“It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.”

– George W. Bush

Math

Since learning mental math isn’t exciting enough to warrant a bunch of posts on, I didn’t write that much about it. However, I did practice my mathematical abilities on a daily basis and ended up becoming pretty good at keeping tally of some large numbers. While it was nerdy, I enjoyed being able to mentally estimate things like bar tabs and restaurant bills before they were presented. If you have a couple extra bucks, I suggest picking up Short-Cut Math. It’s a quick read that taught me quite a bit.

Fiverr book

My other challenge of writing a Fiverr book has been scrapped. I think that almost all the “make money online” books are really cheesy, and I don’t want a flood of people copying my exact formula for earning a living. With that said, anyone who is interested in making money with Fiverr should shoot me an email. I’d be happy to set you up in business, free of charge.

Other books

Lastly, the other eBooks that I made have done decently well for themselves. I’ve gotten enough off them to cover some random impulse purchases. While it’s not big money, it was enough to allow me to buy a couple books. One of which I’ll most likely be using in a future challenge.

Conclusion

November was a good month for me. I managed to earn enough that I quit my job, learned how to tally bills in my head, and sold some books. Somehow I also managed to have a lot of fun, and ended up with more free time than I used to have.

“Kick game like martial arts.”

– Ab-Soul

I like clothes shopping more than most girls I know. I also like making money more than most guys I know. Recently I’ve started to combine the two into a fun game.

When I wake up I like to set a monetary goal for the day. If I can exceed my goal by a certain margin I treat myself to some clothing. As shallow and materialistic as this may sound, it keeps me focused and in competition with myself. There’s an added incentive for me to hustle.

Recently I’ve been looking for new shoes. I usually wear a pair of teal Ralph Lauren canvas high tops and I wanted something equally as vibrant. I ended up settling on a similar pair of sneakers.

By chance there was a special going on in which the shoes were only $41.

I decided to see if I could rustle up he extra funds.

$41 is basically 10 Fiverr gigs, to increase my gig sales I decided to offer a special offer. For the price of one gig I’d write two 400 articles and have them delivered within 24 hours. Although it was a little time consuming, I still managed to sell five gigs. Two f them were new orders and the other three were from repeat customers whom I had notified about my offer.

Halfway there.

I then decided to sell some textbooks on Amazon. I’d had the books for awhile, but never got around to putting them online. I ended up selling none of them, but it was still nice to have them as potential money makers.

Trying to figure out another method for generating some quick cash I went back online.

I discovered that potential customer who I’d cold called had bought $40 worth of services from me. I took five minutes to celebrate, and then bought my shoes.

“The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something turn up.”

– Charles Dickens

When I started blogging I was planning on being anonymous. Unfortunately I didn’t know how to change my WordPress username. Everything I posted went up as Robert. Rather than starting over I decided to keep writing under my real name.

Nowadays almost everyone I know reads my blog, even my grandparents.

While I’ve never posted anything that I’d consider highly inappropriate, there is plenty of material that would raise some eyebrows amongst more conservative folks. I can’t imagine too many HR departments would be happy to learn that one of their employs was doing Nootropic drugs, and posting stories about dinosaur porn.

Writing under my actual name also forces me to be honest. If I started lying on posts people would immediately know and I’d hear about it.

I’m also prevented from doing things like retelling various sexual capers or posting other Tuck Max-esque material. I’m sure this has cost me a reader or two, but I’m not overly concerned.

If I didn’t write under my real name I’m certain that this blog would be a lot different. I’d probably end up exaggerating a lot of what I do, and I’d probably be a lot more offensive. I wouldn’t have anyone to answer to and I wouldn’t have any motivation to stay on my grind. 30 Days To X would be less of a documentary and more of a dumping grounds for my ego. Updated between games of Dwarf Fortress and bags of Cheetos.

“Life without a Kindle is like life without a library nearby.”

– Franz McLaren

Yesterday afternoon I decided to play a little game. The rules were simple: before I went to bed I had to write an eBook and upload it to Amazon. However, I was not allowed to spend any money in the process. That meant I had to format it myself and design a cover. As it turned out, my challenge sounded a lot harder than it actually was.

