Capacity returned to almost full. Vaccination requirements fallen by the wayside. And most importantly, the requirement to wear a mask has been dropped in all but the high risk areas (medical buildings etc). I had almost forgotten what it was like to not wear a mask inside--I felt like I was doing something wrong the first time I stepped inside a building without one, once the mandate was removed!
Of course, out of the frying pan, and into the proverbial oven... We all know that a certain situation boiling over in Europe can explode into global proportions if the right spark catches. Let's hope we didn't ditch Covid for WW3, shall we?
Anyways.
March saw a nice gross revenue of $1,300, and my investment portfolio grew by 9.27%. A pretty good month!
- $754 from Nicehash, including value growth in accumulated mined coins I haven't withdrawn
- $160 in Flipping earnings, not bad considering I had an above-average rate of returns/refund requests
- $159 from Youtube ad revenue, a solid bump from last month!
- $142 from 3D print sales on Bonanza
- $27 in sales from Print on Demand, a pretty steep dropoff from the holiday season continuing
- $21 in value growth from Bittrex/Binance automated trading bots
- $21 from Amazon Affiliate sales via Youtube video description links
- $19 from MyMiniFactory 3d model sales
- $2.08 net dividend income from stock holdings
- $0.07 from Lbry token income/value growth hahahaha
- -$1.86 value loss in mined Signum tokens, despite mining going at almost full steam
This is the second month in a row where I've seen positive growth in both of my trading bot instances (one on Bittrex, and one on Binance). The one running on Binance uses raw profit for determining which strategy/trading pair to select, while the Bittrex one just uses wins vs losses (so it calculates days of being up vs days of being down, rather than sheer profit).
Now, the whole market has been up this month; so I'm very hesitant to attribute the success to my bots; but I'm hoping that I'm at least I've gotten past the point of break-even--arguably the Great Filter of trading bots. As always, I'll continue letting it run and trying to make tweaks here and there to improve performance.
I also successfully implemented the newer version of the Bittrex API, since v1.1 was being deprecated. I used TDD approach to the development, which was pretty helpful!
Last month, I identified affiliate income from Binance signups as a major source of potential revenue. I have not had any additional signups this month--still at 107 signups. However, I did the legwork this past month to identify ways to promote my signup link; and one of the more important work items for the next month will be implementing them. See if we can't start getting those numbers up.
With my manual Coinsquare trades based on advice from my trading bot, I'm down by -20.61%. A bit of a drop from last month's -17% ish; but that's from a combination of withdrawing a couple hundred dollars for some bills, and a bit of value loss as I wait for some winning trades to actually fill the Sell order (the value of the altcoins dropped before the order filled).
On the actual cryptocurrency mining front, I'm still waiting on the replacement fans for my GPU to arrive, so I haven't gotten around to repairing them yet; so that work item gets moved to next month.
Additionally, I continue to acquire hard drives to populate the final mining rig; but since I need six of them and prices have gone up, it's been a bit slow going to acquire them. I have two currently; four to go. Will continue this process into April. Even though I'm mining a pretty strong amount of Signum (and continuing to bump that number up by adding to my staked tokens), the value of them dropped enough where I actually saw a value loss this month. Such is the nature of crypto.
On Odysee (a blockchain-based site that is a potential competitor to Youtube), it continues to be pretty stale with no growth with my videos. That being said, I have virtually no overhead to maintain my presence here, since it automatically mirrors my uploads to Youtube, including all tags & descriptions and all my SEO. They recently released their Android app, so hopefully this leads to a bump in traffic. The only way to earn revenue on that site is a tiny bit given to you whenever you upload, and by users tipping you. By locking in tokens to a given video, it bumps up that video in the search results.
Speaking of Youtube, let's take a look at the rolling 365-day views chart:
While it hasn't been staggering, I have seen some growth throughout March. Except for one week where I was extremely swamped from my dayjob (requiring me to work overtime pretty much the whole week, with one day having me not sign off until 11pm), I've been consistently putting out one video a week again. Three videos in March, right in line with that one-a-week expectation minus the one from above. I aim to continue this trend into April, with my four video selection already queued up and ready to write & film.
I also went ahead and reworked my Patreon; I condensed it into a few tiers and dropped the cost & a lot of the perks. No one seems to be going for Patreon, so I'll leave it be at this point; until someone signs up. Maybe I'll try a month of videos where I promote my Patreon?
