Another month is over and it’s time to go back and look at how I did with my alternative income in February. The quick answer is that I made $2767.41 after taxes. That’s a nice gain from previous months. Like each month, some income disappeared and some new reappeared. I’m starting to wonder if it’s easier to start 10 websites and hope I can bring them each to $1000 than take my current ones beyond that.
The big news this month is that I have started contracting full time again. I won’t necessarily be working all the time, but as of now, there seems to be as much work as I want at a good price. It will be interesting to see if my alternative income can stay the same. I’m curious to find out if it will. The downside of the new work is that it will be hard to increase it while working full time. I certainly couldn’t go ahead with the 10 websites that I brought up in the last paragraph.
There’s another side effect to this new-found work… I’m trading time for money. Ugh. I’ve said here for a long time that I want to get out of that game. It’s why I wrote about defining alternative income. One way to look at it is that if it’s enough money it’s okay. Would I trade 8 hours of my time today for $5000? Sure! I could put in some ten days of work and have a solid year of income. Of course I’m not getting paid that outlandish rate, it’s just an example of how trading time for money is not black and white – there’s a lot of gray. Now, I just have to focus on getting this money quickly so that I can plow it into the stock market. Dow 6700 intrigues me. Even if it just goes lower from here, I feel that in 10 years I started buying in at these levels.
My February blog income was $4.59 :) This was an infinite improvement from January, though.
I’m hearing a lot more chatter about people wanting to get out of the market, which could create more buying opportunities. If a million people suddenly decide to transition from stocks to bonds, this doesn’t change the underlying value of the stocks – it just changes the price, because of excess supply.
I like to read about people that don’t participate in the recession
Fantastic job on your alternative income! Having different income streams is a very smart move.
Nice work on the income. Keep it up.
The income will only grow as the blog grows, soon enough you will have the opp to do it full time.
Everything is so temporary. Even making money on the internet it seems. It’s just so fickle. I’ve learned not to get my hopes up with any one income opportunity. As you say — they come and go. One thing dries up, another one takes it place, but it’s in constant flux, and sometimes you can’t help but stress about it.
It’s an interesting field we’re in, but wholly unstable, so they challenge is to be able to accept it and go with the flow. I’d love to have something stable to back me up while I continue working on online stuff, but there’s not enough time! So here I am, just seeing where it all will lead me.
Now as for Dow 6,700, it makes me sick (hate losses) and excited (love opportunities) at the same time. This market confuses me. :)
Very nice income report this month. Keep up the great work. Greg Ellison