May Income Report — Picking Up Steam!
What a crazy month May was. I had all 31 days to grow and scale my business. I did not grow as quickly as I would have liked, but significant progress was made on all fronts. I’ll be sharing numbers and overall progress for the month of May today. Today also marks my 60 day anniversary of having quit my job to pursue my dreams. I’m not going to lie, but this has to be the most emotionally challenging thing I’ve ever done. Things are going well, so I really don’t have much to complain about, but still, the thought of now knowing where your next check is going to come from is daunting. I have HUGE plans for June and I will be challenging myself to make $10,000 a month by Labor Day which is in early September. There are roughly 100 days between Memorial day and Labor day and I plan to make the best out of those days. I am going to really try to minimize the procrastination and distractions and really focus on building.
Freelancing
On the freelancing front, the month didn’t go as well as previous months. I didn’t earn as much, but I did have a lot more consistency. I was able to not only make money, but I also built good relationships with the clients that have taken me under their wing. Pretty much all of my Upwork clients are repeat customers and they keep giving me work. They give me enough work that I haven’t really have had to go looking for more clients. Additionally, I crossed over the $1,000 dollar mark on Upwork which is a major accomplishment and helps get your profile promoted on the platform. Fiverr was okay. I had a few hundred dollar projects but nothing too big. The good news I have to report is that I am two project completions away from become a Level 1 seller. Right now, I still have new seller status and after 10 completed projects, Fiverr levels you up. I already have the next two project lined up, so I should be able to cross over that threshold this month. Contra and Freelancer continue to not be used. I’m still waiting for Contra to get their act together and Freelancer is way too spammy for my tastes. The last thing I have to do is muster up the courage to actually go and find my own clients through my Apetech brand. I haven’t do so for two reasons. One, because I’m scared to cold email/call people and two, because Upwork and Fiverr are keeping me busy enough right now. Alright, let’s see how much we made in May.
Freelancing total: $800
2. Podcast
I saw great growth with my podcast the month of May. I had an initial goal of getting to 1,000 downloads. I ended the month with over 1,200 downloads! I also had the privilege of interviewing my first guest which made this month all that much better. I am going to continue to focus on growing my podcast as I’m now averaging about 20 downloads per episode. Just a month ago, I was at 10 and I was at 5 a month before that. I have a lot planned for my podcast and I like the direction I’m currently going in. I have made a running total of $12.29 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
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 hit a major writers block. I felt uninspired and unmotivated to write. I felt like I had nothing else to say. I’m changing that up this month and will return with two posts per week. I’m brainstorming some good post ideas and promise I will have good content coming your way. I made no money from my technical posts (really thinking of not renewing my Wordpress site at this point) and made .19 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 had higher expectations for my selling/flipping story, but honestly, I’m running out of things to sell. I’ve sold pretty much all of my games. I have some electronics I want to sell, but I just haven’t had the chance to take pictures and get those listed. Additionally, these electronics are part of a larger collection of electronics so I’m still debating if I want to list all the items as one large auction, or sell them individually. I also had a yard sale this past month that while we didn’t make as much money as we would have hoped, we did manage to get rid of a lot of “junk” we had laying around the house. In total, I made $475 from selling things.
May Total: $1275.
A lot less than the previous month, but let me share some additional information. When I quit my job, it wasn’t because I wanted to change jobs. I wanted to build a business based on passive income. Building passive income takes some time and in the month of May, I was able to build on some of those passive incomes. For YouTube, I started writing a technical writing course that is going to start going live this month. As you may know, writing has been a key area of improvement for me. My English is still not perfect, and I mostly blame my keyboard for not being in sync with my head, but I do believe I am improving. I want to help technical folks communicate and write better. I am extremely excited for this course and it is going to be completely free on YouTube. I’ve also seen good subscriber growth on my YouTube channel. We are almost at 500 subscribers!
I’ve also been busy writing a book! I finished the first draft on Technical Program Management with Jira. I am going to spend the first week of June editing it and filling it with diagrams and screenshots of Jira. I plan on getting this book out to a couple of editors/reviewers and then plan on publishing it some time around the middle of June. I also attended a couple of developer conferences. One of the major passive incomes that I am building out will be coding based. I have started that process, but in June, I will start building things out.
Finally, I’ve spent a great deal of energy growing my TikTok following. I started the month with 2,000 followers and I am ending the month of May with 2,953 followers! These followers are key to my overall growth and success. For June, I plan on hitting 4,000 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 June.
These next 100 days are going to be challenging. June is just 1/3rd of the overall picture. It’s going to be tough, but I have a ton of content planned for these next 100 days. I will be aggressively creating and building things over the next 100 days. Make sure you are following me everywhere so you don’t miss out on anything.
Thanks for following along and I’ll see you in July!
