The Writers Coin

Personal finance is kind of like breakfast—it’s crucial to get your day off to a good start, but you don’t want to be having breakfast all day long. This isn’t Seinfeld—you eat breakfast and then you move on to lunch and dinner.

And right now I feel like I’ve been eating Corn Pops and orange juice all day—personal finance bores me.

Once you get certain basics down (spend less than you make, contribute to your retirement, create a budget, etc.) you should move along and step into the next phase of managing your money.

In my mind, it’s making more money.

Before I get blasted for sounding materialistic or shallow, let me say one thing about money: it won’t bring you happiness (not on its own anyway) and it won’t solve any problems you have in your life.

But it sure doesn’t hurt.

The other day I was making my infamous sandwich at work and I realized that some people just aren’t built for personal finance. They have absolutely no interest in doing stuff like:

• Building a budget in Excel
• Finding the best rates to store their money
• Researching the best place to open a Roth IRA
• Calling the cable company to get a better deal
• Hassling your bank to get stupid fees refunded

This isn’t exciting stuff, but for some reason personal-finance nuts love to do it. We’re proud of it. We take what we have and we make the most of it. And we often rail on people who don’t “get it.”

But most people just don’t care.

They don’t want to spend time on the phone or online to save a few dollars here and there. And you know what? That’s totally fine.

As I stood there waiting for my sandwich to toast, I had an epiphany: there might not be a universal appeal to making your finances more efficient, but there is one thing I know we can all agree on.

We all want to make more money.

I’m not talking about whoring ourselves out for every extra cent we can get. I’m talking about doing something meaningful outside of work and getting paid for it. Like this blog (although “getting paid” is kind of a misnomer in this case). Like having side projects that help others and make some money.

And that’s what I’m working on right now: a side project that I’ll treat more like a business than I have this site, which is more of a place I use to chat and talk about the things I find interesting. Could I monetize it more efficiently and turn it into a good income?

Sure I could. But then I’d be writing about online stock brokers and the best banks to store your savings in.

And I just don’t care about that.

More on this project as it unfolds, but I’m pretty excited about it. I feel the way I did when I was getting this site off the ground and everything felt fresh and new.

Image by yaybiscuits123

This post was included in the Twenty Something Finances Carnival.

So I’m thinking of starting a side business to help people get the most out of their PCs. There are some tweaks that almost all PC owners can do to take clean out certain parts of their machines that make them slower than they need to be.

What I need to know is if any of you out there are potential customers and what you would want/pay for a service like this.

The service would be something like this, though I haven’t nailed it down yet: I’d come over to your house for an initial inspection. It would take about a half hour and cost around $25. If your computer doesn’t need any work, then that’s it—job over.

But if it does, it would take me about an hour (on average) to run some software on it and get it working faster. I would show you before and after data that shows the improvement so you don’t have to take my word for it.

That service would be an additional $50. So that’s $75 for an inspection and a revamping of your system.

Not only that, I’d set all the software to run once a week so you don’t need to call me again.

The target customer: someone with a computer that doesn’t have the time or the patience to learn the intricacies of making it faster. Someone who feels his/her machine is slower than when they first bought it and is maybe thinking they need a new machine but don’t want to spend the money.

What do you guys think? How much would you pay for something like this?

Any and all feedback is appreciated!

I’ve been getting some great free content from Ramit’s newest project, Earn1k.com. And on Sunday he opened it to everyone and revealed how much it costs and what the details are.

The course is aimed at getting you to earn your first $1,000/month by starting a new site/business or doing freelance work on the side. Right now I’m all about finding bigger and badder ways to make money (Adsense does NOT count), so I was very interested in his program.

And even though Ramit hates to hear this question, I want to know if it’s worth the money.

There are three packages:

1. One includes private coaching and office hours, and it sold out at $3,000.
2. Another is a step down and doesn’t include the private coaching. That one goes for $1,500.
3. The most basic course includes a lot of great stuff—it goes for $500.

A couple things: Ramit is trustworthy—he’s proved this over the years and with his other programs (Scrooge Strategy). Also, he’s got a 30-day money-back guarantee. Not happy? He’ll send you your money back.

And I’m struggling with the following: is it worth it or can I pull it off without paying $500?

Obviously, if it works and I can make $1k in a month, the $500 will pay for itself pretty quickly. But there is a fear of failure built in there.

What if I fail? What if the program is fantastic but it’s me that can’t pull it off?

I’ll feel like a sucker with $500 less than I had before.

I’ll give Ramit credit, he’s done everything beautifully on the promotion of this program. He’s addressed all the questions and issues that might keep people from buying the program. That’s why he sold out of the expensive tier so quickly.

Would you buy into Ramit’s program and take a shot at making $1k per month with a money-back guarantee? It sounds like a slam dunk but something continues to keep me from pulling the trigger, and I think it’s the fear of failure.

I’m curious what other people think about this.

As I mentioned recently, I am getting a little bored of personal finance and I’m more interested in something bigger. Something like earning more money on the side.

I’ve tried this before, but I wasn’t thinking big enough—so I figured I would share my previous attempts at generating some alternative income.

Freelancing

I found someone looking for a person to translate a medical book about something I knew nothing about to Spanish: IBS. I estimated the job at a month or so and asked for $250. And honestly, I had no idea what I was doing. The estimate was way off and the money was probably too low.

In the end, it took me about two months and a lot of back and forth with the client. But I did manage to turn it into a regular, monthly gig to translate the doctor’s newsletter. I was happy that it turned into regular work, but I again made the mistake of underpricing. I charged him $30/month for around three to fours hours of work.

Not good—that’s around $8/work.

Month after month, I did the work and got paid my $30. And every time I dreaded it—it was boring, monotonous work. Maybe if I was getting paid more it wouldn’t have bothered me, but when I realized what I was making on a per hour basis, I knew I had made a mistake.

So I asked for more money and the client balked. Then we went our separate ways. I learned a lot about freelancing and set myself up for a better experience if I decide to freelance in the future.

Online Tutoring

This was a while ago and I don’t know how I found them, but a Canadian site called Brainmass was out there that provided help for high school and college kids for their schoolwork. You had to be accepted into the program by proving your credentials in whatever field you had experience in (I did English and Writing).

Here’s how it worked: students posted their problems or questions and you “claimed” the problem by logging in and taking it. Once you did, you posted your solution for the student. Not bad. Every job, on average, was probably worth $10–$15.

You could also contribute to a “library” of solutions. This compiled common problems that students could “check out” like a book whenever they needed it. The best part was, more than one student could check it out at any given time and you’d get paid every time.

It was rewarding and matched my schedule. Because I was in grad school I had time to sit around and claim a bunch of work. But eventually all the “problems” students had were “do my homework” or “write my paper,” which I was not about to do.

Turns out I do have morals, and I quit the program. Total income: probably around $100.

Miscellaneous

• I’ve made $10 a pop on Usertesting.com
• I’ve made around $70 referring people to ING Direct
• Adsense has made me less than $250 since I started this site
• I make some money writing for Wisebread depending on how many pageviews my articles get
• Some ads on this site make me a monthly income, but not much
• I’m an Amazon Associate, so if someone buys something via a link on my site, I get paid a minute referral fee (last year I made $70).

What I’ve Learned

I’ve been thinking too small. Everything I’ve tried so far is too much work for too little a payoff. It’s just not worth it.

It’s time to start thinking big and put a lot of energy and thought behind it instead of getting nickel and dimed. Sure, my alternative income is diversified, but the income is so minute that it doesn’t really register.