How Much My Side Hustle Earned in January 2021
What a month January was. So many things happened and I can’t wait to share them all with you. This is going to be a detailed account of everything I accomplished in January and how much money I made. If you just started following along, I’ve been posting monthly summaries since September. Make sure you go read each month so you can see how I’ve built up to this moment. For everyone else, 2021 is going to be a great year and January just proves how amazing this year has been. Let’s jump into the details.
I started things off with a pivot in my strategy. I’ve been having a difficult time focusing on my tasks at work because my mind and heart just want to focus on building out my side hustle. I’ve developed a list of 18 different sources of revenue that I’ll be pursuing in 2021. In January, I started really focusing on building out the foundation for those 18 sources to flourish in the coming months. I’ll be discussing the sources of revenue that I did manage to stand up in January. I haven’t finished all, so make sure you keep coming back every month to read up on the latest progress.
YouTube
In December, we set up a new format for our videos. The results have been very disappointing. Not only is it taking us longer to make and edit the videos, but folks just aren’t watching them as much. I’ve asked for feedback on my videos, but folks aren’t providing me with much. I’m going to have to get a little more aggressive in February. I really do like our new format. I do believe that it explains things in a much more clearer way and the tutorial is easier to follow. I’m going to reach out to friends and family directly and have them offer up recommendations. Maybe it’s just the titles or the topics that folks are not too interested in. Regardless, I’m keeping the format for now, but do plan on pivoting on the topics a little. I want to try more trendier topics and see how those videos are received. But not all is bad in YouTube land. Despite new videos not being watched as much, overall watch time and views are up! We are averaging about 100 views a day now which is up from 50 views a day last month. With respect to monetization, were are slowly getting there. We saw a healthy increase in subscribers and watch time. The goals for January were 400 subs, 800 Watch hours and 69 published videos. As you can see, we came up very short on the subscribers (but up from 312) and crushed our watch hours goal. We also came up a little short on our videos published goal. Got 64 published now, up from 57. Overall, I’m feeling good about where we are with YouTube. I know that new video viewership is a little low, but our existing videos are really driving momentum for the channel.
Goals for February — 350 Subs, 900 watch hours and 70 videos posted. Let’s do this! And obviously, until those metrics up above hit the required numbers, still no monetization on our channel. If you haven’t yet subscribed to our channel or if you want to learn more about the Scratch tutorials that we make, make sure to check us out.
Podcast
The podcast continues to blow my mind. I’m crushing my goals so far and actually making money from it. January goal was to publish 10–12 episodes and I managed to get 7 out. Not the numbers I was hoping for, but I ran out of preexisting topics. I had planned to make a pivot on my topics, but didn’t feel like it was ready for prime time just yet. Nonetheless, I’m just going to have to pull the trigger and start recording and publishing season 3 of the Apetech Podcast. I had 272 downloads to the podcast on January 1st, and 31 days later, hit 407 downloads. That’s just amazing. The support I’ve been getting from you all is truly appreciated. As far as money, we are up to a whole 4 dollars! I really enjoy creating this podcast and I have many new ideas for the platform. In January, I plan to record at least 10 episodes again. I have 5 of them done already, so I’ll just have to make 5 more this month. I also plan on hitting 600 downloads. I also created a new icon for the podcast which I think people will enjoy more. I’ve also played with the titles a little more to make them more relevant and clickable. Don’t forget to check it out!
Blog(s)
A lot happening here as well. If you read my previous blog post, then you know that I’m moving my technical content out of Medium and on to my dedicated personal blogging site that I created. But that doesn’t mean I’m leaving Medium completely. I’m simply pivoting and will be creating more insightful blog posts here. I want to challenge myself as a creative writer and I do feel that Medium is the platform to do it on. I also don’t want my technical content behind a paywall, so moving it to my personal blog felt like the right decision. My posts in January (8 total) yielded me $0.00. A little disappointing, but this is why I’m going with the new strategy. But not all is lost, one of my articles from December managed to get me a total of 24 cents in the month of January. So, that’s a pretty good improvement. I’m hoping that because of the new style of writing I’ll be posting here, more people in the Medium community will read. This should return higher payouts because the content is going to be more thought provoking as opposed to technical tutorials. Over on my other blog site, I’ll be running ads so that should start yielding some money as well. Let’s see how this goes. I have 5 posts ready to go for cyber security, 1 TPM post, and I’m currently working on a Scratch/STEM post. I do have some new strategies for that content and I’m super excited to share with you in February.
This isn’t really a revenue source, but it’s where I’m building my community. January was a challenging month for the Twitter community because everyone was focused on talking about the terrorist attacks on our Capitol, the Inauguration, and then Wall Street / Gamestop fiasco. Even though everyone was going crazy on Twitter, I had a pretty solid month on there. I FINALLY reached my goal of hitting 500 followers! Currently sitting at 506 followers and wrote a total of 784 tweets. Overall, January was a solid month and I connected with a few people on a deeper level. I’m excited to be building my 18 sources of revenue publicly on Twitter. February is going to be a short month, but I’m going to see if I can hit 1000 tweets. Goal of 550 followers still in play for the month of February.
TikTok
I spent a lot of time over the month of January thinking how I was going to conquer TikTok. Let me tell you, my new strategy is working! A little over a week ago, I started posting videos about my journey in creating 18 sources of revenue. The response has been overwhelming. Every video has received over 100 views and I’m up to 220 likes on my videos. This is amazing and I plan on really focusing a lot of my creative energy into making TikToks. I have lots of ideas and documenting my life every day, 60 seconds at a time is going to show people how I grew my business, day by day. A lot happening in this space, so make sure you follow along so you don’t miss any daily details.
Freelancing
I ended up working on a website for my cousin. One of the case studies I had worked on over the summer didn’t work out, so I needed a third site. My cousin needed a website for his new business, so my wife and I created it. Shortly after, he referred me to two new paying clients! This is amazing as my wife and I are finally receiving paying clients for our work. Planning on getting the websites done for these two clients over the next week or so. I’ll share more details in February’s recap. I also stood up gigs on Fiverr and planning on setting up Upwork as well. I also have a compiled list of local businesses and I’m going to be email them to see if I can help them up with setting up a website or maybe improving an outdated website. Never done this before, but it’s time we really start focusing on making money here.
Books
No progress here, but still continues to be an area of focus. Still have the 3 books I’m working on and hopefully I can dedicate some time each week to write a little bit on each book.
SaaS
No progress here either. But, I do believe this is the future of Apetech so I need to start figuring this out.
Courses
Since these are tied to my books, no progress here either.
Flipping
I’m going to try selling my stuff. I plan on utilizing OfferUp, Facebook Marketplace and Ebay. I managed to take a few pictures of some products I want to get rid of and posted to OfferUp only. Haven’t received any offers, but I really want to document how I’m doing this and share it either on TikTok or on YouTube. So, I’m kind of siting on this while I figure out my path forward.
Total:
4.24. Doing a lot better and once I have my first two client pay, that number is going to go up significantly. February is going to be a short, quick month so I better go focus since time is ticking! Hope you enjoyed this and see you next month.
