Does anyone earn a living without having a job?

teabelly

PN. You're doing exactly what I want to be doing. I have a few websites I play around with and have joined a few programmes but none so far seem to be doing much. Multiple income streams is definitely the way to go!

I definitely would be interested in what have been your most successful systems :-) PM me if you wish to share. Will be happy to share info on social media which I have been researching recently. I'll show you mine if you show me yours so to speak!

charlee

How do you get into websites and advertising etc please?
I have a 1 year old son and we are planning on another child very soon, and I would like to have a trickle of money coming in at least when the time comes...

PasturesNew

teabelly wrote: »

PN. You're doing exactly what I want to be doing. I have a few websites I play around with and have joined a few programmes but none so far seem to be doing much. Multiple income streams is definitely the way to go!

Most don't do much. I've been doing it for about 3.5 years, which I only actually realised today as I've finally got round to newslettering my double opt-in mailing list... which is ironic really as that was the whole point of starting the first site (so I did have a list to email). I've tried to do it before, it was all complex, I tried other ways, it was all complex, then I bought some software and my server was capped ... and then time passed ... and I've moved hosts and have a short trial of uncapped bulk mailing, so spent the last 2-3 days pontificating over a newsletter to send out ... and finally sent it. I think I have 25-30,000 members, which will mostly die off (bounces/unsubscribes) as I left it too long

I'm kind of sitting up tonight waiting for the endpoint. 5 hours in and the status counter said 51%.... I just want a smaller list, that's 'alive' and not dead

So, yes, I've got some stuff that works. And a whole bunch of stuff I'm continually trialling.

I run an ad server, which tells me that I am a direct affiliate of over 300 companies, an affiliate of over 20 ad networks ... and delivering probably nearly 2,000,000 ad impressions per annum. So you can see I kind of spend a lot of time researching/trialling ... and never get round to 'taking it seriously and promoting things'.

teabelly wrote: »

I definitely would be interested in what have been your most successful systems :-) PM me if you wish to share. Will be happy to share info on social media which I have been researching recently. I'll show you mine if you show me yours so to speak!

lol/show.
I've done nothing with social media, beyond a bit of mindless twittering. I'm really not an audience/people type of person, even online.

I'll PM you. Although PMs aren't the easiest of ways to communicate as I seem to not know when to shut up .. and run out of character space

I've got a bunch of easy/free winning ways at the moment... I should write a book, but I'm too busy seeing what else is out there!

Patrick20

I'm another one who has no "real job". I was out for lunch the other day with a good friend and he said something like "what is it you actually do for money? People keep asking and I don't know what to tell them" All I could say was I do quite alot of things that bring a small trickle of money that mounts up. It really isn't much though and I would probably take a stable job if I could find one in my area. I'm also worried that the longer I leave it the more it looks that I'm unemployed(since I'm either getting my money from matched betting which is untaxable, or I earn with surveys and things like that which don't exceed the amount that you start getting taxed as self employed) If I could go back I probably wouldnt venture down this route. It is in no way a hassle free way to make money.

Samanthamum

charlee wrote: »

How do you get into websites and advertising etc please?
I have a 1 year old son and we are planning on another child very soon, and I would like to have a trickle of money coming in at least when the time comes...

I would also like to know this too please. Desperate to work from home. Any help/advice would be appreciated or even a website that explains everything.

dave4545454

SammyS1987 wrote: »

Whilst I was at work earlier I was wondering if anyone manages to earn a living without having a job if that makes sense?

I guess I mean people that trade in stocks/shares, sell on eBay, matched betting, that kind of thing.

I'm not talking about people who have 4 kids and get loads of benefits, I'm talking about someone who is a single, home owning/renting person?

Your thoughts...

i used to play the stock market and made a lot of money there but now i'm a musician who makes cash in hand money from gigs and selling CDs/mp3s. so i guess that is earning a living without having a proper job.

PasturesNew

charlee wrote: »

How do you get into websites and advertising etc please?

To be honest, it's not easy. When it works, it's easy.... but when it doesn't it's hell. Hours and hours of hell as you try to work out what's broken, why, how you can fix it .... and it needs doing now, immediately, no delays, because it's broken and your site has an error message.

Everything else in life has to immediately go out the window, while you fix it. No matter what time of night/day you find a problem, you can't just shrug and walk away ... well, sometimes you have to.

Like right now. Yesterday, sent an email out to "everybody". Complete nightmare ever since. Site has become unstable, site's unavailable. 3+ hours online to support this morning, without resolution or hope. Bunch of technical documents, for the wrong version, were linked through to me to read through - they kind of expected me to fix the problems with the server/site myself, sitting here now, with the site monitor saying "it's up" ... then "it's down", then it's up/down/down/up/up.... constantly checking and trying to keep it up ... for how long ...? No idea... I have no idea when it will magically become stable again. Nobody can help; support can't help - they've given me a suggestion, so now I am onto the developer on the other side of the world, to try to work out the seemingly simple task of "turn that module off". Earnings today have dropped, my stress levels are high.

Really .... it's not all sweetness and light.

Then, when you do have something that's running, you get that nasty email "upgrade available"... damn. Upgrade... so what's that all about then... and you spend hours pawing through upgrade manuals, trying to judge if you think you're competent to [a] upgrade it restore it back to the previous version if it goes t1ts up.

But then you have days/weeks/months ... when it all just works fine. And you forget those bad days/weeks when you chewed up entire nights/days trying to get stuff to work. Installing, configuring, finding out it doesn't work, getting to the bottom of it.

So, the bottom line is: be careful how you set out, else you will trip up along the way - and there is no answer. You need to be a glutton for punishment, have the time to fiddle about .... and be exceedingly self-motivated and tenacious.

OR ... just buy into somebody's ready made system and accept you can't choose your own path, but have to follow theirs (but at least they do upgrades for you and all you have to do is worry about your site content).

OK, that's not very positive, but I have been going through hell with this for the past 36 hours and there's no end in sight. I won't pretend it's all lovely and super and all this lovely money comes rushing in - it doesn't... but if you can keep being determined, then you can have some days when it's all fine.

Personally, these troubles have prevented me/my site being where I wanted to be, because they suck up so much time. Right now I am exhausted, I've not even managed to eat properly today. A lot of the time I compromise on what I want, for what I can afford/what I can achieve myself in the time I have available (which is, unfortunately, only 24/7).

So, you choose: be in control (run ragged), or buy into some ready made website system where everything's done for you (at a cost). Although doing it yourself is costly too, one quote I had today to fix my email issue was about £3000/year or so.... so I've had to revise my plans.

Better pop off now, see if my darned site's up or down right now......

Petlamb

I, er... try. I'm making some headwya at least. My Avon selling is early days but it's enjoyable and I like that it's forcing me to learn the "atr" of record-keeping, self assessment, etc.

My biggest single earner (when I'm actually online*!) is my affiliate marketing from my blogs and social networking that I do.

*We moved just over a month and a half ago, and have been offline that whole time with notable exceptions being popping to the uni library... where I can't exactly promote and blog the way I do, for the companies I aff. market for!)