Earn More Results and Give More Kickoff

My stated goal for the Earn More Challenge was to make $555.56 by selling on ebay, selling on half, donating plasma, picking up cans, and anything else I could think of.

Here's how I did:

Total Extra Earned: $ 506.33  (short $49.23)

(1) Ebay and Half - net $366.32 - Ebay was more time consuming that I had realized; taking pictures and photoshopping them to look decent, as well as writing out descriptions, took on average 30 minutes per item.  This would probably get faster if I had more practice.  Half was much faster; I would say it averaged about three minutes an item. On half I listed 63 itmes, of which 6 sold, taking about 3.1 hours. On ebay I  sold 18 items and had 31 unsold auctions, so that's about 24.5 hours.  All together 27.6 hours, so an average of $13.27 an hour, assuming a base cost of zero for all items (which is pretty reasonable, since I usually donate clothing and books, and I don't itemize tax deductions).

(2) Plasma donation - net $90.00 - I only managed to donate for the first week.  It took me 9.5 hours for my two successful donations, for an hourly wage of $9.47 (not including driving time).  I am not counting my failed attempt at donation, where I waited four hours and finally left in frustration.  If I had been able to make myself donate plasma one more week, I would have achieved my goal.  But the time spent on ebay did not really leave me enough free time for plasma donation, and, as you can see from the hourly comparison, ebay was a better use of my time.

(3) Selling cans - net $0 - I couldn't find anywhere local that buys cans.  I know I can sell them about 45 minutes away, but I rejected that as not being worth the time and gas money.

(4) Anything else - net $50.01 - I cashed in my Amazon.com credit card points for a $50 cheque, and I found a penny on the ground (thanks, SS4BC;)

In conclusion, I have an extra $506.33, a few nice clothes to take to the consignment shop, and ~ 10lbs of aluminum cans.  I'm glad I participated; I'm happy to have the extra money.  I'm also glad that I didn't go with my original goal of $200 - that would have been too easy, and there's no way I would have kept up the ebaying at the rate I did all month once I was at goal.  This challenge did remind me, though, why I don't try to make extra money this way on a regular basis - it pretty much sucked all of the "me" time out of the month of September.

On that note, I'm trying something different for the month of October - Christian PF's 10 Day Give.  His idea is to give at least one thing every day for ten days.  It doesn't have to be money, which is good, because my discretionary spending for the entire month of October is $36.  And it makes a nice segue from the Earn More Challenge, because today I am giving a relative the aluminum cans.  She and her husband live on her SSI disability and his social security cheque, and I know that one of their small extra income streams is selling aluminum.  I still don't know what aluminum cans are worth by the pound, but I can assure you that the money will mean more to her than it does to me.