May Earning Report — First Full Month After Quitting My Job

Photo by Jake Ingle on Unsplash

This has been a crazy month. I never thought that I would quit a well paying job to pursue my dreams. In the month of April, I finally pulled the plug and April 2nd, 2021 was my last day as a full-time employee. I took a bit of a leap of faith and decided that it was time to chase my dreams. Over the last month, I have been busy trying to earn money and also building out different income streams. This has been the first month in my life, where I could completely focus on the things I wanted to focus on. I had all the time in the world, no more excuses about being too busy. Let’s review how far I came in just one month and then we’ll conclude with a brief plan for the month of May.

Income Streams

I quit my job because I wanted to build multiple streams of income. I realized I was never going to achieve my goals in life with only one income stream. I therefore set out to build multiple streams of income. I initially set out to build out eighteen different streams and so far, I’ve managed to build a few of them. We’ll start with the order that I have been prioritizing. I hope that by the end of June, I have all of my income streams up and running.

Freelancing

I started freelancing in an effort to earn money while I build out my more passive income streams. Freelancing takes a lot of time and requires that I sell my services to complete strangers. I’ve never been really good about doing that, but I have managed earn a decent amount of money in the past month. I opened up four different accounts to freelance and I also have my own personal website where I offer my services.

Fiverr

Fiverr was the first website that I signed up for. Fiver is known for five dollar gigs and mostly used by non US folks. I set up seven gigs which allows me to basically advertise seven different skills that I offer. In my gigs, I offer services such as web development, cybersecurity training, and Jira training/configuration. My experience with Fiverr has been mixed. I receive a lot of spam on the platform from people that just need help with their scams. I’ve had to learn to be careful on identifying those scams and I really do wish the platform did a better job at eliminating those accounts. But, I’ve also have had great success on Fiverr. After Fiver’s 20% cut that they take, I managed to make $1,532 dollars on the platform.

Upwork

Upwork requires a lot more attention and upkeep. The platform really tries to make you feel safe and secure when interacting with complete strangers. They go above and beyond in verifying your identity to minimize scams on the platform. Unlike Fiverr where you post your services, in Upwork, you basically apply to open positions. Companies put up work that needs to be done and you create a proposal. You can also only apply to 2–3 jobs per month if you use the free account (which I am). I like that the jobs on Upwork are more “real” and usually last a couple weeks and pay better than on Fiverr. I’ve managed to make $400 on the platform. It is a lot harder to get jobs here but I like the interface and the overall experience better. I currently have another contract that I will complete within the next week.

Contra

I signed up for Contra because unlike Upwork and Fiverr, Contra doesn’t take any of your earnings away. Problem is, they are just starting out and I have no idea how to use their platform. Their interface doesn’t make any sense and I have no idea how to find clients or how clients find me. I’ve emailed their support and basically they told me that they are still wrapping things up. I guess I’ll wait and see what happens here but so far, I’m not impressed and wouldn’t recommend it.

Freelancer

I created an account on here as well and I would not recommend it. The interface is very ugly and you get a ton of notifications and emails all day, every day. Most of the people on the platform are non US and it is really hard to find good paying jobs on there. I haven’t touched the platform since I started and I just spend most of my time deleting the hundred emails the send me every week. Do not use Freelancer.

Apetech.me

I built my personal website in the Summer of 2020. I haven’t really done anything with it, but just this weekend I crafted an email that I will be using to try to get new business. I’ve created a flyer, collected emails and contact information for local businesses in my community. My goal is to reach out to them and try to get a couple clients per week/month where I train their employees on cybersecurity. I’ve really hesitated to get this started because it requires I proactively go out and find work. I am not a very good sales person so I’ve put this off as much as I can. But, now that I have a flyer, email, and sales strategy, it is time to do the scary thing and reach out to businesses.

Podcast

Since I started my podcast, this has been where I’ve been able to generate the most amount of money. It used to be a lot, until I started freelancing. While my podcast is no longer my biggest cash cow, it still continues to earn money for me and I absolutely LOVE creating my podcast. For the first time since I started the podcast, I was able to stay on track and published nine episodes in the month of April. Viewership is at an all time high and I’m almost at 800 downloads on my podcast. I continue to invest into the podcast and have huge plans for it going forward. My next steps are to figure out how to get guests on the podcast and I’d also like to start going to other podcasts to discuss things that I’m interested in. In total, I’ve made $7.74 through ads on my podcast but I have a long way to go. Next week, I’ll be researching how to make money through my podcast and plan to make big changes in the month of May.

Blog

I have two blogs that I am maintaining right now. I have a technical blog, where I post technical how-to content. I also post the show notes for my podcast on there. The other blog is hosted through Medium and I use that platform to post more leadership/personal development posts on there. I tend to write things that I are more in line with experiences that I am going through as I am building out my business. I managed to make .12 cents on my blog posts in the month of April. I spent the past week researching how to grow a blog and I have some action items and new tactics that I’ll be implementing in May to hopefully get that number up.

Selling Stuff

I have a ton of stuff in my garage that I simply do not use. In April, I finally had time to sort through some of those items and post them up for sale. I posted some video games that I had laying around along with a few other items. In the last couple weeks, I’ve managed to make $600 from selling all those things that I just had absolutely no use for. Selling is hard and not every item sells. I have a lot of items and I am hopeful that I can continue to make a few hundred bucks a month for the rest of 2021 with the amount of items that I have in closets and in the garage.

And that’s pretty much it for the month of April. In total, I made $2,532. While this number is no where near what I used to make as a full-time employee, I am so proud of this money. I took a leap of faith and trusted in myself. I earned that money by doing things that were uncomfortable to me and I am beyond proud. I have big plans for the month of May, so let’s take a look at what I have in store.

• Update my gigs on Fiverr to include video introductions. This should help convince folks that visit my page to hopefully want to at least start a conversation with me.
• Update my Upwork profile to include a video introduction of what I can do for potential clients. I will also clean up my profile since I can have three profiles on there.
• I will be sharing all my services on social media and also updating my website, apetech.me to include all my services.
• I will be actively looking to be a guest on a podcast and hopefully have a guest on my podcast as well.
• I will be trying to figure out how to get a sponsor for my podcast.
• I will be figuring out how to write for publications on Medium and elsewhere throughout the startup/coding community.
• I will be trying to get a gig as a technical writer.
• I will be making Spanish versions of my Scratch tutorial videos.
• I will be publishing a Writing for Engineers course on YouTube.
• I will be selling my first book on how to be an Effective Technical Program Manger with Jira.
• I will be starting to understand and build out affiliate marketing.
• I will start coding and will be focusing on web development and mobile development.
• I will start a Patreon / Buymecoffee to enable donations for those wanting to help me on my journey.
• I will be 3D printing out a pokeball and showcasing it on YouTube and TikTok.
• Continue to grow on TikTok and have 3,000 followers by end of May.

As you can see, I have some big plans and I plan on enabling three more sources of income in May. I’ll see you in a month!

Thanks for your support and as always, if you want to stay up-to-date with everything I’m working on, apetech.me/social is the best place to get all the details you need!!