From Aldi To Harrods

How I made almost £3,000 online – October 2015 income

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Hello and welcome to October 2015’s monthly income report.

Deciding to publish my online income isn’t something that I have taken lightly. I have had countless discussions about whether to take the plunge and publish my income, especially as I am about to go self employed. Previously I have shared my money making challenges with you, so this is the natural next step.

How I made almost £3000 online in October 2015

Publishing my income holds me accountable to you, my readers. I want to achieve, I want to earn and quite frankly, I want you to congratulate me! I am able to look back at previous months when I need some more motivation or ideas to continue. Most importantly, I want to tell you how you can be making money! You might just want to make enough to cover your holiday spending money or you might want to quit your job all together. Whatever your financial needs are, you can earn extra.

This month we have been fortunate to be working together as a couple. An injury that Tony sustained from work, alongside all of the resting he needed to do meant that our lives have taken a wonderful turn and allowed us to work together. He usually works nights, Thursday through to Sunday, sometimes Mondays, meaning we rarely see each other. It has been a testing time for us, but an exciting one.

As you may recall, last month I quit my full time job in biotechnology to take a leap of faith into working for myself full time. I have still been working throughout October and there are still two weeks left to finish in November. It has been a really stressful time, and I felt as though my online earnings have taken a hit, but it seems that they haven’t.

So here you have it – my extra online earnings for October 2015. This is money I have earned this month – some of it won’t be paid for another 30-90 days though.

Matched Betting – £1,105

Matched betting is clearly our biggest earner – and by far. October has seen Tony taking up his own matched betting accounts and I am really pleased with our earnings. Remember that matched betting is a tax free, risk free and legal way to earn extra money! We are still using Profit Accumulator as a tool and you can see all my previous matched betting income reports:

Remember that month 3 also overlaps into October – from now on I will be reporting the matched betting income monthly.

I have recently created a Facebook group for those of us who are using Profit Accumulator. It is a closed group and it is strictly for those of you who have heard about matched betting from my blog and want my personal help in using Profit Accumulator.

Affiliate earnings – £581.59

Affiliate earnings have been another big earner this month. There is one program that is out performing all the others, which I am keen to do more work on. My affiliate income was also boosted thanks to eBay offering a nice 20% off code last month. I shared the code with an affiliate link which saw my earnings shoot up. With Black Friday this month I am planning on posting offers to my social media channels and on here in a bid to save you money and boost my affiliate income.

Website earnings – £288.64

Between us we currently have five websites, all earning us an income from various sources. These earnings are for non-affiliate earnings – so sponsored posts and advertising (through Google’s Adsense and Media.net). I have taken the decision to remove Media.net as I only earned $7 for the entire month, whereas Google Adsense was my best month to date. We both plan to continue to grow our traffic and hopefully this will translate into bigger earnings.

Gift vouchers – £105

Some of the things I do, such as Instagc and Swagbucks and even some sponsored posts here pay out in gift vouchers. Whilst this isn’t cash in our hands, we still like to count it. In October I earned £105 in gift vouchers – both Sainsbury’s and Amazon gift cards. These have gone a long way to helping us with the cost of groceries whilst Tony is signed off work, and towards Christmas presents. This amount is NOT included  in my income total for this month. 

Mystery shopping – £152.90

Thanks to working from home a bit more, I have been able to take up mystery shopping opportunities. My favourite company is still MarketForce, although I have been working with a new company recently. We have managed to get a whole ton of beer, chocolates, biscuits and crisps for free as well as getting paid for going shopping and reporting back.

Online surveys – £65.47

Prolific Academic is still my favourite survey site by far, with over £40 coming from Prolific Academic. It was followed by a few payments from MintVine and ClixSense. I have dramatically cut down the number of online surveys I complete – I check Prolific Academic every day but I just dabble in the others.

Everything else – £781.78

“Everything else” comprises of just that, everything else! First of all, I launched my new e-book, 50 iPhone Apps To Earn Cash (available at Amazon for just 99p) and I am really pleased with how the sales are currently going. I definitely need to put more work into promoting it so that I can see some nice numbers coming from sales.

Secondly, I own a property that I rent out. I have never included it in my online earning reports, but I have now decided to include this income. Are you interested in hearing about how I bought a house aged 18? Let me know if you are!

Everything else compromises of:

  • Bank account reward
  • Rent profit
  • Book sales
  • Freelance work
  • eBay sales
  • Smart phone apps (one app in particular has been great in October, with over £150 made)
  • Website testing with WhatUsersDo

The total we have made is £2,985.38

Remember that this amount doesn’t include tax, national insurance contributions, holiday pay and sick pay – for which we are putting aside 20-30% of our monthly income (excluding matched betting earnings as they are tax free).

Expenses

There have, of course, been some expenses this month. They total £159.79 and consist of:

  • A proof reader for my book
  • Paypal fees (when I have received payment)
  • eBay fees (for selling items)
  • Landlord costs (mortgage and home insurance)
  • Buffer to schedule my social media posts
  • Competition prizes for December (see below)

Total for October 2015 (after expenses) £2,825.59

5 most popular posts in October

I have seen other bloggers include their most popular posts from the previous month, so I am excited to share mine with you. These are a mixture of posts that were published in October as well as previous posts that have been popular in October.

