Financial Year report 2012-2013

It's the end of the financial year, and I have finally caught up with my paperwork. True to expectations, this has been a disappointing year in terms of 'turnover'. Last year I turned over about £1500, this year was more like £1000. Last year I had outgoings of just £224, this year was almost £400. Actually, spending the money on stuff that I need for online work such as hardware and software is good use of earnings because I don't have to pay income tax on it. So it's not all bad especially as I have been able to use some of those earnings to refurbish my new office with work-related items.

March was one of my best months of the year with a total of £120, £100 of which was 'passive' income including a substantial affiliate payment and payment for contextual adverts over several sites.
So it's a 'profit' of just over £600 this year, but I have already bagged quite a few earning opportunities for April, so the new financial year should start with a bang.
I haven't done any cassette conversions for a few months, but am expecting one this week, added to that I have done some paid blogging work which should be profitable. There seems to be plenty of paid blogging opportunities around at the moment, so there is a chance to start pushing the new financial year in the right direction.

Autumn is coming..

Uk weather remains undecided as the summer holidays are well behind us and everybody barring the students are back at the grind-stone. We leave a remarkable summer of Olympics in our wake as we face the mundane challenges of life in the vague hope of an 'Indian Summer' starting in the next few weeks.
The economy as a whole is in back-pedal or treading-water mode with little hope af any dramtic change any time soon. The general concensus is that the summer of sport in the UK has been a great success, and that gives us a positive attitude that we can take into our family and business lives, engendering a sense of satisfaction despite the uncertain economic future.
On-line earnings remain possible but it is getting harder to justify the effort needed to pull in the few dollars that are available. Having said that I have had a good result with my currently favourite affiliate - I often get a few payouts sometimes of around £2 or thereabouts every month or so, but I have just received notification of an impending £20 payout coming my way soon. The only issue I have with this is that the affiliate scheme doesn't have any tracking, so I am not even sure where the clicks are coming from... £20 will be a nice boost to earnings, and with another Adsense payment just around the corner, I will have some decent figures to add to my earnings.
I have just completed my tax return for the year just gone, but suspect that this mught be a 'plateau' year or even a dip year for me in terms of annual earnings.

Year End

After I posted last months update, I realised that I need to post my earnings for the year as the new financial year begins in April and I need to finish off the accounts for the year just gone. I think my profit has been about the same as last year, but as I spent less, my turnover must have been quite a bit lower.
I will need to look at which areas have been less profitable and do a proper report, but my gut feeling is that there have been less paid posting opportunities this year for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the general economic downturn has affected advertising budgets, and secondly Google continues to seek out paid posts and punish them.
I have half-formed plans for other revenue streams, but with the emphasis on my 'day-job' and the home renovation plans, there has been even less chance than normal to flesh out these plans. No doubt once I have a shiny new office, I will be suitably inspired to begin the quest for domination of the internet in earnest...

March Catch-up

As March draws to a close, I am pleased to be able to report that takings this month are a little better than last months dire offering. I have a new injury having gone temporarily blind in my right eye after an impact playing football on Tuesday.. sight is mostly restored, but they eye is still a bit sore and generally making me grumpy. Still, I had a much-needed day off today, my 'proper' job has been crazy busy lately, but the boss has promised a bonus!
I was able to do another tape to CD conversion today, plus I had time to remove a radiator from my 'office' at home and to remove the last few pieces of skirting board (I have been instructed to replace the skirting board, which has resulted in a whole scheme of works including ripping up all the floor-boards and re-fitting them all...). As part of this undertaking, I am also stripping all the walls and practically rebuilding the whole room... Still lots to do, but the light at the end of the tunnel is I can spend some of my online earnings on some new office furniture!
Official March figures to follow...

Looking back at February

I don't think I have ever had such a poor month as I have just experienced, but honestly I am glad that I have not had too much online stuff to do. £11 is just about the lowest total I have ever reported except where I have spent a lot - certainly this is the lowest turnover that I can find in my own records!
Nevertheless, important things are being done in the meantime, I have picked up new job titles at work, and remain hopeful that increased salary might also be forthcoming... I am progressing with the renovation of the home office (I am currently sat in it with half the floor boards and skirting boards missing, dust, tools and odd bits of timber everywhere... and am in generally good health, so it's not all bad!

