Extra Income! Minication!

I went over to fix a computer for a friend of my mom's the other day and she slipped me $30! DIAPERS!!

My son and I are taking a minication this weekend. Minication is what I call a vacation that lasts less than 2-3 days, aka a weekend trip. Reasons I love minications:

• They're cheap- the less time you spend, the less you spend on accommodations
• Instant gratification- by staying places that are inexpensive and staying close to home, I can save up for a minication over a month.
• With my personality, I would rather see 5 different places for 2 days each than spend 10 days in one place. I always have to be moving from one activity to another. I can't sustain that over a longer vacation, so I end up burning out.

So this weekend I'll be with my boy and my dog in a cabin in a state park. It's going to cost me $120 for 2 nights at the cabin and $30 in gas, and it'll more than pay for itself in stress reduction.

Last weekend's minication to New Orleans paid for itself in cash when some work came up over there. My brother and I spent a few hours inspecting houses and wound up with a payday that covered the hotel and gas- how cool is that?

Hooray!

eHow Milestone

I have 50 articles on eHow now!

From some of the comments around the forums of the site it appears there may be a sweep going on... another good reason to keep your articles backed up to Word or Google Docs!

eHow Promotions

I'm trying to promote my eHow articles. I was inspired by Pat at Smart Passive Income, who did an experiment with keyword search engine positions using the phrase passive income streams. I decided to learn from him and use some of his tips on a few eHow articles. Here's what I did:

I went through all my eHow articles, picked out 1-2 keywords or phrases, and googled them. I made a spreadsheet with the article, it's views to date, its views for the previous week, and its position in Google. I picked 18 of my articles, a mixed bag of high-earners and a few low-earners I think have potential.

Let's use my article How to Make a Closet into a Baby Nursery as an example. This isn't a high-earner, but it's near and dear because my son sleeps in a closet nursery. The primary keyword string I focused on was closet baby nursery, but I threw closet nursery in there too to see how it ranked.

11/3: Article ranks 7 for closet baby nursery and 42 for closet nursery.
11/3: Submit How to Make a Closet into a Baby Nursery to Xomba as a Xomblurb
11/4: As an afterthought, add an affiliate link to Mini Cribs. Review my article to make sure the keywords are in there and the article flows well.
11/6: Submit my article to Digg.
11/7: Check Google. Article now ranks 4 for closet baby nursery and 31 for closet nursery.

I want to submit it to some other sites and get more backlinks, but for the 10 minutes of work it took to submit a Xomblurb, Digg my article, and re-read it, I went from being number 7 to number 4. That's the difference between someone having to scroll down to see my article and it being "above the fold" in a Google search. It also rose 10 places for my secondary search, but I'm hoping it goes up more as I continue to promote it.

This week I'm going to play around with it some more- writing this blog post, which links back to the article, should help- and I'll post again with updates at the end of the week.

I'm hoping that by following this process for my articles, I'll not only increase my views and rankings, but the amount of passive income that I receive over time.

Depressed

So I read this article in Claims Magazine about how much claims professionals are making.

I make about 50% of what others with my job make.

Ouch.

I'm using this as motivation to study for the GMAT and really work on my networking skills. I need to make more money. I want to be able to get out of debt and save for the future.

I don't want to be living in my mom's house when I'm 30. I would much rather she be living in my house so I can take care of her for once.

eHow- October

My eHow earnings for October are in- $43.29. Not too shabby, but I was hampered by glitches in the eHow publishing system for a few weeks so I didn't meet my publishing goals.

I had a total of 4639 views this month, which makes my average earnings 0.93 cents ($0.0093) per view. It went down this month, which is probably the result of some of my articles being seasonal.

Christmas

I'm done Christmas shopping, and I came in $0.58 under budget- booyah! I'm really excited to be done.

My philosophy this year is love over money. My budget for my parents and siblings was $20 each, which is about enough to get together something meaningful but not showy. My budget for my son was $200, $100 to his college fund and $100 for gifts. I'm getting him a Radio Flyer wagon I found on sale for $63 (usually $80-$90). It came up to $70 with tax. I'm also getting him a gift to match something I'm getting my brother, and 100 ball pit balls, because the kid LOVES balls.

