Ask the Readers Winner & a Question
In this post I’ll be announcing the most valuable commenter from last week’s discussion thread. I’ll also be announcing the overall winner of the Ask the Readers competition.
Lastly, I’d like your input on what to do now the discussions have finished.
* * *
This week’s winning commenter for our discussion on making money online is Michael Martine (who offers blog consulting at Remarkablogger) for his insights on making money online through multiple streams:
One thing you’ll hear people say, and with which I agree, is that you should diversify your online income across multiple revenue streams, some of which are fairly automated. For example, I don’t make crazy money from ad-supported blogs, but in spite of how my consulting income fluctuates, I have been able to count on a steady income from AdSense that is always above a certain amount. The time I take to manage these blogs is minimal now (in the beginning it was intense).
While I know AdSense isn’t for everybody, the general idea of having more than one source of online income, or at least aiming for more than one, resonates with me.
Now that I’m relying financially on freelancing alone, it’s become more important to develop some back-up and complimentary income streams –particularly so I have a good answer to the question my friends and family have been asking me lately: “But what if you stop getting work?”
* * *
As promised, it’s time to announce our overall Most Valuable Commenter across all the Ask the Readers discussion from our short-list of winning contributors: Dan, Paidtwice, Spicepuppy, Keira Peney, Alfa King and Michael Martine. Thanks again to all of them for helping make our discussion threads a fun and informative place to be.
It’s hard to separate the winners in terms of quality, so I’ve decided to make the decision based on the amount of involvement in the discussion. For that reason, the winner of the featured link in the sidebar is Paidtwice. She contributed to every thread and always stayed engaged in the discussion after she had said her piece. It was great to see someone so interested in what others had to say.
I’ll be adding the link after I publish this post and it will stay up until the end of January. Congrats!
* * *
A question:
As you might know, last week’s Ask the Readers discussion was our last (for now). The question alluded to in the title of this post is: what would you like me to do with this day — if anything?
As you know, the weekends are pretty quiet. I don’t want to publish a feature post on the weekend because I know a lot of people take a break from web stuff at this time and would be sad to miss out. It would also be great if ideas don’t require too much effort on my part.
Some ideas off the top of my head:
- A case study of a blog/website I believe works well.
- A collection of links on a specific topic.
- A shorter post focusing on one quick tip.
- A short diary on what I’ve been doing to try and earn an income online and to try and build Skelliewag… in other words, a behind-the-scenes look at how I try to put my ideas into practice.
If you have an idea not on the list I’d love to hear it.
Another option is to divert the time required into adding more value to one of the feature post I’ll publish during the week (and therefore not posting on weekends). At the moment I’m leaning towards this option, but I can be swayed.
I’d like this to be a discussion as much as possible, so I’ll be responding to your ideas, considering pros and cons and that sort of thing.
