Taming Monkey Number 8 – First Update

As you may already know, I’m, on a special kind of challenge this year. I ditched my new years resolution and replaced them with monthly challenges in which I intend to “tame an inner monkey”. Basically, an inner monkey it’s an underdeveloped part of myself, or a promise I never lived up to. You can read the introductory post here.

This month monkey is “straightening my finances”. And this is the first update.

Revenue Sources

First of all, as a digital nomad living off the grid, my revenue sources are very eclectic. In the beginning, this is a little bit difficult to understand from someone coming from a job-oriented culture, where there’s only one clear source of income. And since 99% of the people I know are coming from this culture, it’s a pretty safe bet to say that pretty much everybody finds my way of generating money hard to understand.

That’s why I intend to make a little breakdown of all this.

Ebooks

I wrote 6 ebooks so far, for almost all of them there are previews at my downloads page. Main topics are productivity and self improvement, obviously. I also wrote a bit about how to create and maintain an online business. Pretty much I transform parts of my experience in something that other people may benefit from, and package it in an ebook.

I currently sell the ebooks on Amazon, Kindle and iBookStore.

Affiliate Programs

I promote a few products that I either currently use or used in the past with some good results. Basically, every time somebody buys one of these products via my recommendation I get a commission. Not rocket science. You can see a small list of those items on my recommended products page.

iOS apps

I created and currently maintain iAdd for iPhone and iPad. It has its own website at iAdd.co. It’s the iOS implementation of the productivity ebook I wrote (and currently sell on its own domain too: Natural Productivity: Assess, Decide, Do).

Partnerships

Until recently I was involved in two businesses as an adviser / partner. These are just regular business partnerships where I invest part of my assets (currently I’m not investing any money, just time, skills and expertise) and get a share of the profit, if any. One of the possible evolutions of these partnerships is that, after I validate the market, the product and the team, I recommend the business for a capital injection.

Consulting

I do a bit of business consulting, and that includes blogging, online business marketing and alike. Much of these was done in the form of being part of some entrepreneurs / investors events in Romania.

Live Events

Every now and then I do motivational events, like teambuildings or retreats. These are happening on a “let’s see if this will happen” basis, I’m not promoting them directly.

Where I Am And Where I’m Going

As you can see, this is a pretty hectic list. Could seriously use some strengthening and that’s exactly what I started to do. So, here’s what I did so far.

Leaving WPSumo behind

I decided to step out of the WPSumo ship. Although I was able to generate more than 5000 USD in cash in the first two months, although the market (WordPress publishing) and the product (premium WordPress framework) were both validated, there was something that wasn’t: the team. I won’t dive into details because I still think there’s huge potential for this. I was on the verge to even bring in some working capital, but now I’m happy this didn’t happen. The risk was too high.

More Consulting

I will take on a few more clients on a regular basis from now on. With fall being just around the corner and a few meetings already planned in my agenda I think this will turn out well. My intention is to not only increase cash flow, but to create a regular working routine outside my home.

Online Courses

I was playing with this idea for a long time. I even had a dry test in using one of the many existing platform for online course delivery. I intend to create at least a workable demo of one of my courses (still don’t know the topic as of now) by the end of the month. At least I will have an idea if this is working or not. That’s one of those promises I made to myself but never really lived up to it.

A Fiction Ebook?

In a recent discussion with a friend, it came out that in my teenage years I was kinda of a prolific writer. I guess 80% of it was gibberish, just teenage poetry or prose (“nobody understands me” kind of crap) but some of the pieces I wrote back then were pretty good. I decided to spice up my portfolio of ebooks with a fiction one. It will be a challenge to translate it in English, that’s for sure, so I’m sure it won’t be done this month.

Status

I think I’m ok for now. I already feel this monkey is starting to get human, so to speak. As usual, there will be another update at the end of the month. Or even sooner, if there will be enough material for it.