Mystery Shopping Road Trip

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My wife and I went on a mystery shopping road trip Wednesday.  This is a good way to increase your earnings from mystery shopping.  We did shops in some small towns that were 1-2 hours away from us.  Shops in little towns often go undone and the mystery shopping companies will give you nice bonuses to do them before the end of the month.  It isn’t cost effective to drive an hour or so each way for just one shop but by both of us going we were able to make the road trip worthwhile.  We did two bank shops and four fast-food shops.  The bank we shopped for only allows a shopper to do one shop a day but since there were two of us we were each able to pick up a nicely bonused shop in towns located close to each other.  At the end of the day we made about $150 and had received five free meals and only spent about $20 on gas.  Since we only actually worked a couple hours each I consider that a pretty good deal.

Incandescent Bulbs Being Phased Out

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I was surprised to read yesterday that incandescent bulbs are being phased out in the United States.  I was aware that they were being phased out in other countries but somehow missed the news that they were being phased out here.  Under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 signed into law by President Bush most incandescent bulbs will be phased out between 2012 and 2014.  This will leave CFLs as the main lighting option.  The goal of the legislation is to increase energy efficiency.

I like CFLs but I still only have a couple in my apartment.  This is mainly because the apartment I live in supplies most of the bulbs and they aren’t CFLs.  I just use CFLs in a couple of lamps.  When incandescent bulbs are no longer available the conversion to CFLs could be expensive for some people although they will eventually save money in the form of lower electric bills.  Even though I think everyone should use CFLs I’m not sure if I agree with giving people no other choice.  What do you think?

Online Income Report – December 2010

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Here is a breakdown of my online income for December 2010.

Google Adsense – $195.56

Affiliate Income – $1095

Brokered Ads – $49.88

Direct Ads – $171.36

Total – $1511.80

My online income was once again over $1000 in December.  This was by far my best year for making money online.  I came close to grossing five figures.  My goal for this year is to make a five figure profit.  It looks like I will have a pretty good start this month although I haven’t made much affiliate income for next month.  On the plus side I have picked up a couple more monthly text links which should help smooth out my income a tiny bit.

December Income – $1816.86

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Here is a breakdown of my income for December.

Online Income

$1511.80

Interest

$11.73

Stock Dividends

$111.94

Mystery Shops

$150

Bank Bonuses

$10

Survey/Cashback

$21.39

Total

$1816.86

It was a pretty good month for income.  My online income reached a new high.  If I could make that consistently I wouldn’t need to worry about a day job.  Since none of the income for the month was from a day job you might say I’m not worrying about the day job now.  My online income won’t be as high this month but it should still be over $1000 which I consider pretty good.

This month I’ll make more money from mystery shopping plus have job income.  Stock dividends will be down due to their quarterly nature.  There shouldn’t be any other big differences in my income.  My combination of alternative and passive income is working well and I plan to add to it this year.