Hey there Profiteers! I hope you had a profitable, high revenue start to the year. I’m so excited to share that I had my second best month ever in January, which was very welcome after missing my $10,000 revenue goal in December. There’s nothing like a little disappointment to motivate for success, and that’s exactly what happened. Let’s dive in and see how my income breakdown looks for January and how you can follow along on your way to $10,000+ monthly income.
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 income streams.
Starting in 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 posts to see a breakdown every month starting when I made $739 online in January 2012 to my first $10,000+ month in October 2016 to my current six-figure income 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, podcast, videos, and other goodies.
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
Those who follow along know that December was one of the craziest months of my life. I welcomed my second daughter to the family, which was a wonderful experience. However, it all happened during the largest wildfire in California history. I lost about two weeks of productivity from the combination of getting evacuated from my home and having the new baby, so my December income was about $900 shy of my monthly goal for 2017. But even with that miss in December, my full-year revenue came in at $131,908, about $10,000 over the $10,000 per month average.
I took the lost productivity in December to heart and got working hard in January. While I didn’t make it to midnight on New Year’s Eve (I have a newborn!), I did wake up fresh on January 1st and got to work. Thanks to the new addition to the family, I didn’t have any travel and was able to put my full focus on client projects.
The extra time at home also gave me an opportunity to do my taxes for 2017. That’s right, mid-February and I’m all done for the year! Both business and personal taxes are filed. I used TaxAct for my business taxes, as I could my S-Corp filing for both the Federal government and California online without downloading any programs to my laptop. Once that was done and I had my business W-2 and K-1 in hand, I hopped over to Credit Karma Tax, which I used for the first time. Credit Karma Tax is completely free to use to prepare and file your personal income taxes. I found it to be easy and straightforward to use, plus it didn’t cost anything. That is a big tax preparation win that saved me about $90.
Side Hustle and Online Income Report
Now your favorite part… drumroll please! This is an operating profit and loss statement, sometimes called a P&L, for my business. I take out my own paycheck and taxes to keep things simple, as well as my family’s health insurance which is paid for by the business. As always, you can view every monthly income report back to January 2012 here.
JANUARY RESULTS
REVENUE
Personal Profitability Income – Advertising
- Affiliate Marketing – $142
- Click advertising – $104
- Direct Ad Placements – $0
Freelance Income
- Writing Services – $14,214
- Website Support – $0 (a few projects here and there)
Side Hustles
- Product Sales – $12
- Flipping – $0
- Premium Plugins – $0
- Denver Flash Mob – $0
Gross Profit – $14,472
EXPENSES (Does Not Include My Paychecks, Taxes, or Health Insurance)
- Advertising and Promotion – $7
- Bank Charges and Payment Fees – $451
- Business Licenses and Permits – $0
- Computer and Internet Expense – $1,035
- Continuing Education – $66
- Conference Fees – $0
- Dues and Subscriptions – $0
- Meals & Entertainment – $0
- Money Mola Related Expenses – $31
- SG&A – $0
- Outsourced Labor – $789
- Postage & Shipping – $49
- Professional Services – $0
- Telecom Expense – $106
- Travel – $0
- Total Expenses – $2,533
Total Revenue $14,472 Total Expenses $2,533, Profit Before Tax $11,939
I did end up missing my December goal as expected, but not by as much as I thought. I figured with two weeks away from work, I would earn somewhere around $7,000-$8,000. Turned out to be less than $1,000 from my $10,000 goal. Not too bad all things considering! The busy family month also led to lower business expenses, so total profit for the month came out well above my old day job monthly salary, so I’ll call it a win.
https://twitter.com/EricProfits/status/966379718172905477
Financial Planning and Analysis
This was a great month, partially buoyed up by one big project. But over the last few months, I’ve added some amazing new baseline clients with weekly needs that are certain to maintain a better income ongoing, without relying so much one one-time things to help me reach my monthly goal. Over the next few months, I’m going to keep working on raising the bar for my baseline clients and have a few apps I’m working on coming down the pipeline as well!
But one thing’s for sure, I can get used to $14,000+ revenue months! When I do that, beating $10,000 for my pre-tax profit is much easier. Over the coming months, I’ll see if I can maintain the same success for if this month’s result was just a lucky result. But in business and life, I don’t believe that much in luck. We make our own luck. I landed these clients due to hard work, and I can’t let up or I know my results will slip away.