This month was a bit of a weird one. I didn’t do much with online sales other than what was left over from last month. I did list some random stuff I didn’t want anymore. I move in February, so getting rid of stuff is more about the move and less about money.

The primary goal of this month was to sell sites. I would like for this to take over client work, but I know things will start slow. I have been doing client work since 2012.

Over the last 7 years, I built up skills and tricks to land better clients, along with making enough connections to help get an edge.

Selling websites is harder since I have no established connections. I have sold several before, but never consistently enough to build up an audience that I can tap into now. Even the buyers I had before likely don’t remember me, or their email addresses changed and I have no way to get a hold of them.

Income

Client work still leads the pack. I have been trying to expand my client work and started reaching out to potential new clients to build a relationship. The plan is to either get more work that I can rely more on outsourcing or at least have more work in the pipeline should a current client cut back.

Online sales also kept coming in this month without any additional work. I did do some more listings for things I didn’t want to move, but no more wholesale orders. As part of the move, I checked on the existing listings and found that they were sold out, even while I still had some items left.

I could have done a better job managing those, both in terms of managing inventory to make sure it was accurate along with setting  up promotions and discounts at various times to increase sales throughout the month.

Expenses

Outsourced work was the number 1 expense again, but I did start ending some contracts to help that a bit. The help I was getting wasn’t much, so it likely won’t make a ton of difference. Special to this month, I had more outsource work for help with my projects and not just overflow client work I needed to get done.

Things like helping with marketing, lead generation, and branding were all outsourced for my freelancing business. I don’t have client work paying me to cover the cost of these workers, but this should help generate new business.

I have also been running far more ads than I typically have in the past. That caused expenses to rise this month, but will hopefully increase revenue going forward. The idea was to get some help getting everything going to hopefully make this a little more consistent. I would like to do at least 4 months of promotion before throwing in the towel.

I also started engaging some marketing help on projects that aren’t done yet. They are going to be 100% expense with no revenue until launch, so expenses will lower profit for the new couple months.

Total

It’s nothing too spectacular, but not too bad. While things are steady, I feel more comfortable trying the various ways of making money that involve the upfront cost.

Laying the ground work is easier when I have money coming in, and I am not strapped for cash at the moment.

I am still trying to get the money for the investment deal I wanted to complete, but it seems to get pushed back quite often. On the one hand, at least I get more time to come up with the money, but on the other, it kind of ruins the test.

I will likely come up short from a purely online income stand point, but should be able to do the deal with the help of profits from other investments.

With the new year, I made a few goals. I typically change this blog ever year, but I am hoping to keeping it the same…which is basically unstructured.

The goals for this year are to get websites sales going that it replaces one client completely along with running my own website that generates at least $1,000 per month.

I am trying to take this more seriously than just a hobby or experiment. Truly treating this as a business and being consistent seem like the winning combination that could generate a substantial income. Early on, however, it’s not fun trying to build momentum, running marketing campaigns that don’t have instant gratification, and then keeping up with everything every single day.

Also the move is getting in the way. The plan was to always move at the end of the month, but the leasing office of the apartment I was moving into started to annoy me and delayed everything.

Dealing with that along with multiple clients trying to deploy, I didn’t really have a lot of spare time to focus on other ventures. I was planning on moving February 1st, but on January 31st, I still didn’t know where I would be moving to.

All in all, I had a lot of new ideas and plans this month to get things moving in a positive direction. Nothing had an immediate effect, but I think it will work out well in the long run.

Some of the massive action I wanted to take was cut off by moving and other distractions, but even with a lower income month than recently, I am still pretty happy with what all was accomplished. I should be able to make significant progress once the move is out of the way.