One of my highlights from Monday’s list was that I made around £100 in extra income over the course of the last week.  Now I did say that that was a pretty good run, and it was – £30 is the norm for most weeks and that’s usually only if I’m lucky.  Nevertheless, I know that if I’d read “I made £100 in extra income last week” on someone else’s blog I’d be curious to know how.  So here we go.  My sideline income Summer, and how it’s panning out…

eBay

I’m a total eBay devotee.  Yet I hardly ever buy anything.  I’m wholeheartedly addicted to the sell.  I absolutely love watching unwanted goods go to better homes, and despite the tedious nature of the listing process and the fact that some things either don’t sell, or sell for only a minimal sum, there’s a sizeable part of me that eBay really satisfies. In terms of what to sell, I’m currently working a mixture of my own stuff and things I’ve picked up for cheap at car boot sales and the like.  The latter can be risky, so make sure you’re prepared to lose your investment if the thing doesn’t sell.  If you pick your pieces wisely, however, you’ll usually end up with more than your initial outlay.   Just yesterday I sold for £4.95 a bag I originally acquired for 99p.  Now when is Alan Sugar going to come a-knocking?!

Top tips:

• I try to emulate the person I am offline on eBay.  So I don’t mess people around, I’m honest about the condition of my items and I avoid trying to profit from the postage allowance.  Treat others as you would be treated yourself is the cardinal rule of eBay selling, and it’s the surest way to upping those positive feedback scores.
• Take time over listings.  Remember that the buyer is relying on you to tell them everything they need to know about an item.  If it’s clothes, I try to be as descriptive as possible, giving accurate measurements and suggesting some outfit ideas.  The same amount of detail, however, isn’t required when selling a mobile phone charger.  Judgment call required!

Amazon

I didn’t get round to even thinking about Amazon until last week, when I noticed a pile of old and dusty uni textbooks in a cupboard.  Thinking it was worth at least a shot (it takes literally ten seconds to list a product on Amazon, and as far as I’m aware there are no fees until the thing actually sells), I decided to put a few of them up and see what happened.  I was on the brink of forgetting all about having listed them when an email popped up to tell me that a uni textbook I will literally never use again (seriously, it’s about buying and selling houses, bleurgh) had sold for £17.  Now for someone who rarely makes more than a fiver from a single online sale this was little short of a stinking fortune.  So, Amazon people.  Worth a shot if you happen to have a few esoteric books that might fetch a little bit more than the standard 1p plus postage.

Top tips:

• Check how much the books you want to sell are going for on the site generally.  If something is selling for only a tiny amount, you’ll have to rely on your postage allowance for any profit.  High risk people!
• Avoid really heavy books unless you’re willing to take a dip in your profits.  Amazon charges all buyers a flat rate of £2.80 postage which is credited to the seller, but if the book is heavy it’ll cost you way more than that to package and post it.  Also beware of Amazon fees, which come off before you get paid.
• It sounds obvious, but be honest about the condition of the books.  If there are bend marks on the spine or a coffee stain on one page, say so.  I love old battered books, but not everyone feels the same way.

Research Participation

These are the most fun of all my sideline activities.  Over the course of the past year I’ve had my eye movements scanned and recorded more times than I care to remember; I’ve played video games while being assessed on my ability to multi-task; I’ve learned and applied umpteen alien languages and I’ve even been blindfolded, spun around in a chair and then instructed to carry out various bizarre tasks in the dark.  It’s a lot of fun, and you learn the weirdest things about yourself in the process.  For example, I now know that I can listen to a sequence of ten numbers once and then repeat them immediately without mistake.  Most people only manage six or seven.  Cool, right?  Who knows when I’ll be called upon to actually use such a skill in real life, but it’s nice to know it’s there in the meantime.

Top tips:

• Psychology departments of colleges and universities are usually looking for people to participate in their research projects.  Try browsing the websites of colleges near you (the ones I use always come through the university careers service), or simply phone them up and ask what’s available.  Chances are you’ll find something.
• Don’t be put off by poor rates of pay.  Remember that the people doing the testing are often students themselves, and they might well be paying you out of their own funding (aka their own pockets).  Also remember that the minimum wage is £5.93 – if you get £6 for a one hour experiment that is actually little more than a laugh and a chance to learn something about yourself, I’d say that’s a pretty good deal.  Do several of them and the pennies will soon add up.

And the best of the rest…

Gumtree – a local marketplace for selling things that might not be suitable for eBay, usually because they’re too heavy to post.  Cases in point: furniture, camping gear (particularly good at festival time) and other bits of outdoor equipment.  I’ve also had success selling concert tickets on Gumtree – after 20 days on eBay with no interest they were snapped up on Gumtree within a couple of hours.  Worth a look if you live in or near a city.

