From the back (emphasis is mine):

At 26, Scott is a successful stockbroker and media commentator. He runs his own weekly finance radio show, chooses to drive a wreck and lives a full and rich life. His radio show has been described as finance for people don’t do finance. He makes money funky; your money can look after you once you learn to look after it.

The Barefoot Investor is the only finance book I’ve managed to read from start to finish; lets face it - finance is a bit of a boring subject for most people. The book distills much of the jargon and dry subject matter into a form which can be easily related to, easily understood, and easily acted on.

It’s hard to describe the difference this makes. While reading The Barefoot Investor, you start thinking about how you are going to implement the tips and ideas you get, and more importantly, when. This book makes you want to take control over your finances, and it gives you the information you need to do it.

It’s important to note that this book is (mostly) not about short-term gain. Most of the advice is based on long-term strategies which will make you “financially free” (i.e. not worrying about your finances and not living payday to payday). There are some short-term strategies for helping you get on the right track, but mostly the book looks at the “long game,” or - in Barefoot Terminology - “working your Mojo.”

For me, the best chapter (or “step”) in the book, is #3 - “Repo Your Repayments.” This chapter primarily deals with debt and what can be done about it. It clearly looks at many of the common forms of consumer debt, why they’re bad, and more importantly, what can be done to get out of the trap.

So in summary - buy this book. If you’re looking for a book to help you understand your finances, with clear, practical advice, I don’t think you’ll find one much better than this.

¹ Examples would include: Your Money or Your Wife, What Price the Little Things, and Be a Bank Account Tart

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While I may not be in the same league as Yaro, or Burt, I’m happy for every penny I get. After all, money for little/no work is not something to be sniffed at!

So why is this the best ever month? Because for the first time ever I’ve broken (or will break) the $100 barrier. Earnings over the last couple of months have taken a bit of an upturn compared to previous. The main reason for this is a steady uptake of links sold on TLA. While I’ve yet to sell any links through their feedvertising system, I have sold out my allocation of links a few times in the last couple of months. Two more links and I’ll be sold out again!

The other big earner I’ve got this month, is the money I earned for my Review Me review. While I don’t anticipate a flurry of paid-for reviews, it would be nice to receive one, maybe two a month.

Advertising revenue (read: Adsense) has always been pretty low for this site and has never contributed much. Going on last months figures, I’ll maybe get $5 if I’m lucky. I could no doubt spend time optimising Ad placement to improve click-throughs, but to be honest, I’m not that fussed.

So currently the income pie is divided up 65% from TLA, 30% from Review Me, and 5% from Adsense. That’s obviously not including anything else that might come up in the last 2 weeks of this month. These figures also doesn’t include the several hundred dollars I’m going to earn doing freelance web development this month.

Looking Forward.

Obviously I’d like to earn more money. Who wouldn’t? Up until now, however, I’ve been rather passive about the whole thing, and more than a little haphazard/slap-dash in how I approach things. More than once I’ve started something, only to forget about it or move on to the next idea before I’ve finished. It’s a definite character flaw which I’m trying to overcome.

There are a couple of project in the pipeline which are looking promising. The first of these is my first foray into “providing the shovels for the prospectors” - it’s a simple website builder for Article Underground users, called Metro. While it’s aimed at Article Underground users, it will have other applications and would be a good investment for anyone who wants to make a quick and very simple website. It’s a little while off until it’s ready, but it will be the first of hopefully a number of products designed to make the life of the Internet Entrepreneur that little bit easier! I’m targeting a mid-January/February release, but I’m trying my hardest to get it released earlier than that!

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Pixel Meadow was a blog I ran for the last couple of years. I always meant for it to be my web development business blog-cum-portfolio, but between this, than and the next thing, it ended up being just a personal blog. Now and again I’d post something reasonably decent and the site somehow managed to gain a pagerank 5. Pixel Meadow is on its way back, definitely as a business entity, but with a web design/development blog.

Also in the works is my personal blog, but that’s not even remotely interesting to any of you, so I’ll skip over that one (for now)…

There’s a lot more happening than those two, but they’re all I’m going to divulge just now.

Money-Making Progress

It’s about a month since I started seriously looking at making money online, so I guess now is a good time to post an update to how I’m doing.

1. Adsense revenue was up a lot. In May I made about $0.5. In July I’ve made $14. That’s across 4 sites, including this one, where most of the revenue comes from. Here’s hoping this keeps on rising. Over the next few weeks I’ll be experimenting with other types of ads to see which pay best.
2. Most of my adsense sites are indexed with Google. I need to update them with more content, but that’s not urgent.
3. Text-Link-Ads have been a success. You can read more of my thoughts here, on Yaro’s Forums.
4. England’s World Cup Glory was the big launch for this month. It broke even within 2 days so I decided to use it as an experiment in promotion. Things have been steady, even though I haven’t been updating the site as much as I should. There’s definitely a pattern to sales (i.e. a small boost just after every England game!). The numbers aren’t huge, but I’m more interested in the lessons to be learnt just now.

So there you have it - what I’m doing and what I’ve been up to. Look out for more information on upcoming ventures and launches soon!

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