Given that my blog doesn’t yet have a massive audience (although it’s just a matter of time…mehopes) I was interested to read an article about how blogs can make some income as a stand-alone entity. For those blogs that get a sizable audience then Google AdSense seems to be a good option, although I often get the impression that by putting ads on the blog you are enticing your readers away to a potential competitor.

For less well known blogs then a good way to earn some income is to head over to PayperPost. This is an excellent resource where bloggers get paid for commenting on websites that advertisers want to increase traffic to. The whole sign-up process is very easy and as long you are sensible about what opportunities you accept to comment on you can make a reasonable income.

So if one of your New Year’s resolutions was to start that blog you’ve been musing over then why not do it now and sign up with PayperPost to help earn some money and provide some subjects to blog on.

On a similar note I read a small article in my local paper that described a new service whereby investors could get involved in property investment but more in a trading sense than as specific purchasers. The site is the Property Investment Market. The idea is that you sign up for free and you are then able to deposit funds into your account. The funds can be used to buy shares in properties that are featured on the site. The aim is to attract people who are interested in both an income and/or capital appreciation opportunity. It does not require a lot of money to start as shares are generally a £1 each. The newspaper report said that the average investment is in the region of £3000, so there is scope for people who like the idea of a property investment but who were discouraged by the capital outlay.

I’m considering a small investment to see what potential there is, stay tuned to see how things go.

As 2007 is fast approaching I’ve decided to be more proactive about setting and achieving my goals. I’ve mentioned Michael Masterson in the past as somewhat of a virtual mentor and now I’m going one step further by enrolling on his ETR 2007 Success Plan. Essentially I will be baring my soul and identifying my major goals. This will then be analysed and a report prepared that will show me what I need to do to achieve them. Using a custom made day planner and monthly teleconferences with Robert Cox I hope to accelerate my goal achievement very quickly.

However, this time last year I had 4 years to go and hence wanted to be some way down the road by now. Have I been able to make progress or am I still at the staring gate?

Well as an overall assessment I’d say that I’m not as far advanced as I’d hoped. In fact it has been very much a mixed year performance wise so I am hoping that 2007 turns out to be much more rewarding and focused.

As I look back I started the year with Sports Arbitrage Trading from Risk Free Profit as my main vehicle to profit from. Whilst trading was time consuming and returns were not great my funds did grow slowly for six months or so. Then, one of my main bookmakers decided to limit how much I could trade and this combined with certain other constraints from bookmakers meant that it just wasn’t viable to continue actively trading. I am still profiting from arbitrage trading but not doing it myself. I should just give a mention here to Pinnacle Sports as I found that out of all the bookmakers I used they were by far the most active for arbitrage opportunities and the one company I had no problems with when trading.

I replaced the arbitrage trading with the advisory service from Matt Shaw that works on Fixed Odds Trading. Using an account with BetonMarkets you can make profits by predicting how the financial markets will perform. Unfortunately results have not been great over the last month or so and whilst I can still see some opportunity here there will be some ground to make up. I have a strategy for doing this and whilst it will take some time the ease of placing trades at BetonMarkets makes it an easy decision.

Elsewhere I have a couple of accounts that have the potential to do quite well but have yet to really show it. My accounts at FXIG and Divinius Opulentis are in some ways regrouping and they will need some time to show that a positive return will result. I am positive about both and hope that the first quarter of 2007 we will see some definite signs of progress.

One sore point in the year was Solid Investment, a plan that sucked in a lot of people only to dash their hopes at the last moment. I know we have to expect this sort of thing when investing online but it never makes it any easier when someone you think is honest and upright pulls the plug and waltzes away with a lot of money ploughed into their scheme by honest people. All we can do is learn the lesson (hopefully) for the next one that comes along. 

There were other disappointments through the year but I don’t want to dwell on negative issues and would rather look forward in a positive way.

12by12 daily ceased trading recently although this time I don’t think the admin was dishonest it was more down to a series of events that prevented them from operating efficiently. This means that as far as I am concerned auto surf sites will be looked at somewhat warily, in fact the only one I am with at the moment is CEP Coast as they appear to be operating well and are maintaining contact with their members which I think is a critical factor.

On the positive side of things the programmes that have performed well for me this year are DWS which provides a weekly return of 15% for 14 weeks, MIF that pays 3% a day directly into your ecurrency account, Global Online Depository where you receive 0.35% a day (depending on sum invested) that also allows compounding and Fantastic Pay that is paying on a regular basis. 

I’m still waiting for Shop Right to start paying out on their oilfield venture and the word is that this should start in February 2007. The company are very active in promoting their various services so there is definitely some upside to be had with this opportunity.

The recent two-for-one offer from Global Pension Plan has started to see some very positive results with membership numbers increasing very nicely. The forecast to reach the 100,000 member target is now less than 1 year, that is great news if it turns out to be an accurate estimate.

Latterly I’ve made some investments with GoldClaim where you are able to earn towards purchasing gold coins at a good discount in the future.

Looking forward to 2007 I am keen to get involved with Betfair by laying horses as shown by information from Dataking1. This looks to be a promising way to create a steady secondary income. Also, I’m currently looking into an opportunity for investing in Commercial Property.

Hopefully this time next year I can report a strong performance and a confidence that I will achieve my ultimate goal of financial independence by my 58th birthday.

Let me end by wishing everyone a happy and successful New Year for 2007.

The question of course is when will the $55,000 turn up and there is no quick answer to that. In order for the payout to be made there has to be 100,000 members signed up. At the last count there were some 17,000 already onboard so if everyone who signs up just brings in 2 or 3 people then it won’t take us long to reach the ultimate goal. 

