Medium: Inspiration is the name of the game

It's been a while since I posted my Medium pieces. So as we end out the year, it's time to revisit some of the writing. And the theme is: Inspiration

Here are three recent ones:

One about trying to inspire my godson.

https://medium.com/illumination/inspirational-words-for-a-struggling-teenager-747fcee39a90

One that talks about the highs and very lows I experienced during the pandemic.

https://medium.com/illumination/i-miss-the-pandemic-c4234229201e

And then there are words of inspiration from the late great Charlie Munger.

https://medium.com/illumination/the-life-times-and-brilliance-of-the-late-charlie-munger-0d903369ec70

Quality Writing on Medium: Devouring the Brilliance of Others

Greetings!

I thought this time around I'd share a few articles from Medium that I found inspirational for different reasons.

One came from a woman that hadn't been on the platform that long but was clearly doing something right:

Celebrating One Year and $16,000 on Medium: How I Did It, What I Learned, and What’s Next

One came from a runner that puts the Boston Marathon into perspective:

I Won the 1968 Boston Marathon. And Ran Many More. After the Bombs, Everything Changed

And one was about life in general:

How to Stop Giving a Fuck

There's a ton of great stuff on Medium, and it's always worth investing time in reading about others' experiences and their insights. 

If you'd like to write on Medium, one of the best ways to build a following is to become a member. This gives you unlimited access to high-quality writers and tips on how to monetize. 

 You can join through this membership link: 

• Medium Membership

The same link also lets you unlock thousands of excellent articles. Click here for more details.

Also, take a look at this Etsy shop for career/ money/personal development inspiration:

https://www.etsy.com/hk-en/shop/Work4Cash

Medium: Making Money, Losing Money, and ChatGPT

So my Medium journey continues. 

This time I'm going to highlight a couple of pieces about money and one about the hot topic of the moment, artificial intelligence:

How I Lost $25,000 Through Two Bad Investments

Fancy Paying $3.2m For a Personalized License Plate?

ChatGPT, ChatGPT, ChatGPT...Boring, Boring, Boring

And a bonus feature from another writer - some really good insights in how to run a side hustle:

How I Made $3,063 on the Internet in 31 Days (Part-Time)

If you'd like to write on Medium, one of the best ways to build a following is to become a member. This gives you unlimited access to high-quality writers and tips on how to monetize. 

You can join through this membership link: 

• Medium Membership

The same link also lets you unlock thousands of excellent articles. Click here for more details.

Medium: Ever Thought About Freelance Writing as a Side Hustle?

As we prepare ourselves to enter into a recession, we should all consider ways in which to improve our financial situation. Freelance writing is one area to consider.

Medium is a great platform if you've ever thought about trying out freelance writing. At the very least, you can get good practice with plenty of eyeballs on your work

Here are two pieces that talk about freelance writing in general:

• My Best and Worst Freelance Writing Side Hustles

• How to Start as a Freelance Writer

Read, write and join

If you'd like to write on Medium, one of the best ways to build a following would be to become a member. This gives you unlimited access to high-quality writers and tips on how to monetize. 

You can join through this membership link: 

• Medium Membership

The same link also lets you unlock thousands of excellent articles. Click here for more details.

As a taster of what's on offer, below is a recent Medium article by none other than Barack Obama:

• My 2022 End of Year List

Enjoy.

Medium articles - Recession, Salvation and Gender Inequality

Here's another round of Medium articles to get your teeth into.

Firstly, I'll start with a Scott Galloway piece. If you don't know his stuff, I would heartily recommend digging into it. In this piece, he talks about recession talk and how it can become self-fulfilling:

Bottom's Up

Next, here's a piece on taking responsibility for what's in front of us. Not everyone does. A lot of us are in denial:

Nobody's Coming to Save You

Finally, here's an important piece on the gender imbalance in the workforce - but this time it relates to side hustles and freelancing:

How to Narrow the Gender Pay Gap in Side Hustles and Freelancing

Enjoy!

And if you're new to Medium, you can unlock thousands of excellent stories for only $5/month. 

Click here.

Income Report: April

I was hoping to report that I had got myself a new job. Well, not quite. Yet. I have loosely been offered in verbal form but I'm not going to get too excited until I've signed something on the dotted line.

The problem has been that I've been holding back on marketing certain coaching and consulting services locally to make sure I don't disappoint clients somewhere along the line. I've also not pushed on with creating products as well.