Etsy – hub of all things hand-made and vintage.  Great place to make some money from your own creative efforts (think big: home-made stationery and jewellery sell just as well as clothes, knitwear and crochet).

Car boot sale – I’ve never done one of these, so I’m perhaps unqualified to speculate, but there’s always cash to be made from flogging unwanted homeware, clothes and electrical items.  And the benefit of the car bootie is that you’ll get rid of it all at once, unlike eBay where things can hang around your home for weeks.  Always be prepared for haggling though, and don’t overprice!

Whatever medium you choose for making some extra cash, the biggest tip I feel qualified to give is this:

Accept that you won’t make a fortune overnight!

It takes time to list your old clothes online.  It takes effort to go to the post office and stand in the queue every second day.  It takes a strong will to keep going when those descriptions you spent hours over bear no fruit.  I persevere, however, because I really think it’s worth it.  Every pound I make from my own initiative pleases me far more than the pounds I’ve made working for other people.  And I spend them far more carefully, because I know exactly what it’s cost me to get them in the first place.  And when you have a really good run, like I did last week, you’ll wonder what you were ever doubting yourself for.  Honestly!

Image above from We Heart It.

I read a blog post this morning entitled “50 ways to get more done today” (it’s here in case you’re interested).  Well, I’d be fibbing if I were to say I’d read the whole thing.  In fact, I read only tip number 1 of 50 before deciding that I couldn’t face feeling guilty over my lack of productivity this early on a Monday and quickly flitted to something more lighthearted. What I find motivates me the most at the beginning of the week is not thinking about all those things I simply must get done, but rather, writing about the week that’s just passed and resolving to make the one that’s just beginning either as good as that or better.  So on that note, here are last week’s highlights (don’t worry, there are considerably less than 50 here)…

• Enjoying a post-work pint with a friend on Monday.  Yes yes, I’m unemployed I know, but having spent the entire day listing items for sale on eBay and Amazon I really felt like I’d been at the grindstone with the best of ‘em.  If I find myself muttering the words ‘roll on Friday’ under my breath I will cease all listing activity and take myself to a doctor, immediately.
• Climbing one of the Lomond Hills on a lovely sunny Friday before heading off for a weekend by the sea.  The Lomond hills are the highest points in Fife, and the view from the top of West Lomond, where we were, is breathtaking – you can pretty much see half of Scotland’s east coast.  Drinking the obligatory hilltop cuppa as well, obviously.
• Aforementioned weekend by the sea.  Trawling the beach for shells and breathing in some fresh sea air is always a good tonic for a flagging spirit.
• Making almost £100 from my various entrepreneurial endeavours (eBay, Amazon, extra writing, taking part in psychology experiments…) in a single week.  I’ll be honest: this was a particularly fruitful spell and nothing like normal where I’ll make £30 per week if I’m lucky.  Still, every penny most definitely counts!
• Chomping on salty, vinegary chips and pickled eggs on Saturday while watching the boats in the Anstruther harbour bobbing around in the sun.
• Having one of those serendipitous moments on Thursday.  You know the kind – you’re resigned to believing you’ll never see someone again and then bam, they walk right past you in the street, in an area of town you never usually have cause to visit…weird and wonderful and all sorts of good.
• Getting well into the action at Wimbledon and finding myself jumping around and shouting at the TV in typical mad sportster fashion.  I’m not a mad sportster when it comes to anything other than tennis by the way, just so you know.
• Eating sausage and mash and home-baked banana bread on Sunday night before settling down to watch Atonement, which I’ve curiously managed never to see or read before.  Such a powerful, heart-breaking story, and SUCH a beautifully shot, beautifully acted film.  Love.

I’m planning this week to be all about the following: reading, writing, seeing friends and more Wimbledon.  I might even go the whole hog and crack out some strawberries.  What are you up to my lovelies?

Image above from We Heart It.

April 27th, 1992

Greetings from Fairbanks!  This is the last you shall hear from me Wayne.  Arrived here 2 days ago.  It was very difficult to catch rides in the Yukon Territory.  But I finally got here.  Please return all mail I receive to the sender.  It might be a very long time before I return South.  If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear from me again I want you to know you’re a great man.  I now walk into the wild.

Alex.

It’s not often that I manage to read an entire book in a single sitting.  When it does happen, I’m either ill with nothing else to do, or the book is so special I can’t bear to be parted from it.  My experience with Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer falls, with certainty, into the second camp.