The plan is basically a pension scheme so you do have to be below retirement age to take advantage of the scheme although there is nothing wrong in signing up people if you don’t necessarily meet the scheme’s age criteria as you will still make some very healthy referral fees.

Now, whilst I’m happy with my silver collection growing I’ve always wanted to add some gold coins but was constrained by the cost of each one. Happily I’ve found a way to buy gold at a significant discount and ensure that further purchases are easy to achieve.

There is a private programme called GoldClaim that helps you to save sufficient funds to buy gold coins. As it is a private investment organisation you would not immediately know of it. I was given an introduction by a contact who has been using the service for some time and is very satisfied. There are three plans available, the first requires an investment of $75. This is held for 100 days, after which $50 is transferred to your gold account where you can save it for purchase of a gold coin, another $50 is placed in your holding account so for another $25 deposit you can start another 100 day plan. 

The second plan costs $800 and is effectively ten $75 plans plus a $50 administration charge. In this plan you receive $250 every 100 days for a total of 500 days. Each payment is placed in your gold account so at the end of 500 days you have $1250 in your gold account. After the 500 days $750 is placed back in your holding account where it can be withdrawn or for an extra $50 deposit another $800 plan can start. 

The third plan requires a deposit of $4000 (fifty $75 plans plus $250 administration fee). After every 100 days (for a total of 500 days), $750 is placed in the members gold account and $500 in their holding account. At the end of the 500 days $3750 is placed in the holding account where it can be withdrawn or another $250 added to start a new $4000 plan.

Whilst this may seen a little complicated if you take some time to review the GoldClaim site you will see that this is an extremely good way of obtaining gold coins with little risk.

Now it can’t be denied that there are crooks out there who set up fly by night operations so that they can fleece the unsuspecting investor, to me this programme was not one of them. It’s hard enough trying to find genuine opportunities on the internet and situations like this don’t help at all.

Luckily I had heeded my own advice and not invested that much but even so I did lose a little so again more lessons to learn.

Given that lots of people will be going on-line for the first time after having received a brand new PC there is a risk that they may find themselves a victim of dishonest exploiters. So, remember that everything that glitters is not gold. At this time of year many new sites pop up that offer unrealistically high returns on investment. Just take extra care and before you commit any of your hard-earned money take some time to do some basic research, otherwise known as due diligence.

There are many sites that will give you advice and guidance on what steps you need to take before parting with money, understand of course that no-one can predict the future and whilst a programme may be delivering on it’s promises there is a chance that it may run into problems and you may lose your investment.

To help lessen the risk you should find out about any potential investment by checking out forums and doing a search on the internet. Also, diversify your investments so that you spread the risk and never risk more money than you can afford to lose. I know this has been said many times but it’s remarkable how easy our defences can be breached if we are not vigilant.

It’s been some time since I mentioned the Fixed Odds service from Matt Shaw and I think it I would be negligent of me to hide something which I feel is relevant where people are considering an investment. From all of the this you may have surmised that the trades recommended by Matt Shaw have not proved that successful in recent weeks. To quote Matt himself “We had a great run before these losses, and I am bitterly disappointed“. 

What this means is that my BetonMarkets account has taken something of a hammering. However, I do believe that there is still good returns to be made and as I do not have the time to identify trades myself I will stick with the recommendations from Matt for the time being. This will probably lead to some more conservative trades being recommended but looking longer term I think that this will be a good thing.

I mentioned that I was considering a slightly larger investment in MIF as they have been paying 3% directly into my e-currency account regularly. So, last night I followed through and made the new deposit. Again, the sum involved could not be considered large but it will certainly start to show a difference in my account. 

At the same time I made a further deposit into my DWS account as once more they are paying regularly, this time 15% of your deposit for a period of 14 weeks. 

One of the most successful autosurf programmes is 12by12Daily and I have some money with them. They have encountered further problems recently and a new system has been introduced whereby to get highest priority for payouts you have to have at least 50% of the payout value invested as new upgrades. Luckily my investment is not that large but even so given the fact that I don’t like to keep money sitting in my e-currency account doing nothing it does make it difficult to react quickly when situations like this arise. Just glad I don’t have thousands of dollars waiting to be withdrawn. Ironically the admin at 12by12Daily has always played it very straight with members but ne’er do wells continually strive to destroy legitimate businesses like this, the result of which is that all the honest people suffer. Again, the lesson to learn is to treat each programme as a very temporary venture and not to invest too much in any particular one.

When I originally started this blog I was heavily involved in Sports Arbitrage Trading with Risk Free Profit and as time has progressed I moved away from it as it was taking a lot of time to operate and the returns weren’t that significant given the amount of time invested. Now, one thing that I was involved with as part of the trading was betting exchanges, for example, Betfair.

When I was reading the Sunday Times yesterday I saw an advert for a plan that suggested that good returns could be earned and when I went to the Dataking1 website it described a plan that uses betting exchanges as a way of profiting. I’ve decided to see whether the offer is worthwhile and am waiting for the CD’s. I’ve always believed that laying horses must be a good way to earn money and hopefully the plan will explain things in more detail.

Earnings are generated by the advertising that is done within the emails that are sent to you to read. And it’s not as though you will be sent emails that won’t interest you as you can choose the categories that would of interest. I joined just a week ago and my member number is in the 6500′s. As I write today there are now more than 13800 members so growth is accelerating, why not take the time to see what  Take the Internet Back is all about, you will be pleasantly surprised.

On a slightly different note I’ve recently joined Desktop Lightning which is a service that provides a great way to send information to those in your network. You will need to download a small piece of software and register but after that all you need do is create a buzz with your close contacts and explain just how exciting the Desktop Lightning facility can be if used correctly. No more having to worry about whether your email gets blacklisted as this system bypasses email and delivers directly to your contacts desktop.