Earnings February 2012

I can't believe how busy the last month or so have been, unfortunately (or maybe it IS actually fortunate..) not so much going on in the online earnings world for me. Few posts to do and not much else happening other than an Adsense payout which is always nice. Technically it came in March (March 1st) so I won't include it in this months meagre total.
In the non-internet world, I have a cracked rib to follow on from the broken arm (yes, football again..), and I am a good way into refurbishing the small office we have at home - my main job is very busy at the moment so it's probably just as well I don't have too much to do in the online world...

Busy-ness

I have been (as happens from time to time) lax in updating any of my blogs lately. There is no MLS actions at the moment, so I have nothing to say in my Beckham Blog, I rarely update my travel blog, and have not had time to write anything for Munny4Hunny or TheCreditCruncher lately.
Although I am fully recovered from my broken arm, I am very busy with stuff at real 'work' lately and have embarked on a DIY project which involves pulling our small office at home to bits - no floor at the moment, although the PC's are still running...
Hopefully the DIY project will mean I end up with a smart new office, but knowing that rate at which I work (I don't get many hours at home in which it would be possible to work to be fair...), it could take a while.
Not much happening on the cassette to CD conversions lately which is making me think I ought to probably do some SEO work on some of my sites and see if I can get any decent links (or even crappy links, I'm not fussy..!)
I am thinking I will probably charge any new office furniture to my home 'business', which will save me some income tax, but knock my profits for six!!

January 2012

January has not been a particularly busy month for internet earnings, I have done a few cassettes and that has yielded about £70, plus a few affiliates and blog posts giving a gross income of around £90, I paid out a little over £6 on postage and paypal fees, hence a total income of £84.52.
I have also had a refund of £120 from the water company for overpayment of our direct debit, but in other news, I have lost about £140 on a savings plan (cheque for £120 and statement showing a loss both arrived today in the post..).
I have also had to spend £110 on a new circuit board for my central heating boiler this week, but as it all works so much better now, I feel like it was money well spent. More about how eBay solved my heating problems in a later post I think...

Nadolig Llawen

Merry Christmas - work has finished for a week or so, and I am going to publish my December earnings even though December is not yet over. I don't expect any earnings over the next week or so, so I have effectively finished working in my 9-5 as well as my online 'work' for the festivities.
I managed to get a couple of extra tape to CD conversions out to clients this week and have received some paid blogging income for work over the last few weeks. I bought more CD's and cases for my tape conversion business otherwise, profits would have been a bit higher. Not a bad showing for the last month of 2011 though:
Turnover was about £185, but the additions to stock cost me £23, and postage costs were £13. The profit for the month was £149 which is another healthy profit, stock purchases also mean that I am in a good position to do more tape conversions without having to buy stock for a while. Total profit for the tax year is close to £1100, from a turnover of just under £1300, more than half of which came from cassette to CD conversions. I have made about £500 so far since the beginning of April from blog posts and passive (affiliate and adverts) income. I have three months to go before the end of the current tax year, hopefully I can get some decent chunks of income in before then... In the language of my birth, I wish you all a Merry Christmas, in the language of my adopted home I wish you all Nadolig Llawen!

November 2011

I can hardly believe that it is December already... but it has been a bumper month for cassettes to CD's this month, largely due to one significant order. There has been a few paid posts to crack on with too, some of which will pay out in a week or two.
I have added in some postage costs to the spreadsheet that I managed to miss off last months report... All in all, I have to be very pleased with this month although I am mindful that earnings have come mainly from one job - I must look at how I can boost earnings across all the different revenue streams. Checking against last years earnings in November, I am ahead by about £200 using the same months, but earnings are so haphazard, there is no guarantee that by the end of March, I will be anywhere near £200 ahead - I am chasing an annual profit of £1375, so still have some way to go..
I got a small payout from eBay partnership which boosted passive earnings a little, but I would prefer to see larger totals in this column!

Update

Well, the plaster on my broken arm is still clean, my daughter has not decided what she wants to write on it yet... The whole experience is very frustrating, but not stopping me from doing very much - everything is just more of a struggle... A lot of paid posts have suddenly turned up right in the middle of when I have a load of tapes to do... If I can get everything finished in time, this should be a relatively big earning month for me - thankfully, I can manage my on-line work with just my right hand..
I just checked my GoDaddy affiliates and there is about $7.50 sitting there, $25 payout, so no realistic likelihood of a payout any time soon from them. Adsense is ticking along, but there is too much to do to spend time trying to maximise those earnings at the moment. I bought a new domain for my cassette to CD business, and it does not show up high enough in search results yet - I really should spend some time and effort promoting it - the older site gets quite a lot of traffic, so I am not really missing out, but I would prefer to have people visit the newer designed site.
I haven't even had time to put any more laptops up for sale - I may investigate using gumtree and other sites rather than pay the fees on eBay...

