Escaped the Race - February

I've escaped the race, well, at least for now. Currently I'm in Macau, hence, no photo. The place is very photogenic but the weather has been miserable so far and seemingly getting worse by the day.

Yesterday was a great day as I did something that I thought I'd never do. I'll put the video up and some photos when I get back to Taiwan but I won't spoil the surprise just yet.

February targets

Writing

Contact 10 editors about stories I'm developing
Visit the Taiwan Tourist Board and develop an article for them.
Develop some articles so by the end of the month I have 4-5 complete-ist articles and another 4-5 developing.

Blog

Overall, I want to get more professional in my blogging.

Learn how to do internal links in a post.
Use Luis's suggest on how to insert tables - print screen
Follow some more relevant blogs
Link up with Youtube

Videoing

Get more familiar with the technology
Download video on to the computer
Check out video submission requirements for Shutterstock
Make some Language orientated videos.

Photography

This should be easily accomplished

Upload 40 new photos for 123Rf, Shutterstock and Dreamstime.
Do some involving people.

January Round Up

Freedom in Life

Dreamstime Free Photos Here









Considering I escape the race at the end of tomorrow, my alternative income looks inadequate. This month I earned $39.38 from stock photography and about $27 for writing an article for the company's newsletter.

Stock Photography Report


Dreamstime - Total Portfolio - 470 New Photos - 41 Jan earnings - 13.82
Shutterstock Total Portfolio - 195 New Photos - 40 Jan earnings - 15.38
123RF Total Portfolio - 411 New Photos - 16 Jan earnings - 4.79
Fotolia Total Portfolio - 213 New Photos - 10 Jan earnings - 5.39

Highlights

Shutterstock was the number one agent for the second month running. Only had one 'on-demand' download. Sales were up over the previous month and 40 new photos is the biggest portfolio expansion ever.

Dreamstime - I had 23 downloads but rates per photo were low. I had my first referral (no income and very mysterious). Added 41 photos, this was the biggest expansion of the portfolio since Jan 09.

Fotolia - Not a highlight, but they have started to deducted tax. My British status has been established but tax still seems to be deducted. I'm finding it hard to expand my portfolio with this agency.

Writing

I had an 'advice article' for teachers in Taiwan published in my teaching company's newsletter. This is the third article published with them.








Submit Photos to Shutterstock and make $$$!

Microstocks Goals for 2010

Dreastime free photo

















Just eight days to go and then freedom. Well, freedom for a while, how long I don't know yet but it'll be for months.

I see this as an opportunities to do more with photography and I see microstocks as a helpful tool in this process.

So during this time, I want to dramatically increase the number of photos I have with each agency, whilst at the same time improve the saleability of the photos I submit.

• I'll study good selling portfolios - start in February
• I'll search through flickr, the web and bookstores for photographers and designers I like. I'll note down ideas that excite me and see how I could encorperate these ideas into my photography.
• The conceptual ideas I have at the moment. I'll develop into photos. I'll start this in February.
• If I go travelling, I'll do more research to find out what's interesting in that place.
• I'll do people photography. I plan to start this at the end of February. Before that I'll study what people are doing with hands, feet and body part shots.
• I'll learn illustrator.

Uploading to various agencies

Dreastime

Numbers are for the end of the month

Jan - 460
Feb - 500
Mar - 600
Jun - 800
Sep - 1100
Dec - 1400

Shutterstock

Jan - 185
Feb - 220
Mar - 310
Jun - 500
Sep - 800
Dec - 1100

Fotolia (I'm having real problems increasing the portfolio with this one)

Jan - 215
Feb - 230
Mar - 280
Jun - 400
Sep - 600
Dec - 750

123RF

Jan - 420
Feb - 465
Mar - 570
Jun - 800
Sep - 1100
Dec - 1400





It's a race against time

2010 Update

My current escape plans haven't gone to plan. Soon I'll have no work and very little income. What to do?







It's been a long time since I last wrote and things have certainly changed.

I'll escape the race on Feb 4th. This will be my last day at work.

I've started a new blog called Health for the Middle Ages.

Meanwhite, my alternative income from photography has raisen from $40 to $50 per month. This is hardly enough to survive on but it is a start.

My Chinese has improved, especially listening. I'm starting to understand longer strings of words on TV. I find children's programmes easy to follow and usually I understand new words that are the focus of that episode. My speaking is still poor though.

I will revive this blog. The focus will be on 'being more business like' and developing alternative sources of income. I want to transform myself from a person with little business sense to a focus person who makes it doing what he wants to do. It's a tall order but it's what I want.

In February, I'll make 'being more business like' the focus of the month. I want to change my approach to life, so that it's obvious to other people where I'm going in life and hopefully more obvious to myself too.









Submit Photos to Shutterstock and make $$$!

