Money Tips Network

For 2024 I published my side hustle income report each month to maintain accountability.

This year, my main goal is to be profitable.

To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.

My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.

My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.

I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services. With this in mind, I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.

Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not

Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.

For 2024 I published my side hustle income report each month to maintain accountability.

This year, my main goal is to be profitable.

To maintain transparency and accountability, I'll be reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.

I haven't been profitable for a while now. My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.

My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.

I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services. With this in mind, I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.

The short answer: It Depends!

(Updated 11/4/2017, and again in 6/10/2025.)

At various times in our marriage, we've had more cars than drivers.

Sometimes it's been a headache, and other times it's been a blessing.

Our extra cars back in 2007

Back in 2007, my wife and I had three cars between us.

Two of the cars had more than 160k miles each: a 1997 Oldsmobile Achieva and a 1997 Chrysler Town and Country.

The third one was a 2004 Toyota Corolla that we had just bought because the Achieva was starting to let us down.

We had about $1,000 in exhaust repairs on the Achieva at the time. These needed to get done because we hadn't bought the Corolla yet.

All three cars were running fine; my wife used the van and I commuted with the Corolla.

Looking back, keeping those aging cars on the road required a mix of persistence, regular maintenance, and a little bit of luck.

I rediscovered an old trick a bit by accident

I signed up for a “chair workout” app last year called Muscle Booster to ease myself back into exercising.

There was a $22 for three months trial and then it went up to $66 per three months.

And then the app stayed closed most of the time.

Now it was nothing more than a leak in my bank account.

The road to hell and all that

I decided to cancel the app because I had RGI (Really Good Intentions), but only used it a handful of times during those three months.

(Somehow I managed to decide this the day before it was set to renew. Lucky me!)

Like a lot of things, I was hoping that the fact that I was paying for it would rouse me into action. That wasn't the case.

So I did catch it before it renewed and I went through the cancelation process.

A friend of mine some time ago was bitten by the coin-collecting bug.

Like another couple of people I know, he's withdrawn substantial amounts of coins from the bank and searches them for treasures, like older coins, errors, and coins with precious metals.

To date he's already found a number of silver dimes and half dollars (around ten I think). That's more than I've run across with my searching, so good on him.

I slammed the door on it for a long time. Not anymore.

On the scale of “how hard is this money” this is fairly easy.

Not quite as easy as collecting an AdSense payment or an affiliate payment, but not as hard as writing the articles essentially for free and waiting for residual income to come in.

And like I mentioned, it's showing up at your door. You may just not know it.

“Would you like to share this resource?”

If you've been around the blogosphere as long as I have (my blog will be twenty this month!) you*'ll get plenty of requests to “share a resource that may be of interest to your readers.”

This request usually comes from a website owner or an SEO (search engine optimization) company hired by them.

What if there's another way to succeed as a creator? How would I pull it off?

I have a bit of a hoarding problem with my side hustles.

I have accumulated a lot of different kinds of online assets, and relationships with clients:

For 2024 I published my side hustle income report each month to maintain accountability.

This year, my main goal is to be profitable.

To maintain transparency with this goal, I'll be reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.

I haven't been profitable for a number of years now. My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles.

My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.

Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not

Since I'm not posting anonymously, my main job income, my part-time job income, and my main investments won't be reported. I'll report everything else, though!

I'll report on income as I receive it, not when I earn it. In other words, I report on it when it hits my bank account.

For 2024 I published my side hustle income report each month to maintain accountability.

This year, my main goal is to be profitable.

To maintain transparency with this goal, I'll be reporting on both income and expenses this year.

I haven't been profitable for years. My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles.

My goal this year is to stop that cycle. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.

Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not

Since I'm not posting anonymously, my main job income, my part-time job income, and my main investments won't be reported. I'll report everything else, though!

I'll report on income as I receive it.