October 2011

A few months ago I started picking up broken laptops on eBay with the idea of either breaking them for spares or fixing them up. I have sold a couple of fixed laptops now, but with the costs of purchasing from eBay - I have to say I don't think it's going to be an avenue that I will be exploring any further... To be fair though, I have enjoyed fixing the laptops up and restoring their usefulness.
I have done a few tapes in the last month and am promised a whole stack of them next month, but paid posts have been very few and far between. I have bought some stock for cassette conversions so that accounts for the outgoings of £16. I had no 'hits' for affiliates paid out during October, but have had some recently that will be paid out soon I think..
In other news I had £135 back off the taxman for overpayment of tax on a company car - not strictly income, but helped to swell the coffers a little... That little payout added to income from eBay this month is building up into a decent amount. I am possibly looking at about £200 in tape conversions on the horizon at the moment, so if I can find the time to do them, that should help ease the Christmas squeeze on the wallet!

The end of October approacheth...

As the clocks have gone back, Christmas and wintry weather is on the horizon and a quiet month ends with a bit of a splutter. Thankfully I have had a few cassette to CD conversions to supplement the meagre paid blogging opportunities. I had begun to worry that paid blogging was showing signs of drying up altogether, but there are still a few opps out there if you can be bothered to chase them down.
I have opted for the new Adsense dashboard, but am finding it less than intuitive when it comes to assessing performance. I am sure Adsense performance is going up and down, but am less sure which of the various URL's I use are performing better and which are performing badly.
Many a time I have wished that I had more time to look into these things more deeply, but then if I did, it would probably mean I wasn't doing my day-job properly which, after all is the main means of keeping the wolf from the door...
I managed to find time to put a few eBay auctions on this weekend, and as I still have a few laptops to get rid of, I need to make sure I get a return on the 'investment'.
I hope to post earnings for October soon - watch this space...

September 2011

Adsense payout and affiliates have shored up an otherwise fairly quiet month. Affiliate payments amounted to £22.50 this month which is very pleasing - with this affiliate, I don't think there is a way of finding out which adverts are being clicked, so I'm not entirely sure where the revenue is coming from - but it is very welcome all the same...

One positive is that I have not spent a cent this month, so it's all profit! Cassette conversions have been very quiet, but I have one just done that will figure in next months takings. Overall, not a bad month, but heavily reliant on a (relatively) large injection of cash from Adsense. £637 profit for the half year so far which is in line with last years income. Hopefully I can build on this to overtake last years figure, but either way - it's all good (as they say)...

July 2011

I had a lot of tapes to convert this month, unfortunately most of them were from one client, so I had to give a good discount. Nevertheless, this was a huge contribution to this months earnings which would have been very mediocre otherwise. Paid posts are few and far between at the moment, but sometimes you get a lull, then before you know it, there are suddenly a stack of assignments - maybe next month??
I have been trying my hand at trading laptops on eBay, have certainly spent some money - now need to get some back... (I have an ever increasing 'stock' of spare laptops at the moment...). One affiliate that keeps paying and paying is my '1and1' affiliate program - this accounted for another £22.50 this month, that's the best month so far - a total of £42.50 since April. As it pays straight onto my credit card account, I usually don't even realise until my credit card statement comes in. It's handy because most of my eBay purchases end up on my credit card, because my Paypal is a bit skint at the moment with the lack of paid postings...
Onwards and upwards... a good month behind me, a good month ahead if I can sell a couple of laptops - although I am not including this trading in my earnings here until I am a bit clearer on whether it will turn into a long term project...

