'Round and 'round she goes, when this shit stops, nobody knows. With a potentially vaccine-resistant variant of everyone's favorite viral mood-killer on the loose, we may plummet right back down into lockdown.
For fuck sakes. It's the tunnel at the end of a very dim light.
As is expected during the leadup to the holidays, I've seen a solid income from my various projects, marred by the loss of my investment portfolio from my last withdrawal so I could fund a new 3D printer for my shop, since I've run the other ones into the ground (more on that in a bit). Earned a total Net of $1,776.47.
The breakdown:
- $1,298 from Nicehash, surprising no one as my top earner. Rigs have fluctuated at around $40 to $50 a day, and the total averages out to about ~$43/day.
- $350 from flipping, spiking to the top this month. I sold one of my older printers since I'm making room for a new one, plus a few other things likely purchased as Christmas gifts.
- $190 from Print on Demand, 90% of which is Redbubble--marking a staggering spike in income due to the holidays. (Other 10% is Society6, other channels are dead)
- $145 from Youtube ad revenue, higher RPM due to it approaching the holidays
- $19 from 3D model sales on MyMiniFactory
- $7.35 from stock dividends
- $3.86 from Signum mining/value increase now that my HDD mining is halfway ramped
- $2.10 from Amazon Associates
- $1.19 from Lbry credit earnings & value gain
- -$71 from Bittrex, surprising no one as I continue to operate it at a loss
- -$171 from Poloniex BTT holdings via value loss (selloff?)
In the Cryptocurrency space, let's first give a quick update about my Bittrex trading bot; I had run an experiment where I whitelisted specific cryptocurrencies to see if stabilized higher-volume coins like LTC & ETH would matter, but nope. Saw a loss. So I removed the whitelist and I'll look at other modifications.
On the Coinsquare side of things; I'd actually made some profitable trades! It's showing a loss because I decided to withdraw some money to fund a new higher-end 3d printer, because I'm going to be reopening my 3D Print shop (more on that in a bit). There was also a bit of a drop in the last week or so, but nothing too crazy. This will hopefully be my last month of losses, as I have no more reasons to withdraw funds. I'm locking myself out, and the 3D printer was already an investment I felt guilty about even though it's to generate more revenue.
Overall, I think I had traded back into the positive in sheer BTC value over my base amount, but my withdrawal left me down to -14.26%.
On the Poloniex side of things, I haven't interacted with it at all; that value drop is just from a loss of value in BTT (which is what I hold on Poloniex for the 8% yearly interest paid for HODLing). Probably the result of the business end of a pump and dump. We'll see where it goes.
Getting into the money-positive side of things, aside from the always-profitable Nicehash venture, let's take a look at the two other cryptocurrency-related projects:
The first, Lbry/Odyssee, is seeing a minor bit of traction with views. I gained a few tokens this month, leading to a minor value increase in my hodlings, counteracting what I think was a minor drop in value.
The better of the two, Signum mining, is really starting to take off now that my Hard Drive Mining setup is mid-ramp to full capacity. Four of my seven mining rigs are kitted out with hard drive stacks, totalling 66.5 TB of Signum mining capacity. I have another 34 TB stack that's ready to start plotting for another rig, and that leaves me with only two more rigs to get fully outfitted and ready to mine.
Switching over to the Print on Demand side of things, November saw a huuuuuge spike on Redbubble. My November traffic is almost triple what October was. It dwarfs all the other months this past year by a mile.
Society6 did alright, nothing crazy; and the other two sales channels (Zazzle & Teepublic) have been dead. As for TeeFury, the fifth sales channel I brought on; ALL of the artwork I uploaded to it got rejected. Every. Last. One. So I'm not going to bother uploading the remaining dregs of my backcatalogue; I'll upload new artwork to it as I make it, but I am not optimistic about it being a viable sales channel. Even less so than Zazzle and Teepublic...
In the 3D printing space, I made a few sales on MyMiniFactory, and nothing on Shapeways.
However, I have decided I am going to revive my Shopify 3D print shop and make some changes and updates to it to refine it, make it more attractive to customers, and bring it more in line with my Mike in the Woods Youtube branding as it's official store instead of the old & deprecated 'Durham 3D Printing brand I had it under. Yeah, gotta love that 'Synergy' buzzword!
Here's the short and dirty of what I'll be changing for it:
- Change the site branding & social media links to be the official Mike in the Woods shop and focus on outdoors gear specifically, rather than the prior setup of anything and everything.
