October 2016 Progress Report...$350/Month Passive Income Milestone!

I have just arrived in Hong Kong! I got to Incheon Airport in Seoul about an hour before my flight, and the person checking me in told me I was the last person and I was going to miss my flight…

After huffing and puffing my way over, I managed to catch the plane. As I arrived to my seat, it took me 5 minutes to notice that my entire row including myself was wearing red and blue plaid. I was laughing my ass off and secretly taking a picture:

ANYWAY. October was so, so hectic. I spent most of the month in Korea, where I was working on music with Jun of Areia Creations (here’s my YouTube music channel, btw). I also went HAM on passive income as well as my music, so much so that I started getting burnt out. Going to detail my progress below!

October 2016 Progress Report

Etsy

Remember how in September I only had around 50 listings? I hit 94 Etsy listings in October, which means I made around 40 products in those 30 days. Props to myself!

And in fact, I saw great results from increasing my listing amount. I more than doubled in Etsy revenue from my previous best month.

My goal of 100 listings by end-of-year is about to be completed a month early!

Check out how to make passive income via Etsy here.

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).

Kindle

No progress with Kindle books, unfortunately. I did earn some income from this channel but it’s always quite minimal. Lately the earnings have been less and less. I am planning to work on it more after succeeding further with Etsy!

DNQ Interview Series

I couldn’t push out episode 10 of the DNQ Interview Series in time (I had planned to push out interviews every Monday). But I have a bunch of exciting interviews on the way!

Music

So with music, I met this KPOP remixer online. His name is Jun of Areia Creations (as I had previously mentioned). We had been aware of each other for a while because of YouTube, and he ended up contacting me via Twitter a long time ago.

I wrote a song maybe 6 years ago and sent it over to Jun who made an awesome instrumental to it, and we finalized this in the studio. I went to his studio a lot in October, working on the beat further and re-recording my vocals:

We also filmed a music video:

It was a great experience working with Jun because 1. it’s so easy to work with someone who’s extremely technically skilled in production 2. it was further confirmation that I need to make financial independence a reality cause I hope to have the freedom to hit up the studio for weeks at a time.

Freelancing

I decided to end one of my freelancing gigs. I was getting too burnt out (which I’ll describe in the next section). I guess this is a step for me, as when I read my previous progress reports I would see how much fear I had when it came to staying afloat financially. Maybe I had confidence in ending the gig also because I’m starting to see (small) results with Etsy, and it is giving me more affirmation that I can do this.

Feelings

In October, I felt extremely burnt out. I think this was the first time I felt that way in 5 months of nomading. The issue was 1. the time difference and 2. the music grind. I would get up to go to the studio and work for 8 hours. Then I’d go home and work on freelancing and my own projects and sleep at 4 AM or so.

I have spent the past week or two giving myself a break. Now I am looking at how much I’m slacking and I’m ready to grind it out. I’m already finding it a lot harder to blog now that I’ve taken a slight hiatus. I see why writing is a muscle you have to develop…if you take a little step back it might be hard to regain the ability to write constantly. So I need to start developing that muscle again.