Spending money is easier than making some
Ever since I started writing online almost 4 years ago, I made more money than I ever thought possible. I haven’t become a millionaire just yet, I haven’t moved to a remote island living off passive income sipping piña coladas on the beach either. Instead, I kept my 9–5 job, and I used a lot of the money I generated online to try and expand my business. But when I look back at the past 5 years, I sometimes wonder where the money went.
Income diversification is key to any online business. Here are my different revenue-generating channels:
- Writing on medium.com
- Selling digital products on my website
- Creating video courses on Youtube.com
- Do some freelance work (once in a while, not a lot)
Altogether, this has brought in almost $100K over the past 5 years. Yet when I open up my bank account to check the balance, it’s nowhere near that number. I pride myself on being good at managing my money, saving and investing a lot for a rainy day. I live below my means and I spend rather frugally. I could afford to drive a much nicer car than the one I have, but I only use it to go from A to B, not to show off at the red light. I bought a house below our budget to make sure we didn’t start living above our means. At the end of the day, I do have some money left from the $100K, and that’s better than someone who would have blown through it all. But I’m sometimes not sure if everything I spent with a “growth strategy” in mind was worth it (more on this later) and if there are some things I could have done to have more left today.
With that in mind, I thought I would list down an overview of how I spent the money I made online over the past 5 years. This has a double benefit, both for me and my audience:
- I get to go over my finances, get more clarity on my money, learn some along the way
- My audience gets to see what it’s like to run an online business, learn about the operating costs, and hopefully get inspired from an entrepreneurial perspective.