Income Report July 2019 – Beta Launched The Hustle

Welcome to my income report for July 2019

In July I have earned $178 in total.

About 9% more than in the previous month.

This is due to a time bonus, that comes from opening a new bank account and because I moved the rest of my savings to a higher earning savings account.

July

...was all about hustling 24/7. I made up for the time I lost while traveling.

I used every free minute to work on my blog, the Django React Project, and my finance niche site financia.cz (formerly known as Flask MVP).

The main goal was to put Django React Project live as soon as possible.

For the past six months, it seemed to be an impossible task to achieve. There were so many software development roadblocks, technical issues, that required hours of googling and many trials and errors.

I was fed up with this project going nowhere so I decided to simplify the development roadmap to the point when every action should lead me to publish a landing page live on my production Linode server.

It was not about creating the best app ever anymore, but just to show the world a static Django homepage.

I even created a blog post, that documented my progress day by day. It helped me to focus on one thing at a time.

Suddenly I knew I had to finish refactoring my React codebase, overhaul the landing page, install Django React stack on Linode, and set up analytics.

Simple as that.

I am glad, that I made it and after two weeks I finally published my Django React project live.

Introducing The Hustle App

The Hustle is my take on the best productivity tool for hustlers and overachievers, who would like to utilize each second of their life pursuing their dream goals and projects.

Right now, the app is fully functional, but the signup process is hidden. I wanted to launch The Hustle the same way as other successful bootstrapped startups. That means having a plain home page explaining pain points and how my app is the best solution for that, together with a call to action newsletter sign up form.

The idea is to publish a landing page to multiple startup listings, namely betalist.com, and wait for an avalanche of visitors.

The theory sounds simple, but the reality is much different. There is currently zero traffic and the only sign-ups are from family and friends.

I have to wait for at least a month to be listed on betalist.com if I get lucky. Even then, there is no guarantee, that I will get any subscribers at all.

Luckily, I didn't create The Hustle primarily for money, but for solely myself, so once it comes out of beta, I start to use it every day.

The next step is to add a blogging feature to Django so I can publish quality content about self-improvement.

I don't want to pay for ads, so SEO and organic search is my only hope for success. Then I will bust out blog posts until I gain about 100 visitors a day and about 10 paying subscribers.

From there, the sky is the limit.

So, be sure to check it yourself and secure beta access with a 12-month subscription for free. After the beta period is over, the only way to use The Hustle is to pay a membership fee.

Join now and be the part of the greatest community of hustlers and overachievers.

Good House Music Youtube Channel

At the time of writing this post, my music channel grew to 19 subscribers. A 72% increase over the past month, which is a great feat.

View time is still primarily driven by few evergreen mixes. Thankfully, I have a few ideas on which labels could improve my view stats further.

Now, I am trying to keep the schedule and post one new mix every week. I hope weekly frequency will be positively accepted by the youtube algorithm and my channel will grow above 20 subscribers next month. We will see.

DJing and creating music videos are my pure passion, so I don't regret spending 10 hours on editing one video, even though I could work on Hustle instead.

Financia.cz

My finance niche site grew quite a bit from the last month. Not in terms of traffic sadly, but in terms of added value.

I added a new type of financial product, namely bonds, and construction saving plans, and made the whole site responsive on mobile phones.

I also listened to common requests and made the product filter form more actionable.

Finally, I added new ways to donate. Now you can send me a donation directly to my bank account or my bitcoin wallet.

Right now, donations are my only source of income and I am happy, that I got my first donation ever in my life.

Someone sent me about one dollar donation by Paypal. It felt great.

One dollar won't even cover domain cost, but just the fact, that someone gives you unsolicited money because he appreciates what you are doing, is mind-blowing.

One high school mate, who I didn't see the past 15 years even promised to donate when he discovered I was behind Financia, but he never kept his promise.

I guess that was the reason we were never good friends, to begin with.

Now the next steps would be to add new product types and to start producing quality content. I will be happy if Financia surpasses 10 visitors a day somewhere in the future. Wish me luck.

Income Breakdown

P2P Lending

My income from P2P lending experienced a dip due to bot inactivity during the past two months. It should return to about 30 USD a month once people start repaying newly invested loans.

I am also thinking about withdrawing capital from Bondster, another Czech P2P lender because I don't like the return after fees. According to their calculations, my portfolio gain is about over 4% P.A., which is only 3% after fees. It is not worth the risk.

There are few risky loans in delay for more than 60 days and I have to wait for more than six months to get out. Fortunately, it represents only 1% of my principal so the potential loss will be covered from profits.

I just think I could utilize money better on foreign P2P platforms like Mintos. I will look into that next month.

Savings Accounts

The market with savings accounts was quite active in July. Banks are racing against each other and I can profit from that.

I had to withdraw all money from the savings account, that had a 3% interest rate and move it somewhere else, because 3% was only valid for six months since opening account. Then it will fall to 1% so screw that.

The best savings accounts on the market now earn 2% P.A. so I opened a new account at Moneta Money bank and moved the rest to Creditas bank.

While opening a new account at Moneta, I faced some technical difficulties, that prevented me from fully activating their account.

It took them a week to fix the issue. As an apology, they compensated me by giving me a small bonus. That is why my total income is higher than in the previous month. I could say I got lucky.

What can be improved next month?

Business development

In August I plan to refactor my crypto bot and start to day trade cryptocurrencies again. When I am done with crypto, I plan to make a semi-automatic bot for index funds as well. Due to compliance restrictions at my day job, I cannot trade stocks yet so I have to start with a simple index funds portfolio.

Another topic, that caught my attention is real estate investing. I am in the process of learning and reading anything I can find on the internet. I feel the same passion and curiosity as I did when exploring forex trading for the first time. I hope this venture will be more successful and more profitable than trading Forex.

Project development

There are no new projects in the pipeline. My development focus is currently on improving Financia and prepares The Hustle for the official launch.

Thanks for reading and see ya next month!