In reality, I should be focusing more on the products side, as the goal would be to sell my expertise online while doing my day job. Time to act more strategically.

I'm pretty sure I'll hear something this month on the job front, but until then I'm going to keep playing with my ventures.

So let's look at the income front:

Resume writing: $1,837. This will be the first victim of a new job. I won't give it up entirely, as I still believe that we all have to have multiple streams of income in this new world. But I won't have the time to invest in writing on a regular basis.

Writing: $130. I've got a regular writing gig related to career guidance. I haven't yet billed for the work, as I haven't actually written the two pieces yet. But my estimate should be about right.

Dividends: $760. This is something I'm increasingly keen to build out, as it's a passive income stream that I like. It's not without risk as I need to develop a screening process to select the right stocks. But it's part of my long-term focus. I managed to buy a few more stocks with a good dividend during the month and I was very happy to benefit from a few dividends and special dividend payments.

eBooks: $2. I managed to launch my third book (Cryptocurrency Job Hunting for Non-Techies) to add to (The Simple Guide to a Winning LinkedIn Profile and Craft a Winning Resume). I always sell at least one or two a month. It's not a lot but it is passive. I know that I haven't marketed them at all so it's no surprise that I haven't been pulling in big numbers. Going into the summer months I'll certainly be pushing the books to a graduate audience. Last summer was certainly me most profitable period for my books so will hope to build on that.

Amazon Merch: $0.09. Well, it is passive income...But it's not one that is kicking into high gear just yet. That's partly down to me. I've been focusing my energies on what I see as areas that will give me a better return on my time and money. I'll try to put a few hours aside to develop some new designs and see where this thing takes me. Importantly, it fits into my passive income mindset.

Total: $2,729 (better than my $1,800-$2,000 minimum target)

Looking ahead
It's really dependent on my work situation essentially. I need to keep working on the online course I've started on. Hopefully, I can get that out before the end of the summer.

I also have to see what I can get out of Buy Buttons. So much potential there.

Income Report: March

One of the positives of working for yourself is that you don't have someone standing over you hurrying you along.

But one of the negatives of working for yourself is that you don't have someone standing over you hurrying you along...

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day. I realized he didn't actually appreciate the ins and outs of my portfolio career approach to life, aside from the observation, "you must have a lot of time on your hands". The fact that I work every day in one shape or form is almost irrelevant. My world isn't as easily translatable to his corporate world.

That said, he did say something that really struck me. "If you had done ABC (fill in with whatever action) during all that time you've been away from your corporate role, you could have been XYZ (fill in with whatever blue sky result)."

Obviously, the world doesn't operate in such linear terms and 20/20 hindsight is beautiful. But I must admit he did have a point. Because I was operating in my easy-going, "let's see what happens world", I haven't actually pushed on where obstacles and pain were there in front of me. It's very easy to hide when you're working for yourself. In other words, the lack of accountability has hurt.

My goal for this next quarter is to really smack a few things into place. I'm a massive fan of the Side Hustle Nation podcast hosted by Nick Loper and I bought his recent book Buy Buttons. It was a revelation! I've been dipping my toe into side hustles and the gig economy for some time but I honestly had no clue about how many ways you could make money. It's inspired me to have a look at what else I can build. I'd recommend having a read of his book if you're looking at developing side income streams.

One thing that most definitely will define my world in the near term is the possibility of a corporate role. Just because I have this portfolio career approach, it doesn't mean I won't dip in and out of the corporate world. If I get the role, things will have to change. If I don't get the role, I'll push on with several initiatives I've been holding back on and things will have to change...

Resume Writing: $1,318. Steady as she goes. But my goal is to become far less reliant on contracting via one firm so I'm not too disappointed as this figure starts to dip.

Additional Writing: $468: Not bad. I managed to do follow-up work for two recent gigs, plus I've also done some resume work separate to the contracted work I do. The reason I group it here is because it's from a separate source and the overall goal is to diversify my sources of income.

Amazon Merch: $0.09. Yes, I'm off the mark! Ok, I only sold one but it's a start. I've got some pretty cool, professionally designed T-shirts ready for purchase (Dog T-Shirt; Cool Dog; Pitbull). Time to push on more.

eBook: $6.50. This is still ticking over and I made a similar amount to last month, split between a sale on Kobo and the rest on Amazon. I don't really do any marketing but it's good that it's still working (The Simple Guide to a Winning LinkedIn Profile and Craft a Winning Resume). I've also now signed up to E-Junkie as well. My next book will launch in April (I had hoped for March but life happened and that has changed) and I have high hopes that it is a topical angle on the job-hunting space.

