Almost two years of this...
The markets are definitely feeling it this past month, with contractions in my investment portfolio of -17% month-over-month despite me not withdrawing anything or losing anything significant to failing automated trades. Cryptocurrency, right now, is just straight up in a bear market Crypto Winter.
Thankfully, I'm still well above my goal of where I want to be, investment-wise. That's the dance we play with investments--some months will be good, but then you can go on stretches of loss. Nothing to do but shrug and work within the confines of the market.
I did alright in January, pulling in just over $1,200 in gross income:
- $670 from Nicehash, my strongest performer as always; and drop in revenue due to bear market is in line with experiences from last few years
- $345 from flipping, continuing strong performance even though it's after the holidays
- $116 from Youtube ad revenue, which is starting to see a decline again similar to last year
- $62 from Print on Demand sales, an expected dropoff after the holidays push
- $40 from a 3D print sale via Shopify, my first revenue since I reopened the shop
- $24 in Amazon Affiliates via links in Youtube video descriptions
- $20 from 3D model/print sales via MyMiniFactory and Shapeways
- -$0.21 value loss in Signum despite more and more mining (bear market)
- -$1.14 in Lbry token value loss due to bear market (hardly any earned this past month)
- -$24 from value loss & lossy trades via Binance and Bittrex trading bots
With Ontario's banning-spree of cryptocurrency exchanges, Poloniex was next on the chopping block. I had not that much notice to liquidate my BTT token holdings on Poloniex (which were down significantly, so I had to sell at a loss), and move to another exchange. The leftover funds there, combined with some Nicehash earnings, wound up being invested into stocks, so you'll see a bump to my stock portfolio down later in this post; and Poloniex is now removed as a line item in both my income section and investment holdings section.
In the crypto trading bot world, it's in a bit of a lull right now. I'm continuing to suffer lossy trades on the Bittrex bot, down to -88.61%; whereas on the Binance bot I restarted last month, it's technically up by 40% though that's not from trades, that's from random referrals I continue to receive.
I also reset my manual trade tipsters; and on Coinsquare I'm currently down by -24%, thanks to the recent bear market and value loss in altcoins. Will keep trying to climb back up.
With hard drive mining, I continue to ramp up my hard drive mining operations; with only two rigs left that need drives for mining. I got Mining Rig 002 all set up and mining, and had planned on getting the drives for the second-last rig this month; but that was put off because I'm reserving capital for a personal purchase once I can find one (Playstation 5). So that will get lumped into next month's work items along with actually getting them set up to mine, which should be less time-intensive since it's only a three-drive stack instead of the five-drive that I just worked on.
Print on Demand saw a huge drop this month, but that's to be expected now that the holidays are over and done with; but compared to last January, I'm up by roughly 3x the monthly unique visitors (300 this January vs about 100 last January).
Jumping over to Youtube, it seems several yearly trends are starting to show up--one of which is channel performance.
I had seen metrics growing in December, but now they seem to be on the decline again. I know it's common among most Youtube channels, but I was hoping to beat the odds this year; and I am definitely NOT happy about looking down the barrel at another potential year of flat growth like last year.
Though, in January, I only put out one video. I had plans for two; the second video was to be a winter camping trip I went on. Unfortunately, all my video footage from the trip was corrupted due to the GoPro's failure to perform in cold weather and my mismanagement of battery temperature, so I was not able to make a video. I have a backup video topic I'm working on as I write this post, but unfortunately it won't make it in time for the January release window--so I'll likely have three videos next month.
Hopefully now that I'm focusing on my specific subniches, I start to lock in an audience and growth kicks off.
The Cybertruck was officially delayed until next year, so the lightning pole I hope it to be for channel growth won't be a consideration until next year at the earliest. Just have to focus on the esk8 & ebike backpacking trip adventure videos this year!
