Alternative Income Streams Progress – September 2007

With the beginning of the September just a day away, I thought I’d push the monthly alternative income update up one day rather than back 3 or 4 for the long weekend and my Save Money Monday. Last month, the magic word was “perspective” as most of the gains just offset the emergency of my wife’s car getting broken into. This month, the magic word is “milestone.” I added a fourth digit, finishing with around $1025. As always that income is after exluding income taxes.

The reason for the expansion is largely due to two things: my redesign of this site and affiliate programs. The redesign allowed me to optimize my advertising. I increased my earnings from AdSense by $100 without making the site look like the outfield wall of a minor league ballpark. On the affiliate side, promoting Zecco as a no commission stock broker (for most trades at least), has been a catalyst for pushing me over the $1000 mark. Hopefully, I’m saving readers from paying commissions to their regular broker. I really like win-win situations.

Looking at my necessary expenses it seems that my housing expense of $1049 is nearly covered with this income. For those looking at the necessary expenses chart for the first time, it’s important to note that I’ve halved all these expenses as in the past my fiancee covered the other half. Now that we are married, I should update the necessary expenses to represent our total costs. However, I’ll save that exercise until October when my alternative income turns one year old. That will also be a good oportunity to do a review of the goals that I set last year, as well as set some goals for the next year.

Here’s a page where you can track all my Alternative Income Stream progress. I will update it with this month’s final stats when I get from vacation.