Recently I've Been...

So me and my friend enjoy watching a certain YouTube gaming channel by the name of YogsCast. Some of you may have heard of them. Well if you haven't then you should have.

Every now and again we have a bit of a chat about it and get all too excited. This instance happened to be on a walk down to the local shop to get a drink. As it usually is to be honest with you. We were chatting and it inspired me to write a post about it. I have to say it is one of my real enjoyments, guiltily, to play Minecraft  A little 8 bit game, with no goals apart from to dig up dirt and other resources and build stuff out of it. It's that simple. But because it is that simple the possibilities are endless.

Now I am a mega-fan of the whole gaining wealth and dreaming about money. Subsequently these kind of games that involve building your riches really appeal to me. So Minecraft is a big tick. Now one of the other games which they have just started playing based on it's latest release is Sim City.

Now this game is amazing. In my personal opinion, I may go as far as to say the best game in the world! It just appeals to me so much. Now upon telling this to my other friend, not the one I went to the shop with, but a different one, he said the only the aliens and zombies are good in SimCity. That's to say he is no longer my friend (joking of course).

I disagree with that strongly. I don't really know what it is about it that I enjoy so much. I think it is the excitement of building such great wealth and power maybe? I really do feel the thrill as you start to imagine all the things you can do and build and buy and go absolutely mental with it.

That kind of thing really fires me up I suppose. Like the idea of a growing business empire. So there I have said it. I have told the internet. I am a materialist pig.

Apart from it's not the thought of what I could spend the money on. The lottery really doesn't fuss me. You could put £1 million in front of me and tell me to go and by myself I really nice house and car. Obviously I would take it and do it, but it would be nowhere near as exciting as if you said here is £1 million pounds. Go and turn it into 10. I think it is the creativity and thought which you have to put into little entrepreneurial things that are really exciting. It's almost as if it is the challenge of making money that is what is exciting.

Be Imaginative and Grown Up

One of the hardest things to do as a teenager is to get a job. Trust me. I have been there and done that. Living in a village I was at a disadvantage already with not many jobs going and a lot of people wanting them. The main thing these days is the issue of the law. Anyway, I won't bore you with it, that is for another post, but shopkeepers and employers can't be bothered with the hassle. if you want a paper round before you have finished compulsory education you have to get a working permit, which requires all sorts of stuff from a shopkeeper. Blah blah blah. However there are still lots of jobs which people will employ people from the age of 13 to do little things for them.

For example you may find a gardener who needs a hand on a Saturday or the milkman or whatever. What I am trying to say is don't be closed minded about what you are going to do. It doesn't pay. Trust me.

The other point I wanted to mention was that you need to persevere with your job. For example helping out with pot washer at you local pub could eventually lead to you being a waiter or waitress or even a bar steward. There is a natural progression with every job which moves through the ranks as you become older and more experienced and more trusted by your employer. Let me explain to you my path through my teenager career if you like:

I started as a Sunday Paperboy, earning just £4 a week. After 2 months I had been moved onto a Monday to Saturday round which was £16. I was progressing slowly and surely. After about 6 months of doing that I was asked to help out on a Saturday morning putting the papers up for the paperboys. This was 2 hours work at £3.50 an hour. Rubbish, I know, but from there I got to know how the shop worked. How to work the tills, how to put out the papers etc etc. I kept asking the boss, not so I annoyed him but so I was persistent and keen, if there was a job going in the shop.

Until one day, at the glamorous age of 17, he offered me a job part-time working behind the counter. So there was £23 from my paper round and early Saturday morning, plus 8 hours a week at £5 and I was making £63 a week from my part time job. Not bad eh?

That was just with a little bit of persistence and good hard work that got me to a stage where I could earn enough money to fund a car and a girlfriend. What I am trying to say is approach any job, no matter how boring it may be to start off with, in a mature and proffesional and also positive manner. Don't be the lad that does 3 Sunday rounds and then doesn't bother turning up again. Follow that path.

Don't Spend It, Save It!

One of the most effective ways of making money is believe it or not, saving it. Just think about the amount of cash you may spend on grub from the tuck shop or the newest COD, and think about how much that all adds up to. Try putting the £2 a day you might spend in the shop on your way to school in a pot and see how quickly this adds up. Also think about all the unnecessary purchases. Music, games, stuff like that. You don't have to pay such a price for some things as well.

