by Jonny | Apr 12, 2014 | Travel
I’ve been looking at moving house and very recently found a place. But unfortunately the deal fell through as the landlord decided that they he would favour a member of his family in place of me. This is a small setback, but just means I’ll have to live where I’m currently staying for a while longer.
I thought I’d post up a few of the sites that I’ve been using to look for places.
Advertised as the UK’s #1 Flatshare Website and touted as the #7 website in the Business and Finance – Property industry via Experian – HitWise, it’s likely you’ve heard of SpareRoom. If not, then it’s definitely a website that you should use.
My favourite feature on SpareRoom is their Map Search function that allows you to interactively find spare rooms in houses and flats via a map. It’s much better than the sort of directory-esque listings that you get on the likes of GumTree and RightMove. At least this way you can explore other areas that might be in your budget range and not too distant from the area you would like to live in. Plus, most of the listing on SpareRoom are from actual landlords rather than agencies that will charge you £100 in agency fees.
OpenRent’s database of flat/house shares is not as large as SpareRoom’s, but its interface is quite intuitive (I love that word) and easy to use. They actually charge landlords to advertise on there and sort of work similarly to an affiliate website. From what research I’ve done on OpenRent (admittedly not enough), I’ve found that they used to charge landlords 5% of a properties annual rental income if they chose to advertise (via the paid route) on OpenRent. There is however a free option for landlords to place their ads on OpenRent. The good thing for tenants is that there aren’t any additional fees to pay, which is how it should be really. OpenRent’s tagline is “NO ADMIN FEES, NO HIDDEN COSTS.” Here’s what OpenRent’s map search feature looks like:
Again, I do have to overstate the lack of properties listed on this site. But you never know when you might find a bargain and it’s definitely worth looking on this site for one (that’s if there is anything in the area you’re searching in).
Now, I do have a little resentment towards GumTree as I was scammed on there when I stupidly handed over almost £220 over to a thief for a smartphone that I thought was a bargain. Turns out the only bargain was had by the receiver of my money. If we forget this little hiccup for a moment, you’ll find that GumTree has a section where you can post up your own ads (so that landlords come seeking you rather than the opposite way round) or you can find ads posted by landlords/agencies. You have the generic options that come with most websites, where you can filter down to how much you would like to pay per week and so on.
As with any website like this, you have to be extremely cautious and even more so with GumTree. It’s quite an active website, but I’ve had to list it here as its database of house & flat shares is quite large. You’d likely be able to find something on GumTree if not anywhere else. Be careful though.
FindProperly is another of those 3rd party sites powered by Zoopla. I’m sure you’ve seen Zoopla plastered everywhere in your hunt for a flat/house share. What makes Find Properly unique is its simplicity and its additional ability to give you an idea about the area you might want to move into. For example, I’m looking for a place in Stratford for around £120 per week. You can see the results like this here:
Then if you click on to a full listing there are features on the listing that give you a better idea of area in terms of transport, nightlife, restaurants and other activities. There’s also a neat map that shows you exactly where the house is.
However, again, there is a lack of properties on this site and that’s likely due to the lack of popularity that sites like this get when compared to bigger sites like GumTree and SpareRoom. But you never know where you’ll find those hidden gems, which make sites like this sometimes worth the extra hassle of checking out every so often.
by Jonny | Feb 4, 2014 | Updates
Yep, it’s true. I’ve gone ahead and done it. I have opened myself to debt and a life of monetary despair. I’ll now be poor forever paying back whatever credit I’ve borrowed from the bank using my delicious credit card.
On the other hand, I’ve also opened up a Cash ISA and have chucked half of my savings into it. There’s also a special feature on the Lloyds Bank internet banking website that allows you to rename your Cash ISA account. I’ve appropriately renamed it to:
But ouch. A 0.75% gross interest rate — that’s pretty weak-sauce. I suppose it is 0.05% better than the 0.75% gross interest rate on my eSavings account, and plus you’re aren’t being charged tax on that interest. It works out in the end I suppose. However, if you compare the gross interest rate with say, NatWest then it seems that they have a much higher interest rate at 1% gross (on a similar instant Cash ISA package). I don’t really care anyway, as I’m not going to get much out of this and there isn’t really a real benefit at the moment. I’m hoping there will be an increase sometime this year. I’m thinking of shopping around or perhaps even upgrading to a Two Year Fixed Rate Cash ISA, which is going at 1.55% gross interest. I’m sure there are however other providers providing better deals.
