April showers brings May flowers! I don't know about you guys, but April sure has been a wet month for us this year! As I sit here on the last day of the month the rain continues to come down and wreck havoc on my chicken coop. Granted, it is helping my lawn and helping me not have to pay to water it! :)
Well, I know you didn't come here to get an update on the weather, but to find out what is going on with my passive income streams. A lot has been changing in our house over the past month. Especially as we continue to try to re-coop our dent in our emergency fund after getting out of our housing contract.
First thing, is that at my primary job I found out that my company lost the re-compete contract and there are going to be a lot of changes in the next six months with having to switch jobs. A lot of changes that I'm not normally accustomed too, and don't usually like. Regardless, I've been doing what I can to keep my head down. Keep working hard. Not getting involved in the water cooler talk. Spruce up my resume and look for other opportunities outside of my current employment sphere. I know the Lord has plans for me and where He wants me to be at. I just need to continue to be faithful to Him who has begun a good work in me.
Secondly, I started another income source after reading a guest post on BudgetsAreSexy.com. I started doing work on Amazon's Mturk. It doesn't pay very well, but it allows me to get paid for free time I have by doing audio transcriptions, surveys, or small 20-30 minute jobs. It definitely isn't something that you'll get rich doing, but can provide another source of income. I am going to start tracking this income in my monthly reports, and establish a goal of $500 by the end of the year. This income source I'd like to feed my investments of LendingClub or Schwab Monthly Income investments. At this point, I haven't set this in stone yet, but need to visually see how this passive income stream will feed another income stream.
Thirdly, I've started working with my local farmer to harvest and split wood for sale in our local area on craigslist. It takes a lot of work, but might prove fruitful for another small income source. I'll start recording this income source once I get my first batch of wood ready for sale and set a goal at that time.
Now on to the overview of my monthly income and where my income sources have been coming from and performing.
- Pension – [2016 Goal – $1308 – made $436 thus far] – the pension continues to feed our private schooling savings for 2016-2017 and the ability to prepay for the entire year and get a 3% discount.
- Peer-to-Peer Lending – [2016 Goal make $100 – made $8.16 thus far] – LendingClub.com is continuing to be an excellent source of income and all of my lendees have been faithful in paying their principal and interest. This past month I reinvested some principal and interest back into another loan ($25). My plan is to continue to feed Lendingclub and really grow this investment over the next year. I've almost got $300 invested in this account that has been entirely funded by egg sales and gold/silver sales.
- Egg Sales – [2016 Goal – $360 – made $97 thus far] – work has continued to be stressful and I haven't been able to focus on selling my eggs. In addition, this past week my coop got completely flooded by rain water. It really is taking a toll on the structure, but I'm doing everything to mend it. I sold $23 in eggs this past month, which was a little down, but not bad. We also have 14 baby chicks that we have been raising up from hatching, so that'll help increase our egg production in about 5 more months.
- Blog Income – [2016 Goal – $6000 – made $2925 thus far] – made $717 this past month, which was an increase from last month. I'm almost halfway to my yearly goal and we are only four months into the year! Aaron and I are continuing to develop our plan of putting more money back into the business in the coming months. We are looking at a site redesign, purchasing a GoPro camera to develop our video tutorials, and do more advertising. Like I said last month…”more to come on this in the coming months.”
- Two Checking Account System – [2016 Goal – $500 – made $275 thus far] – our launch of the two checking account system for the past two months have been very successful. I am way ahead of my goal for the year and our hits are to 2100 views on YouTube.
- Schwab Monthly Income Fund – [2016 Goal – invest $1200 and make $100] – continued investing another $100 automatically from the proceeds I had in the previous month of selling some gold/silver.
- Amazon's MTurk – [2016 Goal – make $500 – made $6.85 thus far] – I just started doing surveys and small jobs around the 22nd of April. I realize that this income source takes a lot of work for little reward, but will pay me for any extra free time I have. Also the plan is to feed other passive income streams with this income source.
Just like all the other previous months, April continued to prove very busy and productive in my efforts to increase my multiple income streams. I need to continue to focus on my yearly goals, and what I can do to leverage my efforts for growing these with little maintenance work.
I'd love to hear from some of our readers on whether you've taken any action on creating another income source based on reading my monthly reports! I'd really love to hear your positive or negative feedback.
1 Comment
I have tried using Amazon’s MTurk, but have had better luck with others. I discuss my success with one survey company and a content writing company on my blog (which focuses on taking underutilized minutes in the day and using them for side hustling). They might be right up your alley!
Otherwise, I appreciate looking at how others create side income and I look forward to future reports.