July 2020 – Side Hustle Income Report

It has been a very good month for side hustlin’, I did have another little mid-month blip – I think it’s a case of getting a little overwhelmed with the goals I sometimes set myself (and probably hormones too 😂) at the start of the month, they always seem attainable and then when I get a few weeks in I have a bit of a crisis of confidence. I’ve found that taking just a few days ‘off’ or having more downtime seems to get me back on track so I need to make sure I am doing that more often.

Another thing I struggled with this month was keeping track of where money was coming in from (as it goes into PayPal and my bank, but if I withdraw from PayPal then there are sometimes fees which mess up the numbers) and I’m always worrying I’m going to miscount – I’ve found a very simple solution though, I have made myself a printable Side Hustle Income Tracker which you can have a look at and download here

I managed to bring in an extra £987.62 in July. 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 and other fees

Matched Betting – £47.33 – Matched Betting as a Side Hustle (How to get started)

This was from 10 FREE spins across two new games. I’ve not done any ‘real’ matched betting (as in placing bets) in a long while but every now and then I get texts come through from places like Betfair offering me free spins on new games they launched, it’s worth logging into your bookie accounts and making sure that you are signed up for marketing messages so that you don’t miss out on offers. It’s always worth doing the free spins as you never know when you’ll get lucky and hit a payout.

Reponsdent.io – £48.20 – How to earn money with Respondent.io

This is a payout for a market research call I did on Zoom right at the end of last month (it takes a few days for payments to clear) I’ve not applied for or completed any screener questionnaires this month as I didn’t feel like I was a good fit for them, I don’t want to waste mine or the researchers time applying for calls I’m not suitable for. There does seem to be a big focus on surveys for businesses/business owners/small companies and how they’ve coped through lockdown so if you fit that demographic it is definitely worth signing up and having a look at Respondent.io

Freelance Services (Etsy SEO, Website Building) – £245

This month was a bit slower for freelance work but looks set to pick up again for August in a major way as I have a few new projects to work on (which I can hopefully share with you all soon!)

Fiverr – £52.59 – How to make money on Fiverr

This was a payout from Fiverr for work I did at the very end of last month. The payments take a little while to clear on there (I think its because I’m a new user) so I’d actually forgotten about this until I logged in to update something and saw it sitting in my earnings. I’ve added a few new gigs to Fiverr in the past week, all Etsy based, so fingers crossed I might see a few orders from them next month.

Blogging Income

Affiliates Earnings – £99.14

Last month I said that Affiliate Income is something I need to work and this is a perfect example to show why.  This £99.14  is made up of payouts from two affiliates – my first bit of income for the month was £62.97 affiliate income for something I don’t actively promote but I still get a payout from it every 2-3 months. The second lot of affiliate income was from Design Bundles (who were the affiliate I mentioned at the start of last month and said that I’d like to see if I could make it a regular monthly payout!)
I’ve still not implemented my new affiliate ‘strategy’ on my blogs but it just goes to show how useful passive income streams are, if I could make 5 times as much effort in promoting it then, in theory, I could make 5 times as much money which is excellent motivation.

Sponsored Posts – £495.36

This is a mixture of a few things like copy and paste posts and link insertions across all 3 blogs and contracted sponsored work with brands.

I’ve done pretty good with copy and paste work this month, that isn’t always the case and it does seem to come along in batches and then nothing for weeks but that can be the nature of blogging work sometimes which is why it helps to have multiple streams of income. Some bloggers don’t like to do work like this/find the payout too low but when blogging is helping to supplement your income or might possibly end up replacing your income (still unsure if redundancy is a possibility for me at the moment 😬) I feel like it’s a decent chunk of money that I don’t want to pass up.

Sponsored posts are my favourite kind of blog work. I only work with companies that I feel compliment my brand and would be useful to my readers (which does mean that I end up turning quite a bit of work down) The majority of the time I’m given free rein creatively to write what I want and create the social media promotions which is great fun, this is definitely something I need to ramp up and turn into a bigger income stream, it takes a bit more work initially as you have to ‘pitch’ to the companies you want to work with and agree on terms but it’s always worth it.

Plans for August

I’m waiting on confirmation for some big new projects coming in next month which will be amazing BUT I also might be coming off of furlough in August so I’m going to have to be very strict with how I manage my time and make sure that it’s being planned out sensibly. I’m also going to be using my new Side Hustle Income Tracker to keep note of my income throughout the month (at the moment it’s been getting scribbled in the front of a notebook which is not ideal) and will be focusing more on blogging income which includes pitching to some brands that I’d love to work with.

How was your July? Did you smash your earnings goals?
Let me know in the comments below