Total: $1,792.59

This is ok, and it's not my only income stream thankfully, but it's a bit below what I now want to be the minimum here ($1,800 - $2,000) and below three of the last four months.

Looking ahead

The corporate job dynamic has been hanging around for a long time and it should be resolved within weeks. That will shape my next moves.

In the meantime, I've got to get my book out, start writing my course and see what I can get out of Buy Buttons. There are so many ways to make money out there.

Income Report: December

As 2017 draws to an end, I guess it's time to have a little review of where I am now.

It took me a while to start getting a bit serious about all of this online income / passive income / enterprise thinking, and I'm nowhere near where I want to be. But I've worked a lot on my mindset in recent months and I'm convinced that 2018 will build upon the momentum I've been seeing in recent months.

I'm gradually building up structures and disciplines that should put me in better stead for the next 12 months. One of the reasons why I struggled at times this year was that I didn't have clear enough goals to target and didn't have any metrics to measure how well or not I was doing. That's going to change.

I'm also going to keep my main focus on two areas: career and finance. Those are going to be the core of all my income streams. That way I won't be too distracted by shiny objects that cross my path. It will also allow me to repurpose content and work done in different areas. I have a few random connected domains that I hope to monetize, while I also need to build on my relationships and ideas in different ways. Go where the money is and use what you know what works - that's my plan.

December was an incredibly short month for me as I effectively took off the last two weeks. As a result, there's very little to speak about in relation to my income streams:

Resume Writing: About $400. Did very little but that was to be expected. I'm angling at $1,200/month for this. That's a lot less than most of my months but that's because I want to re-direct my efforts elsewhere with a passive and online income bias.

Ebooks: $16. Pleasantly surprised that I sold eight over the month (not amazing but one of my best months, and reflective of both books being purchased - The Simple Guide to a Winning LinkedIn Profile and Craft a Winning Resume). In keeping with my idea of repurposing and going where the money is, I'm starting to write a new book talking about cryptocurrency. My goal is to get $20/week via my ebooks in 2018. That's a stretch at the moment but that's exactly what I need.

Writing: $0. This was a disappointing area for me this year. I had a few bites but didn't have the consistency. In 2018, my writing is going to be heavily focused on finance writing. By focusing on this niche I won't waste time on areas that I can't build as part of my brand.

Projects: $0. I had two good projects this year and the goal is to find similar types of deals. I realize that working with organizations, while more hassle, are far more profitable and better for my development. It means that I need to tighten up my propositions but I'm excited about what I might be able to bring to the market.

Total: $416. A non-month but directionally I'm heading in the right direction. Slowly but surely...

Income Report: April

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."

I love the saying but it's also very pertinent to this whole Income Report process. Every time I get to the time of the month to write a new one, I realise that I'm broadly writing the same old, same old. 

There may well be progress but it's slow. And there's often a fair bit of familiarity about it all. And for many months it really was pretty much the same. 

Thankfully, I've finally got my first ebook up and running. It's not pulling up trees at the moment but at least I've started.

I need to be patient and not get sucked into assuming that all those others making big bucks online (or at least so they tell us) have taken a long while to do so.

I've given myself a target. I've got a 90-day challenge going on, where my goal is to have tangible online and offline income streams properly set up. I don't expect to be kicking back with a pina colada and getting ready to retire, but I hope to be able to show to myself that I'm genuinely on the right path.

So my goal is to have something worthwhile to write when I get to August. I'm working on a couple of eBooks, looking at how to monetize through a few websites and want to expand a few different areas.

In the meantime for April:

Resume Writing: $1,760

eBook sales: $4

Prolific Academic: $6

Total: $1,770

Income Report: March

I've finally managed to make a few inroads into the world of passive income. Ok, we're talking extreme baby steps. But there have been steps nonetheless!

I've finally completed my ebook and have sold a few on Amazon! I probably haven't been that sophisticated in how I put it together and have promoted it. But it's all part of the learning experience.

The important thing is my book is basically all about what I do on a daily basis: resume writing. It's not a book based on conceptual thinking or things that people have Googled. The tips, tricks and techniques are ones the company I work for applies.

So it works.

As for elsewhere, I've continued to do a lot of resume writing work - everyone from graduates all the way up to Executive Directors. So that's very steady. I've also been working slowly on other ebooks related to career hunting and finance.

