Why Publish A Blog Income Report?

Why not? My goal is to create something of my own and create a passive income stream in the process. Publishing my blog income report allows me to continue writing and more importantly, reflect back on the month to see what I did or didn’t do so well. Lastly, I have read other blog income reports such as SmartPassiveIncome, amongst others, and I like to see what they have tried. It is a form of motivation for me and I hope that this can be one for someone else. Be sure to check out CashFlowDiaries for other bloggers that share their blog income reports.

About ApexThis

ApexThis, as a whole, is my publishing arm for my creative writing in short stories, ebooks, music, apps, audio and video content. ApexThis is the publisher of the first Atlassian focused podcast, Admins of Atlassian, launched in 2015.

ApexThis originally started life as a car forum for a group of friends until it went dormant. I have resurrected this domain in 2014 as I found a new focus in life. Jan 28, 2015, my Welcome post went live signaling my restart in blogging and my path to publishing my own work as well as others.

The focus of this blog is about Life, Tech, and Food. I share things that I do to help me be better as a person or to accomplish a task more efficiently so that you too can benefit.

August 2016 Finance Report

Disclaimer: Any income reported will only be reported as “cash” in hand. If it did not deposit into my account, or if I didn’t cash a check, then it does not count as income. Additionally, income will only be reported for ApexThis business and not for personal income. I may discuss side hustles for additional side income, but only income in which I represent ApexThis will be counted. 

Income/Investment Report

Investment – $0.00

Expense Report

RawVoice – ($12)

RawVoice is a service I used to host the podcasts for Admins of Atlassian. It has built-in integration with WordPress making it vastly easier to upload, and maintain the podcast.

Google Apps – ($5)

Buffer – ($10)

Buffer is a service I use to schedule tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram posts. Great way to keep pushing older content. 

Hours Worked

Time Logged – 9hrs 58min

I doubled the amount of time I put towards ApexThis last month. I am still missing hours from other activity such as reading and watching videos for different things I want to do with ApexThis. These are somewhat difficult as they are ad-hoc activity versus the sit-down and write activity. Still, the increase is good. 

Overall

  • Total Income/Investments – $0.00
  • Total Expense – ($27)
  • Total Net – ($27)

What Happened?

I’ve more than doubled the time I spent on the blog in comparison to last month which is great. Overall, I am starting to rethink the idea of a ‘blog income report’ in the financial sense. I think I will still include the numbers in the event someone stumbles across this and wants to know what it may cost to run things at a low level. I think my focus to make money first is changing. If making money first is my intention then I’ve already failed. I want to create great content and improve my writing ability. If I focus on quality then everything else will fall into place.

This also calls into question the ever-changing focus I’ve had here as I try to figure out the direction I want to go. I started this blog to start back writing and to have source material for my Toastmaster speeches and future books. Then I discovered passive income blogs. Fed up with working 40hr work weeks, I too wanted to create a passive income source. In identifying potential sources, I ultimately launched my first podcast. Realizing how fun doing a podcast was as opposed to just listening to them, I now wanted to do more. I wanted to meld my short stories into podcasts and create even more podcasts and have an entire network of them. Crazy right? 

As I plan and structure my thoughts, I know there will be changes such as the likely elimination of having a budget blog and moving directly to a podcast series. While still outside of the story and writing aspect, budgeting is still an interest for me, and I think it would be fun trying to tell a story about budgeting and personal finance. If nothing else, it would be great foundation work for the future plans I have.

August Goal Results:

Weekly blog posts on ApexThis. (Pass)

The hours logged for the month shows in that I met my goal of weekly blog posts. What also helped is that I was able to get ahead and have posts scheduled and ready to go while I was out for a short vacation. That, my friends, is a great feeling.

One short story submission to a creative writing forum I frequent. This elicits feedback and contributes to my goal of publishing an anthology series. (Fail)

No short story writing for me. New posts for this blog and future podcast has taken my writing time, in addition to my screenwriting course that I signed up for.

3 new chapters for my e-book. (Pass)

While my time is filled with other writing activity, I did add new chapters to my ebook.  Keyword being “add”. I feel these chapters, and many others, need to be reviewed and possibly rewritten.

Outline for a fictional podcast. (Fail)

No written outline exist, just ideas. This has taken a back seat as I work other podcast ideas and my screenwriting course.

What’s Next?

Here are a few goals that I’ve outlined for myself in July:

  • Weekly blog posts on ApexThis.
  • One short story submission to a creative writing forum I frequent or write and perform one Toastmasters speech. This elicits feedback and contributes to my goal of publishing an anthology series or improves my writing and speaking abilities.
  • Write 3 episodes of new ApexThis podcast.
  • Record 3 episodes of side project podcast.

Let’s see what this month brings.