Eat your heart out, bitches! (I say that lovingly!) June f-ing rocked for side income, becoming my best month to date. I’m so excited that I’ve been on a constant upswing over the past several months. I hope that I can continue to grow my side income each month like this! I’ve also been fortunate because several other doors are opening, and I can’t wait to tell you about all of it!

My Online Jewelry Store is Growing

One of the things that’s starting to finally come together is my online jewelry store! For those that don’t know, I have an online store called Maggie & Milly, where I sell my handcrafted nautical shackle bracelets.

In June, Maggie & Milly was chosen alongside Sperry Topsiders to supply the gift bag item for a VIP press dinner held on a yacht in New York City. I had about a week to make over 70 bracelets, and bag them in a fun little presentation for the attendees, which included press from media outlets such as Travel and Leisure, VH1, The NY Post, USA Today, and almost any other big name publication on the market. I gave away over $1600 worth of product!

I knew that it probably wouldn’t yield any sales, but I was hoping to possibly get a small mention in a press release about the event. (To my knowledge, I didn’t get any mention). What I did get out of it was a guest list with the names and contact info of everyone attending the event.

When I take into account my actual cost to produce 70 bracelets,  I figure it was still cheaper than most advertising methods, and if I can somehow make use of one of these contacts later on, it will have been worth it.

Would I do a big gift giveaway like this again? Probably not, but it was still a good experience. I will say though, my fingers were blistered and damn near bleeding after whipping the ends on over 70 bracelets in under a week!

I’ve also landed a new wholesale account from a retailer up in Michigan and I created an affiliate program for a select few top online influencers, so if you’re interested in learning more about how you can get paid by promoting Maggie & Milly, hit me up for more info!

Side Income Summary – June 2015

For those of you that are new here, I post my side income each month, and to be clear, my side income is just that – money made from what some call “side hustles”, minus any expenses/payouts directly related to my side income such as affiliate payouts to others, PayPal fees, etc. This doesn’t include my income from my full time job (which I do remotely from the boat) or my fiance’s freelance income or income from his music or book sales.

I post these numbers for a couple of reasons. One, it’s a form of accountability for myself and keeping track of everything and posting it inspires me to keep working hard. The main reason, however, is to show others that you can make hundreds, even thousands of dollars per month on the side, from anywhere!

The below numbers are an accurate depiction of what I’ve made on the side, bad or good, compared to the previous month.

Webmaster/Web Design Stuff: $985.20
Online Sales: $840.77
Affiliate Income: $20.11
Adsense: $16.79
Writing Gigs: $30.10
Misc: $62.25
TOTAL: $1955.22 in extra income (UP 371.68 from previous month!)

As you can see, most of that is from webmaster/web design work. I had the awesome opportunity to design a site for my friend Tadji Kretschmer. If her name sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve probably heard of her husband, sailor extraordinaire and best-selling author John Kretschmer. She is a travel consultant on the side, and her website is Travels With Tadji. I’ll be talking more about this (and her) in an upcoming post!

My second highest income generator in June was from online sales. This includes sales from Maggie & Milly, as well as anything I sell on eBay or Craigslist.

After all my success selling the golf clubs that I found on the side of the road in May, I decided to sell a few other things on eBay, and that brought in some extra cash, too. We don’t have much to sell on eBay since downsizing to live on a boat doesn’t leave you with a lot of unnecessary shit, but I had a few things that we decided we no longer needed.

I made a little money writing some short SEO articles for a company. I’ll be talking more about this soon, too.

Affiliate income and Adsense are still pretty low, and I don’t expect them to grow a huge amount anytime soon. Most of my Adsense income comes from a niche site that I created about 18 months ago and haven’t touched since. It’s amazing that it still produces income, albeit a very small amount. I’ve been thinking about adding more content to it to see if I can grow it, but it’s lower on my priority list right now.

Miscellaneous income is from random extras such as cashback rewards from my credit card, or other similar things. I’m a credit card rewards whore and I drive Chris crazy because I make him let me put everything on the credit card (which I pay off in full each month), just so I can get the cash back. The way I look at it, I haven’t paid a dime in interest to this credit card company, and I pay everything in full each month, so it’s free money. Why not do it?!

Savings with Digit

I am still in love with Digit, the money saving app! I love that it saves money automatically for me, so I don’t even see it. As of this writing, Digit has saved me over $200. It’s not a huge amount, but this is money that I would never have set back myself. A few dollars here and there – enough so you don’t miss it (they do send you a text every time they save for you) but it adds up pretty quickly.

At this rate, I estimate I will have saved about $800-$1000 with the app within a year’s time. Not too shabby! You can sign up for your own Digit savings account using my special referral link by clicking here. It’s free for you to sign up, and I get a small referral fee. After you sign up, share your own referral link with friends and family to get a little extra boost to your savings account!

Coming Soon…

I’ll be starting my Side Hustle Series, in which I interview other people who are out there hustling so you can get other ideas and perspectives on earning side income. I’m still working on my book(s), and I’ve got some other exciting news around the corner, too, so stay tuned!