Ok, given today's modern world, first thing I wanted to do was explain the pun in the title... it refers to 'in the black', the concept of being profitable (the opposite of being 'in the red,' or at a loss).
Now that that's cleared up...
Another month, another pandemic-impacted economic downturn.
You know what, though? Something I'm noticing is that, as I see the end of the tunnel with the ongoing pandemic, the impact to the Canadian economy--at least, as it seems at first glance--has been considerably less so than the impact to our neighbours to the south. It seems like we're having a more straightforward approach to reopening, thankfully!
So first and foremost, I need to discuss the difference between what I stated I made at the end of last month, and what the updated numbers are in the excel sheet posted for this month--a whopping difference of over $500!
After I posted that last update, including the day of, I saw a huge rush of last-minute business--a variety of flipping items sold, and a custom 3D Print order from a recurring customer. That put me to a whopping $1300 in side project & passive income for June!
Sadly, after accounting for that, I fell short of last month's take-home this month:
Didn't quite break $1000, but I came very close! Given that this still beats the number posted last month before the last-minute anomalous business, I'll still consider this a win!
As expected, Flipping continues to be my highest performer; but you'll see that I've continued to have my income streams diversify even further.
Let's break it down!
- $440 from flipping. Down from last month, but I think last month was a bit of an anomaly; it's still upward trending from the month prior (May). This month has been mostly Ebay; I find a lot of people have shied away from in-person sales this month
- $301 from cryptocurrency mining. Still fighting with mining rig stability; this month's increased earnings can be attributed to an overall increase in the cryptocurrency market (seems to be in a bit of a bull run right now)
- $215 from my various 3D Printing sales channels (Ebay, Shopify, and Bonanza). Had sales on all three platforms; and this seems to be a hotter month than most for 3D Print sales! Glad to see that this project isn't dead completely.
- Down $13.19 on Bittrex, and up $0.99 on Binance, in terms of automated trading using my homebrew algo-switching trade bot.
- Down $13.66 from dividends--this is from DRIP, and my dividends being reinvested
- The rest is all small potatoes from my various other projects that I'm continually scaling up:
- $3.21 from Redbubble
- $1.03 from automated trading on Poloniex with Gekko, which I have resumed
- $1.97 from burstcoin mining
- $8.46 from MyMiniFactory 3D model sales
If you're not aware, Burstcoin is a type of cryptocurrency that is unique in the way that it is mined with hard drives, not processing power. As you can see, the income is paltry; but it is the only Proof of Capacity (use of hard drives) crypto that's been around until this point. However, recently, I have been made aware of a new up and coming project that uses a similar methodology--Filecoin. As burstcoin mining is almost dead, I plan on investigating it and seeing if I can rededicate my hard drives to this new project, if it turns out it's more profitable--more on that in the futture.
On Redbubble, this month I have seen a massive rise in daily views on my listings--I'm averaging about ten views a day. I welcome the traffic, as this will lead to more sales; which means more listings, further snowballing the growth of this particular project. I highly suspect I'll be well into the double digits income for this particular income source next month--let's see if I'm on the money!
Speaking of massive jumps--for Binance referrals, I've made an absolutely insane jump to 96 referrals this month! That's up from 43 last month -- that's an astounding 123.25% growth in referrals!! This has also led to an increase in ongoing referral income from these users trading on the platform. The amounts are still paltry, but I'm seeing consistent fees paid to me on a daily basis. Hopefully there is some potential with this project after all!
For my homebrew automated trading bot; as I mentioned, I increased the time frame of data it retains. I have definitely noticed an increasing efficiency in trading--I actually briefly popped above my breakeven point this month! (But then I had a few bad trades and dropped back down to, as of writing this, -12%). It's getting better though. Next month, maybe I'll be able to post some actual profits. Still have some tweaking to do!
You'll also notice that I picked back up on trading on Poloniex, with the Gekko Trader bot. Found a strat that should be consistently profitable; let's see if live trading matches up with the backtesting results. The amounts I'm trading with on this platform is small--to the tune of about $12--so the numbers won/t dip up or down too much.
In terms of workload, I'm continuing to feel the pressure of more work items being added than I can actually knock down. The biggest perpetrator of this--due to it being a runaway success--is my flipping enterprise. As such, I had to switch from a growth strategy to a holding pattern; aiming to keep stable at around 200 active listings. (I'm currently behind by at least 30). This month I'm really starting to feel the pull between truly passive income projects--things like Redbubble, Shapeways, and MyMiniFactory--and things that require more of a direct time investment, like Flipping. It's not sustainable to keep growing these projects, where my weekly time allowance to them will have to grow as well--I'm going to have to re-weight my priorities in favor of the more passive projects and their more exponential potential. So, while Flipping has been a great success, I think I'm going to have to neuter it's growth here; and keep it in a holding pattern while I put focus elsewhere.
