October Online Income Report: How to Earn Money Online

It’s time for another income report! Each month I share the income I earned from side hustling online and break it down in detail.

Why do I post the extra income I earn aside from my full-time job publicly online? Accountability is one reason. I’ve made a lot of goals in the past. I was able to reach many of those goals by following through with my plan and holding myself accountable.

This year I wanted to create multiple streams of income and control how much money I can make instead of having an employer limit my earning potential. I have some stiff financial goals and I need to earn more money, bottom line.
Posting these income reports helps me become accountable to myself and my readers and gives me the motivation to keep pushing myself each month.

Another reason why I post these income reports is to encourage others and let people know that anyone can have the power to control and grow their income so they can meet their financial needs and goals. My hope is that my income reports will show you how to earn money online in an honest way. I work during my spare time since I still work 40 hours per week at my day job and I enjoy being able to work from home, complete projects on my own schedule and do work that I am passionate and excited about.

I work during my spare time since I still work 40 hours per week at my day job and I enjoy being able to work from home, complete projects on my own schedule and do work that I am passionate and excited about.

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.

I am a team player, but I also enjoy being a loner when it comes to work and freelancing allows me to control how much I can earn so I’m not dependent on anyone else to make money. It also helps me push myself to find ways to challenge myself to keep increasing my earnings each month and find ways to work more efficiently.

October was a great month for freelancing. Despite not pitching that much, I landed a few new gigs and even got offered raises at two of my current gigs. Most of my income still comes from freelance writing and I love it. If I have the right topics that interest me, I could literally write for hours and not get tired of it.

In October, I earned: $1565

This is income that I actually received in my account during the month and not just money that I earned from doing different projects. My clients pay me at various different times throughout the month so I will not be compensated for some of the work I did in October until November so it will be reflected on the next income report.

I also need to pay taxes on this self-employment income so each month I put aside 20-30% of my earnings so I can be ready for tax time.

Here’s How My Total Income Breaks Down:

Freelance Writing: $1,195
Virtual Assistant Work: $240
Affiliate Sales: $130
Ads on my website via Google Adsense: $0 (Still haven’t reached that $100 threshold yet, ughhhh)
eBay Store: $0 (I put this up here just to motivate myself to list my darn clothes online. I already put my mannequin together and took nice pictures of the clothes but I haven’t even listed them online for sale yet. I’m hoping I can do this in November and get some sales)

As you can see, I hit my goal of earning $1500 in side hustle income by the end of the year and I’m super excited about that. I lost a client early last month, but I picked up a fun transcribing gig and a few writing gigs for mostly personal finance websites including XY Planning Network, The Outlier Model and a few others.

How Many Hours I Worked

Last month I promised to start tracking my hours and documenting how much time it takes me to work on my side hustles each week. I work on posts and projects for my blog right alongside the projects I work on for other clients so I combined the hours spent blogging for myself and working with other clients.

October 1 -4: 9 hours
October 6-11: 20 hours
October 12-18: 20 hours
October 19-25: 19.5 hours
October 26-31: 15.5 hours
Total hours worked side hustling in October: 84 hours

It looks like I’m averaging about 20 hours per week with my online side hustles which is what I figured. Working all these hours is not always easy and I’ve never worked this hard in my life but it is rewarding. I’d like to keep my hours in this range and not exceed 25 hours per week even if my workload increases which I’m sure it is.

Using my time efficiently allows me to get a lot done in the time I’ve allowed myself. I try to get up at 5 am on weekdays and I get up around 7am on weekends before anyone else is up so I can get a head start on my work. I’ve been putting my son to bed at 8pm which has been doing wonders so I can work from 8-9:30pm each night and I also pick back up with a few tasks later in the evening on weekends as well.

I find that I work best in silence with very little distractions around. I’ve cut my television time tremendously to increase my focus so I’m not stuck working on a post forever and so far it’s working out quite well.

Goals for my Blog and Online Income

Send more pitches: I hardly pitched at all last month and while it was a good month overall, I know that having success with freelancing long-term means constantly pitching so I need to prioritize pitching for new jobs that I’m interested in more in November and keeping an eye out for opportunities.

Focus on work I enjoy: A few months back, I ended things with a high paying client and it was such a relief because deep down I couldn’t stand doing the type of work the client asked me to do and they were super picky. I’m so glad now that I truly love working with each and every one of my clients and I’m passionate about what I’m doing so it makes my work very enjoyable and I want to keep it that way. I recently discovered that I’m actually going to slow down on trying to land virtual assistant gigs because I want to spend more time building up my own blog and I’m not extremely motivated to take on a ton of VA clients at this time. I do have a few and I will accept some on a case-by-case basis but for now I’d rather earn money by doing other things

List my friggen clothes on eBay! Procrastination at it’s finest. Enough said.

Work on My Giveaway: On the blog side of things, I planning on having my first giveaway next month. It’s about time right? I want to celebrate my blog’s 1st birthday with a bang and let everyone know that I truly appreciate you stopping by my blog and keeping up with me.

Lower my blog’s Alexa rank and increase social media followers: Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to drastically lower my Alexa rank and hopefully get into the 300,000s by mid next year. I was well over a million early fall of this year and now I’m about to be under 800,000 so I hope it keeps dropping. I installed the Alexa toolbar to keep track of this, and I usually post consistently to keep fresh content on the blog but if anyone has any tips for lowering my ranking quicker, please let me know.

When it comes to social media, I’ve been pretty lazy and put this on the back burner. I think it’s very important for bloggers to have a social media presence so this is something I definitely need to work on. I try to follow back people who follow me on Twitter, but I hardly ever venture out and try to connect with new people. I want to work on this in November and gain at least 100 more Twitter followers and establish some new connections on that platform. I recently got a Facebook page for the blog. and I’m pretty active on there so I will hopefully try out some new strategies throughout the rest of the year to boost engagement on that platform.

A final note for my fellow freelance writers out there:

A fantastic course to build your freelance writing skills is Earn More Writing.

My friend Holly is a wonderful coach and inspiration to a lot of people. Her course came out after I was already a freelance writer for sometime so I haven’t taken it but she has put together an amazing course that many others agree is loaded with true value.

From how to truly build a strong, unique and memorable brand to how to write stellar pitches that get accepted to taking your income to the highest levels, her course provides insights that will definitely help you launch your writing career the right way and fast.

If you’re serious about becoming an established freelance writer by building your skills and quickly landing great gigs, I’d highly recommend her course.

Did you earn any extra money last month? What are some of your best strategies and ideas for managing your time and combating procrastination on certain things?