Online Surveys

Has anyone had any experience of these?

As I'm spending hours online, looking for jobs, I thought I might as well try surveys as well, and see if I can make a few quid.

I have signed up for a couple of sites, with mixed success. I have done a few surveys, but not so far earned enough money to actually get any payment in hand.

A couple of days ago I signed up with another company called Vindale Research. Has anyone else had any experience with them?

Its weird, they have sent me an invitation to do an evaluation of an online Bingo site. If I do the evaluation, then I can earn USD15. BUT ... to do the evaluation I have to join the site and deposit a minimum of £10, and play bingo. Now it seems to me, that if I spend £10 to earn $15 dollars, then I'm not actually making any money. Also, they will only pay me any money once I have earned USD50. So I would have to wait to get my $15/£10 back.

Now it might be, that I can go to the Bingo site, play one game and get most of my £10 back. But even so, it doesn't look like a good deal to me!

I'll give the company a few days and see if what other surveys/evaluations I get. But if all I get are invitations to spend money, then I'm wasting my time.

Back Again!

Its months since I last blogged.

I spent two months trying to sell beds. It was an interesting job. I quite enjoyed bits of it. I don't consider myself a 'people person', so I was surprised to find that most of the time I enjoyed meeting customers. I met some really intersting people.

But I was rubbish at actually getting them to part with their money and actually buy a bed.

I successfully sold 3 beds. There was another lady who ordered a bed, and then cancelled, and one couple who wanted to buy but failed the credit check.

I learnt a lot about psychology.

But I'm not a manipulative type of person.

Let me make it clear, the company was very keen that its reps stayed within the letter of the law at all times, and there were loads of guidelines on what we could and couldn't say to the customers. But were we going out there to sell beds, and the whole appointment was very closely scripted to get the punters, errr customers, to buy, buy, buy.

Having said that. If I ever win the lottery, I will buy myself one of the beds!

Now its nearly 3 months later and I still don't have a job, and I have run up the credit cards, and I need to sort out the fact that I am registered as self-employed.

Its all pretty depressing, especially with Christmas coming.

Luckily I have been able to surrender an insurance policy for more than I was expecting, which will give me a bit more breathing space.

But I just don't know what I am going to do.

I can't find a job in computers, and I don't have any useful experience in anything else.

I'm sitting at home, freezing because we don't want to turn on the central heating because of the cost.

My hands ache all the time. I think I might be getting arthritis in my right hand. If I am getting arthritis, then I would be better off getting a job that doesn't include spending all day sitting at a key board.

Still Having Problems

I am still having problems getting into here to update, which why nothing has happened for a couple of days.

But today seems to be working okay, so here we go.

I have decided to give this sales job a go. They seem very organised and keen to get more people, which is good.

I have a four day training course starting tomorrow lunch time. So I will be up with the lark and plan to leave home at 7.30 to drive down. The course finishes on Thursday. I'm assuming that there will be a certain amount of selection involved. So I have to be all bright eyed and positive and enthusiastic. I can do that! I'm sure I can.

Actually my gut is telling me that this might be good. Its probably time I moved on from IT. I haven't been able to keep up with the latest developments and in the last two years, I've probably spent more time not working than working which is not good. It looks like with the sales job I will get leads, all I have to do is charm people into buying. Its a well established firm and they seem pretty sure that their sales pitch works, all I have to do is follow the script.

In 10 years time the mortgage should be paid off, and the children will be grown, the youngest should be through university by then. I need to maximize my income for those 10 years. I'm never going to get rich as a contract programmer. If I am a good salesman(person), they I could get a nice nest egg together. Assuming that I don't get lemoned into spending it all on the husband and children!

Decisions, decisions

I took part in a conference call today about the sales job I applied for yesterday.

First I did a check on the internet for the company. Seems they have a bit of a rep for bullying old folk into buying stuff they don't want. OTOH, its unlikely that any satisfied customers are going to post to sites that are looking for negative reviews. If the satisfied customers post at all they are going to go to the companies site, and there were loads of positive posts there.

If I want to go further, I will have to attend a 4 day brainwashing session, er, training course, at a hotel down south. The training course will be free, and the hotel bill will be picked up by the company.

There is a course running next week. I could do the course, drive home Thursday night. Shadow an existing salesman on the Friday and Saturday, then be off on Monday visiting leads and selling the goods. They pay a percentage of whatever I sell, and pay weekly. Someone earned over £5000 one week this year. But the average weekly earnings are £860. Not that £860 a week is anything to sneeze at.