  1. 10 Weird Things That Sold on eBay in October 2015
  2. Reverse Wash Your Hair – Thick Hair Edition
  3. What’s Awesome in Poundland October 2015
  4. How To Earn £100 A Month
  5. 7 Things You Can Do Now To Make Christmas Easier on Your Bank Balance

This month I also guest posted for Skint Dad with 5 Ways To Make Extra Cash for Christmas and for The Money Advice Service with 5 Ways To Make Cash For Christmas (do you notice a theme?).

My thoughts

I am really thrilled with October’s earnings. I took some time to get my book finished and I have been working hard at my day job, so I am still really happy to have achieved this amount. Of course I want to continue to grow them, but I also need to take some time out to think about my plans for the long term. I would like to spend some time laying foundations for other work.

My plans for the next month and beyond

Seeing as I will still be working full time for almost three weeks of November I am hoping for Tony and I to make a combined total of £2,000. This is lower than October for a few reasons:

  • I am tired. When I handed my notice in to work I thought that two months would be more than enough to get everything done. I was wrong. I have already given up one weekend to get things done, but for the next two weeks I will be busy from the moment I wake up to the moment my head hits the pillow at night.
  • I am launching a 5 year blog anniversary giveaway in December at From Aldi To Harrods, with a prize on offer each and every day. Writing these posts, editing images and setting up the Rafflecopter widget over and over again takes a lot of time.
  • I need to spend some time thinking about my long term goals. At the moment I use my time to chase immediate money, often not thinking about long term projects.
  • I am desperate to go away in the final week of November. We have a discussion every night about whether we can justify going (note how I didn’t say “afford” going. We can afford it. We have more than enough savings to go away. But with Tony being signed off and me about to embark on the world of self employment, can we really justify going away?) and we still don’t seem to have made a decision. I feel that it would be the perfect way to relax before starting on my 100% self employed life. We are waiting to see if we can find a great deal before deciding.

Do you like this income report? Would you like to see more of them in the future? Let us know your thoughts in the comments – we would love to hear from you.

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Comments

  1. Well done, Emma!!!! Would really enjoy reading future income reports…..and yes, I would be extremely interested to hear about how you became a property owner at 18.

    Reply

  2. This post is inspiring, well done to both of you for achieving this, with all the other things going on in your lives ATM. Reading what you achieve really does help motivate me to start earning via the web too, so please do keep up this amazing work. Good luck in your new self-employed venture, I’m really looking forward to updates and progress reports of how you are finding it all!

    Reply

    • Thank you! I am so excited that this is going to be my job in just two weeks! I will definitely be keeping up with the income reports.

      Reply

  3. well done you, you deserve the congratulations as you work so hard to achieve it. I would vote for going away at the end of November, it’ll be a good way to recharge batteries ready for self employment full time in December.

    Reply

  4. I really enjoy reading your blog and it spurs me on to think of other ideas to earn money or give me a kick up the bum when i need it!
    I would opt for the break in November as well! :)

    Reply

  6. Congratulations! That is fantastic online earnings. You really are motivating when I read your Blog it really inspires me.
    I find it so useful when you give a breakdown of your earnings and look forward to reading more.
    After reading everything I took the plunge to give Matched Betting a try and can now see how easy it is to earn decent regular money from it. Even with absolutely no Betting experience the Profit Accumulator videos made it extremely easy to understand. All I regret now is not starting earlier. Better later than never I suppose.

    Reply

    • Same here!!! Profit Accumulator just made everything so easy for me. I’ve known about matched betting for years. If only I’d started earlier.

      Reply

  7. Congratulations!! This is awesome, I love seeing people’s income reports, it really inspires me. I’d love to hear how you bought a house at 18.

    Reply

  12. Sounds like a really successful month but I’m glad you make it clear how much hard work is involved. I something think people believe blogging is all about sitting back and waiting for the sponsored posts to roll in.

    Reply

  16. this a fantastic post!! I love being nosey and seeing what other people earn and how. And I have just signed up to be a mystery shopper, so thanks for sharing xx

    Reply

  20. Not only are you an absolute inspiration, you are a lovely lady – giving your time to help whenever you can. I am so glad to have discovered you and your fab blog! Kaz x

    Reply

  21. This is amazing, you are so inspiring. This really opened my eyes because I have no idea about some of these! Well done you, and so brave but amazing to write this post!

    Reply

  23. I find reading income reports absolutely fascinating. It is good to know that real people are making a living this way

    Reply

  25. Jesus, very well done to you!!! I’m not sure I could ever go self-employed as I need more structure in my life but I do like to do some of the things you’ve mentioned above when I can to earn some extra on the side. This has really inspired me – thank you!

    Reply

    • I am definitely going to struggle with the lack of structure! Hopefully it will all work out though. Good luck making some extra money!

      Reply

  27. Amazing! I’m going to take a look at this matched betting thing – I’ve never heard of it before. Please do publish more posts like this, I find them fascinating.

    Reply

  32. Just out of interest, roughly what percentage of your matched betting profits were from sign-up bonuses, vs reloads? I did a lot of matched betting about 8 years ago so probably have accounts with all the major bookies, but might consider getting back into it if the reloads are as profitable as your post suggests. Thanks in advance.

    Reply

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