For my book I ended up making another guide to bartending. This time I made it more broad and used fifty of the most popular cocktail recipes that I could find. I wrote a little introduction, filled up the book, threw on a conclusion, and had a product within twenty minutes.

Formatting everything ended up being the hard part. I kept getting weird spacing issues every time that I’d try and convert my document. After thirty minutes of frustration, I solved the problem. So far I was still on target.

While formatting my book was the hardest part, designing a cover was the most time consuming. Not knowing where to start, I initially tried making my own cover. Five minutes later I scrapped that plan entirely. I went back to the drawing board and tried again. This time I looked on a stock photo site and ended up finding a picture I liked. Unfortunately the site wanted me to buy the image with their own nonsensical token system. The process looked like It would be a pain so I abandoned it.

Not sure what to do, I skipped ahead to uploading the book to Kindle Direct Publishing. While there I noticed that Amazon had it’s own cover generator. I tested it out and ended up with a pretty cool design. Best of all, it didn’t cost me a cent.

With my new cover in tow I eagerly uploaded the book to Amazon.

Around midnight I discovered that my book had been published. I spent roughly twenty minutes trying to market my book before going to bed. When I woke up this morning I’d already sold three copies.

Considering my time investment, this venture wasn’t very lucrative. I spent a couple hours working on a product that’s only earned me a single dollar. With that said, I did accomplish my goal of creating a book with zero input costs and having it up and on Amazon within a day.

Here are some additional notes on my experiment:

• Recipe type books are the easiest products to make.

Most recipes are in the public domain, as such you are free to reuse them however you see fit. Additionally, they take very little time to churn out. Other genres, like erotica, are better sellers, but they take a lot longer to produce. Grandma’s Stuffing Recipes takes a lot less effort to write than Stuffing Grandma does.

• People actually buy food books.

Unlike a lot of niche genres, cookbooks are actually popular sellers. A fifty page recipe book will sell. If I wrote a three thousand page epic fantasy novel about trans-dimensional wizards, almost no one would buy it. Eating is a hot trend. Food Network and the ten trillion assorted cooking blogs have made cooking and eating into a fade.

• A low profit is better than no profit.

I think James Altucher once said something along the lines of: “Selling fifty thousand dollars worth of books is easy. Just write fifty thousand books and charge a dollar for each.” Ten bucks a week doesn’t look like much but it adds up. In one year you could easily write and publish a Paleolithic cookbook, book about foods with the best protein sources, or a guide to various exercise routines. These books don’t have to be anything elaborate, just a couple thousand words each. After twelve months I could easily imagine that you’d have made at least a couple hundred bucks off the venture.

“The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.”

– George Carlin

A lot of people underestimate how much alcohol is consumed during the Christmas season. Eggnog parties, ugly sweater parties, office parties, regular parties, drunk caroling, there’s and endless slew of events that involve binge drinking. Christmas is right up there with New Year’s, Saint Patrick’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Oktoberfest, Halloween, and all the other drinking holidays.

To capitalize off this I decided to write my own holiday themed guide to bartending. It took me all of two hours and five dollars to make. And, at the time of writing, has made me a little over two dollars off Amazon. It’s a painfully low amount, but I haven’t promoted it yet and only uploaded the book on Sunday night.

If you’re interested in making your own low selling guide to Christmas cocktails, I’ve created an easy to follow guide:

1. Open up a new Word document.

2. Go to drinksmixer.com and find a bunch of holiday drink recipes. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, just Google “Holiday cocktails.”

3. Copy and paste the recipes into your Word document. Arrange them however you see fit.

4. After you get a sufficient amount of recipes make a title page, table of contents, and introduction.

5. Go on Fiverr and find someone who makes quality book covers. Have them design one for you.

6. If you know how to, format your document for Kindle. Otherwise just hire someone off of Fiverr to do that too.

7. Use your Amazon account to sign into Kindle Direct Publishing.

8. Click the “Add new title” button and follow the site’s step by step instructions.

The whole operation took me about two hours to knock out. While it’s not paying out well at the moment, I do have a tactic to boost its sales in the next few weeks. After I test it out I’ll report on how effective my plan really was.