If you’ve been enjoying March Money Making Madness then you’ll love the make £10 a day challenge. I’m really excited to let you know that from April, I will be running the make £10 a day challenge over on the Money Saving Expert forums. The idea is really simple – you commit to making a certain amount per day in April – be it £5-£20 (or more!). I usually aim for £10 a day, which means a total of £300 in April. It may seem daunting, but it really is achievable and is done by forum members over and over.

Now is a great time to get involved – there are loads of people signed up so far for April, and people are on hand to help you out with any questions you have. Not to mention that it is very motivating and you’ll make some great friends along the way.

The eagle-eyes among you may notice that there was no challenge blog post in August – that’s because I took a bit of a break. I still carried on with some earnings, and I even set up a few new income streams that should prove useful in the future. But I spent the month buying myself treats that I’d been scrimping on for months and months, and having a bit of a break. It has been a fantastic break, but it leaves me motivated to really put my everything into September. Especially as there are now less than 3 months until we fly to Florida.

There are a few areas where I want to achieve in September. So here are my goals, not limited to money making:

• Lost 1 stone (now before anyone gets all preachy at me, I’m actually counting this particular goal since mid August, which means about 6 weeks. As I am very overweight, my average weight loss when I start something new is a stone in 6 weeks. If I don’t achieve the full stone then at least I’ve lost something).
• Visit the gym 3 times a week. I’ve just paid for 3 months of gym membership for myself and Tony, so we have no excuses.
• Make £sh!tloads. I decided to not set a goal this month – I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing. I’m going to try and make as much extra money as possible.
• Cut down our food budget to just £200 for the whole month, including take aways.
• Limit my personal spending to £100 for the month (not including petrol).
• Write and publish 3 blog posts per week.
• Achieve an extra 1,000 blog visitors in September.
• Earn 1,200 Nectar points towards my challenge to buy a Kenwood K-Mix.
• Maintain a tidy house!
• Sort out ESTA, travel insurance and API for our holiday in November.
• And finally…these are too long to put onto a list – but I plan on doing all the niggly annoying jobs that I’ve been putting off for months. This includes sewing some items of clothing, completing an online training course, restoring furniture and some DIY tasks.

In order to maximise the money I  make in September, I’m planning on the following:

• Earning 500 AppTrailers points every day and cashing out daily.
• Earn enough “berries” to cash out on Get Jam.
• Fill my Swagbucks daily goal meter.
• Go through all my current earning/survey accounts and see if I’m close to cashing out.
• Listing shed loads on Facebook selling pages, especially as eBay have changed their final fees to include what you charge for postage.
• Holding a yard sale
• Work through my Make £1,000 blog post and do things I’ve not got round to.

Is anyone else setting themselves some September goals? I’d love to hear about them – even if they’re not money orientated.

A few weeks ago whilst browsing Sainsbury’s (more like I left Tony to deal with Customer Service whilst I looked at pretty things), my eyes fell upon this absolute thing of beauty – a Kenwood K-mix. I will allow you to look at the photo for another moment before moving on.

I raced to get Tony to show him the ‘Mixer Of My Dreams’. And that’s when we discovered the price. The Kenwood KMX84 kMix Fire Cracker Kitchen Machine is for sale in Sainsbury’s for, wait for it…£399.99. Um.

Sigh. I absolutely adore my Kenwood mixer, but we’ve had it since I’ve been around, and I’m 25! My Dad reliably informs me that he thinks it is from the 1970s or the 1980s. Wow! I use my Kenwood so much, for making cakes, perfect icing, mashing potatoes and I’ve got fantastic attachments that grate and slice wonderfully. However, my Kenwood is old. In the last 2 years I’ve managed to break the spare Kenwood mixer, and every time I use my current one, I’m reminded of how old it is, simply by how LOUD(!!!!) it is. Whilst everyone lusts over a KitchenAid, I’m all about the Kenwood, having grown up with one. It had been vaguely in the back of my mind to start looking at a new Kenwood mixer, hoping that they’d be cheaper than a KitchenAid.

