Financial Newbie

I read an interesting article onhow to make more money today. I had been thinking about the ways to increase my own marketability and this brought up a few ideas on what I need to do.

My biggest challenge is a lack of marketable skills. I don’t have the technical skills, experience, or education to be employed in a field I prefer. I am taking college courses to finish my degree while also learning programming, but my progress is slow going. Once I have sufficient resume fodder, I’m confident that I’ll be able to network and interview well to increase my primary income source.

Once that’s done, I’d like to move onto increasing passive income. Blogging and developing income from it would be one route. Having the hard skills should make it easier to develop the blog from the back end and enable me to speak with authority on a broader range of issues.

Just like anything in life, a series of incremental steps with a few setbacks are likely to be the path I must travel. Let’s see how it goes.

I managed to earn $100 by going to a focus group on a new technological product.  Due to the NDA I can’t say anymore, but it was easy cash.  The group that does the market research also pays for feedback on movies and various other products from their wonderful office in downtown Seattle.  I think they only call a few times a year, but it’s easy money for a couple of hours of feedback.  They fed me and validated my parking as well, so I don’t know that I would’ve had better plans that evening regardless.

I hope to find more productive ways to spend my days in general.  I do manage to work out, but I’d like to spend more time learning, blogging, and earning extra cash.  My number one impediment seems to be my tendency to procrastinate, but I suppose that’s always the problem.