On the Youtube front--this has been my major success this month! As of a few days ago, not only did I successfully hit the 1,000 subscriber milestone; but I got approved for the Youtube partnership program! As of two days ago, I have ads running on my videos. As ad revenue earnings reports are delayed by 48 hours, I was one day away from being able to report some actual earnings in my Youtube entry in the Excel sheet! Stay tuned next month to see what my first full month of ad revenue is.
Specifically, I am at 1018 subscribers as of writing this post; up from last month's 870--a 17% increase! That's a jump over last month's 14% increase. I think at this point it's safe to call out the pattern of exponential growth--not only is the subscriber count continuing to grow exponentially, but the actual percentage growth rate is as well!
Okay. Let's take a look at the work items I stated last month, that I wanted to try and accomplish this month. Sadly, as mentioned, I'm falling behind in work items, so I didn't quite hit all the notes I wanted; and some reprioritization/reweighting is in order:
- Ongoing listings of things for sale for my Flipping Project
Falling behind. Had to fall back to a holding pattern, where I only replace sold listings to keep the number of active listings the same. (200 active listings is the goal) - Four new Youtube videos (two of which will be trip videos)
This was successful! Actually, as I have been prioritizing my Youtube channel work, I managed five! - Stabilize mining rigs so they don't require constant rebooting
Work on this is ongoing. Testing & tweaking different settings. Improvement, but still unstable - Migrate automated trading bot to v3 of the Bittrex API, from v1
I have deprioritized this as I have plenty of time to impement this (two months) - 4x MyMiniFactory listings
As I've fallen behind, I don't think I got four up. I think I've only managed two of the original four listing work items - 2x Shapeways listings
Didn't get to it, but these are literally the next items in my work queue - Implement cards and pinned comments in all Youtube videos to increase retention in my channel ecosystem
Done! - Implement Patreon--targeting all six tiers, but first three will suffice for initial implementation
Didn't get to it, but is one of the next few work items (a big one!) in my work item queue.
Only managed about half of the things I wanted to accomplish for the month--see what I mean about falling behind? Going to try and reprioritize and re-weight so I'm getting the most efficient work done.
Let's take a look at my work list for the month of August:
- At least 4 Youtube videos
- Reach and maintain approximately 200 active Flipping listings (holding pattern)
- 2x Shapeways Listings (carryover from last month's work items)
- Patreon implementation. As mentioned, this is one of my next work items, and will be the major project of the month of August. Still needs a bit of tweaking with my planned patreon reward tiers
- 4x Redbubble Listings
- 4x MyMiniFactory Listings
I've deprioritized a lot of work items to help me focus on the stuff that really matters--namely my Youtube channel, and the trifecta of passive income projects--Redbubble, Shapeways, and MyMiniFactory.
Lastly, we take a look at my investments!
Yes, you read that right.
A 20% portfolio growth this month.
Crushed it.
This is mainly thanks to crypto earnings and manaul day trading on Coinsquare; on which I am up by 16% in BTC value over my baseline. This growth more than makes up for my comparatively paltry 4.11% growth last month. As such, I've more than made up for it, and continue to stay on track with my absurd desire to maintain a 6.5% growth rate in portfolio month over month. (Yes, know it's insane to expect to keep that pace up; but the longer I manage to at the beginning of my inestment journey, the better off I'll be down the road).
--
Well, that about wraps it up for this month. I'm excited to post my first revenue from Youtube next month. Let's aim to break $1k next month in overall revenue, with a stretch goal of $1.5k.
If you find these posts helpful, and you are interested in cryptocurrency, try signing up for Binance! It's a widely-known cyrptocurrency exchange (think stock exchange, but for crypto). It's free to do so, and by using my referral link we'll both earn 10% of any trading fees you pay.
https://www.binance.com/en/register?ref=WZKZ16ZW
See you next post!
#financialfreedom #financiallyindependent #financialindependence #financialindependenceretireearly #passiveincomeinvesting #passiveincomestream #passiveincome #sidegig #sidehustles #sidehustle #wealth #makingmoney #wealthbuilding #incomestreams #incomestream #passiveincomeideas #passiveincomestreams #passiveincomeclub #passiveincometips #passiveincomemethods #sidehustleideas #sidehustler #sidehustlers #sidegigs #sidegiglife #sidegigsuccess #passiveincomesuccess #sidehustlesuccess #sidegighustle #entrepeneur #creatingwealth #investmentportfolio #income
No comments:
Post a Comment