Earnings June 2011

At first glance, June looks like a bad month, but when you look closer you can see I have bought some stuff! Without the expenditure, I would have reported a more respectable £113. The first purchase was a domain renewal, but the major purchase was a laptop. It was an eBay purchase and I got it for under £50 (excluding delivery). It has prompted me to think about possibly selling laptop parts on eBay, but I may post about that another time. In the meantime, I am very happy with my new purchase. I plan to move all my website building stuff onto the laptop as it is not really going to be suitable for the cassette to CD conversions that I do. I had some other audio work to do which accounts for the 'other' £25 earned this month. This was the poorest month for blog posts that I have had for a long time, so I am hoping that this will pick up in subsequent months.

Slow month for blogging

I seem to have my focus elsewhere this month - there has been little blogging needing to be done, but thankfully, some other revenue streams have been a bit more active. This is just as well as I went a bit mad and bought myself my first ever laptop this month off eBay. I got a bargain at just under £50 plus delivery. The battery was duff, but I bought a broken laptop for £5, and that had a good battery - also a good DVD drive and hopefully other components that I may be able to re-sell. I may try my hand at laptop salvage for a while in case it may be a worthwhile income stream - bit of a gamble though buying broken stuff in the hope that something is salvageable...

Naturally, I will 'charge' the laptop to my online earnings as it is definitely a tool of the trade... mostly I intend to use it for doing website building. I also bought my first wireless router (not exactly a first-adopter) so the two are working well as a team.

Fortunately, I have had a few tapes to convert this month so I think the cost of the laptop will be covered - would really like to have another bumper crop of paid blog posts so I can invest in more broken laptops!

I recently bought a new domain for my cassette to CD conversions and have a spanking new web design up and running - for the time being I will run two sites promoting the same business. I am also linking the sites into facebook and twitter too - I am going to have to spend a little time encouraging people to 'like' my page - but I also want to revamp the old site to bring it up to a similar design standard. I will need to work out a long-term plan that makes use of the traffic that the old site gets and also encourages visitors to the newer site.

Still juggling too many ideas at once, but feel a bit more determined to see some plans through at the moment, so am going to make the most of this mood...

Earnings May 2001

A definite improvement this month, largely helped by an Adsense payment dropping in on the last day of the month... Without this boost, turnover would have been around £85, profit around £70. Some improvement in passive income signalling a return of the payments for fixed adverts that I thought had ceased, and a couple of small but welcome affiliate payments.
Major expense this month was a domain renewal, I thought I might sell a domain, but the offer I got was so low I may as well hold onto the domain and get some earnings from it.
I am looking a buying another domain or two for new projects and am still trying to find time to get 'into' Wordpress. I have another project using a different CMS at the moment, so I am hoping that this experience will inform my journey into Wordpress when I finally embark on it!
I have just submitted my figures for last year to the taxman, I don't think he will get overly excited about my earnings, but I am pleased with the improvements over the last 12 months and hope to be even more profitable this coming tax year...

Earnings April 2011

Turnover of £70 this month, which is nothing special, but after a bumper month in March, a slight slump was expected. I spent £15 on a CD player from eBay - this counts as equipment for cassette to CD conversions, so goes in the spreadsheet.
I have just made another Adsense payout total, so can look forward to that in the next month or so. April income was about average on the blogging side, not so busy for cassette conversions though. I have also just noticed that my regular passive income seems to have finally dried up - I had been reticent to make significant changes to one of my sites in case of disrupting this income, I guess if it doesn't return, I am free to make the changes I want (including removing some of the 'fixed' ads, and defunct pages that still had 'contracts' for fixed ads).
I have not really pursued 'fixed' ads very hard since this type of income began to wane a few years back, so now might be a good time to see if there are any new ways of getting regular fixed sponsorship payments for web pages.

Earnings March 2011

The end of the current financial year has provided a bit of a boom month for me in terms of online earnings. I have cleared £271 (approx £$450) this month, which I think is as much as I have ever earned in a single month from online sources. Earnings from converting cassettes and from paid postings both had a boost this month taking my years earnings to £1375.42 (approx $2290). This represents growth of £550 from last years effort (around 65%) which is not at all bad (assuming the growth can be repeated). Once again I aim to be amongst the first of the 'self-assessment' crowd to submit my earnings online, as I hate to have deadlines hanging over me.

I am already doing paid posts that will start off my earnings for the next financial year. I also need to reinvest some of my profits into 'stock' and by buying some new equipment for my home office. I am not too far off an Adsense payout either - if it had come in this month, I would have been particularly pleased - I will have to wait a month or so, but recently I have been getting a bit of an Adsense boost too.