- Instead of a sole focus on 3D Printing, it will be a general storefront for handmade & desktop manufactured stuff: 3D prints, woven paracord/twine/suede leather (slings, lanyards, etc), laser engravings, vinyl decos, CNC milled stuff once I build my CNC mill, and other random but relevant stuff like USB charging dongles that can plug into an electric skateboard battery to charge electronics, as well as entire 3D printed wind generator kits including the electronics.
- I'll be simplifying the material & color selection process. Previously, the user could select a material and then a color; I'm simplifying it to have a given item only be made in a specific material best suited to that item, and let the user just specify color.
- I'll be more stringent with what I have for sale so that I don't have anything that I struggle to print, in order to cut down on material wastage and churn.
I have updated my home office to accomodate some tool changes; I'm getting rid of two of my older 3D printers, put the resin printer in storage, and just bought a brand new FlashForge Guider 2s to serve as my primary workhorse with my old Wanhao Duplicator i3 v2.1 as my backup. I also have my small laser engraver and my Cricut Explore Air 2 for laser engravings and vinyl decos, respectively; and to cap it off, I have plans to begin building a mostly-printed CNC machine for milling up to soft metals.
On the Youtube front, things have seen a slow but present positive trend. I kept up with my planned goal of two video releases. Here's an updated look at my trailing 365 day view graph:
I think as I continue to hone in on the two primary niches I'm targeting--electric skateboard backpacking and Cybertruck overlanding--I'll continue to whittle my audience to the ones interested in those sorts of videos, and I'll be able to undo the damage I've done over the years by being all over the map with what niches I've been targeting. I think that is the primary reason for my slow growth, and narrowing in my niches will take time to heal the existing algorithm expectations.
Anyways. Let's look at stats:
- Published two videos, keeping up with my monthly target
- At 4,232 subscribers, up 211 over last month
- Subscriber growth rate: 5.25%, more or less at parity with last month's 5.26%
- Average daily views throughout November: 582, an increase over last month's 568; or an increase of 2.46%
- Average daily subscribers throughout November: 7, at parity with last month's 7
Switching over to my novel, I successfully wrote and uploaded Chapter 4 of my novel, and hit a stretch goal by plotting out the rough outline of everything that happens in each chapter for the rest of the book! I solved a lot of plot point connections, and the whole thing feels like a cohesive story in my head and in my notes--just need to finish getting it out into written form! Also went back and tweaked previous chapters to improve them.
Okay. Let's take a look at the work items I set out to accomplish this month, and how I did:
- Two new Mike in the Woods Youtube videos, with a stretch goal of three
Did my goal of two - Continue
accumulating hard drives and setting up for Signum mining, with minimum
target getting 28 TB stack for Mining Rig 006 plotted & set up, and
obtaining drives for the next rig
Completed - Maintain 200 active flipping listings
Completed, had to add about six or so new listings as things sold - Write Chapter 4 of novel and upload
Completed, along with stretch goal of outlining the rest of the book - Implement coin whitelist for Bittrex trading bot and run through November to test
Completed, though experiment failed. Reverted to full catalogue of tokens - 3 new listings for either Print on Demand and/or 3D Printing
Completed--two 3D models and one print on demand - Porting initial selection of 20 pc artwork backcatalogue to TeeFury and waiting for approval/rejection
Completed, all were rejected. Will only upload new artwork from here forward - Update Amazon Affiliates Canada tax info, as it requires an update due to recent changes on their end
Completed
For the month of December, I have a full workload, which includes 3 to 4 Youtube videos, just because of how trips and things work out. I'm also focusing on re-implementing my 3D print shop on Shopify.
- Three to four new Youtube videos, one of which must be annual New Years Update video
- Plot hard drive stack for Signum mining and get MiningRig002 up and mining
- Acquire three hard drives for MiningRig005 Signum mining
- Maintain 200 active flipping listings
- Write chapter 5 of novel and upload
- 3 new listings for either Print on Demand and/or 3D printing
- Update branding and social media links on Shopify store to reflect Mike in the Woods focus
- Refresh/create 20 listings (all currently disabled) for D3DP (Durham 3D Printing) Shopify store under new direction
- Reopen D3DP shopify store and promote on Mike in the Woods social media
- Ensure all Youtube video descriptions have links to D3DP shopify store
I'll have my hands full between this and the holidays; if I need more to work on, I can always pull out of my growing backlog of to-do items...
And now, the final section, looking at my investments:
Saw a loss, mostly due to me dipping into it for a 3D printer purchase. Hopefully next month will see it go up!
As for current weightings:
See you at the end of December for a look back at the entire year and how it compares to the previous!
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https://www.binance.com/en/register?ref=WZKZ16ZW
See you next post!
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