I am currently in Taipei, Taiwan and loving it! I met up with one of my closest friends who’s now living out here and has made a solid network of passionate, creative, entrepreneurial people. It’s been fun and inspiring hanging out with them and has to be honest, given me a lot to think about.

Travel

I spent most of March in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. It started out a bit rough, but I ended up not wanting to leave. Once I landed in the country, I was sick for about 10 days and was a bit bedridden. And when I did go out, I would complain about the heat and the difficulty with crossing scooter-filled streets. But once I found my groove I started loving Vietnam.

I also took a mini vacation to Hoi An where I enjoyed exploring the Old City and lounging out on the beach. Even merely relaxing in my hotel room was super nice. Sometimes you have to remember to take a vacation from your “workation” to recharge.

Here’s a video to show a bit of my time there:

Passive Income

In terms of passive income, I hit a new milestone of $1,400/month (I was actually very close to reaching $1,500). However, I worry that my progress isn’t strong enough to hit my $10k/month mid-October goal.

I guess I have about 6.5 months left to reach my objective…ahh…yeah that doesn’t seem that feasible. To reach my goal, I think the answer is to continue building my main income channel while simultaneously diversifying my efforts through outsourcing. That way I don’t waste much time while learning what works and what doesn’t.

Kindle Outsourcing (Fail)

In my last progress report, I mentioned that I hired 3 writers through Upwork. ALL THREE of the writers ended up continuously making excuses and ultimately did not deliver their projects. I’m shocked. The reason why I went with Upwork was that the outsourcing sites Adrian Ingram mentioned were temporarily down. I’m probably going to try those sites (www.ewritersolutions.com or www.hotghostwriter.com) again now that Upwork has failed me. Sad times. On a brighter note, it ended up being a good learning!

Etsy

I created a new shop this month, and I’m planning to fill it with at least 50 items by end of April. I’ve also hired a VA to do some social media work for my account. However, knowing if the traffic from social media actually converts to sales is another thing. There’s been a small uptick in revenue but I can’t fully attribute that to the outsourced work. Regardless, I’m going to keep with it and try to build the following of my brand as I figure it will help in the long run.

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).

Fiverr

With Fiverr, I made around $200 in March. It’s not much, but I don’t spend that much time on it, so additional income is never a bad thing!

I haven’t been that focused on growing this channel as it is an active income channel (I didn’t include these earnings in the $1,400 passive income milestone achievement). So I’m unsure how it will perform in future months. If I wanted to grow this income stream, I would keep creating gigs and building reviews (which I haven’t focused on).

Adsense & Amazon Affiliates

Google Adsense is the platform in which I monetize my blogs through ads, and Amazon Associates is the platform in which I promote different products and receive a commission if people use my links to purchase them.

I realize that I’m making a small amount of money through Google Adsense and Amazon Associates from my two blogs (this one and mewanttravel.com). By small profits I mean really small…like $20 total or less, lol. Even though it’s so little, it gives me a bit of motivation to keep growing my blog and possibly outsource some writing as well.

Conclusion

I’m glad the passive income amount is going up, and I’m proud of how hard I worked on Etsy (my main source of income). However, I know I need to test different income streams to keep expanding. I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket as mentioned before.

I have also started tracking my exact income on a spreadsheet. I used to only document my Etsy earnings to calculate the passive income milestones I’ve achieved, but having this grander view of all my income streams gives me more to think about and helps motivate me.

For April, I plan to get at least 2 books written for Kindle, grow my newest Etsy shop, and possibly try outsourcing for other types of digital products.