Welcome to a new year of The Saved Quarter Challenge. The founder, Penny Saver of The Saved Quarter, recently explained the challenge again for 2012. I took part in this challenge in 2011 and exceeded my goals as far as income was concerned. If you are looking to improve your financial situation this year, I encourage you to join and link up on her site weekly.
Now that I am starting the challenge anew, I wanted to set a few goals for myself.
I have three objectives for The Saved Quarter Challenge this year:
-Earn at least $2,500 a month in income. (I will need this amount monthly to meet my goal of making $30,000 online as part of my participation in the Online Money Bloggers.)
-Have at least $2,500 in our emergency savings account.
-Save to pay cash when attending my conference in September and two of my husband’s conferences this year (though his should be reimbursable).
I’ll review how I am doing on my goals at the end of every month’s income report.
Now, for the first income report of the year, the first week in January I earned $1,541.22. All of that was from staff writing, virtual assistant work and advertising.
However, not all of that money gets set aside for February’s bill. I took on a short-term writing job, and the client kindly paid me upfront, so that money was snowflaked immediately as was the virtual assistant job I took specifically to snowflake. In addition, I had $45 in blog expenses, so all told, between snowflaking and blog expenses, I deducted $365.95 from my earnings this week, leaving me with $1,175.27 set aside for February expenses.
How do you get your virtual assistant work? What does that usually entail? And do you go to advertisers or do they all just come to you?
I started out with just one client for virtual assistant work, and in the last year it has snowballed. I do a variety of tasks, depending on what the blogger needs. Regarding advertising, that is NOT where I make the bulk of my money. Most of the money I make is through virtual assistant work and freelance writing. I do have advertisers come to me, and I approach some (though I need to get better at this). I also make some money from affiliate work.
I’m so impressed by how your goals have taken off in the past year – not just to meeting your needs but really making a business out of blogging and bringing in so much more than you might have anticipated just a year ago! Fantastic!
I look forward to seeing you meet the 30k challenge – fantastic!
Thanks for all of your encouragement. I have been fortunate that the blog has been a springboard for so many other money making ventures.
It’s a good challenge and we will be watching with interest all the participants. And your first weeks earnings are impressive. Of course to get there you have had to work very hard over some time – really (not to discourage) you have to look at that investment as an up-front cost.
Well done and carry on!
Wow, you really started off the new year with a bang! Great job.
Question, what do you mean when you say that you “snowflaked the money”?
That is extra money I make that I immediately put on my credit card with the smallest balance to pay it off more quickly.
What a great happening in your life. Fun to see how you are growing in your internet business. I look forward to your updates. Grace