Back to work
I'm just about to finish an enforced two month work break and start a "proper" job again tomorrow. I've been on "garden leave" - that contractual mess about when you join a competitor and they stick you in limbo for a while - some might consider this a holiday (its paid leave effectively) but after a week or two it gets bloody tedious.
I resolved not to waste the time and spent a fair bit of effort exploring new interweb opportunities, mainly with positive results:
- I got a fair bit of advertising running on one of our popular sites - this started strongly but has tailed off a little now. Irrespective, its generated about £1.5k recurring income for very little work. I will continue to push this. I do have a couple of reluctant payers it seems so I'll need to watch that carefully - these guys are in Hungary and the Philippines!
- SEO work - I did a couple of SEO jobs and made several hundred, again for a couple of days work. It will be interesting to see how the optimised sites get on.
- Copywriting - something I started a few months ago and still new work coming in. Can be a bit tedious however!
- Adsense - its not dead! I've optimised some ad placement and added a bunch of new content to the better performing sites. Earnings are up around 15% as a result of this. Adsense still pulls in > £100 per week on average.
- I learned the ins-and-outs of a new shopping cart (JShop) and we are already pulling in new jobs using this great new platform.
All in all quite a productive "holiday" 
- perhaps I shouldn't bother with a proper job after all.
Dave J
Comment by Keiron — May 8, 2007 @ 8:52 am
Sounds like you've been busy Dave, and if you can do that with that amount of time I'd be seriously considering if the new job is needed!
I've got a four week break coming up, shame I won't be able to do any of what you've got done - I think the wedding and honeymoon may get in the way of that?!
Comment by Oli — May 8, 2007 @ 11:34 am
WKS! If you made that much working "part time", imagine how much you could make doing it full time
Comment by Dave J — May 8, 2007 @ 8:44 pm
It's certainly a nice little earner and together with my better half's web design earnings would more than keep a roof over our head.
However, it doesn't come close to the day job wages (albeit its arguably more interesting and certainly less tiring). Our target is to have enough stashed away over the next ten years to allow us to bog off to France or Italy, convert a barn and drink wine all day
- still some way to go tho'
Dave