photo by Daniel Morris

Initially my plan was to get off the ground as quickly as possible, but as with many new blogs I put little thought into the direction I was taking. In many ways I jumped in with my eyes shut. So learning to blog effectively has been a steep learning curve, but worth it.

Now I have decided to try and push this blog to the next level by modifying a ‘off the shelf’ theme to personalise it, make it unique and most importantly give a professional look to this blog.

But most importantly I am trying to differentiate this blog from the thousands of ‘Make Money Online’ blogs that have appeared over the last 5 years or so, hence this market has become so overcrowd with blogs that regurgitate the same material week in, week out.

For me this is still an exciting experiment and testing ground for future projects, but one thing I have learnt is you are not going to become rich overnight. You also need to put a lot of hard work in to get anywhere / get noticed.

So what’s changing?

• Martyn’s Blog will become Money Making Student, nothing wrong with ‘Martyn’s Blog’ but it sounds to much like a personal blog about life in general. Money Making Student is more concise and to the point.
• Theme is personalised and more professionally looking, although not finalised, I plan to tinker with it over the next couple of weeks, bear with me it could get messy. If you have any suggestions or criticism please let me know!
• Personalised domain name, the current address is clumsy and was only planned as a stop gap. The gap seemed to have got very big!
• More adverts, hopefully I don’t end up giving the impression of a free ads newspaper, but by placing the ‘useful’ stuff on the left and ads on the right, I won’t confuse or mislead anyone intentionally!

Any feedback is most welcome, I discuss the changes in more depth once I have completed them and visitors and me are happy with the result!

Cheers,

Martyn.

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photo by jenn_jenn’s

Welcome to the second money making report, it doesn’t seem long since I did the last one.

Still nothing to shout about, although traffic is increasing, so there is potential to earn money. Any income is a plus at this early stage. Especially since I have not put much effort in over the last month.

So my earnings so far -

Adsense

So far earned: $6.72 (approx £3.36) [+$1.14]

Received: $0

Money4Banners

So far earned: £30 (approx $60) [+£5.00]

Received: £30

As you can see money4banners continues to pay. Also Adsense is till ticking over.

I am currently debating whether I should include earnings from online surveys, or whether I should keep them separate due to them not always paying in cash, vouchers being the common reward.

A post about online surveys is on the way, so I should have decided by then.

Best of luck,

Martyn

photo by Mike9Alive

Well I hope you all had a good holiday, back at university now, apologies for the absence! I must try not to apologise in every post. Which brings me to my biggest flaw at university, my lack of time to do things I enjoy, or more importantly need to do. Probably this is down to me preferring to do things on the spur of the moment. Mind you I doubt I’m the only student who usually says yes to the offer of going to the pub! As people know TIME = MONEY, or for students TIME costs MONEY, and the fact is, the little ‘free’ time available often involves spending money for entertainment, e.g. cinema, pub, clubs, e.t.c.

Having a little extra time can save you money, an extra half hour in the evening could be used to cook a cost effective meal, rather than that expensive take-away or ready meal. Also that half hour could be used to finish that essay due in at 9am!

So what to do?

Plan, Plan, Plan ahead.

168 Hours you have each week, of which ideally you need to sleep 56 especially with exams ahead, therefore 112 Hours of usable time!

Obviously some of that is used up by work/lectures-

But you can:-

• Get up in the morning (shock horror, students getting up on there days off, see zenhabits ideas if you need a little persuasion!)
• Plan your meals in advance (no more thinking what shall I have for dinner, spending 10 mins thinking about it and then settling for the easy option.)
• Set time specifically aside for work and play (sounds sensible but how many stick to it!)

Finally just remember time is like money, you always spend it, but unlike money you cannot earn it back. Just don’t cram to much in, a little relaxation (procrastination) time is always needed!

Still working on the time machine,

Martyn.