That’s where my new challenge was born! I am going to be the proud owner of a Kenwood K-Mix, even if it took me 5 years. And I wanted the Fire Cracker edition, despite the fact that the block coloured ones are cheaper. The reason I’ve chosen to stock up on Nectar points to buy this, despite it being a little (and trust me, only a little) cheaper on Amazon (but I’ve added it to my wishlist just in case), is that we’d get a staff discount in Sainsbury’s, and hopefully this would increase over the Christmas period, to a massive 20% off (fingers crossed). But that still leaves us needing a lot of money.

I decided that the best course of action, as well as continuing to earn extra money, is to start looking at ways to increase my Nectar points. I’ve done this in a variety of methods:

1. Getting Tony a Nectar card on my account, so that he can earn some points on his purchases.
2. Swotting up on places that give out Nectar points. You can view a list here on the Nectar website. Relevant to me is eBay, BP and of course, Sainsbury’s.
3. Downloading the Nectar tool bar where you can earn 1 points for every 2 valid searches. The results displayed are great – there are no adverts above the search results, meaning that you get the results you were expecting. You can earn up to 100 Nectar points per month using this.
4. Signing up to Nectar Adpoints. This is a bit more tedious – there are videos released weekly for you to watch – and you have to watch them as there are prompts throughout the video to check that you’re still watching. Once a video finishes there are often extra points to earn by answering a few questions and/or visiting the sponsor’s website. There’s a cap of 250 Nectar points per week from this, reset at 11.59PM every Sunday.
5. Downloading the Nectar App and seeing the bonus offers available to me – usually buying a certain product to get extra points.

So far, so good. I’m not exactly rich, but I do have over £5 in saved up Nectar points. My Kenwood is still a long way away, but I’m determined to do whatever I can to make this beauty mine.

If you have any ideas for ways for me to increase my Nectar points then please do let me know! Is there anything in particular that you’re saving loyalty points for?

Earns so far:
£35 Mystery Shopping
£9.63 Paypal – eBay sales & AppTrailers
£9.75 Mystery Shopping
£15.21 Paypal – eBay sales
£10 Paypal – eBay sales
£7.33 Paypal – eBay sales
£12 Clothes For Cash
£20.89 Paypal – eBay sales and AppTrailers
£10.89 Paypal – Qustodian payout and AppTrailers
£65 Paypal – eBay sales
£5 money off coupons (transferred the money from our joint account)
£70 cash for various things (Facebook sales, eBay collection sales, bagging up coins)
£17.50 Paypal – eBay sales and AppXpert
£4 Mystery shopping
£10.02 Paypal – eBay sales – I had to second chance someone after a buyer didn’t pay

Total: £302.22 / £310

As you can see, I haven’t quite made it, but I’m certainly not going to complain about being £7.78 short of my total. It has been a race to the last minute to get to my total this month, especially since I’m still waiting for a payout of £10 from AppXpert, a bag of clothes delivered to Clothes For Cash and at least £40 from Quidco that has been pushed back to August. I’ve also had a few unpaid item cases opened on eBay this month which has slowed down the progress.

eBay has obviously been the biggest earner for me this month, with a few odds and ends dotted throughout the month. The eagle eyes amongst you might spot that there’s no Swagbucks payouts this month – things have been slow and when I reached enough SBs to cashout £5 in Paypal (1,049), I decided to keep saving for £10 (1,999SBS). I’m quite pleased with my progress this month, so now all that’s left to do is decide how much I would like to make in August.

So, how am I getting on so far? Not too brilliantly if I’m honest! I was expecting a Quidco payment of £15 on the 14th July, but this has been pushed back to 29th July (and is still only ‘estimated’, so it could arrive any time!)