Into the Wild recounts the true and haunting tale of Christopher Johnson McCandless, a young man from an affluent Washington DC family who, upon graduating from college in 1990, donated the $24,000 he had saved for law school to a hunger charity, burned all of the cash he held in his wallet and set off to travel, anonymously, around the American west.  McCandless didn’t stop to bid his family farewell, he simply upped and left with a few meagre possessions, changing his name along the way in order that he couldn’t be traced.

McCandless, operating under his adopted name of Alexander Supertramp, spent almost two years in the north American west before embarking on a journey into the Alaskan wilderness, his ultimate dream.  In late April 1992, he sent the above message to his friend Wayne Westerberg, after which he ventured alone into the Alaskan wild, north of Mount McKinley.  McCandless lived for over 100 days in the wilderness, setting up camp in an old abandoned bus and using a small rifle to hunt for food.  The gritty reality of Alaskan survival, however, proved to be too much for McCandless in his state of ill preparation and inexperience.  His emaciated, decomposing body was found by a moose hunter in August 1992, four months after he had set off.  Chris McCandless had starved to death.

It was upon writing of McCandless’s fate in Outside magazine in 1992 that Jon Krakauer first became involved with the story.  A story which Krakauer found so compelling that he was moved to investigate it further and present his findings in the form of the book.  Chris McCandless kept journals and took photographs of his travels, both before and during his period in Alaska.  Jon Krakauer has combined those materials with information gleaned from the people McCandless encountered on his journey – some of whom became the man’s closest friends – to create a supremely powerful portrait of a life that was lived with little more than a passing nod to the bounds of conventionality.

When it was first reported in late 1992, the story of Chris McCandless and his death in the wilderness attracted a multitude of differing reactions.  Some people denounced McCandless as a selfish, impudent adolescent, someone who had demonstrated only fleeting regard for the power of the wild and as such, had no business being there.  Others championed McCandless as the founding father of a new way of living in the 20th century.  A man who, upon finding himself ill-suited to the constraints of conventional life as we know it, actually went ahead and dug out the gumption to do something about it – actions which lots of people only ever dream of in the wildest of their dreams.

Reading Krakauer’s book, I personally failed to find much evidence of immaturity, or selfishness come to that.  McCandless was not a stupid person, and while he may have underestimated the difficulties he would encounter in the Alaskan wilderness, his reasons for going there seem to me to be the result of deep, probing thought rather than a whimsical by-product of twenty-something angst.  McCandless lived his life guided by an internal compass which he had programmed for himself – as far as I’m concerned there’s far more to admire about that than there is to criticise.  My favourite passage from Krakauer’s book, which I’ve reproduced below, is hugely reminiscent of many of the books, blogs and articles I’ve read over the past two years.  Unconventional living has never been more in vogue than it currently seems to be, but what marks Chris McCandless out from the rest of the crowd is that he was thinking about, writing about, and actually living his unchartered life almost two full decades before the idea even occurred to the rest of us.

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.  The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure.  The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

Letter from Chris McCandless to Ronald Franz, April 1992.

I turn 25 next month.  Which doesn’t bother me in the slightest (don’t worry, this isn’t a rant-about-my-age post).  I’m cool with the idea of growing older, in fact, I’m actually quite excited about the future and everything it holds.  And to be honest, while I’m a true believer in learning something from everything that happens to us (and, indeed, everything we inflict upon ourselves), there are plenty of experiences I had during my “formative” years that I’m perfectly happy to consign to the realm of history (example: drunkenly throwing up in my Dad’s car on the way home from a party, age 16).  No, I’m enjoying growing up.  Long may it continue.

Nevertheless, “growing up” seems to bring with it another, different set of things to ponder (I think I’m done for now with “What am I going to do with my life?” and “How much alcohol can I realistically drink before I become loud and annoying?”).  And one subject that seems to keep returning to the discussion table between my similarly aged friends and me is the topic of house buying.

I live in an old redbrick tenement (which, incidentally, has been covered from top to toe in some impressively bland scaffolding since the beginning of this year) in a leafy, quiet area of Edinburgh.  It’s cosy and comfortable, and I’ve done my absolute best with the decor given a very limited budget and some rather heavy restrictions on what can be changed.  My flatmate and I rent this humble abode from the local letting agency, and I’ve been here for almost two years now.  Prior to moving in, I lived in a series of other, similar, rented flats around and about the South (ahem, best) side of the city.

