My YouTube plans, blog income boost, big pop from stocks (This Week in Side Hustling)
If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you’ll know I update my earnings from blogging, YouTube, and investing from time to time as part of my Publish Every Day project.
That project — with which I aim to leave commuter life within a year by publishing every day on various platforms and investing my earnings in passive income instruments — is off to a pretty decent start.
On Day 145, I’m approaching $8,000 in earnings overall, which definitely isn’t enough to live on but is trending in the right direction.
When I started out with this project, I was posting updates almost every day.
As side hustles like YouTube, email newsletters, and others have taken time away from writing here, however, the updates have been more sporadic and erratic.
In an effort to bring some consistency and predictability to these updates, as well as to prompt myself to reflect on where I’m succeeding, where I could be doing better, and where I can pursue other opportunities, I’m committing to doing a weekly update every Sunday morning.
And in doing so, I think I’ll be able to provide you with some useful tips and info as I learn too.
I’m calling it This Week in Side Hustling and you’re reading the very first edition today!
So let’s dig in and see we what we can learn from the past week.
Where the side hustling money comes from
Here’s a look at my earnings for the year in various areas, and then we’ll compare to the averages over the past week.
And here’s what I earned from each over the past week.
(Side note: You’ll notice a discrepancy between the numbers here and the Publish Every Day project totals — that’s because the PED numbers are converted to Canadian dollars, the currency of my home country, whereas these spreadsheets are tracked in USD).
So what worked this week, what didn’t and what am I planning to do next? Let’s dive in.
Blogging income update
I had a decent week writing on Medium before my numbers fell off a cliff over the past couple of days.
My daily average earnings from blogging in 2024 is $30.77
My daily average over the past week was $33.40
I was able to outpace the average this week on the strength of this post.
Typically stories take about a week to really get going, but this one generated a lot of engagement right away, which also contributed to the unusually high RPM.
Note the story length too, which also contributed to better-than-average numbers.
Although this one did fine, I find myself getting increasingly discouraged with how much harder it is to generate income here this year.
The switch to paying tons for engagement vs. read time really has been a killer for top writers.
Which brings me to a real growth area…
YouTube income update
Although my YouTube income badly trails my blogging income, there are some encouraging signs on this front.
My daily average earnings from YouTube in 2024 is $1.83
My daily average over the past week was $1.79
Although my average is down over the past week, it’s actually up 32% over the past month, and I recently nabbed by first $10 day on that platform.
My biggest hiccup with YouTube has been consistency.
I got a huge pop from my latest video (see below), but then followed it up my publishing … nothing since.
I have more than 400 posts here, but just 60+ videos on YouTube.
If the second number gets closer to the first, things could get very interesting indeed.
That $10 day has me inspired, and I think I’ve devised a new strategy to bring more consistency to YouTube.
I’ll give you an update on that next weekend if it actually works.
Oh … and I’m going to launch a SECOND channel in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!
A big pop from stocks
I’ve written time and again about the importance of not resting on your laurels, of diversifying your income streams, and turning your money into more money.
There are plenty of ways to do that, but my favorite is to put all my side hustle earnings into stock market investing.
It really is the only true form of passive income, and it’s been fairly kind to me over the past year.
Here’s a look at my top equity holdings:
I love the first couple of weeks of the month, because that’s when the monthly dividends from my bond ETFs and residential REITs rolls in.
My daily average earnings from dividends in 2024 is $1.15
My daily average over the past week was $2.28
Again, my stock investing is mostly a set-it-and-forget-it endeavor, which is why I love it so much.
I recently expanded my trading strategy to build my top holdings even faster and add some more growth stocks for potential exponential gain.
As you can see from the above, my small Solana holding is already an eight-bagger, for example.
My hourly wage from side hustling
Now that I’m fairly well established as a content creator, I determine whether or not my efforts are worth it by comparing them against what I could earn working a regular job.
The low bar I set is the hourly minimum wage, which where I live is about CAD $15 per hour.
I count my work time in 15-minute blocks (you can watch the video below if you want to understand more about that), and last week I worked approximately 28 blocks, or around 7 hours.
I earned CAD $338.50 side hustling last week
$338.50 / 7 hours = $48.36 per hour
So that’s definitely way less than I would have made under the old pay system here, but still a respectable number that’s 3x higher than I could make, say, working at McDonald’s.
What’s next?
I have big plans to really ramp up on YouTube (and yes I have said that before), post more exclusive content to my email newsletter, and just hold steady here.
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Disclaimer: The author of this article is not a financial advisor. This commentary is provided for general informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed as financial, investment, tax, legal or accounting advice. It does not constitute an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities referred to. Consult your financial advisor prior to making financial decisions.