Welcome to my income report for December 2019

In December I have earned $189 in total. About 13% more than in the previous month.

What I did in December

December was meant to be a peaceful month. Instead, I had a series of bad luck, which prevented me from catching up with games, movies, and TV series I missed the whole year. Maybe I will get lucky next Christmas.

So what happened in December?

Spilled juice on my Macbook Pro

At the start of December, my Macbook Pro had a serious accident. And because I do everything on it including writing, coding, and video editing, I could not hustle for two weeks.

Only after the repair, I had to make up for the lost time. I will write more about the accident and how to deal with it in a separate blog post.

Started a Chrome extension MVP journey

I also started a new MVP journey to keep myself challenged. I want to build a fully functional Chrome extension, that will alter a webpage the way I want.

I was inspired by another fellow indie maker Dmitri, who made a Twitter Feedburner, an extension, that will hide your Twitter feed.

Chrome is the most used web browser in the world. It exists on all platforms, both desktop, and mobile. And all you need is to learn javascript.

So it makes sense to explore the Chrome ecosystem and make a useful minimum viable product. Let's see how it goes.

Real estate deal on hold

As the end of the year approached, all businesses are put on on hold. In Czech, a week before Christmas is the time to slow down, relax and prepare everything for Christmas Eve.

People will take all vacation left and companies will have limited business hours. That is the reason why I didn't push the current real estate deal further.

There is a high risk, that I won't get financing in time and lose the whole reservation deposit. I also know that the real estate agent I deal with has a very long response time.

By postponing it to January I risk getting worse financing rates, but that is life.

On the real estate market side, I saw a significant decline in the number of new properties. It is true, that no one buys a property in winter and if there is no buyer, there are no sellers. Let's wait for spring and see how will the market evolve.

The end of my intrapreneurship journey

December was also the last month of the Intrapreneurship journey at my 9-5 job.

Our team didn't win financing after all, but we did the maximum until the end. So I am not satisfied with the outcome, but I am happy with what we achieved as a team.

Our dream of helping millennials to save for their group goals was not chosen despite getting 5000 sign-ups from interested customers. It is such a shame, that you are doing everything by the Innovation framework, focus on the customer, get them hyped, and in the end, tell them it is not happening.

The projects, that won financing are not innovative per se nor had any traction but had bigger business case potentials. As a CEO, I would also not take any risk and go with cheaper already explored topics.

I think it is a big mistake to let fin-tech disruptors, like Revolut, take the whole market segment. Especially young customers, who will be the future business owners, CEOs, and wealthy individuals.

But what can you do?

Despite the results, the participation in the program was a life-changing experience:

I improved my English capabilities.
I got confident in doing public speeches in front of a huge crowd.
I learned a ton about the benefits of teamwork.
Met many like-minded and ambitious colleagues from various countries.
Earned some beer money from daily allowances.
Worked abroad for four months.
I had a blast and a ton of fun.

I would do it again and I would not change a thing in our approach.

With the program over, I can now fully focus on my projects and get them to the next level.

Building a new rendering rig

Thanks to the broken Macbook, I had time to think about its replacement.

I could either buy a 3000 USD new 16-inch Macbook Pro, that was recently released, for video production and software development. Or build a new budget PC purely for speeding up video post-production.

It was clear Macbook is too slow for video production and the PC is not suitable for writing and coding. And so after Macbook Pro repair, I opted to build a new PC, that will be used for rendering and video editing only.

This way I won't be dependent on bro's gaming desktop and can do my own thing 24/7.

When looking for PC components online, I found a passion I once had for tech gadgets and electronics. It made me think, that building a new rig will be a great source of content for my blog.

I took advantage of the post-black Friday discounts on major components and ordered the whole rig. Thanks to the timing, I saved 20 bucks on 16-thread Ryzen 2700x, 20 bucks on 32GB RAM, 10 bucks on 500 GB NVM SSD disks, 40 bucks on the 27-inch 2K monitor, and 60 bucks on the Microsoft Surface accessory set.

I can't wait to build this beast and start creating stuff!

Live projects

The Hustle App

The major milestone was

Refactor Django REST API serializers to include pagination
Add missing user management screens such as resetting the password

So in January, I would like to:

Figure out why ajax request doesn't send a cookie in the header
Beta testing with family and friends
Integrate a payment processor so I can charge a monthly subscription
Start link building

I missed the New Year's Eve deadline because of the broken Macbook. The next milestone then has to be postponed to Chinese New Year's Eve. Wish me luck.

