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Wow – is the summer flying by or what? I swear every time it’s time for a side income post, I’m like, “Really? A whole month just went by already?”
This summer has been pretty eventful on the personal front. We left Fort Lauderdale to sail up to St. Simons Island, GA back in late June, and had a mishap with our alternator while out at sea, leaving us no choice but to divert into St. Augustine instead. Luckily we were able to get a brand new alternator shipped out and installed with very little fuss. Which, if you’re on a sailboat, you know hardly ever happens – so when things do go smoothly, you just give a nod of thanks to the universe and move on.
Once we had our new alternator, we motored up to St. Simons Island – a 2 day trip inside on the ICW – and have been docked here since. St. Simons is a lovely place! Seriously, we’ve fallen in love with it and I’m so glad we decided to spend our summer here, although we greatly miss our friends on the Chesapeake!
It’s been an interesting month and a half here in St. Simons. Since we’ve been here, we’ve had to take Jet to the vet twice, and Chris to the ER once, but thank goodness both of my boys are fine. Actually, Chris’ incident was actually quite terrifying for me – to make a long story short, we were at the vet with Jet, and Chris had a sudden, severe case of vertigo due to a bad inner ear infection that we didn’t realize he had.
I thought he was having a stroke at first, and although I’m usually calm, cool and collected, I was anything but calm this time. It was definitely an eye-opener for me, and I’ve been replaying the incident in my head, just so next time, I am not such a basketcase and instead I’m more clear-headed and helpful.
Tough way to learn that lesson, though.
Side Income Summary – July 2015
If you’re new here, I post my side income each month – 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 any of Chris’ income.
I post these numbers for a couple of reasons. One, it serves as 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: $48.25
Online Sales: $441.72
Affiliate Income: $149.61
Adsense: $21.72
Writing Gigs: $15.75
Misc: $97.30
TOTAL: $774.35 in extra income (DOWN 1180.87 from previous month)
July wasn’t nearly as good as June was, but mostly this is because I was focused on my new job and other exciting stuff.
I finished a few web design and webmaster projects I had been working on off-and-on for several months, so there was a big decline in that income. Affiliate income was a little better, and I’m learning more about that. Adsense is picking up a little bit – nothing to write home about, but it’s interesting to see a steady increase over the months. The sucky thing about Adsense is that there’s a $100 threshold before you get paid, so I don’t get a check until I hit $100. That can take up to 6 months or more, so right now, I don’t get too excited over it, but I’m still learning how to increase it, so we’ll see how it goes.
Writing gigs – I had a small gig writing SEO posts for a company, but to be perfectly honest, the pay is not that great. You choose a topic from their list of clients, and if you get lucky and it’s a topic you already are familiar with, you still have to research an SEO keyword or look at the client’s site so you can adopt the correct “writing voice”… and even if you crank out an article in half an hour, the average pay is like $4.00 so for me, it hasn’t been a priority. If I find myself with nothing to do, I’ll go on there to see if I feel like writing something just for the hell of it, but this particular company isn’t one I’ll be spending a lot of energy on. They’ll probably fire me soon anyway, as they want their writers to crank out at least 1500 words a week. Not worth the headache. I’d rather pursue writing gigs that are much more lucrative, but at least I’m getting a good writing portfolio together! I’ve got a post coming hopefully later this week on some resources and tips for landing writing gigs. (Even though I don’t yet focus much energy myself on writing gigs as of late, it doesn’t mean I don’t know where to find them!)
Miscellaneous income is from little things here and there that don’t really come from a job per se. Most of this income is from my Capital One credit card rewards – I charge almost everything to my Capital One card, then just pay the card off each month. That way it’s a win-win. I’m not spending any more than I normally would, I get the cash back rewards from all my purchases, and I pay it off every month in full, so I have never once paid a penny in interest to Capital One. So in essence, they are actually paying me to use their card! This doesn’t work in your favor unless you pay the card off each month.
New Directions
There are a few things I’m starting to think about that pertain to this blog, and I’d love your input. As I’m starting to go more in the direction of showing people how to work remotely so you can achieve location-independence, my writing focus is less about “saving to sail” and more along the lines of “learning how you can work from anywhere in the world.” I’ve been getting some new readers that aren’t sailors, and I’m wondering if the blog title might box me in a little too much.
The last thing I want to do is have to start a whole new blog – I’ve spent 2+ years cultivating this one and building my readership as well as ranking it high on Google with search engine optimization. I do want to attract new readers who may not be sailors, and who may not be interested in “saving” money, but more interested in making money. Anyone have any thoughts? Do you think I still have a chance at growing my readership outside of the sailing niche, even with this current site? What would you like to see more of? Let me know – post a comment below!
Following your side hustles is something I’m totally on board (on deck?) with, even if my focus isn’t specifically saving or sailing. I am, however, looking to develop an income stream(s) I can make while living and travelling in an RV. Soon The Hubs will be able to leave his day job and we want to see the world. I don’t want to be the wet blanket that has a job that keeps us tethered to one place. (Well, that and the fact that I don’t want to devote any more of my budget to LBDs and high heels!)
I’d like to read about the logistics of how you actually work. That is, where do you set up your laptop, how much of an “office” have your carved out of the limited space on the sailboat, how the distractions the same – and different – from working from home in a sticks-and-bricks building?
It’s great to hear that you had the courage to step out of your comfort zone for your new dream job and that it was a successful gamble. Congrats!
Hi Sophia! Thank you for your insight and ideas! It’s funny because I hadn’t really considered writing about my “office setup” but I suppose that would be a good thing for others to know, so I’ll definitely be writing about that now, as well as the pros and cons of working from a virtual office. You’re the second person to contact me today who is on an RV rather than a sailboat, so it makes me very happy that people outside of sailing are finding the blog and still finding some benefit. I really appreciate you reading and commenting!