Gave up a day job! Now what? – Income report #2

I know that many of my blog readers have subscribed my RSS Feed only for my monthly income reports. And as I want to make you happy here is my report from last month. April have ended over two weeks ago and now I am ready to sum everything and provide you my money making details. I hope it will inspire some of you to try your skills in making money from independent web & software development. I know that at all it is not much for most of you but it is still my beginning and I am hardly working to increase my income - I will write about it more at the end of the post.

So my goal was...

As I have been writing previously my first income goal to achieve to be satisfied from leaving my full time job was to make more than $1000.00 monthly. In march I have not passed this amount but I was pretty satisfied as it was a real beginning. I have been working really hard to increase my income. Most time I have spent to increase a long term passive income that is not providing immediate money flow. So as I wanted to pass $1000.00 I have been working on one time money makers as well (for ex. website flipping).

Gimme numbers!

I do not want to make you unsure any more. So here are the numbers. This time list will start from lowest income source and end with the highest.
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It looks that in total I made ...[PLEASE LOG IN TO READ]... my previous month income! Unfortunately I still need to pay tax, health insurance, server, flippa and PayPal fees and a few more. But even then I made a much more than $1000.00 of my income goal! A lot of this is thanks to support of all of you - so as usual I would like to say to all of you a big THANK YOU!

What are my plans...?

So what are my future plans...? I will not be too active in website flipping as it takes a lot of time and is a one time income. I will try to work more on my passive income sources. Currently I have just developed my frist free Android application "WP Stats" for reading traffic stats from "WordPress.com Stats" plugin. I have put in it a small ad banner from Ad Mob (just like Ad Sense for mobile devices). Unfortunately in a few days I made only a few cents - but I still believe that it will bring real money after getting more popular. In my long term plan I want to make most income from ads on web pages and in my software plus still generate some money from stock photography... If you want to be updated about my success (or failure...) don't forget to subscribe to my blog updates =)

21 Responses to “Gave up a day job! Now what? – Income report #2”


  • I would focus 80% of your time towards the ebook. Your sales page could be optimized a little more (and there are typos). If you pull in more user testimonials and run some adwords, you could see this come in and be your primary source.

    • Thanks Steve. I have been thinking about it. But it does not fit my long term business model. I am developer and want to make web and software development my main income source. And as I want to make it passive I am doing it by putting ads on free content or software (to make it long term income).

      • Don’t limit yourself like that.

        If you want to be web developer go get a job.

        If you want to be an entrepreneur then you better go where money is. Besides how do you expect web development to function as passive income source? Offering a service/application may be such an opportunity – but then you’re an entrepreneur who uses code to leverage his business.

        BTW. Your project is mint – love every installment of it!

        • This ebook has been done “by accident”. As a developer I want to make passive income from selling many copies of application or via ads on web pages/in software.

          • The only reason I wouldn’t say focus on the ebook as your main source of income, is because in reality it really offered little content.

            I am a person who bought the e book, mainly through curiosity of reading your blog and I was a tad disappointed.

            Essentially it was several pages just teasing me saying ‘At the end of this ebook you’ll find the secret to how to get page rank 4’.

            And then the conclusion was some information that most people would already know (I won’t ruin the spoiler by posting it here).

            I did feel a little cheated when I read it, but just forgot about it (after all it was only $7). However, aiming to be a ‘best seller’ would require some more solid content in my opinion.

            E books like ‘Getting Real’ and ‘Rework’ are really useful with loads of content… perhaps aim to produce something equal to that quality / quantity.

            • Thank you for your comment Paul. Good and solid critique is always constructive. It is hard to always satisfy all customers but in future I promise to try even harder. Thanks again.

          • Accidents sometimes result in much profit. Don’t limit your horizons.

  • Congratulations on achieving your goal! A word about adsense and admob.. you could make a larger income from your app or website traffic by having your own offers instead of leaving it up to an outside source to decide. You could either direct them to your own real estate (ebook or other apps) or you could find an offer that you truly like, such as the hosting company you wrote about and direct traffic to there. Doing this should result in a higher return, and once established you can negotiate a higher payout as well.

    • This is my very first attempt with mobile soft and it was my first bet (to use AdMob). But I am going to implement mediation layer to my soft so I would easily be able to “swap” ads and test what brings me best income.

  • Well done. I think this goes to show that when you want to generate cash and your focus is on the money, it’s better to do several small things instead of investing time on a single product that takes a long time to make cash.

    Your income is going to rise and rise, just remember not to get lazy. Keep yourself hungry, otherwise at some point you will stop growing.

  • fabiandesimone@hn

    Congratulations on your increasing success. We all know how hard it is and you are putting yourself out there trying your best. Thanks for sharing!

  • I think this is pretty impressive, he is clearly doing lot of work.

  • I was critical of some of your prior posts, but this is pure gold. Your writing has improved, and this blog post has a lot of meat on the bones. Well done, thanks for sharing, and keep it up!

  • I think it’s against AdMob’s Terms of Service for me to reveal actual numbers, but I’ve been a customer of theirs for some time and I’ve been very satisfied with their fill rate and eCPM.

    • Thanks – good to know. I have just published my app 3 days ago – but today I am starting to see numbers increasing (downloads of app and admob impressions). Hope that daily trend will become like this as it may become profitable in a month or two :). I will email you later today as I have a lot of question to experienced mobile app developer…

  • I think http://gotmusictalent.com/ was a steal at $260. Had I known about it, I might have bid higher to flip it myself. The “got milk” campaign is still firmly engrained in most Americans’ minds, and the phrase “music talent” speaks for itself.

    Perhaps your problem is more trying to squeeze money out of your investments than building your investments. When you do your eBook, be sure to spend at least as much time as you spend writing it on the right kind of marketing. Also, don’t wait until after it’s done to think about marketing. Let your strategy for getting people to buy it shape how you build your product.

    All this said, congrats on achieving your goal!

    • Thanks Ben! I am not as good in squeezing so I flip it to give a chance to others :)
      But to be honest I believe that if some idea do not get noticed the way I want I switch to new project and monetize old to fund it and my living by flipping it and I keep developing my best ideas and projects.

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