April Side Income Report - $2184 from Blogging & Etsy Digital Downloads (2024)

Last updated on January 17, 2020 By Millennial Boss 3 Comments

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Around this time last year I was up to nearly $3,000 in revenue. Let’s see if I can do that again.

Etsy Digital Downloads – $234.59 in revenue

I am so excited to see my Etsy shop take off!! I shared that we launched an Etsy mastermind as part of the podcast and that I was hoping for a revenue bump this month. It came!

Before – 62 Sales

I took this picture on March 24th. Not quite April 1st but close.

After – 148 Sales!

I took this picture today (May 4th). This is a little more than the month of April but it makes the point. I’m making money!

Income is up~ $173 in profit.

I think I can double my profit this next month. Here’s why:

1. I just bumped up the price of my top selling product from $1.99 to $2.99. I can probably increase the price even more since I’m priced low in my category but I’m trying to take it slow and not mess up a good thing.

2. I stopped pumping so much money into promoted listings mid-month last month and it had ZERO effect on my orders. My orders actually increased naturally because I put up new listings and Etsy rewards new listings BIG TIME.

By the way – promoted listings just means that Etsy shows my listings up at the top in the ‘ads’ section in search. Check out these graphs.

Look at how my spend on promoted listings drops mid-month in the picture above.

Now look at the graph below showing a revenue increase and order increase around the same time.

I am now sure that putting up new listings is *MORE* impactful than promoted listing spend. No reason for me to spend money on promoted listings when I don’t have to!

My new strategy:

I kept my daily spend at $4 max but then I took the bid for each listing off of automatic and set it at 5 cents. This meant I was winning less bids and spending less money each day. I am not close to hitting the $4 max anymore at all.

It is possible that I will use promoted listings to scale sometime in the future but I’m not heavily focused on them right now. my focus now is getting up more products.

Blogging – $1950 in revenue this month!

I really should be doubling down on blogging since it’s my main revenue driver but I’m very captivated by Etsy right now. I do think that I can grow my Etsy business to match blogging but it doesn’t hurt to have two strong income streams.

Even though this income amount looks really good on paper, I want to tell anyone interested in getting into blogging these things:

1. Getting paid through blogging is typically delayed by 90 days and kind of spotty. It’s not a consistent paycheck that deposits straight into your bank account.
2. Income depends on traffic, conversions, and program terms and keeping all those things afloat is not easy. Getting those things in the first place is not easy either.

That being said, blogging is very rewarding and once you do the work and set it up, the machine kind of runs on its own with only minor maintenance.

If you want to start a blog, check out my How to Start a Blog tutorial.

If you want to monetize your blog, consider the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course which I took to learn how to monetize.

Rental – $32. (OK I know this number is wrong)

I know I have to update this chart to show principal pay down in the “income” category among other updates but I can’t bring myself to do it.

Mostly because I’ve tried to sell this house before two years ago and wasn’t able to. The principal pay down doesn’t seem guaranteed unless I capture that money in the sale. I know that is somewhat ridiculous but this house will be off my books soon and then I can invest that money into Airbnb rentals. I am SUPER excited about this new project and think it’s a better use of the money.

I still am not taking chances this time on having the house sit on the market. I am researching little ways to update the house to make it sell more quickly. It’s only a 20 year old house (which is a baby house where I grew up) and has a wide open floor plan, kitchen with granite countertops, lots of natural lighting.

Brass everywhere. All brass everything.

What the house does have though is BRASS. Like, everywhere. Brass on the fireplace, brass in the bathrooms, brass on the doorknobs, brass on the light fixtures. I want that brass gone when we put the house on the market this time.

I’ve been researching how to cover the brass with a nickel spray paint and it seems to look pretty good. I also want to cover the peach tiled fireplace with this Annie Sloan chalk paint I keep reading about on blogs. Apparently you don’t need to use primer if you use this paint and you can paint directly on tile. At least that is what this blogger says. My fireplace looks somewhat like hers so I’m hoping this is possible.

Related:How to Paint a Brass Shower Frame for $30

If you have personally tried out this paint or any of these updates, please let me know in the comments. This is my first semi-renovation so I have no idea what I’m doing.