Well, not strictly rules, more like guidelines for myself. All experiments need guidelines to follow and this one is no different. The idea is to earn my ten grand, in my spare time, using the Internet. But what exactly does that mean?
Rule 1: The Internet must be involved somewhere in each money making process.
So it is ok for me to buy some vintage jeans at a car boot sale and sell them on ebay, but not ok for me to buy some vintage jeans at a car boot sale and sell them to a friend. I can't include anything I earn doing freelance for my old publishing contacts (even if the freelance is for a website). If I win a bid to do some freelance on elance.com however (for example), I can include those earnings.
It doesn't always have to be about buying and selling. The idea is to find ways of making money on the Internet, so that could include being paid to complete surveys, playing poker online or flipping websites.
Rule 2: All of the steps to the £10k must be possible for anyone to repeat.
This should be fairly easy to follow as I don't have any very specialised skills I will be using to make the money. Nothing I do will require the average person years of practice and study to emulate, but most things will require at least some investment of time and effort. I won't be building hugely complicated Flash-based websites or writing clever iPhone apps to sell. I don't currently know how to do these things and I don't have time to learn.
Rule 3: I will not spend any money earnt during the experiment, on anything not to do with the experiment.
This could be a tricky one. If all goes well I could have several thousand pounds sitting in a bank account in six months time and the temptation to dip into it for a new laptop or to pay the car insurance will be tough to resist. I need to try to remember that any money I earn will help me earn more (hopefully...), it will be my fund for buying things to sell, it will be my bankroll for online gambling.
Rule 4: The experiment must be done in my spare time.
My idea of the amount of spare time I have each week and my wife's idea of the amount of spare time I have each week differ greatly. However, I have come up with the figure of ten hours per week and I will do my best not to spend more time than this on the experiment. If I start spending 30 hours a week doing this, I might just as well work 30 hours overtime at my day job. The result would be essentially the same (although I might die of boredom if I did work for 30 extra hours at my current job). The idea is to find ways to make extra money that can be repeated year after year, not to devote my entire life to this to the exclusion of my family.
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I first thought up the £10k experiment about 5 years ago whilst working as a writer and designer for a small publishing company. But back then it was more of a random stray thought than an idea for a personal experiment and probably more along the lines of "Could I turn £10.00 into £1000.00, in less than 12 months, using only the Internet?"
Let me explain that seemingly random but also fairly succinct thought a little more. At the time I was looking at ways to turn our back-catalogue of printed text into cash-generating online content (via affiliate advertising, google adwords, etc) to give the company a secondary income stream. I spent several weeks researching the above subjects (and many more besides) and had some small success at turning that content into cash. In the end however, that side of the business was abandoned for more traditional publishing methods and, although I found the whole thing enthralling, I thought little more about it for some time.
Fast-forward 5 years and several changes of circumstance and I find myself here: Self Employed, working from my home office, with a bit more spare time on my hands and about to put a much grander "experiment" into action using what I learnt then, what I have learned since and by trial and error.
Ok, but why? And why the blog? (you might be asking...)
The main, overiding reason for the £10k experiment always was, and still is, the £10k. If you earn £200k a year, another 5% isn't going to make much difference. But to me and my family, it would make a huge difference to be able to add that much money to our income without having to work a second job. Originally the figure was £1000 and even that amount would be useful, but it is not going to make that much difference to my life and obviously didn't inspire me much or I would have done it 5 years ago. I settled on £10k (after some thought) because it is an achievable figure, whilst also being much more than I currently earn from the Internet (more on that later...)
The second reason for this experiment is to give myself a challenge, whilst doing something which interests me. And this fits both of those criteria. There are many experienced Internet marketeers and super affiliates who could generate that amount in a month without breaking a sweat, but I am neither of those things. I have some knowledge of building websites, blogging, being an affiliate and selling on ebay amongst other things, but I am by no means an expert and will be learning as I go. If people reading this blog find it interesting and useful, if they decide to try to emulate what I do, then great.