I am not saying you should just give up all your little luxuries that you buy with the money from delivering the local newspaper, but just think about what you are spending and try saving it in a jar or pot to see how much you really do spend. Trust me, the results are outstanding. You may be able to save up in 2 or 3 months to buy yourself a new x box, or an iPod, or a new Bike.

If you just have a little bit of sensibilty when thinking about each time you spend money, then you can save a packet! Also, cutting down on those sweets will make you a little bit healthier too, which could also be a little benifit! 

Remember, SAVE IT, DON'T SPEND IT!

Link shortening sites: Potential as a money making scheme?

Everybody on the internet is making money from just about anything that you can do on the internet. One of the popular ways which seems to be very popular is link shortening sites such as adf.ly and other similar sites.


There are many different variations on this subject. Adf.ly is currently the most popular and essentially, you register your link, and then get people to click on it and they show the viewer 5 seconds of adverts and then they can redirect to your actual link. The pay is around $5 for 1000 clicks, which to be honest with you is really not very good. If you think about it, you have to be pretty popular to get 1000 views to something. Obviously if you are linking to an internet app or an indie game or something which you have made yourself, and are giving it away for free, then you are making money off the people downloading your app. This I think is a really good way of creating a win win situation for the creator and the consumer, as the creator gets paid for his work, while to consumer doesn't have to fork out money. The trouble is, the amount of recognition the creator gets for his work is peanuts, and doesn't really make it worth it. You have to feel sorry for the creator.


Another way which I have found is a website called DollarUpload.com, which is really quite good, as it pays you between $0.70 and $0.90 per download, which would be a better way to get paid for your downloads. This amount is just under the cost of a song or an app on the iTunes store for example, which getting paid that for your work is very good. Trouble is with this, is getting the views and hits to make the money worthwhile. You can spend days making an internet app or a song or a video or something similar, but if only 1 or 2 people download it you are only getting $1.50 or so for it, which is not a very good hourly rate. However this could be said for any venture of this nature, if you are creating it to generate money, which kind of evens it out.


The question is: Is it all that?


My answer is unless you have a significant amount of views per day, then no. Say you get about  100 downloads a week on a specific app or song or whatever, that is about $70 on DollorUpload, which does become a little worth it, but how are you going to get 100  downloads a week consistently. Lets face it, if you put something like that on the internet, interest in it will die off after a very short space of time, which means you will loose out very quickly. The whole issue with link sharing websites which offer you bags of gold in return for 1 little link is it isn't the money making scheme it is cracked up to be. By no means am I saying it isn't a good way of getting money, but it only is if you get large amounts of hits, which let's face it, this takes a lot of work and really good idea, which unfortunately every one of the 4 billion people who use the internet every day can't come up with a good idea and get it to make money, because it stops being a good idea unless it stands out from the crowd.


If you do choose to use these services, don't expect goldmines to come rushing through your front door the instant that you create the account. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot or perseverance to see any kind of results.

The Place for Cheap Music: mp3mixx.com

mp3mixx.com

As a true musician myself, I hate to steal music, but sometimes you just can’t afford some new tunes. So I have been searching for a while for music which I can buy cheaply, but the artists still benefit a little. I have found that magic compromise. Mp3mixx.com is a website which allows you to buy music for as little a $0.15 a track or in some case $1.50 an album, in a very simple and straight forward way. And so far I have had no trouble with the music I have downloaded either.

They have a massive range of music, from heavy metal to the charts, from dupstep to jazz, and there is something which appeals to everybody on there. While the range may not be as great as on the iTunes store or Amazon mp3 store, there is still a great amount of music to buy and listen to for very little cost. At the end of the day, $3 for an entire album is not bad by anybody’s standards at all.

It works by buying a certain amount of credit from the company initially, and the least you can buy is $20. I know it seems quite a lot of money as a start-up cost, but you only spend as much as you need once it is credited to your account. This registration takes seconds, and also you can use your PayPal as well, so for those people who make money on PayPal and then don’t link it to a bank account, this is a great way of withdrawing it essentially.

