This side income post is fun because I’m writing it from somewhere south of St. Augustine. I’ve mentioned before that after awhile at one spot, we grow a little restless and feel the need to get moving again. After all, if we can’t quite get to the Bahamas or the Caribbean just yet due to work restraints, the least we can do is see places we’ve never been before.

We’ve heard a lot of cool things about the Tampa area. There’s apparently a great music scene in both St. Petersburg and Sarasota, and awesome sailing in Tampa Bay. Chris is currently working on his 4th album (you can check out his last EP here), and we want to be somewhere where there’s a healthy music culture. So, on Labor Day weekend, we decided to take a drive down and check the area out for ourselves.

Chris has an old friend who lives there, and he and his wife acted as our unofficial tour guides, and we had an awesome time. Checked out some marinas, and finalized our decision to check out the gulf side for awhile — why not, right?

See, that’s one of the things I love about this lifestyle… if you want to go somewhere else, you just untie the dock lines, and that’s that! I mean, obviously we did a little more preparing than that for our trip down and across (as in, I went shopping and bought enough food to feed a small army). But other than that, all we did were some weather checks, checked the oil, and off we went.

You know how they talk about being “sail-ready in 15 minutes”? Well, we can be sail-ready in less than 10 minutes. 5 if we’re really diligent. (We always keep a full tank of diesel, even when sitting at a dock – for both condensation purposes, and because you never know what could happen, so we’re always prepared).

Anyway, we’re excited about our trip across the Okeechobee. We’ve never done it before, and it’s bound to be a learning experience, what with the 49-foot bridge that we’ll be going under with our 53′ mast… I’ll keep you posted on that.

Side Income Summary – August 2015

Now, for the side income summary. If you’re new here, I post my side income each month. My side income is just that — money made from what some call “side hustles”, minus any expenses directly related to my side income. This income report 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 in order to hold myself accountable, to see my progress (which motivates me to keep working hard), and most of all, to inspire others — to show them it can totally be done.  I would have never thought before that I could make hundreds, let alone thousands of dollars each month in side income. But, inspired by other stories, and by my desire to live more freely and not be tied down to a desk from nine to five for 250 days a year.

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: $0
Online Sales: $446.31
Affiliate Income: $19.93
Adsense: $36.70
Writing Gigs: $1008.00
Misc: $73.83
TOTAL: $1584.77 in extra income (UP $810.42 from previous month)

I was super excited that my side income for August was up from July. The extra money covered some of our honeymoon expenses.

So, a quick breakdown of the above numbers, so you can see how I did it.

The web design/webmaster income was zilch in August. Which isn’t terrible, as sometimes building websites can get tedious, so a break was kind of nice!

Online sales is money I made online a few different ways. Most is from my handmade nautical jewelry website, Maggie & Milly. It also includes money I made by selling a couple domains I owned that I decided I wouldn’t be using. Note that there is not much profit in selling domains, and I do not buy domains in order to flip them. I just have several that I got in the past “just in case”, and since I’m not using them, I’m simply getting rid of them.

My affiliate income is made from a few different affiliates. I am an Amazon Associate, meaning that if you click on one of my Amazon links within the blog (sometimes I link to books or products I love), then I get a small commission off any sales made via that link. Small as in 4% commission, so no one’s getting rich here, but it all adds up. I’m also an affiliate for a few other companies, such as Bluehost (I use them for all of my web-hosting). Some money is made from affiliate links that I share on this site, and some comes from other sites that I own.

Adsense income is simply that – income from Google Adsense ads that I have on the site. I try not to have too many of them because I like keeping the site fairly uncluttered and would rather give value to my readers than make a few cents in ad clicks from more ads. That said, they do bring in a little bit, and basically they help pay for my website hosting and not much else.

Writing was definitely up in August, and I would love to keep that trend going! August writing income was from a few sources. I wrote reviews of various pet breeds I’ve owned for a website that matches pet types to people based on their lifestyles, a couple of SEO articles, and a customer service manual for a company. I’ve even gotten paid to write photo captions, and Pinterest descriptions before! This just goes to show that you can make extra money by writing in ways that aren’t what you typically think of when you think of freelance writing jobs (such as writing for magazines, etc.) Some pay better than others. I try not to discount the smaller jobs, as they are low-hanging fruit, but they can be tedious and a bit of a time-suck, so I just choose my battles.

Miscellaneous income is from little things here and there that don’t fit into one of my standard job categories. Usually what I put here is the cash back rewards from using my credit card (which I pay off each month). I’m also reserving this spot for my big lottery winnings one day (I’m a very lucky person — seriously), but I think you have to actually play the lottery in order to win something, and I’m too frugal to do that. Oh, well.

So there you have it. I’ve mentioned before that I’m exploring new avenues for side income, and I’ll talk more about those as we go along. In the meantime, my next post is a guest post from a totally awesome (and hilarious) cruiser and blogger, so stay tuned!

Have anything in particular that you have questions about or want to share? Drop me a comment below!