It’d be fair to say that this month didn’t really go to plan – I had big goals of hitting £1,500 which clearly I missed by a long way BUT it has been a very busy and productive month otherwise and I’m not disappointed.
I was taken off of furlough just over a week ago which, although is great because it still means I have a job and won’t be getting made redundant, meant a few days of stress trying to work out how I was going to organise myself and run what has essentially become a full-time job alongside my actual full-time job – I came to the conclusion that I just need to be super organised and focus on the work that makes the most sense for the somewhat limited time I now have available.
I spent a lot of time this month on projects that should now become regular work and really help to bump up my monthly earnings from now on so it’s been a bit of ‘reap what you sow’ kind of situation this month.
I managed to bring in an extra £574.85 in August. It’s important to note that this is before deductions – I pay tax on all my side hustle/self-employed earnings so put away around 25% a month to go towards my tax return.
Fiverr – £20.73 – How to make money on Fiverr
As seems to be the trend with me and Fiverr, this was a payout for some work I completed at the very end of last month (the payments get held for a certain amount of time until I’ve hit a set amount of ‘gigs completed’) I didn’t have any new work come in from Fiverr this month and I haven’t really logged on to see what other people are currently advertising so that is on my To-Do list for next month to see if there are any new gigs I can add to my list of services.
Freelance Services (Etsy SEO and website building) – £170
I took on less Freelance work this month as I was focusing on my own blogging projects, the good thing about the clients who I do my freelance work for is that there is always more to pick up when you need it. They were aware that I was focussing on some other bits this month and that I was going back to work full-time too so we’ve slowed down on the workload for a bit and will have a discussion next month about what are their top priority projects and how I can support them best with the time I have to dedicate to it.
Blogging Income
After speaking to some fellow bloggers it seems August is notoriously slow for blog work which was definitely the case for me at the start of this month. The only money I had coming in at first was from invoice payments for work done in July (I only count money as earnings once it has actually hit my bank account)
My big blogging news for August was that my newest blog, CraftHustleDirectory.co.uk, has landed me a job as the first UK Brand Ambassador for a company called Design Bundles. This is a massive opportunity for me and has meant I’ve spent most of the month focusing on work for them which has been great fun and a big learning curve when it comes to managing project work. It isn’t featured in this month side hustle earnings as I invoice them at the end of the month for my work so it’ll roll over on to next months earnings and like I said above I only count it as income once it’s hit my bank account. I was a bit torn as to whether I should put it down as freelance or blog income but I think it only makes sense to have it down as blog income as my craft blog is the reason I go the work!
Affiliates Earnings – £110 – What Is Affiliate Marketing?
This was a nice surprise to have come in – this is an affiliate payout from a company that I only started linking to last month! I was going to say promoting instead of linking but I’ve not really been ‘pushing’ the link anywhere, it just sits in a post (this one here) that does quite well in terms of views. For the past 2 months I’ve been saying that affiliates are a passive income stream that I’d love to get working better for me but I still haven’t found time to really work on it. For now, it’s bringing in a regular chunk of money each month which I’m more than happy with but it is definitely top of my list to try and grow as an income stream.
Sponsored Posts – £274.12
I’m in a very fortunate position now where all 3 of my blogs (CharlotteMusha.co.uk, SideHustleDirectory.co.uk and CraftHustleDirectory.co.uk) are bringing in some sort of paid work each month. This is normally a mixture of some sponsored posts or social media promotion for a brand and the rates I get paid can vary greatly depending on the budget a brand has and the work involved from my end. I had a bit more sponsored work trickle in towards the very end of the month so they’ll go on to next months earnings once the invoices are paid.
Plans for September
I think the only plan so far is to try and work out just how much side hustle work I can juggle now that life has got back to a more normal routine! This first month of trying to find the right balance is going to be the hardest but I’m trying not to overload myself with too much and will tackle things as and when they come in. It might be that I only manage to find time for the project work that’s already booked in and not much else but that’s fine by me, it’s going to take a while to strike a balance 👍
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