December Round Up – Our Favorite Income Reports From Around the Web

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December Roundup – Our Favorite Income Reports From Around the Web

Today we take a look around the internet at our favorite income reports from around the web. These articles bring together seven to ten bloggers to see what they did in the past month. Some of these people will be fresh for this month while others will be regulars.

The point of this article is for all of us to learn what other bloggers are doing to bring income in each month. Hopefully, you will find something new to increase your own income next month.

Before we get started, let’s take a look at how Andrew did in December. Overall, he had a pretty successful month bringing in $190.49 during the month. He also wrapped up 2017 with a total count of the income he made online. So, go check out his income report to see how he accomplished it and give him a congratulations comment at the bottom.

Here we go with this month’s featured bloggers!

Pat Flynn – $213,212.64 (November 2017)

Pat’s income reports are always a month behind because I do this roundup at the beginning of the month and he posts later on in the month.

This month Pat talks about how he is getting anxious to start something new. Most of his business has become a well oiled automated machine so he has no place for creative freedom. Well, this month he decided to make a bigger dedication to his Youtube channel.

With this new old adventure (he has had his channel since 2009) he is energized again to have a new challenge. As it is every year, it will be fun to see what he does in 2018!

Michelle Schroeder – $1,536,732 (2017)

WOW!!! What a year by Michelle!

Every December she wraps up the year by totaling up what she earned throughout the year. Back in 2013, when she left her 9-5 job, she earned $116,519. Four years later she has multiplied that number by 13 to earn 1,536,732 in 2017!

It is going to be exciting to see what Michelle does in 2018 to keep the ball rolling. Keep up the good work Michelle!

Lanny and Bert – Dividend Diplomats – $2,009.22 (December 2017 Lanny’s)

So I had to do a double take when I saw Lanny’s dividend income this month. I thought I was looking at a total for 2017! WOW! What a month Lanny!

This is the way to end 2017 and how to go into 2018 fired up!

Obviously, December 2017, was a new personal record for Lanny bringing in $2,009.22 just off of dividend income. Two of his stocks, PRFDX and VINIX, brought in over $1,000 alone.

This is really impressive Lanny! Keep up the good work!

Curious as to what the heck dividend income is? Andrew explains it really well in his What are Dividends and Dividend Investing article. Check it out to learn more!

 

 

 

Reverse the Crush – $11.57 (December 2017)

Reverse the Crush is fairly new to the dividend investing world, starting just six months ago. He just completed his second-best month ever earning $11.57 in December!

Reverse the Crush has a goal to make $1,500 each month from only dividend income. This will allow him to leave the 9 to 5 job to focus on blogging full time.

We wish him the best of luck in the coming months. Keep up the good work!

Bobby Hoyt – Millennial Money Man – $13,186.26 (December 2017)

Bobby is a pretty incredible blogger to follow because he knows how to reach people. His blog set many new personal records during 2017 such as reaching over 1 million readers! That is pretty awesome Bobby! Congrats!

In December he brought in $13,186.26 through affiliate marketing, advertisements, and digital marketing consulting. This month he just let the website do its thing while he focused on completing and planning some new projects.

Keep an eye out for those new projects!

Millennial Boss – $2,560 (December 2017)

Millennial Boss (MB) is new to this report. I stumbled upon her blog on Twitter earlier this week.

It is really impressive what MB has accomplished such as paying off over $90,000 in loans to become debt free. She also co-hosts a new podcast called the Fire Drill Podcast. AND she crushed her goal to make over $18,000 from side hustle income during 2017 by actually making over $23,000.

Basically she does it all!

MB capped 2017 off by bringing in $2,560 in the month of December. She mainly makes her money affiliate marketing. It is actually really impressive how diversified her affiliates are. I suggest you check out her list!

Keith Park – DivHut – $682.74 (November 2017)

Keith crushed it in the month of November! He had a 26% year over year gain to bring his monthly total to $682.74. Well done Keith! Keep it growing for 2018!

Keith has a very nice and clean strategy to gaining extra income from dividends. Andrew has also written up what his strategy is in his My Dividend Investing Strategy.

More from Keith to come up next!

