May Online Income Report

Welcome to another online income report! Every month I go over the money I earned online during the previous month and disclose how I earned it and how much time I spent working.

In May my income dipped a little, but I also gained a much more positive mindset and felt like I was finally making a breakthrough with my work-life balance goal. Right before my wedding and honeymoon, I was feeling pretty down in the dumps about my work situation.

I was tired, irritable, and just not a fun person to be around. Some days I’d cringe when my alarm went off if I didn’t get enough sleep the previous night. I’ve definitely been working hard these past few months, but it could also be a combination of the sucky weather we had in Chicago during the beginning of May and just a reduction in my motivation that made me a little restless. How did I shake this unproductive or unhappy mood? I went on vacation!

Now, I know everyone can’t just jump up and go on a trip to change up their normal routine and restore motivation and productivity, but my honeymoon came right around the perfect time. It was great to step away from all forms of work for an entire 11 days.

When I came back, I took an additional day off work to adjust and get organized and to say I felt refreshed, re-inspired, and ready to enjoy the summer would be an understatement. I started becoming more appreciative of the work I do at both of my jobs and stopped letting little things get to me and ruin my day. At the end of the day, all those little things don’t matter if I choose not to let them control me and my mindset. I started choosing to control my own attitude and actions and have a laser-like focus on my end goal once again.

I know it sounds cliche, but it’s literally amazing what a positive attitude and outlook on life can do. We are all much stronger and focused than we give ourselves credit for and maintaining a good amount of positivity can help bring that out so you can get closer to reaching your goals.

Other Updates

Since I’m not sharing monthly budget reviews anymore, I’ll provide an update on my debt payoff progress here. In May, the hubby and I put about $3,543 toward debt – the largest debt payment either of us has ever made. About $2,347 of that was from wedding gift money which helped a lot. We also contributed an additional $600 to savings. My students loans are now down in the 15k range and you can check out the rest of our debt progress here. We are using the avalanche method of debt repayment.

If You’re New Here

Last year I started publishing the income I earn outside of my full-time job through online side hustles as a way to motivate myself and others to earn more to meet financial goals and work toward financial freedom.

I officially landed my first freelance writing client in March 2015. At first, I attempted to start earning an extra income as a way to help me pay off my debt and got hooked. I paid off more than $11,000 of debt last year and wouldn’t have been able to do so without earning an extra income.

I also publish these income reports to demonstrate a true and transparent way that people can earn an honest income working online. I probably never would have gotten to this point and made so much progress with paying off my debt if I hadn’t started a blog. If you’d like to start a blog as well to help you earn extra income on the side, there’s never been a better time to do it. Check out my tutorial guide to starting a professional self-hosted blog with Bluehost in just minutes.

Now let’s talk about the numbers.

In May 2016, my online income was $3,032

This is income I actually received during the month of May and before I deducted for taxes. I usually set aside anywhere from 25%-30% of my earnings for taxes.

 

Here’s How that Income Breaks Down

Freelance Writing: $2,462

Virtual Assistant: $410

Advertising (sponsored posts and ads): $160 – I finally received a payout from Google Adsense for the ads on my site and participated in only one sponsored post last month.

I realize we’re already halfway through the year so I thought it’d be interesting to look at how much I earned in side hustle income so far.
January – $2,703.36
February – $2,711.02
March – $3,540 – My highest income month yet!
April – $3,219
+ May
Total: $15,205.38

Not a bad start for just part-time work that I enjoy. This inspires me seeing as how just a few years ago, I didn’t even earn this much after a year of energy part time-work.

A Valuable Lesson Learned

One of the most important things I learned these past few months is to always keep it moving and cover your bases if you want to be successful with working online. As a freelancer, I have the freedom to work from anywhere and set my own hours but, I also have to accept the disadvantages of freelancing and roll with the punches when life and the unexpected happen.

I tried to get ahead as much as I could before I left town early last month but I let one of my clients know I’d be delivering less work for the month ahead of time. The tradeoff was well worth it to me since I can always earn more money next month.

When I returned from my trip earlier last month, I started settling back in with my freelance work for only a day or two when the hard drive on my laptop went out completely which wiped out all the memory. Luckily, I only had one post for a client that was saved in Microsoft Word that was lost so I rewrote it and kept it moving. I worked from the library, my tablet and recorded my podcast from a family member’s computer for a week while I waited on my computer to get fixed.

Since I try to stay ahead with my work (even if it’s only a week ahead), it wasn’t too stressful to keep up without my laptop and I just made it work.

One thing I didn’t really do a good job of in May was tracking my hours worked, but I started working again on May 10 and spent about the usual amount of time to complete tasks.

Expenses

I try to keep my expenses low for the most part since I’d like to pay off as much debt as I can with my extra income. Hosting and domain fees for my site are not included in my monthly expenses because they’re been paid for through 2018 already.

Blog help and VA: $171

Tailwind: $14.99

Total: $185.99

Goals for My Blog and Online Income

I’m still working on quite a few goals, but my main goal is to boost my online income to $4,000 per month by the fall and hopefully $5,000 per month by the end of the year to reach the challenge/goal I set for myself last year. These are some of the smaller goals I’ll need to achieve in order to get there:

Pitch More Clients: I still don’t feel like I’m at my maximum capacity for freelance clients yet so I’ll continue to send pitches until I get there. If anyone you know needs a staff writer, blog manager, or social media management, holler.

Actually Start My Rebrand: I talked about rebranding during my last income report and I have yet to get started, so please encourage me! I want to start by getting my logo redone and taking new head shots. I’m excited for when I get to the website design part and I may talk to the graphic designer at my job but I feel so weird talking about my blog with people I work with, even though we make such beautiful websites at my day job. If anyone knows a good and reliable designer, please let me know.

Continue to Work on Social Media Presence: I talked a little about this goal last month too. The platforms I’m focusing on now are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. While Pinterest is outsourced for the most part, I truly believe some effective social media marketing will help me reach more readers. We’ll see how it goes.

Now let’s hear from you. How was your month? How do you get yourself out of a ‘work funk’ and restore your positive mindset?