I have certainly let time get away from me this year. I mean, I meet all of my deadlines and don’t miss anything at work, but the goals I make for myself often get put off. My goal of reporting my monthly side income finances is one of those goals that quickly got put on the back burner.
I know we are supposed to be talking about September but October was a crazy month for me. I had two jobs out of state which took up just about two full weeks of the month. Both jobs were on the east coast. I felt it in my productivity and my ability to create content that would assist in my goal of increasing my side income.
With that said, a few things took place in September that was notable.
Toward the end of the month, I hired someone to assist with editing video. This part-time position was created to help us catch up on all of the video content we had filmed but had not yet edited. We had about 30 or so videos in the backlog. I will talk more about the progress here in Octobers post.
I am approaching some major milestones on Youtube. From here on out I will include subscriber counts to the YouTube channels and the increasing percentage as well. Though this report is about income and income is usually referred to in dollars, I also will be paying attention to reach. At this phase, I would prefer an increase in reach over income.
September 2017 side income total – $2446.50 (-17.56%)
YouTube
- StateOfTech – $909.62 (+17.42%) Subscribers: 19314 (+5%)
This YouTube channel is part mobile technology review videos and part tech tutorial videos. - Ditch Auto – $349.52 (+1.77%) Subscribers: 17227 (+6.04)
This YouTube channel is similar to StateOfTech but for Photography. The videos that perform well are reviews and tutorials. - Jerad Hill – $32.62 (-2.51%) Subscribers: 4569 (+0.41%)
This is my personal channel which I do not post too often. I do plan to do a lot more on my personal channel in the near future. I am just trying to decide what I want my focus to be there.
Amazon Affiliate
- Amazon Product Links – $527.77 (-47.31%)
With August being back to school, it makes sense that these numbers would be higher. The majority of the product links I have out there are for technology and camera equipment. We have not put out much content that includes product links so I don’t expect much growth here until Christmas shopping begins.
Google Adsense
- Google Adsense links/display – $108.97 (-7.41%)
I cut some of the fat on a couple of my websites which will initially produce a decrease in traffic. I deleted a lot of content that I did not feel was relevant anymore. Many of these pages would generate a click or two here and there from organic search, but I deleted it all so that the search engines could focus on crawling quality content.
Udemy.Com
- Paid courses on Udemy – $0 (-100%)
I only have one paid course currently and that course is getting old. It needs to be refreshed. I have plans later this month to get new courses out that will be paid and to revise a couple of my existing courses to drive some return traffic to my instructor page.
Other Income
- Other monthly revenue streams from side work – $518 (-23.28%)
I turned off a couple of sources of this other income that I did not plan to maintain any longer. These sources really only brought in $20-75 per source and took an average of 3 hours per source. Not a good return on invested time, so they are gone.
I like the color red on a car, not on income statements. I have not looked at the numbers for October yet but I am sure they won’t look much better. Unfortunately, I just have not had the time to spend on much. Unless I cut back somewhere, there is no room left for growth. This is why I have started removing some of the items that consumed a small bit of my time. Removing, even more, will allow for more time on my side projects.
October is going to tell a similar story as to September. I battled with not posting September or October at all, but that would not paint a very fair picture of reality. The reality is that sometimes I start things and don’t have the time I thought I would have. I often get into trouble in this way. I am learning that it has to do with some fear that I carry that stems from a need for security. It’s not completely unhealthy, but there have been times I have missed opportunities because I chose security over risk.
One last thing of note: Both of my brothers have now entered the realms of the self-employed. My middle brother bought a truck and started his own mobile diesel repair business. My youngest brother was doing some sales for a solar company and saw a need for solar panel cleaning. One of them is full-time self-employed and the other is on his way there. Pretty cool if you ask me.
Stay tuned for October’s numbers. I know I didn’t provide much hype, but I will be posting them soon.
Thanks for reading. If you want to connect, shoot me an email or contact me through social media. I enjoy connecting with others on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Check out August 2017 financials.