C*VID Month #8: The C*vid Came Back, the Very Next Day... It Just Wouldn't Stay Away.

 Eight months. Eight straight months of this nonsense!

Much like I anticipated in last month's post, we rolled back to Stage 2. Although, it wasn't complete--only the hotspots, like Toronto and Ontario, saw a rollback. Still, there is talk of province-wide rollback if the numbers don't curtail.

Due to this resurgence of the pandemic, the economy continues to roll in turmoil; both stocks and cryptos continue to slide downward. 

Due to some surprising but hard-earned profits on various projects this month, I managed to beat last month's income numbers; but still fell short (barely) of the $1k gross revenue for the month. Not bad though, considering everything's still on a downward slide!

Without burying the lead any further, let's took a look at the chart for the month. There's a few surprises in here. (As always, there is still numbers left to finalize, such as Youtube ad revenue which is always a few days behind):

As always, let's break this down:

• $375 from Nicehash mining. No surprise here, it's a consistent earner; but since cryptos are down across the board, this has been in a slump since last month. Also suffering rig instability issues again (out of nowhere)
• $303 from Youtube ad revenue, with a couple of days' lag still left to be added! This is the most surprising--Youtube has shot up out of nowhere to be my #2 earner! I'll expand on this later in the post.
• $135 from flipping. Continues on a downward trend as my stock of listed items runs out. I've been neglecting this project. I have items to list, just haven't dedicated any time to it
• $121 from Shapeways sales. This was the surprising one! I made a huge sale of 3D Printed paintball rounds, as well as some airsoft-related stuff, which netted me a pretty hefty sum of money! Not bad considering this is one of the more passive sources of income!
• $50 from 3D Print sales. Sold two items the whole month; not really surprising, as I'm trying to phase out non-passive projects like this.
• $12 from artwork print-on-demand sites. It's been a slow month; I'm chalking this up to Covid and the pre-holidays lull. This is split between Redbubble and Society6; sadly, I have not seen any sales on Teepublic as of yet.
• $11 from Amazon Affiliates sales (Canada)
• $3.56 from MyMiniFactory. Pretty meh, but I keep adding models
  
• -$32 from automated trading. A combination of bad trades by my bots and overall crypto market drop. Binance bot hasn't made any trades all month, so it's all loss of value; Bittrex trading bot crapped itself in trades that it couldn't fill (on paper I would have profited, but orders didn't fill and the value dropped), and my Gekko trader instance on Poloniex was the only one that made money. Go figure
• Dividends say I'm down by $13, but ignore that--my ZDY investment has DRIP enabled, so whenever I have enough spare cash in my investment account from dividends accumulated, it reinvests into ZDY
  

 So let's expand on the major surprise this month: My Youtube ad revenue being my second-highest earner. A reminder that this is only my third month being monetized.

This past month, I have really narrowed in on the particular subjects and keywords that rank really well; and thankfully, they seem to be related to the Tesla Cybertruck. Which, if you're not familiar, I have a reservation for--with the intent to purchase as soon as physically able (read: production begins) to make it a cornerstone of the channel. The fact that it is the sole reason for my explosive growth this month only proves out my thesis of using Cybertruck-related content to be a unique selling point of my channel--essentially having Youtube pay for the truck!

I'm seeing some explosive growth here. I've hit a point where I am consistently seeing 10+ new subscribers a day! Now that I have narrowed in on what topics to focus on for growth, the next few months will see exponential improvement in metrics. Mark my words. I'm back on track to hit 2k subs by the end of this year, and 10k subs by the end of next year by current growth metrics--once I put a heavy focus on my SEO-worthy topics, the numbers will be much better.

I'm excited, can't you tell?

Key metrics over the month of October:

• Published only three videos. I skipped out on a week due to burn-out. Always listen to your body when it tells you you need a rest!
• Currently at 1700 subscribers (exactly); up 407 over last month
• Subscriber growth rate: 31.48%, making it the highest month-on-month growth yet at almost a third
• Average daily views throughout October: 1,146; up over last month's 458, or a 150.22% increase
• Average daily subscribers throughout October: 13, up over last month's 6; or a 116.67% increase

In Crypto land, there's a few things happening.

First and foremost, my social media bot has been retired. It had been posting to Twitter and Imgur; but simultaneously, my Twitter API key got suspended (too many crypto affiliate link replies? lol) and my Imgur API key stopped working. I took it as a sign to retire it, since it wasn't having too much of an effect outside of Binance referrals (at which I am currently still at 101). It was a fun experiment, but I'll tuck that away for a rainy day for now. I'm at a point where I don't need it to boost Youtube or any of my passive income projects; organic social media posts & SEO are enough.

Both instances of my homebrew trading bot struck out this month. The Binance instance didn't really make any trades, so the losses there are just from loss of value of the cryptos. The Binance bot seems to have not really any profitable strategies to choose, so it sits on one that hasn't made any trades and just hodls bitcoin. No trades are better than bad trades, so this is fine. With the Bittrex instance, on paper it should be winning; but it's been unable to fill Sell orders, so the value of the coin it's exposed to drops before it has a chance to unload. It was mostly holding even until a particularly bad trade took it down a significant margin. I'll let it run for another month and see if it needs more tweaking. 

