Ducking and Diving with IM

[Ruffle5]

Hi all,

As mentioned in my welcome post I'm new here. I lurked for a while a few years back but never joined as I was always too busy with work. Now that I have a bit more free time I thought I would dip my toes in to the world of IM to see what I can learn and - more importantly - if I can make any money!

I have a few skills that I think will be useful:

• I'm a native English speaker and I can write quite well.
  
• I'm quite organised, so I'm good at handling data and things like that.
• I've always been a hard worker, and I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, (or in the world of IM, get my ass out of my chair).
• I'm also confident with building a website, editing images and other skills like that.

One disadvantage though is that I'm a bit out of touch with today's technology. I know very little about the latest and greatest smartphones and other gadgets, simply because these things do not interest me. I expect that at some point I will have to do something about that if I wish to get ahead.

So what I have I done to start?
As my journey title suggests I will very much be ducking and diving, doing various things to earn little bits of money and gaining knowledge as I go. Then hopefully I will find a gap in the market somewhere that I can exploit and milk the crap out of as much as possible.

For a long time, I've liked the idea of building and growing a Facebook page, as if done correctly the marketing opportunities and rewards are excellent. So I thought I would have a go at building one from scratch. I sat and thought for a little while, and came up with what I thought was a good idea for a page. It's based around quite a popular hobby, something that I know a little bit about and find relatively enjoyable myself. There are also plenty of things to promote in this niche, so monetising the page shouldn't be a problem once I have sufficient people following. More on this later.

I also like the idea of having something quick and simple that can earn me small amounts of money every now and then with very little effort. So I spent a few minutes thinking of something that people would pay a small amount for, and created an eBay listing. It's nothing new, and I don't expect to make much bank from this, but it's nice to earn something out of virtually nothing.

As I mentioned previously I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty. So I signed up to a few local Freecycle groups around my local area and the area where I work. A lot of the stuff on Freecycle is practically rubbish, but every now and then something may pop up that will make me a bit of free money if I post it on eBay. For those who don't know what Freecycle is, it's a website where people give things away that they no longer need. Old furniture and things like that, much like the 'Free' selection on Craigslist.

I have one or two other ideas in the pipeline, both of which require me to build and rank a niche website, so I still have a bit of research to do on the BHW forums and elsewhere before I invest any considerable time and effort into these. I still have a lot to read on this website, so I will get on with that now and provide you with an update in a couple of days. (If anyone's actually read this far of course)

 

[esmeralda]

Being organized is a big advantage on this. Good luck with your journey!

 

[Ruffle5]

Being organized is a big advantage on this. Good luck with your journey!

That's good to know, thanks for the kind words.

 

[Ruffle5]

In my last update I said I would have more information on my Facebook page. Although I am a Facebook member, I hardly ever use it so building a page will be a learning curve for me. I didn’t spend much time trying to think of a topic for the page. I figured that it would be difficult to get a following to a page that was too niche-specific. So I kept things simple and picked a common hobby that can be monetised. It doesn’t matter that there are already similar pages, as people on Facebook can like and follow more than one page.

I created the page on 4th April. I created a profile photo and timeline cover first, then I filled in as many relevant details as possible in the about section. I registered a Hotmail email address specifically for the page and put this email address in the contact details. To make things easier I set the Hotmail address up to forward all mail to my usual email address, so that I don’t have to keep signing in to check it.

After I filled in the relevant details I did a quick post. This post was just to welcome people to the page, explain that we are a new page, and that we would appreciate if people followed us and shared our posts if they liked our content. I pinned this post to the top of the page.

Now for creating the content. For this page I will be creating a post every day. Without giving away my niche, the content of the posts will consist of an image that is resized to fit nicely into the Facebook page layout, and text over the image. I’m quite skilled on Photoshop so once I’ve thought of the post content it only takes a minute or so to create it. I created a batch of 10 of these so that I have one per day for the next 10 days.

Now I had some content, I needed some followers. As I plan to monetise this page one day I need to make sure that the followers are targeted people who are actually interested in my page topic. From what I can tell, the quickest and easiest way to do this is by using the ‘Boost Post’ feature. This puts your post in front of thousands of people, and those who are interested can like the post and follow the page. So I wrote a little bit about my page, included a little joke and attached one of the images I had made earlier and boosted the post. I set my budget to £1 per day for 7 days.

5 days in and the post has reached just over 1,000 people. Out of these people, 46 people have liked it, and 2 have shared it. I noticed that despite 46 people liking my post, none of them actually liked my page, so they wouldn’t see any of my new content when I added it. So I found the list of people who liked my post, and invited every single person on it to like my page. A few hours later and my page now has 28 likes. A couple of people have commented on some other posts, and I have interacted with them to make the page look busy, and I’ve continued adding my daily post. I also wrote a post to thank people who had liked my page, and encourage them to share my posts on their timelines if they like them.

Meanwhile I have sold 2 of my ‘money from nothing’ products on eBay, which has given me a grand total of £4.42 after fees. It’s tiny acorns, but at least it’s something.

I am also the proud owner of a stair gate that someone near my work was getting rid of Freecycle. These things are always in high demand with people who have children and dogs, so I see it as an easy £5 when I resell it on eBay.

Now I have to do some reading on the BHW forums, as I've not read as much as I'd have liked to. Until next time!