June Income Report
90 days ago, I quit my job to try and build out multiple sources of income. I’m not going to lie, I was beyond scared when I finally mustered up the courage to quit my job. After all, who in their right mind quits a very well paying job in the middle of a pandemic? After some encouragement from the internet, I pulled the trigger and here we are; 90 days later. If you remember from my last post, June was going to be the first month that I really tried to turn the ship around. I was getting by, with some income coming in. But, if I want to make this side hustle a full-time thing, I really need to start pulling in some serious money. The plan is to make 10k a month by Labor Day. Let’s see how I fared on my journey.
Freelancing
On the freelancing front, I had my best month ever! I’ll start things off with Fiverr. I have bittersweet feelings for Fiverr. It’s a great platform but there is so much spam. Half the messages/requests I get on there are some sort of scam. I really do wish Fiverr would so something about it. I made 357.60 dollars on Fiverr. Not bad. I was able to withdraw 863.60 for the month of June. I have a few more gigs currently going on Fiverr and I continue to negotiate more gigs. I really do see Fiverr as more of a side hustle thing than anything else.
Upwork is up next. Here’s where things get interesting. A client found me and offered me a very challenging job. I wasn’t sure if I could do it, but I signed up for it anyways. I was given a set number of hours and I was able to finish the project in 1/3 of the budget! Great for the client . . .not so good for an hourly employee such as myself. I still managed to net about 1300 dollars from that client for the month of June. I finished out a couple out a couple of other contracts I had with existing clients for a total of 816.15. In total, I was able to make 2149.90 from Upwork which is AMAZING!
Not much effort was done on the Contra, Freelancer, or Apetech fronts. I was overwhelmed with my new and existing clients that everything else suffered as you’ll see in the next sections. . .spoilers =)
Freelancing total: $3,012
Not the 10k I was hoping to be making, but compared to my previous couple months, this is trending in the right direction. Stay tuned for the July income report, because I have a feeling I’ll be surprising you!
2. Podcast
I saw good growth with my podcast the month of June. I had an initial goal of getting to 1,500 downloads. I ended the month with just a little under 1500 downloads. I’m averaging about 30 downloads an episode and let me tell you, I really lost steam with the podcast. I planned out the next 25 episodes but I just haven’t had the time to actually write the scripts and record them. The podcast continues to be a high priority in my passive income model so I will continue to invest in this. I’ll have to push these episodes out more consistently and I’ll just have to find some more time to write and record the episodes. I have made a running total of $14.98 and I can’t wait to hit the magic $15 dollar mark. If you aren’t listening to my podcast, I encourage you to fire up your favorite podcast player on your phone and look up Cyber Security For All or Apetech.
3. Blogging
Starting to sound like a broken record, but I am not going to lie, but I completely dropped the ball here. I started out with good intentions, but the month got the better part of me this time around. I posted only two posts here on Medium and a handful of posts on my technical blog site. The reason I didn’t post on Medium was because I just didn’t make the time to write the articles. I actually have outlined the next 25 articles for Medium, but I just haven’t gotten around to writing them. I’m trying to do better in the month of July as I have started to make changes to my schedule to accommodate for all the new work I have. I made no money from my technical posts (really thinking of not renewing my Wordpress site at this point) and made .05 cents from Medium. I do plan on starting to write more paid content this month so hopefully these numbers turn around by the end of the month.
4. Selling/Flipping
I hardly made any money selling things. As I stated before, I really have started running out of things to sell and I really need to start looking into more items to get rid of. This month, I only managed to make about 60 dollars from selling/flipping.
5. Everything else
I have really dropped the ball with respect to everything else. I realize all of this and I’m making changes to make sure I get back on track. I haven’t used my planner at all which I think is leading to my distraction. July is going to be the month where I get back on track and you should expect to see me turning things around over the next few weeks. My Jira book is still missing all the screenshots and diagrams (the text is all complete). I need to develop courses, apps, plugins, themes, etc. I also haven’t made a YouTube video in almost 4 months!
June Total: $3,012
This has been the best month so far! I was really nervous when I quit my job, but slowly, this venture is starting to pay off. I’m feeling more confident that I’m going to make it to my 10k goal by the end of the summer. I know that I’ve fallen behind on many of my other passive incomes but I have a plan.
First thing I want to do is focus my energy on getting the podcast out. It only takes me about 30 minutes to produce the podcast and about another 30 minutes to write the script. I need to find a time over the weekend where I can just sit for a couple of hours and hash out a few episodes. I already have all the titles so this should be easier this time around.
Next up is YouTube. I decided to hire an intern and I have a goal of publishing 100 videos to YouTube. It’s a little aggressive, but with the help, I should be able to do this as well. Similar to the podcast, it only takes me about an hour to write and record the video. Since I’ll be outsourcing the editing, this should cut down on the time it takes me to turn these videos around. I already have a handful of videos planned and now I just have to create them.
Finally, I’ve spent a great deal of energy growing my TikTok following. I started the month with 3,000 followers and I am ending the month of June with 3,900 followers! These followers are key to my overall growth and success. For July, I plan on hitting 5,000 and by end of the Summer, my goal is to be at 7,500 followers. I’ve also been doing well on Twitter and have grown my following there to 550 followers. Consistency is key, and I plan on being even more consistent and engaged with online communities during the month of July.
I have a lot planned and I realize that I really need to put in the work now. July is going be much better!
Thanks for following along and I’ll see you in August!