The system so far, as I said has been free of issues and I think the whole website is created really well. There is all the important info about the tracks and the albums, like artist, release date, length, price and even record company, as well as there being an option to listen to the whole song before buying it, which is a really good idea as it allows a better try before you buy system than that offered by the iTunes store.

The only criticism I have for them is the downloading process. When you purchase your music, it all linked on a page on your account, which is where it stays for 48 hours and then is deleted. However if you buy an album, you have to download every single song individually via clicking the download button, which can take a while and be confusing as to where you can go to. That said, it doesn’t detract from the quality of service and you definitely get very good value for money. Recommended for anybody buying music on a budget.

Slicethepie.com: Get Paid for Listening and Reviewing Music

In my endless trawling through the internet for ways o make money, I have found many different claims of get rich quick schemes and many different people offering me services and items which cost to sign up for and don’t really offer that much in return. All they are essentially is somebody else trying to make money off other people trying to make money. Quite a logical and simple idea right?

One thing that has really caught my eye though is this service called slicethepie.com. Basically, you sign up, they ask you a few questions about yourself and your musical tastes and then you get presented with a screen with an mp3 music player and a text box. The instructions are simple, listen to the music, and write a report on it and after 45 seconds you can rate it between 1 and 10 and move on to the next.

It is not a simple as it may seem at first, you have to comment on a variety of musical elements including texture, harmony, melody and lyrics to be able to submit your review, but once you get the hang of using these keywords, it is relatively quick. The automated system which checks your review is also very clever in picking up whether your report accurately reflects your scoring too. This is the bit which I find most intriguing, as it is spot on.

Because of the way the website is designed, you don’t get to see any of the information which your are inputting, like the word count or the amount of keywords, which is good as this makes you add as many as possible. If, like me you have a basic understanding of music, this is really quite easy and also enjoyable, but I suggest you do some background reading on musical elements before you start this endeavour.

I really like the way you are rewarded for you work as well. It states you will earn between $0.05 and $0.20 for each review, depending on how much you write and how well written it is, so these are always good point to bear in mind. I have not yet got it into double figures yet, and get around $0.08 per review, but this is still good. In 30 mins, I racked up about $3, and I did this for a week and got myself about $12 in return. You can only withdraw money of $10 or more, which does mean you have to work for a substantial amount of time unfortunately, however there wards are well worth it.

This is definitely something to consider if you enjoy listening to new music and getting paid for doing just that. I find that it really is inspiring listening to new music and enjoying what people have to offer outside of the mainstream eye, and getting paid a little for it as well. It isn’t really hard graft and the rewards are very pleasing and I think fair for the amount of work that you do.

How to Make money from Article Writing

There are many ways to make money online. Many you can learn all about from websites and articles online, but there are some, the very best, which aren’t covered. Article writing falls into this. There are many people who make a fantastic living off article writing. Take me for example. I provide article writing services and such like, and make a perfectly comfortable living off it. I don’t need any other jobs to live the life I want to live. I also have an incredible passion for article writing and this makes my job even more worthwhile and enjoyable.

Many platforms allow you to start out article writing, some where you publish articles, others where you can submit proposals for people looking for something specific writing, whether that be for a website or a magazine or something. One of these very portals, where I started article writing, is squidoo.com. On this platform, you set up an account, and create a lens, which is essentially a page on which you place your article writing on. You can then choose if you want to put extra widgets and things on, including ad sense advertisings and affiliate links to Amazon and eBay, which sell products linked to your article.

The most important thing to remember when doing this is to have an interesting and creative style of article writing, yet also make sure your article writing is informative and flows well. For example, if you are writing a music review or instructions on how to take a photo, they both require a different style of article writing, so make sure that they suit the style you choose to use. To publicise your article, post a link on facebook or twitter, and be active on some forums which link to your niche, and publicise that way. Another really good way to get public notice for your article, is a free service called amplify, or you could even use Google Ad Words to get hits to your article.

If you would prefer to work on a more couture and bespoke environment, the best place for freelance writers to get work is eLance.com. This provides a service which connects clients and writers together and because of the volume of people using this site, there is always somebody for you. There is a great workroom interface and it is a really powerful tool to make money in article writing.