The only crypto bot that actually made any profit was my Poloniex Gekko instance! Funny.  

With my manual trading on Coinsquare, I am currently down by 0.62%; but that's only because I have several Sell orders waiting to fill on altcoins that shit the bed. Once prices recover I'll be well back into the green. 3/4 of my trades--assuming they fill--have been winners, so it's just a patient waiting game.

Also, if you remember from my post last month, I was going to have to rewrite the Bittrex API for my bot. However, the deadline came and went... and the old API still works. I guess, it turns out, they were just deprecating it (ie: shutting off support), not outright stopping it. So for now, it continues to chug away on API version 1.1...

Over in Affiliate Marketing land, I--bizarrely--got rejected from the US Amazon Affiliates program. The reason? I had amazon logos in two of my video thumbnails (I use amazon affiliates on my Youtube channel). So, I had to reapply, and re-do all my links in 80+ videos. THAT was fun. And, obviously, I fixed the issue so they won't reject me for that again.

And now for something completely different: After getting a huge urge to start on it, I picked up a new project this month (not that I need any new ones! Focus on the ones you have, Mike!)

That project?

I'm writing a novel.

So, in the short term, obviously it's a time sink and nothing more; it's more of a passion project than anything. But I wholly aim to get this sucker published when it's done--preferrably through the traditional publisher agent courting method, but I will settle for homebrew publishing via Amazon or something if that doesn't pan out after a while of trying.

I'm aiming to start looking to get it published towards the end of next year. So yeah. Between that and the Cybertruck potentially entering production next year, it's gonna be a busy end-of-year for me! (and expensive...)

Here's the synopsis blurb for the book:

What most people don't realize: Legends have a basis in reality. Some more than others. And with The Storyteller—a ghost story of a legend passed around among the numerous branches of the United States government, about a legendary young woman who could solve any crime by the slightest of details—that particular legend is more real than those in power would care to admit.

When novice FBI trainee Quinn stumbles across who she believed to be the Storyteller, she can't seem to match that legend against the broken, disfigured, psychologically ransacked shell of a young woman who seems to be the face behind the fable. But as Quinn soon finds out, the legend is just the beginning.

What starts as a chance encounter quickly explodes into a whirlwind of survival, conspiracy, and dark government secrets that spill out from the very top. She quickly realizes the true value of love, family, morality, and trust as she and the people around her find themselves in the middle of the fallout of the greatest secret project conspiracy in the government's history—and the epicenter of it all: the mute and damaged Storyteller, who's story isn't quite done being told...

I'm currently hosting the book on FictionPress for feedback as I write it. I would absolutely LOVE your feedback on it. Not praise--praise is useless--but criticism that can help me improve it. Much appreciated:

https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3351221/1/The-Storyteller

 Okay. Now comes the time to take a look at my work item queue I projected for October and compare it to how I actually did:

• At least 4 new Youtube videos
  Nope. Took a week off to rest, only managed 3. But I quickly got back into the swing of things
  
• Migrate Bittrex API (now mandatory & high priority)
  Nope, turned out to not be mandatory
  
• 1x MyMiniFactory/Shapeways Listing
  Yep, wound up doing two I believe
  
• 5x Print on Demand listings
  Kind of lacking here; I think I only managed 2-3

Didn't quite hit the target, but I hit all the important points. Focusing on Youtube is my biggest concern going forward. So let's take a look at what I project for November:

•  Four new Youtube videos
• One to two new chapters of my novel
• At least three 3D model listings on Shapeways/MyMiniFactory out of my backlog
• At least three artwork Print on Demand listings on Redbubble/Society6/TeePublic out of my backlog
• Stretch goal: Implement new Print on Demand sales channel: Zazzle (unlikely I'll get to it next month; but I can dream, right?)

Got my work cut out for me in November.

Lastly, we take a look at my investments and see how they're doing!

 

Due solely to crypto (specifically mining), I was somehow able to reclaim my target 6.5% month-on-month growth rate. Which, yes, I understand is a ridiculous target to strive for month-to-month. But as I keep saying; the longer I keep it up for in the short term, the more it drastically cuts down on what growth rate is needed later on! The goal is to retire by 40, after all.

I managed a 7.41% MoM growth. Purely based on my Coinsquare holdings. I predict that next month will be another drop; as Covid continues to wreak havoc and the holdouts of the financially impacted businesses finally give out. Don't be surprised if I drop into negative values next month, unless Crypto holds strong for me.

At any rate, as you can see I am significantly farther ahead comapred to where my Target (bottom green line) shows where I need to be. $8,784 compared to a target of $2,885 (this is at a projected investment growth rate of 6.5% per month, to hit $2m by age 40). I'm still ahead of the curve. Have to keep this up and struggle through Covid. I'd be wildly investing right now while all the stocks are on sale (looking at you, $TSLA), but I'm focusing on debt paydown first.

Well that does it for me for this month guys. Thanks for reading this, and if you made it to the end, you're awesome! Make sure you follow so you catch up with me next month or one of my errant other posts.

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! 

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