Disclaimer: I don’t break down the actual amounts in my progress reports in fear of revealing too much online – my apologies! These posts are merely a way for me to track my progress.
Woohoo! For September 2017, I achieved a new personal record with passive income. It isn’t a huge increase, but I’m happy with any positive progress I can get. Unfortunately, I’m not going to hit my $10k/month goal by October like I had previously mentioned. However, I’m starting to think my $10k/month goal is extremely doable within next year – and within my lifetime, maybe even $20k, $30k, and so forth. It is true that once you hit some new milestones you start having a lot more faith in what you’re doing.
Travels
In terms of travel, I took a 2 week trip around the US. I visited 5 cities:
- Sept 6 – Denver, Colorado (overnight layover)
- Sept 7-11 – Austin, Texas
- Sept 11-14 – Chicago, Illinois
- Sept 14-16 – Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Sept 16-19 – Los Angeles, California
Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis
16th Street Mall in Denver, Colorado
While I was on this trip, I met up with my homies in Austin and LA. My friend in Austin quit her job as well to pursue her dreams of building her own business. She decided to create her own accelerator program for Taiwanese startups. It was really cool checking out how she pitches to her potential investors.
My friends and I checked out different attractions, went kayaking, hit up Harry Potter World, ate Korean BBQ, and more:
The trip was a great refresh. I had been working from home by myself for too long and needed a break. It was a great reminder of why I chose the digital nomad life. I remembered that while everyone was working hard at their cubicles, I had the choice to leave when I felt like it and see the world.
I also came back with a lot of great ideas, not necessarily sparked from things I had seen while traveling, but perhaps from shifting my thinking and doing some research while abroad.
Feelings
As mentioned in my previous post, I started implementing a morning routine and scheduling my life daily. I’ve also taken more steps to work on my anxiety by reaching out to a blogger who discusses the topic as well as reading some self-help books (I know, it sounds lame). I do feel more confident and better about everything going on with my life!
Passive Income
Etsy
Check out my guides on how to make passive income with Etsy. Giving myself a numeric goal, I achieved a lot more than I would have if I didn’t force myself to meet a specific deadline. By that I mean I created a lot of new listings.
I have decided passive income is largely a numbers game. It also requires you to think smart. Since I know a majority of my income comes from this channel, I know I need to keep building my stores.
If you’d like to open your own Etsy shop, you can use my link here which gives you 40 free listings – an $8 value – (and provides me with 40 free listings as well).
Merch by Amazon
Merch by Amazon has proven to be a great income stream for me. Outsourcing designs has been nice, but the majority of designs have still been created by me and I’m still the one crafting the descriptions and uploading the designs. For September, I tried to ensure I hit the max amount of uploads per day (at tier 500 it is 10/day).
I’ve also decided I would try to expand to other POD platforms (including Redbubble, Teepublic, Teespring, and more).
Amazon FBA
FBA has been doing decently. I tried to get a product released for Halloween but had no success with my research on items. I found a handful of appealing products but none of them were sure hits, so I decided not to go for it.
I ordered one item in September to be manufactured, but I have been having a difficult time working with the manufacturer so it has not been shipped to FBA yet.
New goal: I have decided I want to explore selling globally for FBA. Will create updates on progress.
Kindle
I was planning on getting 1-2 books published but didn’t end up editing them in time. I have a hard time focusing when it comes to Kindle books. I guess it isn’t a route that interests me enough, but I plan on getting those 1-2 books done in October.
I also created a discount code with ewritersolutions (this platform is where I get my outsourced writing completed). So if you want to try it out, use my code “Sharon7” for 7% off your first book.
Dropshipping
No progress here unfortunately :(. However, my friend and I crafted new objectives we plan to meet for the upcoming months. I am feeling confident that those accomplishments will make a huge difference in our performance.
Conclusion
September was a solid month, and October will be interesting as I will be going back to Hong Kong and returning to my digital nomad life again! Yup it’s happening. Will post updates next month!