BUT, I can expect 2 or 3 leads a day, six days a week. One morning, one afternoon and one evening. Each visit will last 1 or 2 hours, or longer. So I could be working from 10 o'clock in the morning to 9 or 10 o'clock at night. Six days a week. Saturdays are their busiest days. Which makes sense. That when people are home.

So I could be working 11 or 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for £36,000 a year (based on 45 working weeks in the year).

Of course, if I get good at it, I could earn a lot more. If I last and don't burn out, or fall asleep at the wheel.

Also, I would be self employed, so I would have to pay tax, higher level NI, accountant etc. petrol etc. out of that money.

Hmmmmm.

Decisions, decisions

Monday - One Step Foreward

I have bitten the bullet and applied for a sales job.

The advert promised massive potential earnings, of course. I need to search out a few more jobs and apply for them. Its silly to apply for just one job and then sit back waiting. However, I have had to change my CV a lot before applying for a none-it job, so I might wait and see if I get any response. It difficults to go from computer programming to selling beds. Its not a logical path by any means.

In other news, I tried to find out if I need to do anything to my paypal account before I start trying to sell stuff on ebay. But the website was so slow I gave up in the end.

I think I might just list a couple of things and see if it works. Its not like anything is likely to sell for more than a few pounds.

Now I have to decide what to do for tea. I'm not sure I can stand the excitement!

This was supposed to be Friday!

I tried to update this blog two or three times yesterday, but blogger didn't want to play.

It was very strange, I tried typing in, but just got pipes appearing (like this ||||) instead of letters.

I normally use IE6 as my web browser, but I while ago I loaded up Safari, so I am trying that instead. Hopefully this will post okay!

I hate Fridays. Its another week over and I'm no further forward. Like a song says "Another day older and deeper in debt".

I'm going to go and try and solve a problem I have in an Access database I am supposed to be up dating for a friend. We have a table which should have been set up with a unique identifier, but wasn't. So if you update a record, it just creates another record with the same identifier. I need to find a way of collating the records to capture all the info but lose the extra records.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Career Advice?

I had an appointment for adult career advice this morning.

What a joke!

It seems that this is not a good time to change career. Wow! Who knew!

But what I am supposed to do? I have been trying for nearly 4 months to get a contract using my skills. I have nearly exhausted my savings. I will be getting Job Seekers allowance for up to 6 months, but that will not even cover my grocery shopping at Tesco's. My husband cannot continue paying the mortgage, utilities, council tax etc. for ever.

I need to find a job and get some money coming in.

So I wanted advice on different places to look for jobs. I knew that it was unlikely that they would be much help. But somehow I did expect something. The only thing was that there are still openings in retail (but even there they like experience), care work and sales. So I guess I will have to try and talk my way into a sales job.

Shudder! I need a personality transplant to be able to do sales!

Some Good News!

I phoned up the job seekers allowance people yesterday to see how my claim is going. Seemingly they made a payment to me on Friday which will appear in my bank account today or tomorrow. Nice of them to let me know! They were a lot quicker to send me the original letter refusing my claim.

Still, every little helps. Its nice to know that the 30+years I have been paying NI are actually worth something.

The moral of this story is to check if you are turned down for anything. It would have been too easy to say, "Well they must know what they are doing!" and give up.

I have an appointment tomorrow morning at another job centre for adult career advice. I.e. what sort of jobs can I apply for if I can't get a job in the area I have worked in for 24 years!

I need to either get a job or win a load of money on the lottery. At the present rate of progress, I need to keep buying lottery tickets!

Another Month, Another Post!

Well I'm still here, still unemployed.

One of the big problems with being unemployed is social. I sit at home looking for work on the internet and thinking of things I could do if I had some spare money. I would love to do some decorating, several rooms in the house are looking a little tired, but I don't want to spend the money on paint and wallpaper.

So when I do go out, I have no conversation. I haven't been anywhere, I haven't done anything (other than a bit of housework) and I have nothing planned. We aren't having a holiday, obviously, this year. I can't meet up with people for lunch, or for a troll round the shops.

I can't decide if people are avoiding me because I'm so boring, or if I am being paranoid!

I went down to the job centre a couple of weeks ago and applied for job seekers allowance. It looked fine, then I got a letter saying my application had been turned down. I phoned up the office to find the reason and was told that I needed to have paid £5000 per year N.I. for the last two years to qualify. Which is rubbish. Who pays £5000 a year National Insurance? Any way they asked to see my P60's for the last two years (which I had already produced at the job centre). Those where sent off on Tuesday, so I should hear soon.