To put it in comparison, here's my January metrics compared to my December ones:
- Published one video, missing target of two videos and significantly less than the five videos published in December; and could be a driving factor behind January performance metrics
- At 4,728 subscribers; up 235 over last month
- Subscriber growth rate: 5.23%, down over last month's 6.16%
- Average daily views throughout January: 722, up from last month's 660; or an increase of 9.39% (down from last month's growth rate of 13.4%)
- Average daily subscribers: 8, down from last month's 9
Switching over to the 3D Printing front, I had my first-ever sale on Shopify since I rebranded & reopened my 3D print shop; I'll continue to update & add new listings to grow the shop over time. For now, Shopify is my only direct-sale 3D Print sales channel, but eventually I'll re-add Ebay and Bonanza as well, once I can figure out the fastest and most efficient way to run those concurrently with my Shopify storefront.
One of the things I had been working on, but put on the backburner, was the Drawbot and corresponding color flattening & layer split software I wrote. The drawbot build I worked on kind of... didn't work. Rather than continuing to add cost to it via the Sunk Cost fallacy to get it working, I decided to scrap it and will proceed with purchasing a pre-built draw bot once capital & time is available.
I've also continued to neglect the novel I've been working on; but I feel burned out on the story, and it's not healthy to try to write it while I feel burned out on it. It's okay, I can shelve it until I feel ready to pick back up on it.
Refocusing Projects For 2022
This past month, I sat down and calculated all my income from 2021, and figured out the percentages of each project to paint, in a clear and simple picture, what my biggest earners were:
- Cryptocurrency-related income accounted for a whopping 63.71% of 2021 gross income.
- Flipping, and Youtube ad revenue + Amazon Affiliates accounted for approximately 10% of totals each
- Artwork Print on Demand, 3D model sales, and 3D Print on Demand accounted for 7.4% of my total.
This let me see, in no uncertain terms, what was working and what wasn't during 2021, and let me figure out where & how to focus my efforts in 2022 for my three main tentpole projects.
In 2022, the name of the game is development of purely passive income projects, via synergy across my various projects and lateral expansion to new platforms.
Here are my three tentpole projects that I will be focusing on this year:
- Mike in the Woods Youtube Channel.
- Focusing on my unique subniches: Backpacking on electric rideables, 3D printed gear, and EV overlanding.
- Focus on quality of videos rather than quantity.
- Focus on trips & adventures.
- Cryptocurrency Mining, Trading, & Other Projects
- Expansion & tuning efficiency of mining operation
- Investigate projects such as lending, staking, & node operation
- Continue to refine automated trading to profitability
- Print on Demand & Digital Asset Sales
- Continue to produce new 2D and 3D assets for 2D & 3D Print on Demand & asset sales
- Expand laterally to new platforms in the 2D artwork and 3D Printing Model space
My work items going forward will reflect this.
Speaking of, let's take a look at the work items I set forth for January:
- Two new Youtube videos for Mike in the Woods
Only one due to equipment malfunction. Will make up for it by 3 in February - Plot hard drive stack for Mining Rig 002 Signum mining and get up and running
Completed! - Acquire three hard drives for Mining Rig 005 Signum mining
Delayed to February - Maintain 200 active flipping listings
Completed! - Write Chapter 5 & Chapter 6 of novel & upload
Shelved for now - 6 new listings for either Print on Demand and/or 3D printing
Only 3 completed - Test Palette Manager software I wrote with either drawbot build or Cricut
Drawbot build failed, so I shelved this for now
Let's look at what I have planned for February:
- Three new Youtube videos for Mike in the Woods
- Acquire three hard drives for, and get operational, Signum Mining on Mining Rig 005
- Maintain 200 active flipping listings
- 2x new artwork Print on Demand listings
- 2x new 3D Model listings for 3D Print on Demand & Model sales
- Minimum 5 new/updated listings on Shopify storefront
- 3x 3D Model listings on Turbosquid
- Replace failing fans on RTX 2060 on Mining Rig 003
- Investigate & start implementing one new 2D Artwork Print on Demand sales channel
- Review Voskcoin videos for potential new Cryptocurrency projects
Okay. Now for a look at my investment portfolio:
A -17% loss month-over-month. Ouch. When the dip keeps on dipping... Five months in a row of portfolio loss. That's almost half a year.
Going forward, I might allocate more capital to my stock portfolio and try to keep it a bit more balanced:
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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