I also hit a major milestone on Youtube; 5,000 subscribers. Next major milestone is 10,000, which I hope to hit before the end of the year. Better grind that SEO and make great videos!
Youtube metrics for March:
- Published three videos; one shy of the targeted 4 due to extenuating circumstances at my day job
- At 5,175 subscribers; up 270 over last month
- Subscriber growth rate: 5.5%, up over last month's 3.7%
- Average daily views throughout March: 676, up from last month's 578; or an increase of 16.95%
- Average daily subscribers: 8, up from last month's 6
On the Print on Demand side of things, this have continued to slide back into obsolescence as we get further from the holiday season. My 2D artwork Print on Demand offerings have performed poorer than March last year by about $10, and my 3D print offerings are roughly on par (3d model sales via MyMiniFactory, and 3d print on demand sales via Shapeways). This is why diversification is super important!
I completed my signup/tax forms for Spreadshirt, now totalling six sales channels I am a part of: Redbubble, Society6, Zazzle, Teepublic, Teefury, and the eponymous Spreadshirt.
I saw a rare 3d print sale on Bonanza, which is printing on my 3d printer as we speak. It's like one sale a year there at this point. No activity on my Shopify store this past month despite a few views a day.
Aight. Let's look at the work items I set out for March, and how I fared:
- 3x to 4x new Mike in the Woods Youtube videos
Success! Only did 3 because one week was extremely busy at work
- Maintain 200 active flipping listings
Success
- Finish setting up Mining Rig 005 for mining Signum
Success
- Begin acquiring hard drives (6) for final mining rig, Mining Rig 001
Ongoing (2 of 6 acquired)
- 3x to 5x new artwork Print on Demand uploads, following focus on simplicity
3 new artworks uploaded
- 2x new 3D model listings for Shapeways/MyMiniFactory
Failed. Did not get to these work items!
- 5x or more new/updated listings on Shopify
Not completed. Parked for now, higher priority work to do
- Replace failing fans on Mining Rig 003
Still waiting on fan replacement arrival
- Mining rig tune-ups: blow out heatsinks w/ compressed air, improve stability
Completed; but stability improvements are always an ongoing struggle (new algos, changing meta)
- Finish setup of Spreadshirt PoD sales channel
Completed
- Begin back catalogue upload to Spreadshirt
Started
- Implement Bittrex API v3 in automated trading bot
Completed
- Implement win/loss ratio for algo selection in automated trading bot
Completed, currently only running on Bittrex
- Patreon overhaul 3.0
Completed
- Investigate ways to significantly push Binance referral link
Completed
That was a lot of work items set out for March, especially combined with me ramped back up to one Youtube video a week; but I feel like I nailed most of it! And, of course, some stuff is ongoing, and will be moved & hopefully completed in April.
So with that set out, let's set the work items I'd like to complete in April:
- 4x new Mike in the Woods Youtube videos
- Maintain 200 active Flipping listings
- Acquire six hard drives for Mining Rig 001 Signum mining (2/6 acquired)
- 2x new 3D model listings for Shapeways/MyMiniFactory
- 1x new artwork listing for Print on Demand sales channels
- Continue uploading back catalogue of artwork to Spreadshirt
- Replace failing fans on Mining Rig 003
- Binance referral link promotion implementation:
- Youtube description -- Clean up & move links higher in description
- In-between monthly blog posts on various passive income ideas & projects
- Investigate re-starting Twitter posting bot
- Add links in descriptions of relevant listings on Shopify, Shapeways, MyMiniFactory
- Test Facebook ad campaign for blog post link
If I need more stuff to do to be productive, I have a never-ending backlog of work items of lesser priority I can always pull from!
Okay, now for a check-in on my investments:
A nice, healthy 9.27% month-over-month growth; helping undo some of the damage wrought both by my wedding cost related withdrawals, and overall market downturn. Still have a bit of work to get back to my all-time highs... Also gonna get hit by a hefty tax bill this year, so I might have to dip into this a bit to, ironically, pay the taxes from dipping into this for my wedding. Plus all my day trading.
And finally, let's take a look at my portfolio weighting:
I think this is a pretty good weighting; roughly 1/4 in stocks, and 75% crypto--in alignment with my belief in cryptocurrency, while also being exposed to the traditional stock market a bit (TSX.RY, TSX.ZSP, TSX.ZDY, and TSX.LAC)
That's it for this monthly update post. Going to do some in-between posts on various avenues & ideas for producing passive income & side hustles.
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 month!
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