I’ve always enjoyed renting.  It drives the would-be interior designer in me insane for sure, but generally I like it.  I like knowing that I could hand in a month’s notice and flit somewhere else within a matter of weeks if I decided I wanted to.  I like the fact that renting allows me to live in what I consider to be one of Edinburgh’s nicest areas – cripplingly expensive when it comes to first time buying.  Most of all, however, and selfish as it probably sounds, I like to know that the responsibility, both financial and otherwise, for almost all of the maintenance and repairs that a beautiful old building like this one inevitably requires from time to time lies at somebody else’s front door.  That scaffolding outside?  It’s been here for six months already – expensive.  There are, on average, three workmen on it every day – more expensive.  And that’s not even to mention the work that’s going on – you get my picture.  The bill for all of this will have to be split between the owners of the flats in the tenement.  To tell the truth, at this moment in time I’m almost painfully glad that I’m not one of them.

Having said that, I’m not entirely opposed to the idea of buying a place to live.  Which has definitely not always been the case.  In fact, there was a time when I was going around telling anyone who would listen that taking on a mortgage was akin to having a child: life would never be the same again, and you would forever be restricted in terms of what you could and couldn’t do by the weight of a responsibility you had voluntarily taken on board.

It’s safe to say I don’t think that way any more – probably because I’ve witnessed several good friends pass through the gates to home ownership in the past couple of years and live to tell the tale.  Yet somehow, I still don’t feel like buying is quite ‘me’.  It’s certainly not me at the moment in my wandering but happy state of unemployment, but even once I go back to full time work in September, I still can’t visualise myself going through the process of actually committing to purchasing a house.

The most expensive thing – as in tangible, material possession – I’ve ever bought is a car for which I paid £300.  I’ve spent more than that on flights and travels, and I regularly (as in, on a monthly basis) spend more than that on rental payments, but still – the most expensive material possession I’ve ever bought cost me £300.  So perhaps it’s understandable that the thought of spending over £100,000 on what is, stripped down, little more than a possession strikes me as slightly unnerving.  I live a very frugal, simple life – extravagant purchases are not, and never have been, my boat.  And while I understand that you don’t just go and actually drop 100K plus on your chosen home just like that, there is still a part of me that reckons myself too young and irresponsible to be entrusted with looking after and paying for something as expensive as a house.

But the thing is (and there’s always a thing, isn’t there?), I’m secretly starting to long for just that: a house.  I long to be able to spend weekends wearing dirty, paint-splattered jeans, splashing colour up the walls, making and hanging my own curtains and attempting to restrain my love for Cath Kidston-style furnishings for fear of the place turning into a chintzy floral hell.  I also long for a garden – even two square feet of a garden – in which to grow tomatoes and chillies and work my way, seed by seed, towards ditching the farm box in favour of my own front yard.  As materialistic as it perhaps sounds, what I’m longing for is a place to call my own.  Not necessarily a pipe dream home (remote farm cottage replete with solar panels, wind turbines and cow named Jeeves in the yard whom I milk each morning in case you’re wondering) but just a little corner of Edinburgh that belongs to no one but me, and which can be decorated according to the will and by the hand of no one but me.

Is that weird?

What are your opinions on renting vs buying a home?  Do you own?  If so, what’s it like?  Do you (or have you) been through the paint-splattered jeans phase?

Image above from Flickr – Images_of_Money.

It’s my long-held belief that when life becomes difficult, all those little things that cause us to smile, however brief those smiles may be, must be noted down, kept under lock and key (or password protected) and never allowed to escape.  Last week was very hard for me in a very personal way, but writing this list of highlights has confirmed that it certainly wasn’t all about sadness…

• Reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer in a single sitting last night.  Such a brilliant book (substantive post on this later in the week).
• Cycling along the Water of Leith in the rain on Saturday.  Finding ourselves so tired after the outward journey that we decided to sip takeaway coffees and push our bikes home instead.  Following up our lazy cycle with a lazy takeaway and a lazy film.  Nice.
• Wandering up into the Pentland Hills on Sunday afternoon.  Reaching the top of one of them in pouring rain and rolling mist but sitting down on the grass for a cup of tea and a biscuit anyway.
• Eating risotto and cheesecake and drinking two bottles of red with friends on Friday night.  Setting the world to rights over wine is probably one of my favourite activities of all time.
• Obsessing over eBay.  Not really a highlight as such, but a constant source of distraction and, at times (like, when something sells), entrepreneurial elation.
• Organising Summer trips with my girls.  Caravanning!  Festival-going!  Book club!
• Trying out the cycle from home to new (as in September) workplace and finding that a) it’s mostly downhill and b) probably because of a) it only takes 30 minutes.  Deliberately not thinking about the cycle home for now!
• Watching my lovingly sown herb garden shoot to life.  I now have basil and coriander seedlings on the rise (come on parsley, what you playing at?)!

What was great about last week for you?

Image above from We Heart It.