July Income Report — Mind Blown!

My journey to 10k by Labor Day!

With every passing day, my mind is blown. I quit my job in April of 2021 and honestly, I had no idea what the future was going to hold. I had a plan, but I knew that plan was going to take time to fruition. I had no idea how long it would take for me to earn a dollar without a traditional 9–5 job. Fast forward a few months and here we are at the end of July. These last few months have been surreal. I never would have imagined that I could take so much control of my career. Work on projects and things that I was interested and yet still make a good amount of money. I’m not going to lie, I was very scared when I quit my job. Up to that point, quitting my stable job, with a stable income was the dumbest thing I had ever done in my life. To be fair, I wasn’t much of a trouble maker growing up and always played it safe. But wow, I just can’t believe where I am today. Let’s take a closer look at my earnings and compare them to the previous month. Just as a friendly reminder, I have goal of getting to 10k/month by Labor Day 2021. Also, remember that I initially had about 18 sources of income that I was building out. I have since scaled those sources down to about 10.

Freelancing

Freelancing continues to be the #1 way that I make money after quitting my job. I started on a few different platforms and each one has yielded very different results. After using these platforms for the last few months, I have learned a lot. I’ll start with Fiverr. Fiverr is great if you want to work on one off type of projects. These really are gigs, in the sense that you work on something for a few hours, and then you turn it in. After that, you are basically done and you may or may not hear from the client again. In fact, rarely do you even know who your client is. All communication is done on the platform and I hardly ever call anyone up when using Fiverr. I made a total of 900 dollars on Fiverr in July. I have an additional 80 dollars pending and I’m currently not working any active gigs. I’m not sure how August will turn up, but I am redesigning my gigs on Fiverr this week to better align with my new direction that I’ll talk about later.

With Upwork, I made a good amount of money. Not as much as I did last month, but still had a pretty good return. For the month of July, I made 1,361 dollars. A lot less than last month, but you’ll see why that’s okay in the next part. I really do like Upwork. I think their service is great and I’m only now losing 10% of my earnings to the platform. I am on their Expert-Vetted Level which favors my profile when folks are looking up my services. I do plan on creating an introductory video and also redesigning my profile so that it is more clear what I specialize in.

While using freelancing tools like Fiverr and Upwork is great, I’ve also managed to get a couple of clients outside of those platforms. I’m really excited about these earnings because these earnings aren’t subject to the fees that Upwork and Fiverr take away from you. Also, these earnings represent clients that I’ve made lasting impressions on and they basically have become repeat clients. This is exactly where I want to be long term as this gives me more earnings and great control of the jobs that I take in the future. Off one client, I made 582 dollars!

The first week of June, something magical happened. I received a message from someone that was looking for a Jira expert. I reached out and a couple days later, I had this amazing gig where I get to work out of Jira/Confluence pretty much all day long. After working pretty much most of June with this client, I managed to make 3,477 dollars! As you can see, these numbers are starting to add up! Let’s get the total

Freelancing Total: $6,320

Only less than 4,000 to hit my goal of 10k!!! As you may remember, freelancing is just one of the pillars that I’ve created. I have at least 9 more to go, so let’s take a look at how those are going.

Podcast

The podcast has been going well. Since this is the only other area that I’m making money, I continue to invest heavily into my podcast. I have all the episode titles for Season 4 (current season) and I just need to write scripts, record, and publish. Sound simple right? I currently have 1,660 downloads to my podcast and cross over the $15 dollar threshold. I’m currently sitting at 16.67 and really hoping this number takes off at some point. I’m thinking of making a second podcast where I talk about Atlassian/Agile as that is now my main focus, but just not sure yet. I’m also not sure if I’m not sure what I’m going to do with cybersecurity. When I initially quit my job, cybersecurity and websites was how I was planning on making a living. But now, I’m thinking it’s going to be Atlassian/DevOps/Agile and maybe cybersecurity. I’m not sure yet, but I’ll be figuring that out before Summer is over.

Blogging

Yeah. . . NOTHING happened here. I wrote my June monthly report and that was pretty much it. I do upload my script for my podcast to my blogging site, but I don’t promote it. I just have it there in case someone listening to my podcast wants to see the show notes. I did manage to make 44 cents from my posts here on Medium. I still have the next 25 blog posts already brainstormed up, but now I’m thinking I might want to pivot to focus on Atlassian/Agile/Devops topics. I’m not sure yet and like with the podcast, I’ll be figuring these things out over the next couple weeks.

YouTube

My YouTube channel has been completely dormant since I quit my job. I haven’t posted any videos and honestly, I have no words to explain this. But, not all hope is lost. Since I’ve decided to focus my freelancing career on Atlassian and Agile, I’m going to be shifting focus on Apetech Tutorials. I have 100 videos, all on Jira already planned out and will be exploding my presence on YouTube over the next month. I have an editor lined up and ready to go, all I need to do is create the videos. Be ready to watch a lot of videos on Jira!

Everything Else

I have big plans for the rest of 2021! I’m slowly moving everything into Jira and Confluence so that I can create some accountability and also to free up space on my whiteboard. I’m going to be redesigning my website and pretty much my entire digital brand. My goal is to make it perfectly clear to anyone that finds me to know that I am an Atlassian expert and that I provide Atlassian services. The rest of Summer is going to be a busy one for me. I do think I can hit my goal of 10k by Labor day. Make sure you come back on September 1 to find out how how the next 31 days went!

If you haven’t already, apetech.me/social is where you can find everything that I’m working on. Feel free to listen to my podcast, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and if you need any help with anything Atlassian related, please feel free to reach out! I’d love to chat and work with you.

See you next month!