New Year - New Progress

This coming year should be interesting. I am hoping to start it off with a good push. I am starting off the year with a car-flipping deal, much like the one I pulled in the past. This time, however, I am purchasing the car and intend to drive it around while I take my time and attempt to get a decent profit. Unlike the last deal, I do not already have a buyer in mind.

I have also spent the last few months drumming up some income ideas, several pages worth, in fact. I know many of them will dud-out and not make income, but the more I come up with, the more likely I am to have a big hitter. I obviously cannot do them all at once so I must implement them one at a time and see how it goes. Since many of them involve little to no physical parts, it won't be a huge loss if they don't work out. Still, one likes to see progress in all they do, right?

I need to adjust my monthly income program a bit. I initially said I wanted to make $30 a month as a starting point in residual income. I actually had that going with the vending machines I have. I just was not separating that income into a monthly cashflow. I have since decided to do so. So my next goal will be a measly $50 a month. A small increase, but $50 gives a common round number to start with and then progress to the next step of say $100 or so. I am working on that chart and will post the steps when I make them more concrete.

Final Haul of the season

I made the final haul of the season in my largest vending location. It was an awesome $496. SWEET!

I let the money pile up in some of the machines so it made for a big payday. Its kind of like getting a tax return in October. I may do that again next season.

But now to business, this brings my total to 3801. Not shabby, a little progress here.

Its great to have progress even when you get lazy, isn't it?

One week, One month....

Wow, I said I wanted to spend a week figuring out a money making plan for $1 a day and here it is a month later and I haven't come up with anything. Can't I get some more time in a day?! I typically am going almost 20 hours a day most days before I get to sleep, so the time I DO get to myself kind of slips away.

I will give myself another week here and promise to dig on it and come up with something. I have a couple of ideas but I need to research them to see if they are viable.

Hang tight, its coming I promise.

What Exactly is Residual?

I was thinking about what my idea of residual is. In normal terms, it means receiving money over and over from work you performed once, like royalties from a product or something. My theory on the whole idea is that the money will eventually dwindle off from each venture, so you really have to keep busy coming up with new things. At first, you have to be really busy until you hit your income goal and can sort of go into a maintenance mode.

Is my vending considered residual? I mean, sort of and then again not. I have to fill them up and collect money, which is work I have to perform, but I no longer have to place a machine once it is placed. Finding locations is about 90% of the business anyway. I think I would place that under residual. Rental income is a type of residual income. Too bad I don't have anything to rent out. Royalties from writing, photography, and programming are feasible. I first need to learn to write and take pictures. Programming I can do, but what? Perhaps make an app for iphones and sell it on the istore. That is a possibility.

So far I have:
Vending
Royalties
Rental

But what about internet specific ventures? Id really like to focus on those. The main reason for this is the flexibility of location. I would hate to have to completely sell all ventures and restart them if I decided to move somewhere else. The idea of residual is continued income I know, but to make more you have to do more work, or replace the streams that dry up. I'd like to be able to do that while I am anywhere in the world. Wouldn't that be nice?

Time for a change

As I mentioned in a previous post, I will be focusing on building monthly income and not just trying to get to a million dollars. That does not mean that I will not continue working on the million dollar goal, quite the opposite. It means that I will focus on finding ways to build recurring income, vs working on one-shot deals. Of course, profit is profit, and I will still do one-shot deals when they come around.

I have yet to decide if the format of the blog will continue or if I will do a complete redesign of it, structurally speaking. I don't think anyone cares what color scheme I use or something unimportant like that. Although, I would like to make it look a little less like everyone else's blog on blogger. I'll add that to my 'things-I'd-like-to-do-but-probably-never-will' list.

SO! Time for the change, I am giving myself a week to come up with at least one residual money-making venture. What I would like to do is find one a week for the next few weeks, then spend some time working them into the plan. I will also report the 'What not to do' things I find, that way I can revisit the list whenever I forget I already saw something or want to remind myself why I should not be doing it.

So I suppose the first thing is to decide how much money per month you want to build up to. I think a cool million per year, AFTER TAXES, would be sufficient, don't you think? That's approximately, $2MM per year. HAHA, I know, think real. But hey, it could happen eventually, right?

Given that I need to start a LITTLE closer to the ground level and in the real world, lets go for an initial goal of $30 a month. Thats $1 a day. That shouldn't be too hard, right? Let's hope not.

My feeling on this is that it will be a bit harder at first because I have no idea what I am doing, but that it will get easier as I get more proficient at this.

Step 20 - Finally Some Progress! - And a Confession...

Wow, what a fruitless summer this has been. With some heavy hits from real life taking away my time to get more involved in making money, things just did not go as well as I had hoped or planned in my venture.

