December Digest

All right!  Here it comes, another monthly digest to show my progress with all the different sites I've signed up with.  I'm going to try and keep it shorter than normal which shouldn't be hard since this month kept me a bit to busy to give these sites as much attention as they deserve.

__________
~*~Gift Cards and Gift Sites~*~
These are the sites I've been working with that offer their rewards in gift cards and prizes.
--------------

iRazoo

Review: iRazoo is a quick way to earn a $5 Amazon card every 10 days.  I have been slacking off a bit with them this past month, but they've been really great none the less.  I've made $20 in Amazon cards with them so far and am still waiting for more to post to my account.

December Goal Review

With the closing of December comes my monthly "Goal Review" where I take a look at the month and decide whether or not I have done the things I set out to do. This month, overall I am pretty thrilled with my results. I still need to do a bit of tweaking, but considering this is my 3rd month back in the working from home world and my second month really trying to do freelance work, I am really happy.

1. Earn $400 this month. Check! This was completely blown out of the water. While I don't have the breakdown created yet, I do have pending total for the month. I am still waiting on one payment that should come through today and this doesn't count the checks I received, but right now my earnings stand at $1,154.31 for December! So much for it being a slow month!

Another Year is Coming to a Close

I feel like 2009 can't possibly be over yet because it's gone so quickly, but clearly the calendar would be a better time keeper than I would. 

The next few days will be incredibly busy as I put together the following:

• December Digest
• December Earnings 
• December Goal Review

You can also expect to see new goals and game plans for January and 2010 as a whole within the next week.  I'm hoping to get a lot accomplished next year and can't wait to see how we all grow throughout the first year of the new decade.

Proof of Payment "Friday"

All right, the Proof of Payment Friday post was postponed for obvious reasons, and Saturday was spent recovering, so here it is a couple days late. Please note, that this won't include any of of the payments from my private clients, but that tally will be included at the end of the month.

• IMShopping: I received a payment from IMShopping on Monday as usual, although I won't be getting one this week since the holidays had me a bit tied up. This payment was for $30 which brings me up to $108.25 total with them. (Proof of Payment)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays Everyone!

The Thursday Tip Traid: 3rd Edition - Motivation

"How do you stay motivated" is something that a lot of you have asked me so this weeks tips for freelancing will revolve around that very topic! Keeping your motivation and momentum as a freelancing work at home mom, or just a freelancer in general, can be a really trying effort. While not every motivation suggestion will work for everyone across the board, I have gone ahead and assembled a set of 3 tips that have helped me out personally when it comes to keeping my motivation up while doing freelance work from home.

Wanelo Christmas Giveaway

Warning - Slightly out of character post:

All right I know this is late, but for those who have kept up with Wanelo (WAnt NEed LOve) you probably know about their Christmas giveaway. If you don't you can read about it here. If you haven't signed up with them yet you really should. I put off making my list because I was worried that it wouldn't be good enough, but I think it came out all right in the end haha

I decided to enter and am crossing my fingers that I win. Just to make it a little more fun, I decided to quickly explain why I want each item, so in no particular order here it is with explanations:

• Mattress Heating Pad: WAnt NEed (Hope to) LOve - It's cold up here in PA and it's terrible climbing into bed just to shiver because the blankets are icy

PineCone Research

All right! I know a lot of you have heard me talk about how great PineCone Research is but how annoying it is that they don't have open recruiting... Well, guess what I got in my email today?

PineCone Research Registration Link!

Now I'm not sure how long the link will work so you should sign up immediately with them if you have any interest in working with them.

Review: Each survey pays $3 and sometimes they send you samples of products as well. When you review the sample you get an additional $3. So far I have earned at least $20 with them and the pay is really prompt. Checks from PineCone Research generally arrive in around 3 business days and after a while you can use PayPal instead and most payments arrive within 24 hours.

(Proof of Payment)

What would you like to see?

