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Getting up and running

I want to be open and frank about my income reports here. I started this page after I made the decision to finally move on from my other online ventures. Let me explain.

I have been a software developer my whole adult life. Ever since I left university and I started working that has been my passion and occupation. I have over the past decades spent most of my spare time creating software like a GPS satellite prediction tool for Windows, a DVD Authoring software for Linux, web OS for myself ( and anyone who wants to join for free ), Android tools which are mostly free and earn a small amount of income on the side through ads, as well as many smaller tools and applications.

While I love the area of software development and the creative process of creating applications on many platforms, I have also found that my passion does not help me to attain financial freedom.

This changed after getting started with the Android apps when I achieved a small breakthrough. Initially, the goal was to learn a new environment and write a tool for myself to help convert 360 degree dual-fisheye images and videos into the proper format for YouTube to display it as an immersive 360 video.

360 Tube was the first app I ever wrote and it took me about 6 months to release the first version. It is quite a complex program, as I had to compile and use native ffmpeg libraries, write a ffmpeg filter to handle the conversion task, convert googles python script to stamp the 360 meta data into the video streams to C++, add a YouTube upload  functionality, and write the UI.

I was quite pleased with the result and I wanted to push it further to see if I get more people to install the app. However I soon realized that not a lot of people installed the app.

While I wrote the app to help me upload 360 video to YouTube and I certainly achieved that goal, not a lot of users actually had 360 cameras, and an even smaller subset of users would want to use the phone to convert high-def 4k / 8k video. I decided to stop the development of this app and find areas where I could add more value to more Android users.

I used my know-how to write many other Android tools and have achieved sufficient results to earn a little side income which grew and fell over time depending on the whims of Googles policy changes for Ads and for the Play store. While I will not detail the complete income report for this line of business, I will nevertheless include it here for the months to come.

Expenditures

With online income also comes online expenses. Expenses can reach from monthly or yearly subscription fees to web hosting costs advertising and marketing costs or hiring VPAs ( Virtual Private Assistants ).

There is a lot to be said about this side of any business and in my opinion this is more important than the income side of things. For example I could drive a marketing channel and advertising campaign to have 1 million people install my apps but the ROI for these 1 million people would never return the initial required investment. Facebook, Apple, and Google are not by chance multi-billion dollar companies. The money has to come from somewhere.

Every online business has to find the right balance between marketing investment and expected ROI and this can be quite a challenge.

Also as expenses go, please do not underestimate the value of your own time and elbow crease you put into any side hustle. After all you could E.g. earn money working at Walmart as a door-opener while instead you are spending time on your project.

Spending time and effort and not getting paid or receiving pennies per hour is the cost of getting started with a blog. As such you have to be aware that your time is not free. As a matter of fact your time is your most valuable asset.

Just think about this, Jeff Bezos makes a whopping $4,475,885 per hour, according to an analysis by Business Insider. That’s around 157 times the median annual worker salary at Amazon of $28,466. How much do you think is Jeff valuing his time ?

Blog expenses

As for this blog, Make money Online For Life, getting started required me to register a few domains, and arrange for web hosting for this new chapter in my online journey. The registration for one year cost a total of $32.22, and the hosting is currently done on dreamhost.com‘s shared unlimited plan.

For now and since I already have an account there I do not have to pay anything extra. If you are looking to start a blog you should consider following this affiliate link to save and sign up for only $47.40.

Format

I have yet to see what would be the best format to disclose my income reports but I think that it will not matter much in the beginning as I do not expect to have a lot to report.

My hope of course is that the longer this blog goes on, the more diverse my income streams will be and will eventually add up to a large enough side hustle for me to retire.

This may or may not happen with this particular blog or with my app business. It may happen with my stock investments or with another side hustle I have yet to start but it is after all the ultimate goal to find financial freedom for myself and help guide as many people along the way as I can.

There is plenty of wealth in this world. It is up to you to take it.

Income report September 2019

Android Apps Business

Ad Revenue = $524.85
In Store Sales = $16.42
Expenses ( Ads etc ) = $140.81
Total Income = $400.46

Blog Post Income

Ad Revenue : $0.00
Affiliate Marketing : $0.00
Expenses : $32.22
Total Income : -$32.22

Fortunately, getting started with a blog is very cheap. Adding content to it is not. It will cost time and energy.

At this point I am all setup and ready to produce that content. Honestly I do not expect to get any meaningful income from the blog over the next few months. To the contrary, as I start focus more of my attention on the blog and away from my App Store business, I will likely see a steady decline in that area. Hard times ahead.