Not that job seekers is a lot of money, but every little helps. I'm nearly at the end of my savings.

I have a friend who has a shop, I have offered to write a website for him. He's not going to pay me. But it will give me a chance to do some web programming, which I have not really done before, and if the site turns out okay, then I can apply for a job as a web programmer and use the site as an example of what I can do. Now I just have to learn how to program web stuff!

Try Again

Wow, its over a month since I posted here.

Being unemployed does very little for your motivation!

I've been checking the websites every day (several times a day, in fact). I have applied for 2 contracts, got phone backs for both of them, which is good, but didn't have all the ticks in all the boxes for either.

The guy I spoke to about the second contract said that they had had over 190 applications for the one role. I suppose I should be glad that I at least got a call back.

I still can't decide if I should try doing a training course. The problem is that a weeks training would cost over £2000. It would also be in London, so I would have to pay for getting there and staying for at least 4 nights.

Employers (and agencies) in my experience are not interested in training courses, only in time spent actually doing stuff. So I could spend 2 1/2 K and be no better off.

Feeling really down today.

I would like to do some decorating in the house, but again I don't want to spend the money. I spend my time doing bits of house work and surfing the net. I am achieving nothing. I hate housework.

I've been thinking about putting some stuff on ebay. But nothing that I would want to sell would make more than a few pounds (if I'm lucky), so it hardly seems worth the time spent.

I've put some books up for sale on a site called www.greenmetropolis.com, but nothing has sold yet. I might go and dig round and see if I can find some older books. Some of the books I wanted to sell, there are already over 20 copies for sale.

Budget Day

Today is budget day here in the UK.

The one thing I'm sure of, is that I will end up paying more tax. Assuming that I ever find another job, that is!

I work short term contracts. Not really through choice. I had a permanent job with a local firm a few years ago. But I was made redundant and my job went to India. I work in IT, so the obvious thing to do was to go contracting. Which has worked reasonably well for the last few years. But I haven't been able to keep up to date with my training, so my skills are getting a bit old fashioned. All the current adverts want skill I don't have.

Anyway what I really want to talk about is the budget. The husband works full time and has a reasonable job. We have a nice house, its quite big, but not amazing. When I'm working I get good money, but again not amazing. We just about keep our heads above water. But it seems like the goverment is always after us to pay more. Every time they change the tax laws it seems to hit us.

We don't qualify for any tax credits. We've lost the married mans allowance. The daughter is at Uni, she doesn't qualify for any assistance, so we have to support her. She is in her first year of a 4 year course, and is living in hall. But the amount she is allowed to borrow under the student loans scheme is less than she has to pay for her room and board. She is over 18, so she is notionally an adult, but we had to fill in all sorts of forms about our incomes before she could claim her students loan (which she will have to pay off).

I have to go now, as I'm taking the children to the dentist (presumably I will have to pay for the check for the daughter as she is no longer considered a child!). More expense!

Somebody Stole The Water

Close to where I live is a boating lake. Its big as these things go and is used a lot for sailing and windsurfing. Its also a popular place for people just wanting a walk. The circuit is about a mile. It was originally built about a hundred years ago, and rebuilt back in the 1980's. Its maintained by the local council who have been threatening/promising to do some badly needed maintenance to it for years. Finally it was decided that this would be the year. Only they didn't start working on the lake till last month. Obviously the lake has to be drained for the work to be done.

The sailing season started at Easter, but there is no water in the lake. Actually that's not quite true as the lake fills from the tide when the tides are very high (which is a few days every month). But nobody is supposed to sail on the lake even when its full of water until the work is done. Nor is anyone supposed to walk round the lake. I can understand the restrictions, its probably not that safe, especially for children. But why did the council put off starting the work until just before the start of the good weather?

Another problem is the smell! All the exposed mud gets quite pongy when when the sun is shining.

I took this photograph yesterday. You can see some of the water that has not drained, the sand/mud of the lake bottom and the seaward wall of the lake. Beyond that is the sand of the Dee Estuary and Hilbre Island. I had fun taking the picture. The sun was shining behind me and I couldn't really make out the image on the camera screen. I could just about make out the horizon and had to hope that it would come out. I'm quite pleased with this shot.

Hello

This is my first post!

Hello,

I am planning to use this blog to talk about my life and my view of the world.

I live on the coast of England and can see the Irish Sea from my window, which is why I have called the blog Watching The Sea.

I will also be talking about books I read, or fail to read, and anything else that takes my fancy.

I will be posting some photographs taken locally to where I live as well. Just to brighten things up a little.