So, this is the first one I've done and I haven't got a great deal to report as such. I want to use this as my baseline and reference point going forward so that I really can measure how successful (or not) I am being.
For the moment, I'm purely going to focus on my online-related income. That's the real long-term story as far as I'm concerned, even if I could do with significantly picking up my offline endeavors.
My approach to this will evolve over time as I find the right metrics and put aside some proper time to record this information. It's probably not the right accounting approach (but who cares) but I'll record all the income earned during the month rather than received and paid. It's easy for now because my income isn't that diverse or sophisticated. And for the future, there's my finance jobs site.
So here it goes....
Writing
Resume writing: $800. I'm yet to have the data confirmed but by my estimates it should be around $800 for the month of May. This has become a significant story for me and will continue to be for now. Essentially, I work freelance for a company abroad and they line up the clients etc for me to work on.
Ideally, I want to be able to replicate the same approach where I live in Asia because I won't need to give a big chunk of cash to HQ every time I do the work. That's the plan in coming weeks/months. But I've only been doing it for a few months and they are doing all the hard work in terms of getting clients, so I've no complaints.
Article writing: $160. I write articles for a website in Singapore a few times a month and since the beginning of the year it's been quite consistent. It's great that it's $80 a time but my trouble is finding the time and inclination to finish the work. The owner is quite rightly incredibly thorough and every time I write a piece I "look forward to" the revisions he asks for and added information.
With both of these writing gigs I need to put my ego by the door and just suck up the revisions that are invariably requested. It's not something I'm used to but it's good for me.
Surveys
Prolific Academic: $5.50. This is the only survey I bother with - the others seem to be boring / hard to monetize / repetitive / confusing and the list goes on. As the name suggests, Prolific Academic is all about academic research and actually pretty interesting. I didn't remember to check for many surveys this month but I had a few. Easy.
Other
Fiverr: $4 (after Fiverr's $1 costs). Not a great return really but I have a few fairly passive income gigs on the site so I was happy to get this one without really having to work any more for it.
Postloop: $5. Things have gone fairly quiet for me on Postloop - i.e. I've been busy with other writing aspects so I haven't really focused much on it. But it's always there and it's a useful default when I've nothing better to do (which wasn't that often in May).
So that's it. $974.50. It won't set the world on fire but it's better than a slap in the face. For now I'll give myself a score of C. It's a base line and I hope to be able to improve on it. Importantly, only Fiverr out of the amount was effectively "passive". So less than 1%, which is not great.
Hopefully, in coming months I'll be able to build that out.
