Income Report #001 - March 2014

This is my second post on this blog, my first post was about how I am starting my Freelancing Career from scratch and what are the goals that I want to reach this year. This post is kind of an update to motivate myself and others who are trying.

I didn’t write an Income Report for the month of February because I made nothing that month. I was working and finding jobs in the month of February which I got paid in March. So, I will count it as my March income.

March was an awesome month, I didn’t even expected that in my first month of full time freelancing, I can earn this much amount of money. Many things happened in March and many things didn’t happen in March.

I wrote in my post how I am going to focus on Elance and Odesk to get some contract jobs. Well I did focus on both. I submitted proposals on both and found out that Odesk is dead. Last time, few months back, I got few projects from Odesk but this time I wasn’t replied to any of my proposals on Odesk whereas I made majority of my money from Elance. So, later I only focused on Elance and stopped sending proposals on Odesk.

Another awesome thing happened this month was I won a Design Contest on DesignCrowd. This was such a great feeling. I had planned that I would be entering into Design Contests to build up my Portfolio. I participated in the first contest and I won it.

Then there were other plans too, my passive income stream is still under process and I haven’t made any move on it. I was seeing a lot of money in the month of March, this made me less focused on the Passive income streams.

Plan to make one illustration a day for shutterstock. I started good, I was making 1 illustration a day, and those illustrations were not as good to be sold. So, I was waiting for the time when I will start producing some high quality illustrations to apply for Shutterstock but then aftr 10 – 12 days of making one illustration a day I stopped and I haven’t made any since then.

Making stuff for Envato marketplaces. I said I will be trying to publish at-least 2 items on Envato marketplaces, I stated working on a HTML theme it was just my old PSD design that I was converting into HTML. But after like doing first half page I stopped and haven’t checked again.

These two were my main source of passive income. I have failed in both in March. I think I will give it another try this month, passive income is something that I am seriously concerned about.

INCOME:

This month I made solely all the money from Elance. I started small by designing a visiting card design and then got some web design and development projects that earned me all this income.

The only other addition to my income in March was the winning prize of a contest I won on Designcrowd.

Here are the numbers:

Elance: $1187 (F**king more than a thousand dollars)

Designcrowd: $391

Total: $1578

EXPENSES:

I had to hire a developer to outsource some work because there was a time when I had a lot of work on my head and I didn’t wanted to let go my client. The only other expense I had was I bought a .co domain name for my personal portfolio website.

Hired a Developer: $64

Bought a .co Domain Name: $10

Total: $74

So, the total profit I earned in March is: $1578 - $74 = $1504

Yay! I earned $1504 in March 2014

WHAT’s NEXT?

The main thing I want to concern as of now is that I want to build some Passive Income Steams. So, in the month of April I will be focusing on Envato and will try to start the one illustration a day for shutterstock.

I am also planning to make a game for mobile phones. I always wanted to make one and this boy Matthew at TrueVallah blog inspired me a lot to make one. I am more a Designer than a Developer so, I will be using Unity 3D game engine. Also, reading TrueVallah Matthew’s income reports I can say that there is some good money that can be made in games.

Other than that I am planning to start a service company for my Design and Development business. I have heard there is more money with a company than a Freelancer. Well, I will check it out. I will start with one of my friends. I am not willing to stop my freelancing right now but will do if I start getting enough work from the company.

Also, I am planning on buying some prebuilt sites that can make me some steady flow of income. I have researched a little and the only problem I seeing right now is that I am not into Digital Marketing and I don’t know a thing how I will be promoting that website. I have tried making few in past but all have failed.

Let’s hope that this new month will be more awesome and amazing than previous.

If you like my post, please take a few moments to comment and share this post. It will motivate me a lot to write more.

Deepak