Outcomes

I always love the wise words that Keith speaks in his posts. This month he talks about the patience and persistence of dividend investing. It takes time to build a solid passive income no matter what your income stream is.

Even if you have a down month, keep your head up and keep moving forward.

If you are looking to diversify your income sources more. Check out our Ways to Earn More Money page. Here Andrew and I personally review as many different ways to earn extra money as we can to help you decide if it is right for you.

11 Last Minutes Budget Friendly Christmas Gifts for the Family

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Wow! Christmas is just around the corner! There is literally only 7 more days left until you and your family will be opening gifts around the tree.

Wait!!! WHAT!?!? You have not gotten them gifts yet?

Do not worry! We have you covered with some pretty awesome budget friendly Christmas gift ideas.

Before we start…I do want to be upfront about these gift ideas. Andrew and I pride ourselves in trying and testing anything before we promote it to you. For this article, this is not the case. We have not tried any of these gifts beforehand so we cannot tell you if they are awesome, good quality, or a waste of time. These are merely just some budget friendly gift ideas that sound awesome!

Okay, there is no more time to waste! Let’s jump right into the gifts!

Gifts For Dad

Wifi Smart Plugs: These smart plugs are super cheap! I like that because normally they cost close to $70! The plugs sync right up to the VeSync app on your phone. Any nerdy Dad who loves data (like me) will love these because the plugs will track how much power you are using through that particular outlet. The best part is these plugs will work perfectly with the next budget friendly Christmas gift for Dad.

Echo Dot:  The Echo Dot is currently only $29.99 (prices may vary) which is a steal! The Echo uses Alexa to help you, “play music, control smart home devices, make calls, send and receive messages, provide information, read the news, set alarms, read audiobooks from Audible, control Amazon Video on Fire TV, and more.” 

All of my friends, including Andrew, that have an Alexa love them!

Praise the Lard: I got this cookbook for my brother a few months ago as he loves to smoke meats. This cookbook is written by Mike Mills, known as “The Legend” of barbecue, and his daughter. The cookbook gives plenty of recipes for various rubs, how-to’s, and meat choices.

This is one gift idea that I can give a recommendation for!

 

Gifts for Mom

Star Wars Mug: This coffee mug will make any Star Wars Mom happy! The lightsabers are heat activated, so as the coffee warms the mug, the lightsabers appear that they are turning on. There are three different sizes of the mug depending on how much coffee you need to drink to get moving in the morning.

Spa Gift Basket: What Mom doesn’t love taking a long bath to get away from life for a little bit? Here is a gift basket full of shower gel, body lotion, bubble bath, bath salt & bath puff (whatever that is…).

A spa gift basket will hopefully help Mom relax as she takes a break from the Nerf gun fight going on between Dad and the kids in the living room!

Sudoku Books: My wife loves Sudoku books and I am sure there are many other Mom’s out there that love them too! With 400 puzzles in this book, I am sure this book will keep her busy for a while!

 

Gifts for the Kids

BB-8 Droid: Okay, this thing just looks cool! Even though it is a bit pricey, it is currently 50% off! This mini BB-8 replica listens to multiple voice commands such as rolling next to you as you walk around. There is also a remote control that allows you to have full control of it.

If you would like to get me a gift for Christmas, this is the one! Really, I am just a big kid.

Black & Decker Jr. Fun Tool Set: Any kid loves to mimic Dad (or Mom) while they attempt to fix the various things that can break in a house. This junior toolset will allow them to do just that! I am sure, one day, my little one will be following me around with a toolset similar to this one!

Toss and Catch Net: These are intended for playing catch in the pool but I could see them working on dry land as well. I learned to play catch with a very similar toy.

Now just add the German Shepherd ready to run you over as he is chasing the ball. Your kid will learn how to catch and throw the ball just as quickly as I did!

Wooden Blocks: What kid doesn’t love building with wooden blocks then taking their Godzilla toy to knock down the blocks?

Wonder Workshop Dash Robot: Okay, this toy is nowhere near to being budget friendly ($279.99) but this is the coolest toy that I have ever seen! I just had to include it on this list. This is an educational robot that allows your kids to learn how to code. Your kid will follow any of the hundreds of coding adventures so the robot can complete simple tasks or be their sidekick! It is no wonder that this toy has been winning all the best toy awards!

