Selling children's books

Ok, on a side note I'm getting a little hacked off with myself that I haven't earned enough money. I haven't been able to do as much as I'd have like and have had to take about a week away from computer due to some family events, so I'm playing catch up.

This way of making money won't be for everyone, and isn't strictly "selling online"... it's more traditional selling, but setting up a facebook page, a blog and other social media accounts will certainly help.

Selling children's books also usually requires an initial investment of up to £100, for initial stock and sales samples. Once you have these and are all set up you can sell your books to friends and family, and schools and playgroups, offer home shopping parties, and promote them online.

Obviously this requires a little more out and about work than purely internet based opportunities, but then the money made is usually higher.

There are several companies you can sell children's books through. Usborne are one of the best known, but they have a lot of distributors so you may already know one. Barefoot Books are also quite well known, and Poppy's Books is becoming more popular. 

This opportunity is really worth considering if you have school age children, live near a lot of schools, or have lots of friends with children.

Day 20: £52.83

Time to get pretty...

Ok one of the other things I set out to do here wasn't to just make money, but to change the way I look and feel. I think it's time to get cracking on that one.

Now I am unfit. There is no way to pretty this up. I do no regular exercise, I don't even walk much. So I'm going to start very small and work my way up.

Firstly I'm going to either go for a 25 minute walk, or do the following set of exercises 3 times a week:

-Walk up and down stairs for 3 minutes. (not running, just normal walking).

- Stand with arms held out at 90 degrees from body for 1 minute.

- Lie flat on back with legs straight and feet raised 6" off the ground for 1 minute.

- Repeat first three steps 3 times.

Now I know none of these things are going to make me a super-model over night, but this is my starting point.

Day 14: £40.76

Let's get blogging

Ok, so if you've been following along here, by now you'll have a few different ways to pull in some income. What I think is going to be really helpful is to have a blog to pull all this together. It will be a place to post and reviews you do, either because you're getting paid to, or because you wish to promote an item you are selling via affiliate selling, (or why not both?).

There are many blogging platforms out there but the two most popular seem to be Blogger and Wordpress. Personally I've always been a Blogger girl, but I know lots of people swear by Wordpress, it really comes down to which system you like the look of better. They are both very easy to set-up and use.

Think of your blog as a store front for everything you do, use the side bards to post links to your freelancing profiles, as well as posting general content. Don't forget to post links to your blog posts on social media to help build a following.

Day 8: £21.26

Freelancing

By whatever stage in your life you are now you will have some skills that other people will be willing to pay for. Freelancing is becoming a big thing, with "micro job" sites, such as Fiverr and Fiverup, really taking off.

As well as the smaller job sites, there are plenty resources out there for you to advertise your skills and make money on slightly bigger freelance projects. PeoplePerHour and Freelancer both provide hundreds of opportunities across a wide range of services and sectors.

You can freelance anything and everything, from proof reading, to prank calling someones boss for them. There really is an opportunity for everyone across these sites so have a look through them and get some inspiration.

There are other business models to freelancing too. With sites like PrestoExperts you can set up your own telephone helpline. Do you have IT qualifications, Law knowledge, teaching experience, speak another language, experience in spiritual counceling? All of these thing, and a lot more can be used to generate money with the telephone adviser business model. Again, have a look at the site for ideas, you often don't realise the skills you have are valuable until you see others making money from them.

Day 4: -£44.99

Are paid surveys really worth it?

So I'm well into my first week trying to find ways to make money (and get pretty... but we're focusing on the money here first!). When I've been trawling the internet looking to make money from home one of the things that keeps popping up is paid surveys. Now whilst they look very tempting, it seems very few actually pay out, there's a lot of "prize draw" entries, but a lack of cash.

I have found 1 exception to this, YouGov. Now the figures aren't huge at 5000 "point" getting you a £50 cheque, but it's a nice little addition to your money making repertoire. The average survey is worth 100 points and takes 5-10 minutes, so it may only be about minimum wage levels, but every little helps.

It doesn't take much to sign up, and they don't send you spam, the only thing you need to watch out for is the pop-up box after you've finished the survey asking you if you'd like to trade some of your points for a prize draw entry, just close it and keep you points in the bank.

Day 3: -£49.99

Where the hell to start

Ok, I'm not stupid, I'm not falling for any of the "millionaires are trying to get this banned" scams online. However, I know there's ways to pull money out of the internet, and some of them have to be obtainable without a start up budget.

Given how much I fear HMRC and the jobcentre I wanted to do this properly too... time to put on my big girl knickers and walk off that cliff.

I have spoken to the powers that be and advised them that I am now a "self-employed" person. The tax year doesn't end for almost another 12 months (April 5th) and I can do the sole-trader return online, so that's not too terrifying. I also had to inform the Tax Credits office, and the local council because of me housing benefit. The housing benefit will no doubt be the one that takes forever to sort out.

Given that I plan on pulling money out of nowhere, there's not really anything I need to start up, apart from the internet. Now, due to the fact I'm a skint as fuck single mother I can't do home broadband contracts, not without giving them a deposit, so I've been working with a mobile dongle, but it's seen better days. I have taken the executive decision that as internet access is pretty crucial here, to treat myself to a new mobile wifi hotspot. These aren't massively expensive at about £40-£50... but when that's equivalent to 2 weeks shopping budget... it was a considered purchase for me.

I also decided to treat myself to a book, '6 Months to 6 Figures', by Peter Voogd, which is reported to be very good, and from what I've read so far is great.

Have you noticed it yet? Yep! First way to make money!

Amazon Affiliate Program
Affiliate selling basically means you get a small payment from a company when you recommend their products, and someone actually buys them. Ok, the form is a bit long winded, but it's fairly straight forward to sign up.

Once you are all signed up, it's fairly easy to use as every time you login to Amazon you'll now have a special "affiliate toolbar":

This means you can easily click "Link to this page" and get copy and paste HTML code for little ads like the ones above. Even if you don't have anywhere to post the ads you can click the little down arrow icon next to "Share" and simply share links to you facebook or twitter.

Day 1: -£49.99