Weeks Of Late

Oops. It just occurred to me that I haven't posted here for ages. Sorry.

I've made a lot of blogs and have been posting at them to try and earn some money (but failing) and have left out the original blog! How bad am I?

Anyway, its been an exciting past few weeks, I actually have a few things to talk about for once. But when I say exciting I probably mean dull.

My time has been taken up mostly by online poker. Which involved me trying to win freerolls with a huge number of players involved. This plan has not exactly worked. I now feel I need to buy a certain book on texas hold 'em if I wish to progress any further.

I also had a poker night and went to just one party. They were both really fun - but I still wasn't able to even place in the money at my small poker night. However I'd say I got my money's worth because I played about 4 hours of poker, and the game finished 20 minutes after I went out. The party was good too, if not a little sad. It was probably the last time I'll get to see most of my friends for ages because we all go to uni shortly, if they haven't gone already.

I go to Bristol on Sunday to enrol upon my physics course. Although I was anxious for the past week or so, I'm now really excited. Provided there are no problems with my accommodation.

Which leaves this week to prepare for my university experience. But I suspect I'll play much poker still.

I'm really annoyed because I fell for one of those online scams, and spent 90 dollars on an internet marketing course. I say it is an online scam, but it isn't really. I paid for the course, and I got the course, which incidentally was very impressive. But I thought it was going to make me a lot of money, and I just can't be bothered to put in the effort anymore to try and get things going - mainly because I'd have to invest a little more money. I am annoyed though because it means I don't have much money to start uni with, which would cover a lot of hidden costs. What's more is the fact that ebay are now charging me random charges which I can't really afford to pay. I'm not sure if I've even make a profit out of the warhammer I sold for my friend because the actual profits I calculated seem to be lower than I thought.

But oh well. This is what happens when you don't get a summer job. My last chance now is to win a freeroll and then win a couple of hundred pounds this week playing poker :p

Gotta love the Royal Mail

I've been getting to know the Royal Mail quite a lot better this summer thanks to my ebay ventures.

Before ebay I had never sent a package, and letters had been done by asking my parents for a stamp. Now I could tell you quite a lot about posting various things at the post office. Another great facility. Essentially they are one and the same, seemingly functioning incredibly smoothly.

I got my best feedback today on ebay. It was: 'Totally Awesome! If I could give 6 stars for speed I would! Thank you!'

To be honest I was suprised to get any feedback at all today. The guy I sold the item to paid for it at 4pm yesterday, I took it to the post office at 4.30pm and he received it today. This was just standard first class post - pretty impressive I think. Since he wasn't expecting it for about 5 working days I daresay he was more suprised than me.

So the Royal Mail takes your letter or parcel, and posts it to wherever you detail on the front. We take this service for granted so much. What would we do otherwise? Drive the letter a couple of hundred miles and find the person's house? This is why I also think it is an incredibly good value service. I can send a small package a couple of hundred miles for just £1.45, and it will get there within 24 hours. I know the delivery time I got yesterday was exceptional, but the same principal applies. Your letter/package travels a long way for a very small cost.

So that is why I commend the royal mail. And I say please don't close the post offices. They're awesome :p.

Complimentary Rant over.

Results of my summer money attempts...

So the summer has now gone, although I have a few weeks holiday left. How did my small plans for making money pay off?

Well if you never read my earlier blogs or have forgotten my plans I'll remind you.

I couldn't find a job because I left it too late and was too honest, so that left me with these options: sell stuff on ebay, find ways to make money online.

The ebay selling has gone well. My last 2 pieces of warhammer are up for sale now, and I estimate that I have made about £100 in total from selling it. Although it cost me about £250, I wasn't going to use it again, so I can consider this total a profit. Not only that but I am now selling some of my friend's warhammer for a 10% commision. This isn't really worth it because at the most I'd make about £10 for quite a lot of effort. Since running out of warhammer to sell I have been looking for other stuff I can sell. This search gave poor results (mainly because I only thought about it in my head) but then I stumbled upon a scalextric car on ebay. I had a number of scalextric cars, and am now selling a couple on ebay. Some of them hold far more sentimental value to me than my warhammer did. Just because I used them a lot more I suppose, and they remind me of my joyous youth.
The Caterham 7 Gulf #1, which I am currently selling, seems to be really rare. A new one has currently been bid up to £42 and the auction is a few days from finishing, so my fingers are crossed! There seems to be a fair amount of interest in my little caterham, which I am rather fond of, so I hope the buyer takes good care of it!

That is about the full extent of my ebay money making plans. Reasonably successful I'd say, although I could have made more money on the warhammer if I hadn't sold most of it to a chap that came to my house and bought most of my collection for £56.

What other ways could I possibly have had? lol. If only I had found a job...sigh.

Well, after research I found out that blogging was quite the little earner. So I started this blog. I started it on wordpress with the aim of joining a pay per post site once I had blogged for 30 days. Sadly when I reached this stage I found out that wordpress wouldn't allow you to use your blog in this manner. So I came here, to blogger. Now blogger would let me put adverts on my site, so far I have earnt a little bit from ads. My blog would be a nice little earner, but I'm just not getting enough traffic to do so. I get about 3 or 4 views a day, most from the same person :p, so the blogging hasn't really come through for me. I don't think my blog is interesting enough to be honest.

The other plans I had were stock photography and gambling lol. The stock photography turned out to be too hard to get approved photos. I had one which was approved a couple of months ago, and as yet I don't think anyone has downloaded it. The gambling was something I was never going to do. I was tempted to do roulette, doubling my bet on red and black each time to make a small profit every win, but gambling online isn't something I want to start doing.

However when pokerstars gave me $5 free money to play with, I thought why not try and earn some money through poker - at least there is skill involved. This was a good plan until I found out that I am/was actually crap at poker lol. I made some research into how to be a good poker player, but I never really cared enough about the money I was given to play properly.

When this was depleted I looked around for other ways I could play poker online without investing any of my own money. Last night this was in fact. So anyway, I found PKR.com after watching one of their tournaments on TV. They have freerolls, where you can win a small amount of cash ($1-$5), and enter for free. This is great, but a freeroll is a tournament. Because it's free everyone wants to enter. Registering isn't a problem, but you are playing against 2000 players for this small amount of cash. To win one of these tournaments would probably take 3-4 hours? They are fun nonetheless though, and my only route to becoming semi-pro at poker, because I have vowed never to use my own money. I finished my best one an hour ago, with a position I was most proud of. 152nd. Now I think that is impressive for a 2000 people tournament. Sadly you only start getting paid at 80th place, and only 14 cents. But it's a good start. I also came 9th out of 244 players in a play money tournament, which I was also pleased with. So maybe there is still hope for earning money online.

PKR is incidently really good. You make an avatar look however you wish and then play with them against other people and their avatars. So its as close as you can get to playing the real thing with people in the room with you. (its all 3D graphics) The TV program just puts a high profile tournament table on, and has a few commentators. If that is all you need to do to make good tv then its a fairly decent program I'd say. Although when the editors leave the bits which the commentators ask to be cut in the program it does help. I was laughing anyway.

So that is the sum total of my money earning exploits this summer. (a few jobs for my Dad got me a bit too).

Interesting? Or was that another waste of time :p