For the past 10 years or so I’ve been trying to create an ‘automated income stream’. I’ve started everything from premium rate text messaging services to websites for actors looking for voiceover work. I’ve probably started well over 20 fairly major projects in that time. Most of the time was spent staring at a screen wondering where it has gone wrong. Where you are right now really rings a bell with me. For years I was banging away promoting a SMS marketing service which I wanted to support me. I tried everything from joining networking groups to blogging to joint ventures to advertising. No matter what I seemed to do, i always ended up back supplementing income by selling some time as a programmer.

My point is, maybe blogging will create an income for you but no matter how smart you, I or anyone else is, you don’t know what is going to work in terms of generating income until you try it. I’m not going to give you advice on blogging as your obviously a lot better at it than I am but my observation is that you need something else on the boil to help generate income. Let your two (or three or four) income streams compete against each month. Test and measure your competing incomes. “I spent 80 hours on blogging yielding and 20 hours working in the local bar yielding”. You may not want to work in a bar so try dropping in something else and see what works. In short – don’t pre-judge what will work and what will not. Right now you have all your eggs in one (very nice) basket. Can you ad another basket that could still leverage your core values?

My perception is that when you are trying this stuff you’ll have a lot more to write about and it’ll have a lot more unique value.

In any case, I’ve just signed up to the blog and I’ll look forward to hearing what happens next.

We should all take an hour or two and figure out where we are, what were doing and what we can do and what we can use to improve areas of us. Every week I try to get a bigger perspective and clarify everything, it helps a lot.
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My bank manager says I need to spend 8 hours a day glued to my computer screen but my body just wants to get outside and enjoy the sunshine.

If only the sexy Mr. Tea could pop round for a cuppa and a one on one lesson I’d be in heaven:)

I use Evernote bit I still think Google made a huge mistake when it stopped supporting its Note facility. Evernote always seems a bit clunky after that.

Just started using Dropbox and trying to get into the whole cloud computing thing.

However, I wasn’t too fond of Mint and ended up going with the free online version of Quicken. It’s very simple, but it works for our personal finances.

My husband uses Evernote too…

A big thanks to Kevin and Gordie.