Good House Music

At the time of writing this post, my channel grew to 43 subscribers. A 19% increase over the previous month.

With the new render rig, I should be able to keep a weekly posting schedule.

One thing that bothers me is the watch time. And I am talking from my experience, that having a simple visualizer is not enough to keep subscribers engaged.

Why do people watch DJ mixes? Because they want to see a celebrity, or they want to watch the crowd while listening to their favorite genre. I have to think about how to generate long footage to entertain my subscribers.

Financia

I updated my site with up to date market data.

Other than that nothing much happened.

Income Report Breakdown

P2P Lending

There was no progress in diversifying my P2P portfolio to different currencies and lenders.

Savings Accounts

December was the last month I enjoyed increased rates from the last year's interest rate hike. Starting in January, the highest interest rate on commitment-free saving accounts will decrease from 2% to 1.6%.

Party is over and this will result in a 20% decrease in my passive income.

Affiliate Sales

Someone bought a book called Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition: Practical Programming for Total Beginners using my affiliate link.

I am really glad people are inspired by my software development articles and take action to create their products. I remember how I taught myself python for the first time.

If it was not for free online courses for total beginners on Udacity, I would still hack my projects with WordPress. Or worse, give up on my dreams due to its complexity.

AdSense

December was decent regarding AdSense revenue. I don't expect it to be a significant revenue stream. It is just about collecting pennies from my existing traffic. In the best-case scenario, the revenue will be high enough to cover server and domain costs.

Plans, dreams, and wishes

My goals for January haven't changed. Release The Hustle to the public and start working on new projects.

A 2019 year in review

2019 was one of the most fulfilling years of my entire life. I would put it on the third spot after 2013 and 2012, and before 2011 and 2018.

Looking back at my best years

In 2012, I graduated from the University after six years of pain, experienced the biggest adventure of my life by attending a Summer university in Romania, got a new girlfriend, and landed my first consulting job.

2013 was not far behind. Met another girl, who could be the one. We truly fell in love, we traveled the world and had a blast. It is such a shame it didn't work out. Those were the happiest times of my life.

2011 was more about self-exploration. I discovered the world of picking-up random girls on the streets and got passionate about my new superpowers. I lost count on how many girls I met that year, but I will treasure all memories forever. It was also the year I met someone special on top of the Eiffel Tower and thanks to her, I experienced the most romantic week ever in Paris, just like you see in the romantic movies.

2018 was again about finding my old-self, that was lost by the day-to-day grind and failed relationship. I reconnected with my family in Vietnam, traveled to southeast Asia, and discovered new possibilities I never knew about. Thanks to consistency and persistence, I reached 13% of body fat and got a six-pack for the first time in my life.

2019 The year of the pig

Now, 2019 started slow and nothing happened much in the first two quarters. But according to the Chinese zodiac, the sign of the year is compatible with my zodiac, so I kept my fingers crossed and took as much chance as I could.

Then it got out of control. I started my music Youtube channel I always wanted for years, I traveled to 9 countries while crossing Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and the Baltic countries out of my bucket list.

I attended the opening ceremony of the 2019 European Games in Minsk. And when I was traveling, my blog took off after a year of no traffic.

Then I applied for an intrapreneurship program at my 9-5 job and after four months of sweat, I discovered my new superpowers and passions I sensed I had, but never explored them or developed them further out of the fear.

Now, after repeated affirmation from random strangers and people, who don't know me at all, that I am a good public speaker, I can't wait to explore this path I would never follow in the past. The ultimate proof was when people chose me to be a commencement speaker and do a graduation speech on behalf of the entrepreneurship program.

I was so honored and baffled about the decision, but I did my best despite the fear of talking in front of the 100+ crowd. And it ended well. So well the highest CEO mentioned my speech during his speech.

On the fitness side, I was consistent and reached my first muscle up ever without a resistant band. After the shoulder injury in 2018 caused by muscle-up training, this was a big win for my ego prooving patience is key to everything.

Patience was also helpful in reaching a full pancake on the ground. A yoga pose so painful only girls can do it due to their flexible hips. I hope getting better at pancake will help me to reach a press to handstand one day.

I am sure I forgot about many minor achievements, but I don't want to bore you with it.

The more important is the future. And according to the zodiac, 2020 is a year of a Rat. A sign that predicts a steady and stable life during 2020. So I won't expect anything special and will continue on my path towards reaching my fullest potential.

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

Income Report Dec 2019 - What A Year!