March 2022: Creator & Gig Income Report + Reflections
Description
An honest look at how I earned $631.61 in revenue as a part-time small creator and freelancer.
Categories
Income Report
Slug
income-report-mar-2022
Featured
Featured
Ready to Publish
Ready to Publish
Author
Vidya
Publish on
Mar 31, 2022
Status
Scheduled
Hide Page Cover
Hide Page Cover
Hide Date
Hide Date
Canonical
Duration
5 min. read
Related Posts
Custom HTML
Meta Title
March 2022: Creator & Gig Income Report + Reflections
Meta Description
An honest look at how I earned $631.61 in revenue as a part-time small creator and freelancer.
If you want to read my previous creator and gig income reports, here you go.
March was tough. Not at all how I expected things to turn out but everything is just starting to fall in place.
Lifestyle wise, I’ve made SO many changes. I’m sticking with my new wake-up routine, evening routine, and I also recently came up with a night routine to wind-down after a busy day.
All these days I thought having routines was not that important but I couldn’t have been more wrong. With these routines in place, I now dedicate time to the most important things and I also realized how often I was overcommitting to projects.
I’ve also started a new course called Notion Mastery by Marie Poulin and it has been a lifesaver. I highly recommend Notion Mastery if you want to change your life with Notion as one of your primary tools. I’ll be writing more about this in future posts.
I couldn’t finish the Women Make Challenge which I initially planned at the beginning of the month and my Newsletter Guide took a backseat in light of my final exams. Hopefully, I’ll get back to finishing this project by end of April.
Enough rant for today. If you want to check out my Monthly Review, I’ll be doing that here.
Let’s look at the numbers now!
TL;DR:
• March didn’t go as I initially planned.
• Didn’t finish the Women Make Challenge.
• Preparing for final exams.
Income Report for March 2022
What I earned and did in March this year:
A brief about my side projects and how I earn money as a creator:
- Newsletter - The Curious Bunch: I’ve started accepting sponsors for my newsletter since May 2021 when I crossed over 500 subscribers. Since then, I’ve been able to book sponsors (mostly inbound requests) for every weekly issue I send. You can view my current pricing structure on this advertising page.
- Info Products: WritingOS: A Notion Dashboard that helps you write consistently. Newsletter Checklist: Start a newsletter the right way with this checklist (free).
- Donations from Buy Me A Coffee and Tip Jar: I’ve been accepting donations from my newsletter readers since January 2021.
- I also take on freelance work from time to time. I help companies analyze their data, execute growth experiments, develop No-Code solutions, and occasionally write their newsletters and blogs.
- Affiliate Revenue: I recommend my favourite products and other tools I use in my day-to-day life to my newsletter readers and Twitter followers.
Net Profit: $616.95
Net Profit ($616.95) = Total Revenue ($631.61) - Total Expenses ($14.66)
In March 2022, I made a net profit of $616.95. This is about a 16% decrease from last month’s net profit of $735.34.
Considering how I didn’t do any kind of marketing for my info-products, this is more than I expected. I’ll break this down further in the next sections.
Total Revenue: $631.61
- Newsletter ($243) — Sponsorships: $243, Classifieds: $0
- Info Products ($70.61) — Writing OS: $70.61
- Donations ($15) — Buy Me A Coffee: $10, Tip Jar: $5
- Freelance ($150)
- Affiliate Revenue ($153)
.png&optimizer=image)
This month, I didn’t expect any revenue from sponsorships because I was already booked 2 months in advance. But luckily, I got 2 inbound requests which were in perfect alignment with my audience and they booked multiple slots! I also recently increased my sponsorship prices which contributed to the increase in my sponsorship revenue.
I’m also in talks with one more brand so that would be reflected in my April Income Report.
No doubt that newsletter sponsorships consistently bring me revenue every month.
While I was writing this post, I received an email about my first affiliate sale. Woohoo! 🥳
Expenses: -$14.66
My expenses are the same as in January and February. No changes at all.
Although I purchase most of these subscriptions on yearly basis, I’m breaking them down as monthly expenses so it’s easy for you to understand.
- Website Hosting ($7.99) — MDX: -$7.07, Carrd: -$0.92
- Domains ($6.08) — Vidya.so: -$5.42, Writingos.co: -$0.66
- Email ($0.59) — Vidya.so: -$0.59
March Milestones
I love celebrating small milestones because they’re the ones that accumulate and make a huge difference at the end of the year.
- Made my first affiliate sale ever!
- Earned $1700+ as a creator in the first quarter of 2022. It took me a whole year to earn $1500 in 2021 as a creator.
- Went to a Writer’s Club hosted in my city. Wrote my first fictional story after ages.
- Mental Health and Productivity levels are much better and balanced compared to February & January.
- Made info-product sales without any active marketing.
- Got 10+ Beta users for Newsletter Guide.
- Helped 120+ people through The Curious Bunch newsletter donations.
- Wrote 6 short blog posts on Nicheless.
What I tried/failed to do
I tried to finish the Women Make Challenge by working on and releasing a Newsletter Guide, an info product but did not realize that I committed to too many things. However, with the help of Notion Mastery and the weekly planning I’m currently incorporating into my workflows, I’m pretty sure I can resume this project in a week or so.
I’ve also failed to do any kind of marketing for WritingOS due to exams but I’m glad I still made 5 sales. That’s almost 1 sale every week without any active promotion. Absolutely not proud about the fact that I haven’t done any marketing for the product I worked so hard for, but, I think the idea behind the info-product is validated and I’m happy about that.
What I’m planning for April
First of all, I’m planning to ace my final exams in April and cannot wait to finish them so I can get back to working on my side projects.
Next, I’ll be working on some marketing material for Writing OS and publicly commit to working on the Newsletter Guide.
I’m inspired by what Jesse is doing with his e-book on ADHD and will probably take a leaf out of his “build in public” playbook to build the Newsletter Guide.
I’m also looking forward to pitching more clients with my blog post ideas. I haven’t decided if I should increase my freelance prices but I’ll probably entertain the thought and make a decision by end of April.
Any other suggestions?
If you want to get in touch with me, I hang out on Twitter.