September Update

Sorry for only updates at the moment. I do plan to do more.

Chinese has become my main activity outside work. It consists mainly of listening and some speaking.

Listening - This has improved since August. At the end of August my girlfriend and I went away with two other friends. I notice that when she was speaking to her other friends about something that we have done I was able to follow the conversation pretty well. I haven't really been able to do this before so I was very excited and happy about this breakthrough.

Listening at the moment is mainly - ChineseOnline -- a Chinese podcast, Youtude, Taiwanese TV including news (difficult), chat shows (difficult but fun), some Children TV (some of which is easy to understand), listening to when my girlfriend talks to her friends (previously I found this boring and hardwork but now I enjoy it) and about 4 hours per week with a friend. (She does most of the talking, though she is prone to translating, which is really annoying).

Speaking - not sure whether this has improved. I'm in a dilemma as I don't want to push myself to speak if I'm thinking too much about what I want to say. If it doesnt' 'pop' then I'm not ready to say this. This annoys my friend as she thinks I should speak more.

Photography - earnings are down this month, though I've started to upload more.

Getting Fit - after the summer heat I think it's time to get exercising again. I went for a jog and a swim last week.

Giving up work, I still haven't handed in my notice. The main thing holding me back is that I'm worried I'll end up doing nothing with my freetime. Though I've had ideas about earning extra income, I haven't really done much towards realising this.

Update

Update

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past month researching ‘language learning’. There are definitely many camps out there but the one that’s got my attention is the ‘acquisition approach’. This approach requires a ‘silent’ period that can last for up to a 1,000 hours and massive input of the target language. It doesn’t require books, study or even thinking, as these practices will ultimately restrict your ability in your chosen language.

Advocates of this approach include;


Though I haven’t researched it thoroughly, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of products for this approach to language learning. The advocates would say that in this age of technology you can source many of the things yourself but this is time consuming and if you’re not familiar with your target language you might end up getting stuff in the wrong language i.e. Mandarin and Cantonese.

I want over the next few months to develop a proto product designed to meet the requirement of the ‘acquisition approach’. I will use it myself to learn Chinese and I’ll share with friends to see what they think.

Chinese – this is slowly improving. I can understand many more words now and sometimes I get the gist of what they’re talking about on TV. There hasn’t been any jumps in my comprehension though.

Photography – my income for July was down to $36 from $41 in June. Currently I’m likely to get around $30 for August. The summer months are suppose to be slower than most other months and I hope this turns out to be true. My aim is now to earn a $100 per month by the end of the year. To achieve this I really need to increase my uploads. I also need to upload people pictures as they’re more in demand than objects and scenery.

Writing – I haven’t done much on this for some time.

Videoing - despite getting a brand new video camera I haven’t done much with it. I have a plan to make a language video as well as to record different techniques that could be used to ‘acquire language’.

Overall, I don't think I'm making much progress towards being free from work. There are ideas bubbling but I really need to take the next step with them.

The past couple of weeks I've been reading about language learning and I've come across some interesting sites.

There are many ways to learn a language and over the past week I've read about people with radically different approaches. Some take a pro-active approach whilst others believe in acquisation that's accompanied by a period of silence. Saying this, most do not believe in learning grammar and memorizing vocab lists.

Interesting Links

Keith's Voice on Extreme Language Learning. Keith is using the TV method to learn Chinese, though he has temporarily stop this as he needs to find a new job in Japan. Besides writing about the TV method, he also has articles on

ALG Thai programme - video of the director of the programme talking about the Thai language programme. This programme is radically different from other learning teaching programmes in that they recommend you do not speak for the first 800 hours. Very interesting.

http://natural-language-acquisition.blogspot.com/2009/07/alg-thai-interview-with-david-long.html

An interview with a Korean ployglot

http://natural-language-acquisition.blogspot.com/2009/06/hyunwoo-sun.html

Benny the Irish ployglot is learning Czech in three months

http://www.fluentin3months.com/

This guy is actually an English Teacher, to many 1,000s of people. His 7 tips are worth signing up for but here he commenting about the ALG Thai programme.

http://effortlessacquisition.blogspot.com/2004/11/comprehension-is-king.html

I haven't read much of this site. It's a mix of language points and NLP. When I have more time I'll go into his site more.

http://stujay.blogspot.com/

This is one I've come across today. It's a free sample. How anyone read the whole book?

http://www.learnthatlanguagenow.com/Learn%20That%20Language%20Now%20SAMPLE.pdf

Other articles by the same guy

http://www.artipot.com/authors/31647/robertson-b-kunz/


I've read many other things as well and hope to put out an article reviewing the sites in more detail. If you are interested in learning languages, these links are definitely worth following.

Leave a comment if you know of other learning sites that you have found interesting or more importantly useful.