 

Conclusion

Are you still reading this? What are you waiting for?!?! It’s time to go get some gifts for your loved ones!

 

November Round Up – Our Favorite Income Reports From Around the Web

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November Round Up – Our Favorite Income Reports From Around the Web

Today we take a look around the internet at our favorite income reports from around the web. These articles bring together seven to ten bloggers to see what they did in the past month. Some of these people will be fresh for this month while others will be regulars.

The point of this article is for all of us to learn what other bloggers are doing to bring income in each month. Hopefully, you will find something new to increase your own income next month.

Speaking of increasing income, Andrew had another great month in November!  He brought in $89.57 during the month. Check out his income report to see how he accomplished it and give him a congratulations comment at the bottom.

Here we go with this month’s featured bloggers!

Pat Flynn – $145,511.70 (August 2017)

Pat’s income has been pretty volatile the last few months. I think the only thing that goes up and down more is the price of Bitcoin. One month he is making $184,000, the next $321,000, then back down to $140,000, then up to $220,000, and finally back down to $145,511.70 this month.

I do not know about you but that would stress me out from month to month!

Now in Pat’s defense, he released a new product every month there was a spike. He has done a very nice job creating a solid base income that he can rely on from month to month (about the $140,000 range). Then he stacks on that foundation with new product releases.

He has created this foundation with a diverse set of income streams that range from affiliate income to niche sites to sponsorships to software.

 

Michelle Schroeder – $110,656 (November 2017)

Michelle’s numbers are always strong and consistent. She made $110,656 in November which is right around her normal range, $110,000 to $135,000.

She makes most of her income from affiliate income, the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course, sponsorships, and advertisements.

Currently, Michelle works anywhere from 10-20 hours a week on her blog reaping in all of the benefits of the hard work she put in earlier. Keep up the good work Michelle!

Lanny and Bert – Dividend Diplomats – $274.98 (November 2017 Bert’s)

Here goes the same monthly spiel about why I like to follow Lanny and Bert’s adventure for two reasons. One, they are two best friends seeking financial freedom just like Andrew and I. Second, you can get two different perspectives on dividend investing from one place!

This month we will look at Bert’s November dividend income report. Bert had a stunning 71.66% increase compared to his 2016 November numbers bringing his total to $274.98.

Well done Bert!

Curious as to what the heck dividend income is? Andrew explains it really well in his What are Dividends and Dividend Investing article. Check it out to learn more!

 

Jay – Dividend Miracle – $138.80 (November 2017)

This month we introduce several new bloggers to the income report. This is nothing against the other bloggers who were on the report before. I just wanted to introduce some new blood to this post so we can all learn from other people. First up is Jay from Dividend Miracle.

Jay started building up his dividend income to help his family gain financial freedom. This money will hopefully be passed down to his daughter and generations after that.

This month they brought in $138.80 from a wide array of dividend stocks. I’m actually really impressed by the list. Check it out as you might learn a new one to invest in.

Jay has a very nice and clean strategy to gaining extra income from dividends. Andrew has also written up what his strategy is in his My Dividend Investing Strategy.

Leah – The Sweetest Way – $1933.53 (September 2017)

The Sweetest Way might be my favorite new blog. I love to travel but do not get to like I would like to. Darn you adult responsibilities!

Anyways, I always love a good blog that I can live my dreams of traveling through. The cool thing about Leah from The Sweetest Way is she just started reporting her income reports a few months ago from the work she does while traveling. We get the best of two worlds!

Leah talks about creating passive income so you can travel around the globe. She also talks about gaining location independence, which sounds pretty cool!

She currently makes most of her money from advertisements, affiliate income, sponsorships, and e-books. Pretty sweet!

Keep up the good work Leah and I look forward to following your adventures in the future!

Reverse the Crush – $5.14 (November 2017)

Reverse the Crush is fairly new to the dividend investing world starting just six months ago. He is off to a great start bringing in $5.14 in November from 2 companies.

Reverse the Crush has a goal to make $1,500 each month from only dividend income. This will allow him to leave the 9 to 5 job to focus on blogging full time.

We wish him the best of luck in the coming months. Keep up the good work!