Earns so far:
£35 Mystery Shopping
£9.63 Paypal – eBay sales & AppTrailers
£9.75 Mystery Shopping
£15.21 Paypal – eBay sales
£10 Paypal – eBay sales
£7.33 Paypal – eBay sales

= £86.92

Pending:
£12 Clothes For Cash cheque
£10 AppXpert withdrawal (withdrew yesterday)

Still in the pipeline:
I’ve got £9.10 with Qustodian (90p more to withdraw £10). I’ve also been playing the free games on Jackpot Joy and I’ve been winning a £1 and £2 here and there – not quite enough to withdraw £10 yet, but I’m going to keep at it. I’m also waiting for my tax refund from HMRC but that’s a complete long shot to think it could arrive this month. Please send me good vibes though! I’m also expecting a mystery shopping payment of £4 later in this month, and I’m doing another mystery shop tonight which will probably pay out next month.

Choosing a charity was not a problem at all. Branching Out is a charity in my village that helps adults with learning disabilities. I was first introduced to Branching Out when I was 15 and working in the newspaper shop – seeing the clients come in with their support workers. I really looked forward to their visits and helping them to make their purchase. My family have been supporting the charity for years – when my Mum died 6 years ago we asked for donations to Branching Out in lieu of flowers. My Dad, a keen gardener, often takes them plants for the clients to grow and resell. So my mind was instantly made up – I’d be supporting Branching Out.

I had no idea where to start. Branching Out has a head office that supports the clients, and a charity shop that serves two purposes – the first being to obviously raise money for the charity, but the second is to provide work experience for the clients. You’ll often see clients in the store performing a number of tasks including sorting out donated items, upcycling furniture for resale as well as serving customers and working the tills. I headed to the shop one Saturday morning thinking that I wouldn’t get very far – I work full time during the week and thanks to my long commute I’m not home until late. I explained the situation to the deputy shop manager, Nicola, and we batted some ideas between ourselves, not really getting anywhere, until she piped up with “you know what? We actually can’t function without volunteers, and I think the money would be best spent trying to get some volunteers”. Okay, this was slightly different to the brief, but talking to Nicola and having a tour of the shop, my mind was made up – I would hold a volunteer recruitment day.

Whilst £30 can buy a lot of items for a charity (especially with clever negotiating and deal-hunting), volunteers can help the charity shop to stay open and making a profit, meaning that long term, the charity can raise more money for their cause. Any items I spent the £30 on would soon be used up – whether that be food, games, books, etc. Hopefully volunteers would contribute a heck of a lot more.

Gulp. Nicola explained that a lot of the volunteers come on an adhoc basis – with very few having set hours. Over the summer holidays, parents who volunteer need to cut back due to childcare issues, meaning that over summer the shop sometimes has to close, and it leaves Nicola feeling very stressed out. During this chat Nicola also explained to me that the charity pay for the CRB (actually now called the DBS) check needed to volunteer in the shop, and even if someone can only volunteer for one summer they are more than happy to foot this cost as volunteers are valuable. We set a date there and then for the recruitment day – 13th July. There – it has to go ahead now.

I walked out the shop and it wasn’t until I got home that I panicked slightly and wondered what I’d let myself in for. A recruitment drive? Could I really do this? How could I spend the £30? How could I stick to spending only £30? Is this even in the rules?

So I had a date set. What next? First I had to liaise with head office about my ideas, their ideas, boring things like risk assessments, fun things like publicity and refreshments. Because there would need to be refreshments! I hit my first snag when head office didn’t get in touch with me, so I spent a week sitting on my hands until I dug out their email address and explained who I was, my conversation with Nicola, etc. I didn’t have the best first impressions when they hadn’t heard of me, but i soldiered on.

