excited to see our results.

3. Save for a decent sized down payment.

We are about 75% positive that we want to buy a new house in 2014. I plan on making a new post on this soon. A lot of you have wondered why we want a new house and why we want to sell our current house. It’s probably all lifestyle inflation and in my head but I still want one.

4. Plan an awesome wedding!

We are most likely thinking Spring of 2014 and last month I posted some wedding ideas. Of course there’s a long list of things that need to be done, and I’ve done pretty much nothing 🙂

Spending:

We did spend some money in the past week, but some of it was from bonus money that W earned. He gets a bonus card from the car brand he sells, and it’s all deposited on a debit card. Now, this is different from his monthly “salesman of the month” bonus that he’s been earning (that is all direct deposited into our bank account). It’s all extra money so we decided to spend some money on ourselves and have some fun.

And we did spend a lot of other money, which you can see below in my “being healthy” section below.

Extra Income (does not include salary from our jobs):

I did good last week, but I am expecting the next couple of weeks to be better. I’m waiting on a couple of payments and I have some things scheduled for the next couple of weeks. Lets just hope nothing falls through! I made $940 in extra income last week.

Food:

No meal plan again for this week. We didn’t do the greatest with eating in last week, mainly because of laziness. We do have a well stocked fridge, I just need to cook some dinners before everything goes bad!

Being healthy:

I haven’t been doing the greatest with this. We did buy a home gym yesterday (pictured above), which was SUPER expensive. I did not realize how much everything would be just so that W could lift some weights. The olympic bar alone was $320 (tax included) and that doesn’t include any of the weights which were super expensive too ($150 for the two 45 pound weights).

We are still looking for a treadmill. We saw a couple yesterday but I wanted to do a little research on them. It needs to be reliable and good for 3 people to use every day. What brand/type of treadmill do you have? Let me know!

Spending:

Extra Income (does not include salary from our jobs):

Food:

Being healthy:

How’s your spending, working out and extra income going?

Finally, I’ve realized and accepted that at this point in my life, I’m just not a morning person.

My tips on how to become a freelance writer:

2013 GOALS

1. Pay off ALL of my student loans.

2. Get super fit.

3. Save for a decent sized down payment.

4. Plan an awesome wedding!

Spending:

Extra Income (does not include salary from our jobs):

Food:

Being healthy:

How’s your spending, working out and extra income going?

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**Finally, I’ve realized and accepted that at this point in my life, I’m just not a morning person.**