Either way, it’s something that I opened because I was at the bank opening a credit card account. Why? Well, I do care about the future and I’m sort of future-proofing myself by building up a credit history. Not sure what my first purchase will be when I start using the account, but I’m thinking I’ll be using my credit card to pay for my monthly £136.60 London Oyster fee from zone 1 to 3. I’ll of course be paying it back immediately — don’t won’t to get into that debt business. 😉
by Jonny | Apr 22, 2013 | Updates
I recently signed up for Wix.com’s affiliate program, and you can see it in action on my Simple Templates website.
I’ll go ahead by saying that the program does not seem to be setup well. Why? Well, for starters you have to host their advertisements [images], and unlike AdSense or Commission Junction (I think), you don’t get a generated piece of code to insert into your website. While that wasn’t a problem, it was a little troublesome. I’m also not enjoying the affiliate control panel, as it looks horrendous and you really have to trust their data is in order. I’m thinking of testing this affiliate system for a month or so, and if I see NO sign ups at-all, then I’m switching back to Google Ads. We shall see how this goes.
Onto the details…
- They will pay via PayPal
- They have packages that range from $4.95-$19.90 per month. – They’ll give you 45% of the revenue made out of those amounts. It doesn’t clearly state whether that’s on an on-going basis or just a one time payment. Would suck if it’s just a one time payment.
- They offer packages that gives Wix’s users access to their premium themes. Wix users can buy packages that give them 30 themes and Wix will give you $40, 31-50 premium themes and Wix will pay you $60 or 51 premium upgrades and Wix will give you $80.
- Sign ups are tracked. Like with most other affiliate programs, any sign ups are tracked. If a purchase is made using your reference ID link then you’ll get the sale and the commission.
- Minimum payout is $200. 😀 – This a shocker and I think the amount should be way lower. Perhaps in line with Google AdSense, at the $100 mark.
I’m actually not sure if I should be sticking with these guys as I’m not getting anyone purchasing from the referrals I’m giving to them. So far, I’ve only got 12 people to sign up. I’m going to give it a full six month trial and if it’s not making me anything then it’s simply not worth it. Especially with such a high minimum payout.
by Jonny | Apr 8, 2013 | Updates
WordPress has a content delivery network called “Photon” and what this content delivery does in WordPress’ own words:
Give your site a boost by loading images in posts from the WordPress.com content delivery network. We cache your images and serve them from our super-fast network, reducing the burden on your Web host with the click of a button.
I’m not sure what the issue is. However, on the site that is having the issue with Jetpack’s Photon module, well, it only has 600+ images and that’s including generated thumbnails. So, I’m really not sure what the problem is. Also, after scouring Google to find out if others are having issues, I found results suggesting that I was not alone.
From what I gathered the WordPress staff or people who’ve worked on WordPress plugins were saying the issues could range from a wide variety of issues. It could be that my site has another plugin which is conflicting with the Photon module, it could be that the design of my website is not compatible with Photon, or it could be that my images are too large. It could be anything essentially, which doesn’t really help. So for now, I’ve disabled it until I can find or come up with a solution.
by Jonny | Sep 13, 2012 | Updates
I’ve totally stopped using Infolinks, I don’t think the return is worth it, especially for websites which don’t receive as many visitors that I’d like, thus equaling not so much profit. I think it might also make my sites a little off-putting and without any big results, it has become more or less a waste of time. Perhaps in the future I will use them again, however I’ve taken a screenshot of my entire earnings since last year.
Full earning report
As you can see, earnings are negligible, which is why I have decided to drop Infolinks altogether. However, that’s just for now. As for AdSense, I’m making a bit of money, unfortunately for Infolinks, not so much money. The results and testing that I’ve done with Infolinks over a 9 month period has been a huge failure. I remember blogging before saying that Infolinks can be an extra source of revenue, however perhaps you should really have a large website to get any real gains out of it.