Samantha – Recipe This – $29,171.58 (2017)

Recipe This is a food blog run by food addict Samantha. We have never featured a food blog and I thought it would be fun mainly because I love food and cooking my self.

This income report focuses on ALL of the income Recipe This made during 2017. They make their money from a very diverse set of income streams. These range from sponsorships, Google Adsense, Amazon Associates, consulting, advertisements, and so much more!

Recipe This will be a fun blog to follow in the future.

Outcomes

We can learn from Pat’s volatile income stream to have a solid income base. For me, right now, that is my day job until Wallet Squirrel starts taking off. You will need this in case things go sideways.

Do you have a solid base income that would support your family?

If you are looking to diversify your income sources more. Check out our Ways to Earn More Money page. Here Andrew and I personally review as many different ways to earn extra money as we can to help you decide if it is right for you.

Google Opinion Rewards – Earn Very Little Money in 30 Seconds or Less!

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Google Opinion Rewards – Earn Very Little Money in 30 Seconds or Less!

Who does not love some free in-game purchases? Sounds pretty awesome, right?

Well, you can have that, even if you are an iOS user (they pay you Apple users through PayPal rather than giving you Google Play credits).

Let me introduce you to Google Opinion Rewards. A great way to earn tiny bits of money to use on fun!

What is Google Opinion Rewards?

There are SO many fun “cheap” apps, games, music, movies, books, and so on within the Google Play application. It is sometimes tough to not splurge on something within the store.

With Google Opinion Rewards, you can earn “free” money by answering simple surveys to pay for anything within the Google Play store. This also includes in-game purchases.

The big drawback is that it does take time to earn that money. It takes a few months to earn enough to purchase something.

If you actually want to earn a little more money from surveys for something more serious, then check out the Best Survey Sites That Pay Cash.

How does it work?

The survey questions that appear in Google Opinion Rewards come from Google Surveys. This is a service offered by Google that allows companies and organizations do market research on specific audiences.

When a survey is created and you match the demographic they are looking for, you receive the survey.

The application gives you a notification saying that you have a survey waiting to be filled out.

Hop in the survey, fill it out, give them your social security number, and send them a blood sample. It all only takes a minute or less.

Then Google pays you!

What data do they collect?

When you sign up your first survey will include a series of demographic questions such as age, gender, and zip/postal code.

Then Google Opinion Rewards will send you a notification that you have a survey. The company will gather the information you provide to them when answering the questions as well as the general demographic data.

The companies will not get anything personally identifying you such as name, address, social security number, or anything else like that. There is a chance a local business might ask permission to post the review up on their site. You will be clearly notified if this is the case and have the option to decline.

For more information, you can check out the Google Opinion Rewards privacy page.

What kind of questions are there?

I wish I had a screenshot of a question but I do not. I have not been asked to answer any surveys since writing this article.

Most of the questions they ask me are, “Have you visited this store? What form of payment did you use?” Here I am assuming they are trying to study trends/patterns on how people pay at different stores in different locations.

Other questions were about hobbies such as if I enjoy mushroom hunting. Weird but I guess its a viable question.

I have also been asked about Youtube (Google owns YouTube) videos I have watched in the past. This I am assuming they are doing market research on video trends/patterns people like to watch.

Overall, there is a whole array of questions they ask, do not let them surprise you.

How much can you earn?

Let’s get this straight, you will not get rich by using Google Opinion Rewards. I look at this service purely for fun money within the Google Play store.

On average you will make $0.10 to $0.25 per survey. The most I have ever earned from one survey was $1.00. Not going to lie, that was a pretty exciting moment!

Like I said, you will not get rich from this survey platform. You will gain some extra “fun” money to use on some frivolous spending.

I have used this money on this sweet application to help me identify mountains in Colorado. I have also used my earned Google Play credits for in-game purchases within Pokemon Go.

Yes, I still play that silly game. 🙂

I have also used it on practical purchases to help me reprogram the Bixby button on my Note 8.

Is it right for you?

To determine if Google Opinion Rewards is right for you, answer these questions below.

Do you have an extra 30 seconds here and there to answer some quick survey questions?

Do you want to answer questions about yourself providing data to some company in return earning a little money?

