Passive income report October 2019

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Kickstarting THE blog

October started out as planned but I encountered a hiccup along the way. Here is the passive income report for October 2019.

My goals for the month were, to write at least 5 blog posts, continue to refine the WordPress look-and-feel, as well as installing all of the required plugins. Furthermore I was looking for tools to help me generate blog-posts as well as creating a strong social media strategy. I had a few blogs in the past about other topics, such as Programming and I knew from that experience how to improve a blog-posts for SEO. My main issue now is that, aside from YouTube, I had never really utilized any social media platform to promote my contents. There most certainly is a lot that I have yet to learn.

Also I wanted to convert my posts into a podcast, as well as upload them to YouTube to extend the reach. I was not expecting though to spend a lot of my available spare time in October on auxiliary things, but more about that later.

Social Platforms

While reading up on the history and success of the Dollar Sprout blog I decided that I will try a similar approach on utilizing Pinterest as my main springboard into the social media environment. I invested a lot of time to research the best ways of building out my boards, and I created the first few PINs this October. 

At first it was hard for me to find stylistic inspiration from what I have seen as viral PINs in the personal finance blogs. It took some time because I wanted to come up with a unique style. One which I can apply to all of my PINs to make them stand out from the rest. At the end I was very happy with the outcome. The only thing which I want to add on to each of my PINs is a new logo which I have been working on.

Don’t be fooled by all the things I have accomplished this past month, there are also a few things which I did not accomplish in October. One of the most important goals I let slide in October was not that I only created 4 blog posts. It was the fact that I did not invest as much effort into building up my Pinterest account. I wanted to create at least 10 PINs per blog-post and build out my boards with other, valuable PINs to link to. I want to provide as much value as I can possibly provide at this point in the game. One of the big lessons from this failure for me is that I have to ‘habitualize’ the posting of contents to Pinterest. This means I will be on Pinterest for a minimum of 15 minutes every day ( you got to start slow ).

Setting Goals

Setting goals is something which I have to do in order to keep me focused on what I want to accomplish. Without goals, I feel like I am drifting in a soup of ideas, work, dreams, and social media platforms without direction.

Major goals for October were :

• Come up with a social media strategy ( Pinterest )
• Create a Podcast per blog ( SoundCloud )
• Create at least 5 blog posts
• Start YouTube channel
• Build out blog structure, find the right Plugins.

You may think that writing 5 articles is a walk in the park. You are probably correct on that one. However I wanted to really shore up the look-and-feel of the blog, and get my bearings in order first. The additional time and effort spent on the WordPress setup has surely payed off.

Going through the goals for the past month I accomplished a lot but I also failed at some. I already talked about the failure to spend more effort on growing the Pinterest account. I have also not been able to add 5 new blog post. Creating contents is the most important part for any blog of course. There is no need for any of the other tasks if I can’t produce the best possible new content in time. Especially in the beginning of a blog you have to focus on adding real value for your readership.

As for tooling, I was fairly successful in finding most of the plugins I need for this blog. Here are the ones I have installed this past month:

• DImage 360, a plugin to display 360 degree images in WordPress
• Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP)
• MetaSlider For some image slideshows
• TablePress To display the Income Report table
• UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore as the name suggests. Its always good to make regular backups.
• Play.ht WordPress Audio To convert any blog post to audio. Although I am not currently using it.

The last plugin may be an easy way to offer a way for my readership to listen to ALL of my blog posts. Even if I did not find the time to personally narrate every single post. I am still deciding if I should use this plugin. It is a rather robotic sounding translation after all. Otherwise I would only provide audio for some of my posts.

One really great tool I found is an online speech to text tool which can help writing blog posts by dictating it to a notepad. This tool is completely free and is working reasonably well. All you need to have is a semi-decent microphone and you are good to go.

I have also signed up with Fiverr and have paid for a cool new graphic which I will incorporate into the blog. These images are intended to be motivational to everyone trying to escape the rat race and Make Money Online.

To keep me honest and accountable to achieving my goals, here is what my major goals in November are going to be.

• Write at least 6 blog posts and create at least 3 podcasts
• Create at least 10 PINs per blog-post. That’s a total of at least 60 PINs to create.
• Write the first Affiliate email report.
• Create a new logo, intro, jingle for the blog, podcast, and YouTube
• Find a better SoundCloud audio player for my site.

Life happens

Aside from being a blogger I am also a proud father of two soccer players. Both Lucas, and Ian are playing travel soccer. That means that almost all of our weekends are filled with going to multiple soccer games. Last weekend was no exception. We packed the family into our minivan and headed out to the soccer field which was about an hour away.

The difference was that this time we did not quite make it all the way. Instead our Minivan was T-boned by a truck, which left fortunately everyone involved unharmed. Our beloved minivan however has been declared a total loss. The image above links to the first blog article about the accident. I am working currently on the follow-up blog post and will post it as soon as it is finished.

This also shifted the topics I wanted to write about in the coming weeks from mainly online based money income and savings tips to now focusing on my experience with the insurance companies. This will eventually lead to a comparison of different insurance companies and their offerings. You know that you have a good insurance company, if you survive an accident and then walk away feeling you have been taken care of. This also includes how the insurance company rectifies any financial loss of yours.

I know that insurance companies are in business to make money and its hard for them to part with it. On the other hand however we are paying monthly premiums to be covered. Being made whole again is exactly why we pay premiums for these type of situations. My experiences may be helpful to other people when deciding in getting or switching their insurance providers. To be continued …

Passive income report October 2019

As you can see this month I did only spend $12,- for the images from Fiverr. Of course I did not receive any income from the blog. This is the early part of starting this particular blog and I do not expect to receive any noticeable income for another few months. The main point to keep in mind though is the Dreamcastle and keep on working on this blog. Adding value and content over time and steadily grow the audience.

This months income of $462.72 compares favorably to $368.24 for the last month. While this is a 20% increase over last months income, I am concerned with the overall downward trend of the app installs. In the coming few weeks I will do some play-store experiments, and will update one of my apps at least once a week to show google that I am actively working on them.

What are your goals for November 2019 ?