For publicity, Nicola said they could help with the printing and distribution of leaflets as they already had the systems in place – all I had to do was design a leaflet. Easy enough, I fired up my Paint Shop Pro (because I don’t like Photoshop, okay! Don’t judge me) and came up with a few ideas to take to the shop the following weekend. Once we’d agreed a design I was able to also provide Branching Out with images suitable for their Twitter and Facebook accounts.

I created a poster using the “Keep Calm And…” that seems to (still) be all the rage at the moment. In place of a crown I used the charity’s logo, and stuck to the main colours that the charity uses.

Now I had to figure out how to best spend the £30 provided. The charity agreed to pay for refreshments out of their petty cash, so that idea was out of the window. Until the charity suggested that they purchase a banner for the shop. They’d already received some quotes so the £30 would enable them to go ahead and purchase the banner. After checking that everything else was covered (cost wise) for the day – refreshments, printing and publicity, I couldn’t think of anything else they’d need the money spent on, so I agreed.

The banner arrived in the week leading up to the recruitment drive, and here it is, proudly displayed in their window.

The day arrived and I was feeling very nervous. I had naively thought that I would just be helping out, not running the recruitment day! When I arrived I was told where everything was to set up…and off I went. Now I will be the first to admit that I was completely out of my comfort zone. I’m not the most confident person in the world, and trying to find my way (metaphorically) around a charity I wasn’t used to; trying to set up and also trying to talk to customers…it was a bit of a disaster to start with. The people coming into the shop seemed to be regulars who would go and talk to Nicola, and I found myself being a bit of an unnecessary babysitter when I didn’t know what else to do. I was completely left to it and I felt completely out of my depth. At around 11 I decided that I needed a drink and I needed some help. I took 5 minutes to go out the back and compose myself, and upon my return, Nicola gave me some useful advice. She said that the customers are used to service users, who suffer from learning disabilities, approaching them, so they’d be more than okay with me telling them what I’m doing and inviting them to have some cake. With encouragement from Nicola I found it much easier to talk to people, and found that if they were interested, they’d ask questions, and if they weren’t, they just moved on to browsing through the store.

Although I offered to help out with the shop, Nicola told me that I could just focus on the recruitment drive, which meant that at times I was stood around doing nothing. During these times I was able to observe other volunteers helping out. An older lady volunteers on Mondays, but had kindly baked some biscuits for the recruitment drive, came in for a couple of hours. Another volunteer is a young man who commits to a few hours every Saturday who loves being on the till and interacting with customers. I also witnessed numerous donations arriving – all of which were gratefully received. What really intrigued me, as someone who loves selling, is that something arrived – I think it was a baby chair, and it was instantly checked over and put out for sale, and it was bought by the very next person to come into the shop! If a volunteer hadn’t been there to check the item over, price it and display it, then it may not have sold for weeks! Seeing an instant result from a volunteer really made me interested in getting involved. I also loved seeing the pile of items to be sorted – I really wanted to go rummaging through and seeing what treasures were there. Whilst I was there, the charity shop sold 2 pairs of Sketchers and a pair of Joe Browns shoes (the latter may have been to me though…). It certainly isn’t full of tat!

I have to admit that I was very grateful when 12.30 came along, because it was so hot (I believe it was the hottest day of the year so far), I hadn’t had time for breakfast (and thanks to starting Weight Watchers earlier in the week, I resisted the really amazing looking cakes!) and I’m really not use to being on my feet (thank you office job). Nicola agreed to keep the refreshments and volunteer information out all day and I was able to make a quick getaway.

The interest that we received was great – we had someone sign up to volunteer that day with more saying that they’d think about it over the weekend and come back in on Monday. But more importantly to me, I decided to sign up to volunteer! I can’t dedicate much time, especially as I work full time – right now I can’t even figure out when I can go and complete the DBS forms, but I can certainly dedicate a few hours every now and then to help out.

Volunteering seems like such a great idea – not only do you get to help out a charity, but selfishly, it means you can pad out your CV and perhaps even gain experience in an area you’re hoping to expand your career into. If you’re interested in volunteering, don’t be worried about needing to regularly commit, like I was, but get in touch with local charities to see what you can do to help.