The idea to start a blog about my experiment came when I was brainstorming (can it be called brainstorming when I was the only person in the room?) ways to get started along my path to £10k. There are currently millions of blogs online as I write this, on every conceivable subject and of wildly differing quality. A huge percentage were whims and probably lay dormant with only a few posts (I have added to that figure over the years, I admit). Yet there are others which are hugely successful and generate large sums of money for their owners/creators every year. Now I certainly don't expect to make the $200k+ that the top 1% of blogs are believed to generate, but I do hope that this blog will contribute at least something to the target figure, be that from selling advertising, affiliate links or whatever. The blog also allows people to follow what I am doing, learn from my mistakes and successes and maybe even suggest ways I can try to reach that £10k. Finally, the blog allows me to keep track of what I am doing, it provides a searchable database of ideas and thoughts and it is simply a lot more fun than making notes in a notepad...
Getting Started
The plan is to officially start the experiment on the 31st of February, 2013 and from that date I will give myself exactly 365 days to try to earn the £10k. During those 365 days I will post at least once a day, either with ideas of what to try next, details of what I am currently trying or to shout about my latest massive profits (I hope...) Aside from those posts, I will also post a running total at the end of each week to show how well or badly I am doing. If things are going to plan, I should be showing an increase of at least £193.00 each week (52 x £193 = £10,036). Up until that time I will be getting myself prepared by doing things like opening various accounts (ebay, paypal account and a separate bank account) and getting this blog set up properly.
Fast-forward 5 years and several changes of circumstance and I find myself here: Self Employed, working from my home office, with a bit more spare time on my hands and about to put a much grander "experiment" into action using what I learnt then, what I have learned since and by trial and error.
Ok, but why? And why the blog? (you might be asking...)
The main, overiding reason for the £10k experiment always was, and still is, the £10k. If you earn £200k a year, another 5% isn't going to make much difference. But to me and my family, it would make a huge difference to be able to add that much money to our income without having to work a second job. Originally the figure was £1000 and even that amount would be useful, but it is not going to make that much difference to my life and obviously didn't inspire me much or I would have done it 5 years ago. I settled on £10k (after some thought) because it is an achievable figure, whilst also being much more than I currently earn from the Internet (more on that later...)
The second reason for this experiment is to give myself a challenge, whilst doing something which interests me. And this fits both of those criteria. There are many experienced Internet marketeers and super affiliates who could generate that amount in a month without breaking a sweat, but I am neither of those things. I have some knowledge of building websites, blogging, being an affiliate and selling on ebay amongst other things, but I am by no means an expert and will be learning as I go. If people reading this blog find it interesting and useful, if they decide to try to emulate what I do, then great.
The idea to start a blog about my experiment came when I was brainstorming (can it be called brainstorming when I was the only person in the room?) ways to get started along my path to £10k. There are currently millions of blogs online as I write this, on every conceivable subject and of wildly differing quality. A huge percentage were whims and probably lay dormant with only a few posts (I have added to that figure over the years, I admit). Yet there are others which are hugely successful and generate large sums of money for their owners/creators every year. Now I certainly don't expect to make the $200k+ that the top 1% of blogs are believed to generate, but I do hope that this blog will contribute at least something to the target figure, be that from selling advertising, affiliate links or whatever. The blog also allows people to follow what I am doing, learn from my mistakes and successes and maybe even suggest ways I can try to reach that £10k. Finally, the blog allows me to keep track of what I am doing, it provides a searchable database of ideas and thoughts and it is simply a lot more fun than making notes in a notepad...
Getting Started
The plan is to officially start the experiment on the 31st of February, 2013 and from that date I will give myself exactly 365 days to try to earn the £10k. During those 365 days I will post at least once a day, either with ideas of what to try next, details of what I am currently trying or to shout about my latest massive profits (I hope...) Aside from those posts, I will also post a running total at the end of each week to show how well or badly I am doing. If things are going to plan, I should be showing an increase of at least £193.00 each week (52 x £193 = £10,036). Up until that time I will be getting myself prepared by doing things like opening various accounts (ebay, paypal account and a separate bank account) and getting this blog set up properly.
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