February 2017 Progress Report

I’m now in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam! Unfortunately I’ve been sick since I got here last week, and much of the time spent has been in bed at my AirBnB. Boo.

At least I’m getting some bomb pho out here:

I didn’t end up crossing January’s passive income milestone which sucks, but passive income isn’t always going to come steadily. There will be fluctuations in income, and that’s okay!

Why I Don’t Reveal My Income Breakdown

I recently received a comment asking why I don’t breakdown my income reports, so I thought I’d address this point. To be honest, I did in the beginning, but my parents were giving me crap about it saying not to reveal so much information. Initially I was frustrated because I wanted full transparency with my readers. But I started to see their point.

I decided to just mention whenever I hit a new passive income milestone for myself. And if people don’t believe me…I can’t really do anything, but I don’t mind anyway. This blog is merely to keep me accountable as well as inspire and help others, and if I accomplish that, then I’m happy. I don’t think it requires me to reveal specifics on how much money I’m earning.

Travel

Nomad Summit in Chiang Mai, Thailand

In early February I attended the Nomad Summit, which was a great way to connect with other nomads and see what was going on in the community. I paid $100 for a ticket, and picked up a few pieces of knowledge from the speakers.

I thought it was a great conference but I probably won’t go again. I guess I went with the hope of picking up more actionable learnings, but a lot of it seemed to be geared towards newer nomads with the message of “just do it”! Regardless, I got to network and learned a little bit, so I’m happy.

Back to Hong Kong

I spent 2 weeks in Hong Kong before setting off to Vietnam. I find it too comfortable there with family, so it always makes me want to leave for my next journey.

With some friends in Hong Kong

Hong Kong Disneyland cause I bought an annual pass…

Currently: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

This is my first time in Vietnam (country 28/100 for me)! A lot of my time here I’ve spent sick in bed, though. I’ll keep y’all posted on how it is going when I’m better. Initial thoughts include: hot and humid, extremely scary crossing the street, cheap food, but can be fun.

Feelings

Something I’ve realized lately is that without any real “deadlines” or part-time work, it’s easy for me to slack off, especially when I don’t feel imminent pressure to make money. And travel seems to make money feel less important, in a weird way. I guess it’s cause I’ve experienced the minimal lifestyle and understand it doesn’t take much for me or other people to be happy.

To keep myself in check, I think taking little custom orders on Etsy or doing Fiverr gigs actually helps. Those deadlines give me more of an “oh shit I need to really be productive” feeling, so I try to welcome some active income type work now as long as it isn’t too heavy.

The other thing that keeps me in check is reminding myself of the goal I made with my boyfriend (oh yeah that happened btw!) of $10k/month by October. We put down a few rewards for ourselves if we hit this goal, a few pricey rewards, so it gives me some pressure to work harder.

Fiverr

I’ve currently received a total of 16 orders and 9 ratings. It’s not like I’m making much, but again 1) it keeps me balanced working on stuff with deadlines 2) I can grow this into a passive income channel if I figure out how I can outsource. I just need to grow my number of orders and sales so I can price up my gigs.

I’ve also reached Level 1 Seller status so I’m able to add new gigs (which I haven’t yet). The max amount of gigs you can create as a new seller is 7, so with this upgrade I can add more for more chance of getting seen.

Outsourcing

This month was a buttload of outsourcing. I made some moves! I hired: 3 writers for kindle books and 1 VA for social media work. The Kindle book move was basically inspired by Adrian after our interview. I’m proud of these two actions because I consider them more “next-level” moves over the somewhat repetitive work that I’ve been doing.

Etsy

I’m taking my Etsy digital downloads business more seriously now. I am considering opening my own website for it and directing Facebook ads to the website. I feel like I didn’t think about how useful my products were until recently, and it could be worthwhile to expand the business as it’s already doing quite well. This was the reason for hiring a VA. I’m having the VA grow my social channels to see if I can really grow a brand, and organic traffic is probably the most scrappy, low-cost way I can start doing this.

If you’d like to open your own Etsy shop, you can use my link here which gives you a free 40 listings (and provides me with 40 free listings as well).

Conclusion

After recapping with this post, I’ve realized I made quite a bit of moves, especially with the outsourcing. So I guess I’m proud of myself in that way. I’ve also visited a new country, which is another one off my list – heading towards my 30 countries by end of year goal! If you have any questions, feel free to comment below. 🙂