I keep track of my money for this challenge by using an online e-savings account, linked to my current account. This isn’t for the (non-existent) interest, but to see the extra money I’ve made kept in one place. I try to add to it daily, and seeing it grow until it hopefully reaches £310. This also stops me spending the money…hopefully.

So what will I do with £310? £200 will go towards paying my Dad back, and £110 will go towards my Florida spending money.

Right now I don’t really have much idea about how I’m going to achieve this. Here is a handy list to help me:

• Selling on eBay
• Visiting a car boot sale next weekend to then sell items on eBay (blog post about what to buy at a boot sale)
• Get items listed (and hopefully sold) on Facebook selling groups
• Quidco £15 cashback for bingo expected on 14th July
• Goal: £5 from AppTrailers
• £5 to cash out from AppXpert (come back on Wednesday for a blog post)
• Goal: £10 from Swagbucks
• Get a move on with claiming my income tax refund due to being unemployed for part of the year.

As you can see, this is no where near the £310 I need to make. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, and I will be sure to keep you all updated.

I made an image (thanks to Photoshop) detailing the yard sale with the date and times, a rough list of what we were selling and the location. Luckily we live opposite a shop, so instead of advertising our address I was able to state that it was ‘near X Shop’. You could also leave the address off and ask people to message you for more details. I then put this image on Facebook and shared it with all the selling groups I’m a member of (check their rules first!). I also made a cardboard sign simply stating ‘Yard Sale Sat 8 June’ and put it outside our house on Tuesday evening (after checking the BBC Weather 5 day forecast). I didn’t bother with putting posters up anywhere for two reasons – firstly being that we’d get a lot of potential buyers from the church fun day and shop just opposite our house and secondly because a large majority of the shops charge for putting adverts up. A yard sale is totally new territory to me, so I didn’t want to waste any money!

On the day my Dad came over with a car load of things from his shed, and made a comment about how my brother used to watch cartoons on a Saturday morning, yet here I am setting up a yard sale on my Saturday morning. I think this sums me up extremely well!

We set up at around 9.30 and started packing up around 2.30. We could have probably gone on for longer but it was a cold day (I thought June was summertime…). There were quiet periods, but often there was an influx of customers. Being at home really made all the difference – Tony and I took breaks in half hour chunks meaning that I could whizz around the house getting chores done. I’m not quite sure what he managed to get done – I can only imagine it was some XBox gaming.

The difference between having a yard sale and doing a boot sale is that a yard sale was out of the ordinary – people were really taking their time to look at items, and things that hadn’t even been noticed at boot sales were being sold. People were also willing to pay us more than we were asking for, which was lovely! I found that no one wanted to haggle – the price was the price and it was paid, no questions asked! We also managed to sell some more bulky items that wouldn’t be worth taking to a boot sale, simply because of the space they would take up in the car.

Whilst packing up I decided to photograph everything in job lots for eBay – a cosmetic lot, a comic book lot, a clothing lot, a craft lot and then ‘everything else’ lot which are now all sat on eBay for collection only.

After we totalled up the money we’d discovered that we made a lovely £61.10! Considering we didn’t have to leave the house, pay for any petrol or stall fees, I was absolutely thrilled.

A great idea I’ve seen is to have a village/town wide yard sale – someone organises this where a map is printed, and on one set date loads of people have yard sales. My village did one last year and it was very successful for buyers and sellers. Those who couldn’t so a yard sale for whatever reason were also allowed to set up a stall in the village hall. It might be worth checking to see if something like that is happening in your area, or if you’re feeling brave enough, setting one up yourself!

So, would I do it again? I’d have to say yes! Not having to pay for petrol, not having to pay for a stall and also being right at home when nature called was lovely! It was a shame that the day was overcast, it would have made an even nicer day had the sun decided to come out.