I'm open to suggestions for new weekly columns. Now that I'm cleaning up my posting routine, I was thinking it would be fun to get everyone involved and see if there was anything that you guys were really interested in seeing here.

As we have it, here are the regular posts:

Weekly:

• Thursday - The Thursday Tip Triad (Tips for Freelancing)
• Friday - The Pay Day Post!

Monthly:

• Goals
• Goal Check
• Earnings Breakdowns
• The Monthly Digest
  

If there is something that you are really itching to see me talk about, leave a comment with your input!

Pay Day!

I now name today Proof of Payment Friday... even though this post is actually coming through on Saturday since it's now 12:10 on the East coast.

Since Friday is the most commonly accepted pay day, I've decided to make it my official proof of payment posting day. This means that every Friday I will post all my payment proof updates from the week before. I figure it will be a lot neater and more convenient for you to see all the different proof of payment updates at once instead of splattered throughout the week.

It's been a while since I've done my Proof of Payment update so this is a bit of a long one:

• YouData: I've received two payments from them since my last update, one on 12/11 for 5¢ and a second today for 21¢. (Proof of Payment)

The Thursday Tip Triad

Installment two in the new Thursday Tip column is a bit late again, in hindsight it also might have been better to dub it Freelance Friday - but I've already committed to making it a Thursday post!

Today's freelance job hunting tips will revolve around finding clients. I briefly touched on how to build a client base last week but this time I will focus fully on providing you with a few pieces of information that will help you build a freelance client base without any investment.

$500 Give Away!

I usually don't advertise giveaways that other people post but this one looked like something that anyone can benefit from especially this month so I thought I'd spread the word:

Visit Money Saving Mom's blog for a chance to win one of five $100 gift cards to the shop of your choice (from a list of over 100 stores).

Updates

Things have been oh so hectic. Apparently on top of the holidays, my SO's family has half their birthdays in December and I had forgotten about... plus the firehouse does a lot of charity work during December which leaves me and my 4 year old bundle of energy stuck indoors by ourselves a lot more than usual.

I did want to say that I took advantage of the gift card sale that Swagbucks was having and bought 4 discounted Amazon cards (saved 20 SBs which is almost 1/2 of another card) bringing my total with them up to $30 with over 100 SB left over.

My scheduling goal is chugging a long like the little engine that could but hasn't quite made it over the hill yet. I have been using a small notepad to schedule my tasks from 6am-6pm and I'm managing to finish most things in their allotted time slots, but not everything. I have been royally slacking on remembering to do iRazoo, TrekPay, NeoBux etc though so I think I need to actually schedule them in so I won't forget.

Coming Soon: More Proof of Payment for IMShopping and Pinecone Research.

Swagbucks Sale

For those who have been watching the gift card sale from Swagbucks, they have finally put up the $5 Amazon Card at a discount. It's very minor and only a 5 SB discount, but it's still not terrible.

You can only grab two cards per day so I just snatched my two and am hoping that the timer resets at midnight so I can grab two more!

Freelance Work

Freelance work might sound like something you are incapable of, but I promise you that it's not. If I had known how simple it was I would have started doing it much sooner than I did. It has really been a great source of income for my family and I'm only getting started. There's not a day that goes by where I don't regret how long it took me to take the plunge and seriously start hunting down freelance work.
I had a bit of an ordeal today (accidentally locked myself out of the apartment!) so this is up later than I'd intended but I wanted to get this post up before I go to sleep.

Tips for Freelancing (The new Thursday tradition!)

Finding Clients

I have had a lot of people ask me who my clients are and where they came from. I can't actually answer the first half of that question (privacy issues) but I can answer the second half...

I'll have a post up later today or tomorrow giving everyone a few pointers and I'll expand on my experiences some!

Wanelo!

I don't know if I ever announced it but I made the first string of Wanelo Super!moms, and the second set was just announced so congrats to you guys :)

On top of that I just won my second Wanelo contest! I haven't been rewarded yet, but I know they're good for it.

