Adding Cents by AdSense

If you haven't noticed, my blog Five Cents Ten Cents is embedded with AdSense advertisements. How AdSense works is that interested readers who find their way to my blog about personal finance and financial freedom would be presented with advertisements related to personal finance and financial freedom. There will be a certain percentage of visitors who may be interested and would click on those advertisements if it catches their eye.

My first foray into developing multiple streams of income
AdSense is my first tiny foray into developing a multiple stream of income and so far, it has paid me my first USD 100+ after about three months of blogging in Five Cents Ten Cents as well as my other blogs kidsREAD and Speaking Life. This means two things. Firstly, I need to keep my day job as AdSense will not pay my bills. :-) Secondly, it means that there is real money to be made in the virtual economy peddling thoughts and ideas presented in a coherent and easy-to-understand manner. :-)

How much is USD 100 every 3 months?
To put into perspective how this USD 100+ helps, it is instructive to compute how much investment capital I'll need to generate an income of USD 100 or SGD 150 every 3 months or so. Assuming a risk-free return of 2% from treasury bills or time deposits, in order to get USD 400 every 2 months, or USD 600 over a year (assuming the AdSense revenue is reasonably consistent and I blog at the rate of 2-3 articles a week), I would need SGD 30,000 in investment capital to get this passive income.

Imagine that! I would need to save, earn and invest SGD 30,000 at a return of 2% in order to get cashflows of S$50 a month or so! My investible savings that are not parked in time deposits or treasury bills are typically invested in stocks and shares listed on the SGX. While some of these shares have a higher dividend yield than 2%, I have to accept the risk of capital loss/gain as well as spend some time monitoring the stock market.

My own experience with AdSense
The beauty of AdSense is that the risk is relatively low in this venture. My investment is in the man-hours that I need to think and write about a personal finance topic that is relevant to you my reader. I did not incur much start-up costs as Blogger is a free service and my only real out of pocket costs are my broadband connection which I also use for personal entertainment.

In addition, while sometimes I feel that I have run out of ideas for this blog, life throws up many interesting scenarios and ideas through actual developments in my own investments, the market as well as questions posed by readers and forum sites that i visit. The time taken to blog also decreases over time as I become more accustomed to summarising my thoughts in a form that most readers are (hopefully!) able to follow.

My own experience with AdSense
In our journey towards financial freedom, seriously consider how you can build up multiple sources of income to help cut down the amount of time you need to work, save and invest to hit your target for your own level of financial freedom. It can be fun as it allows you to monetise a hobby, skill or talent that you already possess but never gave it an attempt to exploit it to earn real dollars and to add cents to growing your financial freedom fund!

Be well and prosper!