the richest man in atherstone

It is one third of the way through the year and the time has come to review my progress in achieving my goals for 2008.

I've set myself 10 goals for this year, however only six of them are related to the financial and business aspects of my life, so only these will be discussed here on my website.

1. ON TARGET Save 10% of my salary - This goal is very much on target. I've been saving a little more than 10% of my salary each month and have budgeted for at least 10% to be saved each month for the rest of the year.
2. COMPLETE Review utility bills - I reviewed our current expenditures and ascertained that I could probably reduce our mortgage, gas and electricity bills. Further investigation into the mortgage market revealed that there really wasn't a better deal out there in the current climate. I switched my gas and electric provider to get the cheapest deal, however they increased their tariff not long after (my own fault for not researching it adequately). Although the results weren't exactly what I had in mind, this goal can be ticked off as complete.
3. COMPLETE Set up and run my own company - At the beginning of February, I registered as self-employed.
4. ON TARGET Reduce our mortgage capital to below £60'000 - This goal was helped along by an inheritance I received earlier in the year. I paid off £1000 of my mortgage capital and am currently deciding whether to pay off more with the rest of my windfall or invest it. No matter what I decide, I have budgeted to get my mortgage below the £60,000 mark by the end of the year so this goal is very much on target.
5. INCOMPLETE Complete steps 16 to 20 of my doubling plan - I recently completed step 16 of my Doubling Plan and am now halfway through step 17. I now account quarterly for my Doubling and business exploits, so I won't be reporting my progress until the end of June, however early indications show that I should be on at least step 18 by this time. That will leave me six months to complete steps 18, 19 and 20.
6. ON TARGET Donate 1% of my salary to charity - I have budgeted for this goal and so should have no trouble making my annual donation to charity.

So, I've completed two of my goals and three are on target to be completed by the end of the year without much effort. That leaves me with my goal to complete up to Step 20 of my Doubling strategy for which I will devoting all of my time and energy (across various different money-making projects).

I fully expect the later Doubling steps to be more difficult than the earlier ones and I think that I could maybe have advanced more than I have in the first four months of 2008. However, I'm glad that I'm effectively left with just one goal to complete for the rest of the year and look forward to focusing on it and and achieving it.

A while ago, I wrote that one of my goals for 2008 was to review my mortgage, gas and electric suppliers and see if I could get a better deal elsewhere.

Well, I jumped right in and used the excellent energy price comparison website Energy Helpline to find the cheapest supplier. The top result was Atlantic Electricity & Gas, so I switched there and then.

Over the next couple of weeks I received letters from them to formalise the signup process, however it wasn't until recently that I discovered that although most energy suppliers have increased their prices, Atlantic hadn't yet but were due to do so at the end of March. So, although they were the cheapest when I checked, it wasn't a level playing field!

So, I made a bit of a cock-up due to my lack of proper research - a lesson learned!

Fortunately, Atlantic Electric & Gas are still one of the best buys for my circumstances, however they're not the best. I need to check my paperwork to see if I am tied in to a deal with them and for how long. If not, I'll probably switch again in the Summer.

I was recently made aware of a couple of website advertising networks that offer fixed payments for displaying banners on your website. They are Matched and Money4Banners.

Matched
With Matched, you submit up to five pages per website and they try to 'match' an advertiser to your website's content. For each page displaying an advert they pay you £3 per month.

Money4Banners
With Money4Banners, you select three pages from your website to display the banners. If accepted, they pay you £5 per month to display banners on the three pages plus a one-off £10 sign-up bonus.

My Experience
I have a few domain names that I secured for projects that I haven't got around to finishing and thought that I'd try the aforementioned advertising networks with one of them. The website I chose has a fair bit of niche content but not a whole lot of visitors at the moment due to lack of marketing. It already earned about a dollar (50p) per month from Google Adsense, so publishing adverts from both Matched and Money4Banners would provide a significant boost in revenue.

In early March, I subscribed to both Money4Banners and Matched and submitted my webpages to them.

Within a day or two, I had been accepted by Money4Banners and so I copied and pasted the 'ad code' into my website. A few days later I received my £10 sign-up bonus via PayPal and have subsequently received my first £5 monthly installment.

Matched are still trying to 'match' my webpages to an Advertiser, so no earnings from them.

Summary
I think that Matched and Money4Banners provide a great revenue-earning option for smaller websites or websites that serve a small niche market. As I mentioned previously, I was only earning about 50p a month from my 'test' website and Money4Banners has increased the revenue tenfold (plus an extra tenner for signing up).

I now plan on integrating this method of advertising with all my half-finished websites to bump up my monthly income from them.

I'm also considering buying a few domain names and knocking up a few quick websites specifically for serving banners. It should take about an hour to create a website with content and after a couple of months, the domain name would have been paid for leaving 10 months of pure profit

The guy who made me aware of this, Phil (a subscriber to my newsletter) earns himself around £100 each month by doing this. Great job, Phil, and thank you for sharing

I recently wrote that, as part of my expenditure review for 2008, I would be looking to remortgage to a better product.

I spent a lot of time in March trying to find mortgage that improves upon the 6.09% Standard Variable Rate I am currently getting with ING Direct. I checked a number of price comparison websites and consulted with ten mortgage brokers but none of them have a mortgage that I believe to be better.

My personal view is that basic mortgage rates won't rise too much higher than they are at the moment so I was looking for something that was around quarter of a percent less than the 6.09% I was on at the moment and with no fees. I also wasn't too bothered about it being another standard variable.

Despite hunting high and low, there doesn't seem to be anything better than the deal I have at the moment. The mortgage brokers I spoke to were actually more of a hindrance than a help. A couple went through a lengthy process of collecting my details before telling me they couldn't offer me anything and the others lured me in with their promises of superior products that weren't available to the general public and then went on to offer me mortgages that were significantly poorer than what I currently have. There was also a certain amount of what I would describe as 'scaremongering' with regards the UK economy. One broker even advised me that if I didn't fix at 7% right now, I'd be paying over 10% by the end of the year as the world goes into economic meltdown!

On the whole the advice and experience was poor and I went away feeling very sorry for the people that don't know better and are convinced to remortgage. It will be a long time before I use the 'expertise' of a mortgage broker.

So, I will be sticking with my current mortgage for a little while longer. Although it's not the absolute best, it's at the right end of the scale and with no redemption fees, it will be easy to change once a significantly better product comes along. Plus there's an unlimited overpayment facility which I plan on making the most of this year.

Of course, I'm just a common bloke and these brokers may be completely right and I completely wrong...but I doubt it