Erusal

There’s nothing more money saving than growing your own vegetables and cooking from scratch.  You get a little exercise whilst you’re tending your garden, then get to eat all the goodies you’ve grown, plus you save a whole load of money as well.  However, if you’re the gardener, it’s important to look after yourself and to make sure that you don’t overdo the digging.  Take small spits of soil with the spade, straighten up frequently, try not to bend your spine and don’t dig for more than 20 minutes at a time.  Once you’ve done all the hard work, treat yourself to something simple as a reward, maybe put your feet up and read a good book, or have a soak in the bath.

Whenever I’m in the garden, or out in the countryside, my little Jack Russell tags along for the ride.  He’s not much use at cultivating the garden, but he does like to dig – great big holes where I don’t want them, so I quite often have to distract him with toys if I don’t want my efforts to be ruined.  However, he has his uses.  He’s always on pest control regarding the rats that come down from the Moor looking for a nice warm compost heap to hide in.  He sees them off pretty quickly.

This time of year there’s not too much going on in the garden, especially with dark evenings and wet days, but it’s a good time to plan ahead for next year’s planting.  There should be plenty of green vegetables to harvest still, as all the brassicas will last in the ground over winter, such as brussels sprouts, kale, cabbage and the like. I tend to harvest them when they’re young and tender, as I prefer this to trying to chew my way through fibrous, bitter greens.  The winter months are also a good time to burn rubbish and have a general tidy up, getting rid of any dead, diseased prunings.  Other than that, it’s back to sitting by the fire with a good gardening book – happy gardening!

I’ve just published an article called How I make Money Online, at Hubpages http://hubpages.com/hub/How-I-Earn-Money-Online, to share with everyone how i earn my living as a writer. The article mainly talks about how to join Hubpages and what the benefits are of doing so. I found Hubpages a really easy way to get into earning money on line because of several reasons:

It’s free to join and to start up your own Hubpages online business.

I get to choose what I write about, so I can write stuff that interests me.

All the techy stuff is done for you, so you don’t have a bewildering learning curve that results in you making a lot of mistakes right off.

Ok, Hubpages takes a share of the revenue, they get 60% and you get 40%, but I think that’s fair for all the help and support you get.

Support – all the other Hubbers as we’re called are really helpful in sharing information.

I also wrote in this article about how to get jobs as a freelance copywriter online. I work as a freelancer through EU Freelance, a site where buyers post jobs, and you get to bid for those jobs. So far It’s worked really well for me, but you have to be careful. Never give away a free sample of your work to anyone, as people asking for freebies are ususally scammers. Thoroughly check how much you will get for each article – $2 for 100 words is OK, for 1000 words is rubbish. Once you win the bid, keep in touch with the buyer, at least daily, and ask lots of questions so that you’re clear what’s required. Make sure you meet the deadlines required.

Then just enjoy writing and being paid for your words!  Here are some other articles I’ve written http://hubpages.com/hub/Starting-a-small-business-The-Sory-of-The-Chocolate-Bar, about how to set up a small business, giving lots of tips about doing it, and about some of the pitfalls if you’re not careful.  I’m also a published author, having written two children’s books http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Publish-Your-Book.