Income Report Apr 2020 - First Chrome Extension User!

Welcome to my income report for April 2020

In April I have earned $132 in total. About 50% less than in the previous month.

What I Did In April

So what happened in April?

Finished Refactoring Financia

In April, I fully completed the refactoring of my Flask jQuery PostgreSQL website to a Flask Vue.Js PostgreSQL Mongo DB software stack. It was a painful process and it took a month of my life, but a complete design overhaul was due for quite some time if I wanted to maintain the project long term.

Thanks to Vue.Js and a Flask Blueprints, I simplified both front-end and back end code to the point even a beginner software engineer would not be ashamed of. Now adding new features will be a piece a cake, that won't break the current codebase or make it messier.

Unfortunately, the changes broke my chrome extension core functionality so I will need to refactor the whole thing and make it work with my new database models.

Gained The First Chrome Extension User!

Even though the chrome extension didn't work properly, I somehow gained my first chrome extension user. I was very happy to see a blip in my dashboard signaling someone installed my extension and did not uninstall it afterward.

It happened to me once in the past, that someone tried my extension for one day and uninstalled it the next day, and I was disappointed and could not figure out the reason. Now I just hope that person will keep using my extension and maybe give me a good rating.

After a month and a half after I published the first version, after seeing zero impressions all the time, this is a great achievement proving I might be onto something.

There were also some legislation changes, that make few features obsolete, so I want to spend some time in May or June refactoring it and making it better.

Started To Learn Tailwind CSS

After finishing Financia, I immediately started to work on a Hustle pivot. I ditched the idea of spending time, making it free for all, and started a completely new project from scratch instead. Maybe after the pivot is done, I will remove the paywall and release a free version.

With new project comes new possibilities and after thorough research on the most trending tech stacks in 2020, I opted for technologies, that I know well and will be suitable for the pivot MVP.

I will stick with React SPA combined with Django backend, but instead of using Bootstrap 4 for the design, I will use Tailwind, a CSS framework, that should allow me to create more flexible designs thanks to their utility first philosophy.

While Bootstrap 4 is nice and functional from the get-go, it is a pain to customize it if I want something to look differently. I have to make custom CSS, custom classes and track the customized code across the project.

With Tailwind CSS, It takes time to initially learn the new class system and to design each component individually, but It is a very powerful way to build whatever I want.

Think of it as Lego or Minecraft. Each brick presents a design feature and you can build a worlds Wonder with it if you want.

Having Tailwind CSS in my skill set, I will use it for complex UI heavy projects, that have UX as a priority. For the simple content-heavy projects, I can still use Bootstrap 4 to quickly ship core MVP and switch to Tailwind CSS later, if there is a need.

Still Procrastinated During Lockdown

The second month at home was more productive due to settling down on a regular schedule. It still does not mean I sacrificed every second of my life for the greater good.

I shamefully admit there were times I ran a TV series marathon nonstop without doing a single thing. Sometimes you cannot say no to the next episode of The Witcher.

But on good days, I squeezed at least three hours of productivity thanks to switching from mentally exhausting task to physically relaxing task and vice versa.

I expect to clock four to five hours every day next month if I managed to build momentum early before the afternoon.

Live projects

The Hustle App

In April, I continued to useHustle  every day and started to work on the pivot as I mentioned earlier.

Good House Music

At the time of writing this post, my channel grew to 72 subscribers. A 12% increase over the previous month. A major slowdown in the subscriber's growth.

In April, I tested the strategy of publishing new content more frequently. I published videos every second day for two weeks and here is what I learned.

Upload frequency doesn't have an impact on the Youtube recommendation engine. Most of the new impressions and views come from external sources when I post my videos on social media.

I got zero subscribers during that time, what's worse, I got a whopping zero from the new videos, even though I have put a lot of effort into sourcing footage and editing the music clips.

Having an interesting video content instead of a boring music visualizer does not impact the watch retention.

If someone dislikes music, he leaves immediately after the first 10 seconds no questions asked. If someone likes the beat, he leaves in the middle regardless of how engaging the content is.

A thumbnail generated from footage has poor CTR. An alternative would be to make a clickbaity high-quality thumbnail, which I have yet to test.

Let's see how metrics improve in May.

Financia

I already covered the current and future status of Financia at the beginning of this post.

Income Report Breakdown

P2P Lending

I am a halfway out of the Czech P2P Lending market and took losses necessary to close defaulted positions. A small price for the potential collapse of middle to worse rated loans. One never knows, when borrowers are losing jobs on a mass scale.

My portfolio on Mintos is still stuck with a huge baggage of pending payments from defaulted loans. The inability of Mintos to keep its 60-day buyback guarantee shed a shadow on the whole P2P lending industry.

When the music is still playing and new investors keep pouring more money, guarantee works well. But once there is a crisis, a liquidity squeeze happens and investors are left dry.

In some way, it reminds me of a Ponzi scheme. There are no regulations, no third party rating agencies to keep the system in check. No proper credit risk. As soon as this situation is over, I will never overexposure myself to P2P loans ever again.

Savings Accounts

There are rumors Czech National Bank might lower the rate to technical zero. In which case, my passive income from interest will vanish to void.

I don't know what I will do. If banks will charge for deposits, then I will have to put everything into long term assets, which means no liquid cash flow for years to come.

With the crash of savings and the stock market, so goes the dream of boomers and millennials about retiring with a comfortable net worth in stocks and investments.

It never worked for their parents and it will never work for them. This is just a dream media feed us to keep us in the system. And I have yet to find the way out of the system. In the end, its the purpose of my journey.

Plans, dreams, and wishes

My goals for May are following. Finish TheHustle pivot MVP, fix the Chrome extension and stay healthy, fit, and happy.

That would be it. Thank you so much for following me on this journey and see you in the next report.