Hey there Profiteers! It is officially summer, and time to drop in with my May income report and side hustle update! If you’re new here, welcome! If you’ve been following along for years, welcome back – and hugs and high fives all around! Let’s dive into the last month in Personal Profitability, what I’ve learned along the way, and what’s coming up next.
What’s the deal with these income reports?
Money is a big taboo for many people, which means we rarely talk about things like our savings, investments, and how much we earn from side hustles and projects. One of my biggest goals at this site is to help you reach your own financial dreams, and I believe that being open and transparent with my successes – and failures – can help you learn to build your own side hustle and full-time income streams.
Since 2012, I have reported my online and side hustle income on this website every single month! Check out my online income tracker and click through to the monthly updates to see a breakdown every month from $739 online in January 2012 to my first $10,000+ month in October 2016 to my current six-figure income, which I earn from the comfort of my own home office. Only eight years of hard work and I was an overnight success! But using what I learned the hard way, I hope to help you do the same far faster.
This blog started as a little side hustle project back in 2008, and it completely changed my life! Thanks to my online business that started right here, I now make more money than ever before, work fewer hours, have full control over my schedule, and love my entrepreneur lifestyle. If that sounds like something you would enjoy, follow along with my income reports each month, along with my free Personal Profitability Bootcamp, subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting app, subscribe to catch weekly videos on YouTube, and other goodies along the way.
In-depth guides for new readers:
- Complete Beginner Guide to Budgeting
- Complete Beginner Guide to Credit
- Complete Beginner Guide to the Stock Market
- Complete Beginner Guide to Freelancing
- Complete Beginner Guide to Travel Hacking
- 137 Side Hustle Ideas
Update from Profitability HQ
This past month, I visited the CFSI Emerge conference in Los Angeles. It was a great event focused on helping low income and underserved communities through financial innovation. I had an opportunity to meet with executives at some great companies and even added a couple of new clients through the event. It was educational and valuable. That’s a big win-win!
While at the conference, I also had an opportunity to participate in the FinX program from CFSI. This financial experience led me to payday lenders, money transfer desks, and other eye-opening experiences. While I did expect the high fees, I was blown away by the time involved in dealing with non-banked money services. It took us half a day and about $20 in fees to do things I can do on my phone for free in just a few minutes with my bank’s app.
I’m very busy balancing clients with some amazing clients. I’m lucky to work with a group of companies with missions I support across the financial landscape. But in addition, my side hustle itch has been, well, very itchy lately. I have a few awesome projects underway that are soooo close to going live. I can taste it!
Social Media – I don’t write all that much about social media in my income reports, but they are a big part of my site’s traffic and my online strategy, so I probably should! One of my big social media goals this year is to reach 10,000 Twitter followers. I’m on track to hit that in the next month or so, and I’m working on a plan to celebrate! I started the year with just 2,400 followers, so this is more than 4x where was when I started on this goal in January.
YouTube is another major focus for me now. I’m kicking things off with my new 2 Minute Money video series. The first five episodes are live and I’ll keep adding them to the playlist below. Make sure to subscribe on YouTube so you get notified each week when a new video is live!
Mastermind Hunt – Working with my friends John and Sean, whom I refer to as SeanJohn for my own entertainment, I am working on bringing mastermind groups to the masses. Masterminds have been a huge part of my success and I am excited with the MVP (minimum viable product) we have spent the last few months developing. We are going to do a soft, beta launch soon. Click the link above to learn more and sign up for the public beta as soon as it goes live!
Community Sharer – I’m in the final stages of testing my new sharing and curation tool for community managers, freelancers, and bloggers. Speaking of my mastermind, they tell me I need to do some work on the public facing pages, so that’s coming up next on my list! I’ll share more on the costs and process of putting this together in an upcoming post.
Kosher Fish is chugging along with some decent search traffic, a pleasant surprise. Swivel Money is still going. I promise.
Side Hustle and Online Income Report
Welcome to my 77th monthly income report. You can view a summary of every income report back to 2012 here. I’m 5 for 5 so far this month hitting my old $10,000+ per month revenue goal, though only 3 for 5 on my new goal of $10,000+ in monthly pre-tax profits. It certainly helps my average, however, as we’ll see in the income report below:
MAY 2018 RESULTS
REVENUE
Personal Profitability Income – Advertising
- Affiliate Marketing – $77
- Click advertising – $0
- Direct Ad Placements – $0
Freelance Income
- Speaking fees – $500
- Website Support – $0
- Writing Services – $13,649
Side Hustles
- Product Sales – $0
- Flipping – $0
- Premium Plugins – $0
Gross Profit – $14,226
EXPENSES (Does Not Include My Paychecks, Taxes, or Health Insurance)
- Advertising and Promotion – $48
- Bank Charges and Payment Fees – $2
- Business Licenses and Permits – $0
- Computer and Internet Expense – $272
- Continuing Education – $0
- Conference Fees – $0
- Dues and Subscriptions – $0
- Meals & Entertainment – $0
- SG&A – $36
- Outsourced Labor – $725
- Postage & Shipping – $8
- Professional Services – $0
- Swivel Money Related Expenses – $20
- Telecom Expense – $77
- Travel – $6
- Total Expenses – $1,226
Total Revenue $14,149 Total Expenses $1,194, Profit Before Tax $12,955
I’m very happy with the results for May, though it’s inspiring me to shoot for my first ever $20,000 revenue month! It’s hard to beat what I’m doing in terms of volume, so I have to put more focus on projects that scale. This is exactly what I’ve been doing lately with efforts on projects like Mastermind Hunt and Community Sharer, both subscription services that can grow in income without needing addition hours for every dollar.
Financial Planning and Analysis
I’m in the middle of one of my most expensive experiments yet on this site. As I’ve shared in the past, I don’t get all that much traffic from Google. I have never been able to figure out exactly what’s wrong, so I hired some expert help. I have a small team in India working to better my rankings when you search for a range of personal finance terms. I’m giving it a few months to see if it helps before I make a solid, long-term decision.
In business, sometimes it takes money to make money. Many sites spend thousands on SEO. Hopefully, these will be dollars well spent! I’ll keep you updated on the progress.
Until next time, stay profitable.