First my confession. Against the rules, I took money from my stake to help with all the various things that were going on. How much, I am really not able to say, but much more than I wanted to take, I'm certain. So I will have to re-evaluate my fundage and how much I owe myself. In all of this, I can say that I was not as on top of things as I should have been in my financial situation. To my defense, the total losses on my personal accounts from January to August was over $7000. It's hard to plan for that and still not lose momentum, wouldn't you agree?

Another thing that took up a lot of time, but in a good way over the long term, is school. Some of the classes are pretty time consuming and need more attention than others. Given that I'm no spring chicken any more, there are times I really need to focus so I can get finished and resume a decent salary again. The idea is that the more I make, the more I can turn into the projects of making money, or at least the less I will have to borrow if something disasterous happens.

So now, we move on to the progress!
Since my last post I have collected another $250 in monies from various machines. Not too shabby. I really need to purchase some spare pieces to replace some of the worn ones. To expand, I need to purchase another few machines as I have a chance to expand a little within the locations I have.

Step 20 - Real Life is the SUCK!

<sarcasm>Hey! So my renewed commitment is doing soooo well! </sarcasm> But it is not my fault, really! What had happened was... no! the sun was in my eyes!

Ok, in all seriousness, I have been moving forward but have yet to see any results. This is due to that thing called Real Life that loves to jump in the way of anyone doing anything worthwhile. Let me give you a recap on why I have yet to realize any significant gains in the last bit.

My puppy broke her leg. They want to fix it to the tune of $3500. 10 TIMES the cost of the puppy originally.

My car decided to break, and since I use it for work and not just to and from, I needed that to be fixed. Yumm $400.

Oh and my friend I loaned $500 (which I was expecting it back this week) has run into payback trouble. Apparently he owes some BIG people BIG money (ie. US government, and they ain't playing) so I have to get in line behind them for the money he owes. yay...

Other than that, things are great. :)

I did a partial money pickup on one of my vending locations: $365.00 Yay money!
My losses include a dollar I lost in the currency market. Could be a lot worse

So for now, that is my report. It sucks I know and is nowhere near what I wanted to be able to report.

Renewed commitment

While checking out my progress, I have decided that it could be much faster. I am renewing my commitment to the experiment in order to accomplish the goal faster. I have decided to focus instead on assets that will help me build a monthly income.

While my dream goal is $1M per year, I decided my first long term goal is to make $100k a year. I am currently working on defining the steps along the way, much like the 28 steps I am now following for my million dollars.

The doctrine of the experiment will be on increasing monthly income as well. I will still track the million dollar value as always, but will also track monthly income. I believe the two goals go together perfectly.

By giving more focus on the project I should be posting a lot more often about opportunities seen, missed, taken, and the results of my actions.

Here goes!

Step 20 - The Beginning

So Step 20 has begun. This could be a very fun and interesting step because of the opportunities that could begin to open up for me. While not a large amount of money, there is potential to begin to grab hold of some better deals that could result in better money.

This step is a bit shorter due to an adjustment of the goal total. This is for simplicity and nothing more. I have to say I am extremely excited to have reached this step. I hope to be able to et some neat and interesting deals going on the way to $5000!

Step 19 - May 6 2009

This day marks my first collection of the vending machines down on the beachfront. The tourist season will begin soon and that means more money from this route. All in all it is not a ton of money for the year, but enough to be excited about collecting. My first haul of the year brought me $212.50. Not a bad start.

As far as other monies go, I have made another $60 from loaning to co-workers, and the currency market has yielded $4 back to me.

So all in all, $276. this time around. (I did net some more money from my prize vending location, but I spent that and some of my savings on a new computer, so I guess I loaned myself some money. $240 total.

$212.50 - beachfront vending location
$240.00 - prize vending location
$60 - interest
$4 - currency market
-$240 - loan to myself
-----------------------
+ $276.50 total

Grand total: $2690.50

WOW! Step 20 has arrived! Alright!

Step 19 - Spring has sprung!

Wow, been a while, huh? I hate winter. My money slows down in winter. Yuck.
So where was I with all this fun money stuff?

Well, as spring is coming, I spent a little time collecting dormant vending machine money. $100 from my largest location, $32 from another, and yet another $125 from my machine with the giveaway prize.

I also have been playing bank to co-workers, netting $124 in profits from 'payday loans.'

I have some money also invested in the currency market, but at the time, it is at a loss of $9. Ah well, I'm hoping it turns around soon.

So lets get a new tally on this springs totals so we can push onward and upward!

$257 from various vending machines, $124 from loans and -$9 from the markets. That totals $372.

The new total is: $2414!