View my winning collection Here!

Proof of Payment

Here are a few payments that have already come in for December!

• YouData 12/4 - 39¢ (Proof of Payment)
• iRazoo 12/5 - $5 Amazon card which was requested on 11/10, bringing my total up to $15 out of $25 received (Proof of Payment)
  
• Greenfield Online 12/7 - $30.00 for my Interactive Survey on Nov. 18th (Proof of Payment)
  

A Quick Note

I am expecting to make a major layout change tomorrow that will move the earnings on the left sidebar to a nice little categorized box in the middle of the page. I'll be looking for feedback on this change, so don't be afraid to let me know what you think!

There will also be a Proof of Payment update and a few other updates tomorrow... this was just a super busy weekend with the holidays and a family member's birthday celebration as well. I haven't forgotten about you guys though so don't worry ;)

December Goals

All right I'm sorry these are up so late, but here they are! I decided to opt for fewer goals this month so that I can really focus on them and hopefully get into a good routine, so they are super basic.

1. Earn $400 this month. This one was preset at the very beginning of the blog, so the amount is going to stay the same. I am going to try a lot harder to earn a lot more with my side eggs this month which leads me to goal two...


2. Manage and schedule my time better! If I can balance my time better then I can earn more.... it is as simple as that. Unfortunately, I am finding it a lot harder than expected to do that, but I know that it's a task that many of us have issues with. I hope to be able to find some good time management methods that can benefit me, and everyone else as well.

November Goal Review

Overall I did well for the month, but I don't feel that I met all of my goals. Two of them were met with no questions asked, but two were not up to par in my eyes. I'll have to try harder in December!

1. To earn $300 worth of spendable cash by the end of the month. That means that only money that makes it to my bank account or PayPal account will be included in the tally.
Check! I totaled $777.28 during the month of November, however I would have liked to have earned $300 from non private gigs.

November Earnings Breakdown

As usual, this post will consist of what I received during November that was actually spendable, not pending or accruing payments.

Paid through PayPal:
$565.64 minus $16.66 in fees nets $548.98 from PayPal.

Paid through eLance:
$250.20 minus $21.90 in fees nets $228.30 from eLance.
Total: $815.84 in earnings and $38.56 in fees for a total income of $777.28! Not bad for my second month, granted a LOT of the income came from private jobs I'm still really happy.
Here's the breakdown by program for deposits this month:

November Digest

Because of the length of the post, I have gone about listing in a special manner. To view the entire post, click the red link below:

Here we go again! The end of the month means another "digest" reviewing everything I've worked with so far, however my monthly earnings will be addressed separately...

Grab a drink and relax while you read about how things are panning out with each program.

Please note that some of the Proof of Payment links have not been updated yet, but will be today.

__________
~*~Gift Cards and Gift Sites~*~
These are the sites I've been working with that offer their rewards in gift cards and prizes.
--------------

iRazoo

Review: iRazoo is a simple GPT site that rewards user that use their search engine. You can earn 300 points per day, and a $5 Amazon card only costs 3000 points. Without ever referring another person you can earn $15 a month which totals up to $180 a year which is a pretty hefty chunk of Amazon cash....

....see the full post here!

VistaPrint

Save 25-50% off on custom printed products at VistaPrint. Order today!

All right, so I've been hearing about VistaPrint for a really long time and I finally broke down and checked it out today... it's AWESOME.

Since I've been doing so much freelance and IC work I've been on the market for some basic mailing products (labels, stamps etc) and I decided to visit the Vista print site today to see what I could come up with.

I walked away with:
250 Business cards
280 Return address labels (two styles 140 of each)
A rubber return address stamp
A 50 page note pad
And a code for a free online Quickbooks accounts so I can track my income in a better manner (this could probably be found anywhere though)

My total? $10.43 for shipping, that's it!

I'm so hyped that I'm going to go order a set of things for my boyfriend now haha