Do you want to earn some extra fun money for some frivolous spending?

If you answer yes to all of these questions then Google Opinion Rewards is a good fit for you. If you answered no to any of the questions, then I would look for other ways to make money.

Personally, for me, I do not mind answering these surveys for random companies around the world. My main reason for being okay with it is that I am not providing them with any identifiable personal data.

Website Performance – Decrease Your Page Load Time Now

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When I joined Wallet Squirrel a few months ago, I came in with several goals to complete the website. My first goal was to improve the SEO with a formalized SEO Strategy, read about our Ultimate SEO Guide for 2017. Secondly, I wanted to increase the value of the website by creating a ton more excellent content on top of Andrew’s. Lastly, I wanted to improve the overall website performance by decreasing our page load time.

After a lot of work, this last goal has been completed! In this article, I, Adam, will talk through what Andrew and I have been working on to increase Wallet Squirrel’s overall website performance.

Special Thanks To Ross!

Firstly, I want to thank Ross over at Paid Insights, who gave us some great advice on helping us speed up Wallet Squirrel. Though I did not use every plugin he recommended, he did point me in the right direction. For this advice, we are very grateful for.

If you have not checked out his site, please do. He is an expert in paid search campaigns. Whether you are looking to get started on your first or 50th campaign I would look into his services. Plus, he has an awesome podcast so you can learn more about the PPC (Pay Per Click) and AdWords world.

New Hosting

We used to host Wallet Squirrel on iPage but were tired of the poor performance of their servers. The lack of website performance and slow page load times helped us make the decision to move over to Bluehost. The new hosting service provided a great package that took care of several items on our list.

Bluehost is our choice for website hosting. You should check them out too!

Firstly, they offered high-performance servers that would help improve our overall page load time. Improving those load times improves the user experience. With the short attention spans of our society, your website needs to load quickly. If the page load time is high then you are most likely to lose visitors not willing to deal with the poor website performance.

Secondly, the Bluehost package we chose, the Pro Package, came with an SSL certificate. Now, the SSL certificate does not help out with the overall website performance. What it does do, is increase our SEO rankings with Google.

Thirdly, we were also able to get a dedicated IP address. This is another item that does not decrease the page load time of Wallet Squirrel. But Google does look fondly on dedicated IP addresses. I am not fully sure why but it is nice to have that helping us out with rankings as well.

Compressing Images

Even with high-performance servers having poorly compressed images will slow down the page load time of any website. We had about 3,500 images that were bogging down the website performance of Wallet Squirrel.

Use TinyPNG for compressing your images.

To compress all of these images required an awesome plugin and we found one thanks to Ross. He pointed us in the direction of TinyPNG. The plugin was able to compress the images by 62.8% taking them from an initial size of 415.91 MB to just 154.92 MB. After the compression, our server response time went from 4 seconds to an extremely fast .21 of a second.

If you are looking for a good image compression plugin for WordPress, I highly recommend TinyPNG. The interface is clean and simple. The compression process does take some time but performs amazingly well in the background letting you work on other tasks.

Caching

Caching allows the website’s page load time to decrease significantly. This is because caching temporary stores the content on a user’s computer. This allows the page to load a lot faster the next time someone visits the website.

W3 Total Cache is a lot more robust versus WP Super Cache.

Right now we are WP Super Cache. This is a very basic and easy cache plugin for WordPress. I am in the process of testing out a new plugin called W3 Total Cache. This plugin is a lot more complicated but handles a lot more responsibility. When using it, I felt like the website performance increased dramatically. I had to disable it because the caching is a lot more firm compared to WP Super Cache. I should be able to get it working with some more testing.

Cache-Control Header

Cache control helps with telling the user’s browser to load previous content or not. Because websites are getting more and more complex, telling the user’s browser this information is crucial. With more JavaScript and CSS on websites, it takes more and more time for the user’s computer to retrieve and download all of this information each time. If this information is stored on the user’s computer then the website can load that much quicker.

With the Cache-Control plugin, you can control the expiration dates as to when certain aspects of the site redownload on a user’s computer. Some items on the site you will want to have a shorter expiration date and others to have a long expiration date.

Cache-Control helps you decide when your site refreshes its content for your viewers.