And so, June’s challenge was born. Very different to May’s Grocery Challenge, where we challenged ourselves to spend just £150 on groceries, toiletries and pet items, June’s challenge is to do at least one car boot sale every weekend. Eep. I would love to have the money that doing 10 car boot sales would bring, but I’m not sure we’d be able to cope with that!

The ‘rules’:

• Attend a minimum of 5 car boot sales as sellers, one per weekend.
• I will deduct petrol costs from our takings – the best boot sales are between 13 and 20 miles away from us, and petrol is expensive!
• Earnings will be split 4 ways (perhaps not equally) between me, Tony*, our joint account and Florida. *I suppose he deserves something for loading and unloading the car, not to mention being awake at the ungodly hour.

Challenges:
Of course it is our anniversary in June, and of course it is at a weekend. Tough! We can be home and unpacked before 1.30pm leaving the rest of the day free for anniversary celebrations. Being able to do another boot sale the following day, when hungover, might be off the cards though. And of course there is the great British weather to contend with, but hopefully we will still be able to do a minimum of 5 boot sales.

Are you going to do any boot sales this month? If you fancy doing a car boot sale then be sure to check out my tips for sellers.

Firstly, don’t miss out on eBay’s free listing weekend, where you can list anything with a start price of £1 or more, limited to 100 items, for free! A fantastic tip that I recently picked up is to start your listings on a Saturday, but make them only 1 day listings. Then on Sunday, relist everything else that hasn’t sold, but for 7 days. This means that buyers who want something *now* and are searching for items ending soon find your items. I trialled this last free listing and made £35. Worried that your item won’t sell for as much as a 7 day listing? Don’t be! I’ve not found this to have a negative impact.

Secondly, go through your books, CDs, DVDs and games. You can see if Amazon Trade in or Zapper are accepting any of your books, then get them parcelled up. Then try your CDs, games and DVDs on a combination of Music Magpie, CEX and Zapper. If you’re very organised you can even get them to the Post Office before they close on Saturday, and the money will be on it’s way to you before you know it. Even better, if you have a CEX store local to you then take your items in store to trade for instant cash.

If you want a chance to earn a bit more then you can list your items on the Amazon Marketplace and Playtrade. Your items are listing for a longer time (up to 90 days), but listing is free and you can normally price them more competitively.

Thirdly, any items that aren’t suitable for eBay or aren’t accepted by the sites listed above, there’s your local Facebook selling group. On Facebook, search for the name of your town or city and “selling” and see what comes up. The rules vary group by group, so be sure to check them out. Generally you create a public album on your own Facebook profile and fill it with photos of the items you’re selling. Be sure to add the price, location and a short description. Hopefully, before you know it, someone will be over with some cash for your goods! These groups are great for larger items such as bikes and furniture, but I’ve seen anything and everything sell!

Search through your jewellery box for any unwanted gold – I’m not talking engagement rings here, but rather broken necklaces or earrings. I made almost £700 selling my broken gold to Hatton Gardens Metal, which you can read about here.

Once you’ve done that, and if you’re feeling adventurous enough, load your car up for a car boot sale on Sunday or Monday morning. Read my selling tips here

Now that you’ve got all the ‘manual labour’ out the way, you can sit down at your computer and carry out the following tasks:

• Join cashback sites. You can read my post about them here. Then trawl through looking for any freebies or cashback for nothing.
• Play bingo! Here are links to my bingo posts, including information on which ones are free and which ones are risk free - Jackpot Joy, BingoCams, Fabulous Bingo,  Little Miss Bingo, Free Bingo or Bingo for Cashback.
• And finally, if you haven’t already, join Swagbucks. This has to be my biggest no outlay and no selling earner.

If after all of that you’re still itching for more then you can check out my category list and sign up for surveys, mystery shopping earning through your smart phone.

Have a good bank holiday everyone!