My plan is to fill the wagon with balls and put it under the Christmas tree. I think Boy might explode with excitement. That many BALL! in one place? A 16 month old boy's dream.

Update

My son has been sick, so sorry for the sparse updates.

I spent a bit last week because my family went to the Alabama game. The tickets were free, but I spent about $20 on dinner for my brother and I, then $50 for breakfast the next morning (I always top about 25% at IHOP. And she was really nice to my baby). My brother bought a tank of gas and we stayed with my sister for free... so not too bad.

In other spending, I bought 2 shirts for $40. I also finished my Christmas shopping.

Thanks my my son's sudden illness, I wound up with a $40 co-pay Tuesday night. I had to put that on a credit card because it came out of nowhere. I didn't want to dip into the emergency fund because I knew I could make the $40 up this paycheck. There was also about $15 in baby motrin and baby tylenol.

With the vacation, illness, and Christmas shopping wrap-up, I wasn't able to pay much on debt this payday, except to reduce what I had to charge since last payday.

Ugh.

Spending Summary

This week I spent:

• $30 on gas
• $60 on a Christmas present for Boy (a Radio Flyer wagon- it was $20 off!)
  
• $15 on Christmas presents for my stepbrothers
  
• $25 on diapers
• $100 on groceries
• Total: $230, $75 of it from my Christmas fund

eHow Update

I'm a little over halfway to my goal of $50 on eHow this month. I don't think I'll make it, for one major reason. I haven't met my publishing goals this month because eHow's interface went nuts for a something like 2 weeks. I published a few things on Hubpages, which I'd been wanting to experiment with anyway, so it wasn't completely a wash. eHow's been having a lot of problems lately with its interface and updates, and hanging out a bit in the forums on the site, I can see some people are getting scared off.

As for me... eHow has paid every month. My earnings are steady. If I were a new author, I'd bail... but with 46 articles in the bin and decent earnings every month, I'm going to stick it out. But I'm definitely going forward with my eyes open and no expectations. All my articles are backed up, and I have an InfoBarrel account set up in case I need to jump ship.

Grocery Shopping

I have a grocery shopping strategy. My grocery budget for the month is $150 now that Boy eats table food. Here's my shopping strategy:

1. I get the weekly circulars when they come out on Wednesday. I usually wind up shopping at Winn Dixie because they have great sales on meat.
   
   
2. I make a list with 4 columns- Meat, Fruits and Vegetables, Baby, and Other. The "other" column is good for my wallet and my health, because it forces me to separate out all the starchy prepackaged stuff from the essentials.
   
   
3. I go through the grocery store circular and add things to my list with their prices. My meat choices are determined entirely by what's 2-for-1 or deeply discounted. This week, I'm buying Boston butt, chicken thighs, lamb chops, and whole chickens. Fruits are dictated by what I need for Boy, and veggies are done by what's on sale and in season- this week it's squash, sweet potatoes, and broccoli. I also drive by a farmers market and buy from there when they have specials. The baby list consists of diapers, but only if the store has coupons or a sale. This week Winn Dixie has a $5 coupon of Kuddles diapers. Score! The other category has things like dairy and oatmeal.
   
   
4. I add up the items on my list. If it's too much, I go back and eliminate. For instance, this week chicken breasts were on sale, but so were chicken thighs. I wanted both, but when I did the math I was $10 over. Goodbye chicken breasts!
   
   
5. I go through my coupons. If I have a coupon for something I need, I put it in my wallet. I honestly don't use coupons that much because they're usually for name brand things, and the generics tend to be cheaper even with coupons.
   
   
6. I go shopping. I take my list and a calculator. I add up everything as I add it to the cart. If I go over budget, I look through my cart and put things back.
   
   
7. I check out. My favorite part is handing over my rewards card at the end and watching my total drop in half!