For example, take the three little number counters on Wallet Squirrel’s home page. Each one of those takes some JavaScript to load on the backend. If they had to be retrieved and downloaded each time, it would add some significant time to load the webpage. Because they are only updated once a month, we can increase their cache expiration date compared to the blog page that updates twice a week.

Hopefully, this makes sense. If not let me know in the comments and I can answer those questions.

Minify

Typically a lot of WordPress themes will have tons of CSS and JavaScript code running on the backend. This code can take a lot of resources and time to load a page. Using a minify plugin will reduce this code allowing page load times to decrease.

We are using Fast Velocity Minify to improve our website performance. This plugin is working swimmingly but will be replaced once I get W3 Total Cache working properly. W3 Total Cache does support minifying as well. Being able to move to one plugin that handles multiple tasks should improve website performance as well.

Minifying your code is crucial for a fast web page load.

Website Speed Testing

We use two websites to help grade the website performance of Wallet Squirrel. The first one is Google’s website speed tester. I like using this site the most because you are getting a speed grade by the company that is ranking your website in its search results. My thought is, if you can impress them, you should rank high in their results.

Secondly, we use Page Speed Grader. This site was recommended by Bluehost and has been very beneficial so far. This is because it ranks a lot of the same items Google looks at but it looks at other important items as well.

I used both of these website speed testings to figure out what we needed to work on to improve the website. I recommend you to use these tools to get a blueprint as to where you need to improve your own site.

Conclusion

Overall, this process has increased our speed grades with Google and Page Speed Grader significantly. Our score has jumped up nearly 30 points according to Google. And just over 20 points on Page Speed Grader. I am very pleased with the results of some serious work on the backend of our website.

Have questions?

Feel free to contact us and we might be able to help you out.

New And Better Things Are Coming

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We are taking a week off because Wallet Squirrel is in the middle of moving hosts. Because of poor performance, it has been decided to move over to Bluehost from iPage. Soon you will be able to get to our pages even quicker.

We apologize for the inconvenience but promise the wait will be worth it!

Thanks,

Andrew and Adam
Team Squirrel

HCP down 32% two days after buy, WTF

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I knew this would happen, but why so soon? Last Monday I finally decided to pull the trigger on HCP, a healthcare REIT that has a diversity of healthcare facilities in its portfolio including senior housing, life science facilities, medical office buildings, hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. Essentially HCP owns the facilities and healthcare organizations pay rent to use these facilities. I love REITs so it seemed like a great investment.

Here’s why I bought 12 shares of HCP at $34.52:

  1. I think healthcare facilities are a solid investment with the amount of growing population we have and soon to be baby boomers.
  2. With the upcoming baby boomers, HCP has a large variety of senior living facilities that will benefit from this population
  3. HCP also has a good diversity of other healthcare facilities including Medical Office Buildings which will benefit from the rise of outpatient services.
  4. HCP has a 31 year consectutive record of raising dividneds, it’s the only REIT in the S&P 500 Dividend Arstocrats Index

In 2 days it declined to $26.13 because:

  1. HCP’s largest tenant HCR ManorCare (23% of portfolio) are under federal investigation over fraud for their Medicare Reimbursements (that’s never good)
  2. HCP with their largest tentant under investigation, their 2016 outlook looks poor.
  3. The post-acute/skilled nursing industry is getting heavily saturated right now with everyone prepping for the baby boomers.

What I am now going to do:

I could sell these shares and use the remaining cash to get a bigger stake into something else, but I don’t know what would spike to make up for the money I lost. I follow Warren Buffet’s ideology when it’s better not to lose any money than gain some. Yet in this case, I lost money. Luckily some of my other positions have been doing well so I’m not in a negative portfolio, yay!

I know better than to make an emotional decision with stocks so I am going to continue to hold onto HCP. I do think that they are making strides to remove themselves from HCR ManorCare by selling non-strategic HCR facilities to reduce their portfolio . I also think with a portfolio of over 1,100 healthcare facilities they have room to come back. I’m currently $99 in the hole with this stock after only owning it for 2 days. Damn. There really is nothing I can do about that timing except do more even more research into each stock I purchase. So for now, I wait.