Let me start off by saying that I think the world of PayPal. If it were not for this service, my freelance writing career would never have taken off. But with that being said, PayPal frustrates the heck out of me each and everyday. How so, you may ask? Simply put, I am tired of getting hit with fees each time that I receive a payment. While I know that this is there way of making money, it costs me hundreds of dollars each month.
PayPal charges several levels of fees, but most of us fall into the “PayPal Standard Rate†category. If this is the type of account that you have, you will be charged 2.9% plus $.30 on each transaction. For example, if you receive a $100 payment you will net $96.80; assuming that there are no cross border fees.
My biggest problem is when I receive large payments such as those close to $1,000. For these, I am docked with a fee of nearly $30! Sure, this is still better than waiting for a check, but that is a lot of money for a transaction that is done the same way as a lesser one.
Just as my freelance writing income fluctuates, so do the amount of PayPal fees that I incur monthly. But for the most part, I lose approximately $200/month. When looked at on a yearly basis, these fees total $2,400 or so; which is not a small chunk of change by any means.
It would be nice to have an online service similar to PayPal that buyers and sellers could use free of charge. But when it comes down to it, PayPal has always been the top dog in this industry, and probably always will be. Unless you want to wait around for checks to arrive in the mail, PayPal is your best option. It is no fun to find out that they are taking hundreds of dollars from you each month, but in the end, it is a service that online entrepreneurs have come to use on a regular basis.
Have you ever seen the television programs that detail the art of “house flipping?†Generally speaking, people purchase homes for a low cost, fix them up, and then clean up big time when they sell a few months later. While this is not the way that the process always works out, it is the basic gist.
Over the last couple of years, this phenomenon has been brought to the internet. Internet entrepreneurs are buying websites with potential, and then selling them for a large profit after making some changes. Again, this is not a sure thing, but a great way to make some money if you have the proper skills.
While I could go into detail concerning this process, you would be much better off reading Yaro Starak’s post on this at Entrepreneur’s Journey. His post touches on everything from the fun of flipping to what to look for when buying.
If you are searching for a way to make money online, why not look into flipping websites? It takes some time, skills, and money, but just like real estate, the payoff can be huge in the end!
There is no denying the fact that I love blogging. Not only does creating content excite me, but I am having a great time learning the technical side of things as well. For this reason, I am thinking about starting a new blog. But as you probably know, this is not something you can jump into without considering all of your options.
The problem I am struggling with now is whether or not I should choose a topic similar to ChrisBlogging, or if I should venture in an entirely new direction.
A similar topic could be something such as the book writing process, freelance writing jobs, writing for magazines, etc. But on the other side of things, there are hundreds of other topics that I could explore. While not all of them would interest me, I am sure I could find a couple that would fit in quite well with my likes and lifestyle.
There are pros and cons of each option. Choosing a similar topic will allow me to more or less build off of the success of this blog. To go along with this, I have plenty of knowledge when it comes to writing because this is what I do for a living. On the downside, this may not give me much of a change, which could get boring in time.
If I choose a topic that is completely unrelated, the fun factor would be quite high; at least early on. After all, it would give me the chance to break away from writing about freelancing, making money, etc. And with this, I think that it could spice things up quite a bit. Facing off against this is the fact that I need to find a topic that I am passionate about, and of course, one that people are interested in.
I am not 100 percent sure if I should start another blog at this time. Do I have enough hours in the day to write and market a new blog? Probably. But with that being said, I do not want to add so much work that my freelance writing career begins to suffer.
Over the weekend I plan on brainstorming some ideas, and taking a closer look at my day to day schedule. Hopefully by next week I will have a better idea of what I am going to do!