So I've got a bit of momentum. Little by little though.

I"m still working on reviving my Fiverr account and waiting to get my Amazon Merch account authorized.

Monthly income in a nutshell:-

Resume Writing: $1,800 (vs. $1,525 the previous month and $1,094 the month before that)
Prolific Academic: $2
Ebook: $4

Total: $ 1,806

I'm excited that I have my first passive income product out there. Now time to build more opportunities.

And if you're looking to improve your resume, check out my ebook, Craft a Winning Resume 2017. 

It give proper, workable tips on how to master the art and science of writing a powerful, impactful resume. 

Income Report: December

Ok, it's time to get real.

Or at the very least it's time to stop pretending.

One of the reasons why I started blogging about income was in order to make myself more accountable. And that's great. Pretty much month on month I've increased my income based on the parameters that I have in place.

But the problem is that the parameters just aren't aligned with my bigger story. I keep telling myself that I want a decent passive income stream but month to month it's simply not showing up. It's not to say that the active income that I have been earning is wrong. Quite the opposite.

It too is part of the bigger story. But I keep telling myself that 50% of my income is going to be passive. That's my big dirty goal. I'm removing rental income from the equation for the moment but if I truly, really want financial freedom then I need to really get going on the world of passive income.

So this time next year when I read through my report on income I'm going to be very disappointed if I'm not able to have a made a real passive income impact here.

As for December, I didn't do a whole heap of new stuff. It was a shortened month and I didn't add any additional income streams. So I'll keep it simple:

Monthly income:-

Resume Writing: $1,269
Prolific Academic: $6.50

Total: $ 1,275.50

Not spectacular but workable. What I really intend on building upon is more income streams. Lots of income streams. Maybe five. Maybe ten. But not two. Not three.

I also don't want to grade myself at the moment. I'm simply spinning the same wheels just now. Once I create something bigger than my consistent income stream I'll really be able to push on.

2016 was the starting point. And I'm grateful that I made inroads over the year that I never would have expected. But 2017 is going to see my online business really gather pace. It has to.

So, to a successful experiment so far and so to the next stage where I will seriously move onto the next level. It's none of the big time promises that a lot of other bloggers indicate. It's the real thing.

Time to own my shit.

Merry Christmas.

Making the Most of This Blog

I've been writing this blog for a while now, sometimes consistently, very often sporadically. It initially started out as a way for me to air my musing. Some were good, some were just plain fluffy nonsense. But that was the whole idea - write some comments that may provide a bit of entertainment for readers, while massaging my ego at the same time.

Over the last year, I've started to touch more on the world of personal finance, sometimes overlapping with the world of personal development. That kind of made sense given that my background is in banking and all things finance, while I've also trained to be a life coach. The problem with providing a few vague insights here and there is that it's never clear as to how much value the reader gets from it, while there's also no real accountability for my intent behind the writing.

Because I now work for myself, I've had some time to think about where I should be directing my time and energies, and what goals I want to pursue. Fundamentally, I'm keen on building enterprises and income streams that make me less reliant on an employer, the government, a fairy godmother. I've always had an interest in passive income ideas plus, more recently, the world of online earning opportunities. And it's time for me to start taking responsibility.

So with this in mind I've decided to make a shift in this blog. In base terms, I'm going to be looking at different money-making opportunities out there, whether that is purely online concepts or interesting insights I've picked up elsewhere. It could be products, it could be services, it could even be the simple psychology behind money. I'll also be chronicling my (incredibly gradual) journey into the world of building passive income streams and creating financial freedom.

I'm not the first to try this and I'm not foolish enough to think that it will be easy or smooth. But hopefully outlining things in the blog can add some focus and accountability to my efforts. Hopefully, it can also inspire you and give you a reason for returning to the blog. It may even show you what NOT to do.

Upfront, some of the online opportunities I feature may have affiliate or referral programs attached to them, and to be transparent there may be times I get commission if you sign up. You won't be obliged to sign up, though obviously any sign up through this route will be gratefully appreciated.

Importantly, I have no intention of directing you towards any old dog of an opportunity. Hopefully I can put in place a bit of quality control. And definitely nothing illegal. The world's too full of people looking to make a quick buck or looking to shaft someone, and that's just not me. There's a karma to all of this and sharing ideas while taking a "slow and steady wins the race" approach works for me.

So this is my starting point. I'm looking forward to this little journey that we're now on!