Adding It Up – The Grand Total For 2013
2013 is history. Quite literally.
And with it ends my record keeping of all the additional income I earned for the year. In total, I made £627.24 after deductions and costs etc.
December saw a big spike in Amazon Seller Account book sales, presumably from people buying books for Christmas presents. Almost all of these were old aviation-related books that were given to me by my dad from a clear-out he was doing. One of which was a big book of paper planes that could be cut out and folded into various designs according to the instructions. This was still sealed in cellophane and in mint condition. It sold for £15, but was expensive to post due to its size, but there was still a chunk of change to pass on to my dad after deductions etc. Interestingly, it was posted to the Officers’ Mess at RAF Brize Norton, a large air force base here in the UK. I can imagine it being given as a gift to someone at the base and then dozens of paper planes being constructed and thrown across an office or dining room.
The only other source of additional income in December was the payment of my royalties from Amazon Kindle – sales of my short story I chucked on there a couple of years ago. Although it sounds impressive – royalties from book sales – the reality is somewhat different. I made £9.18 in total, and that’s from a year or so’s worth of it being available to buy. It also includes both US and UK sales, which is even less impressive. The only reason I got the US royalties is because Amazon and the IRS changed their policies toward overseas earnings – meaning that if you didn’t have the requisite US tax code, all your earnings are subject to a 35% deduction. After a lengthy and expensive phone call to the IRS office in the US, I got my EIN number, submitted it to Amazon, and eventually got my royalties. Which only just paid off the cost of the phone call…
So the break-down for the year looks like this;
Month
Number
Value
Jan
3
£41.21
Feb
3
£47.88
Mar
9
£48.29
Apr
7
£32.01
May
6
£29.96
Jun
5
£15.62
Jul
14
£127.05
Aug
7
£86.94
Sep
6
£45.22
Oct
3
£64.39
Nov
2
£23.65
Dec
9
£65.02
Grand Total
74
£627.24
And the break-down of the income sources looks like this;
Source
Number
Value
eBay
35
£285.28
Amazon Selling Account
33
£220.23
Quidco
3
£76.75
Survey
2
£35.80
Amazon Kindle
1
£9.18
Grand Total
74
£627.24
Not surprisingly, the bulk of the money was earned through Amazon and eBay. The eBay money comes in irregularly as I tend to list things on an ad-hoc basis, when having a clear-out or something falls in my lap and has a) no interest/value to me, or b) is worth a bit online. I have about 30 items listed on Amazon at present, these are just old text books etc that sit around until someone buys them off Amazon or the value drops so low that I donate them to charity shops etc.
Ultimately what this information tells me is that there is money to be made from sources other than your salary. In theory, the Amazon and eBay listings could be stepped up and provide more income, but like all these things it’s a balance between effort and value. I’m happy to keep an eye out and list things as they come to me, but I don’t really want to be hoarding piles of junk on the off-chance I’ll make a sale.
So what did I do with the money I made?
Like spending money in general, it’s hard to keep track of where it went. More than half of it went on car insurance, which was good to know I had that covered. The rest was used to pay for Christmas presents and helped to fund a 50 inch plasma TV I bought second hand from a friend. Ultimately, it was £627 that I would have had to find from my monthly salary if I hadn’t done this.
I don’t plan to do much differently this year, but it would be good to improve on the 2013 figure. £1000 perhaps?
