🚔 I Got Robbed

It's a bit of a crazy story but bare with me.

May 3

In today’s issue, I announce my new column, so you always get that sweet sweet practical life-tactic nectar in every email, we delve into my earnings for April, and I give you the story of my GPS-tracked missing AirPods.

A doozy and a half, and it’s still in progress.

Here we go.

🗺 Here’s Some Advice

Do not, I repeat, do not go to someone’s house if you suspect they have your shit and you want to confront them - why?

At 11 am on Sunday the 24th, I was fuming.

I was about to go for a walk down to the shops to pick up some groceries, and like any other chilled individual, I wanted to listen to some music, but my damn AirPods were nowhere to be found.

I then realized that Find My Phone on the iPhone could track these puppies down.

And where were they? Seven suburbs away, about half an hour, and that’s when the adventure began.

The discovery leads to a plot that keeps thickening like some never-ending thick shake and gives me a lesson that answers the question “Why shouldn’t I go door-knocking?”

The short version of it was about 1000 words, and I had other crap that I wanted to share with you, so I ended up taking it out of this email for space - and I published it as a self-contained article, enjoy my pain if you want to.

But before delving into that, do you like numbers?

Because here are my April 💰 numbers.

💸 April Earnings Breakdown

Medium was piloting the rocket ship this month, again.

Revenue from creative endeavors for April 2022

But here are a few facts before you go rushing to Medium to make a living online.

✍🏼 Medium Facts

The revenue you earn can be as inconsistent as the 9/10 you matched with on Tinder (as we’ll soon see).
It takes at least one year to establish yourself (read: Medium to give a shit) on the platform.
And unless you’re the 0.1%, you can’t rely on Medium alone - nearly all content platforms are like that.

Let’s start with the inconsistency and luck - spot the odd one here:

As you can see, without the tail event of my top article ($2,842), my revenue would have been ~93% less for the month (from Medium) - and you just can’t predict whether or not you’ll get a tail event (viral post).

The lesson here (even though I’m not quite there yet) is to diversify as a creator and business.

Don’t “just” do YouTube, Medium, or Freelancing, have multiple sources; hell, I’m still getting there. I mean, at the speed of a sedated snail, but it’s happening.

I’m coming up on 5,000 followers and will soon release my pre-publishing checklist along with an “everything I know about Medium” resource, so definitely stay tuned for that.

📈 Other Numbers

📧 This email got 20+ new subscribers, so welcome, guys and gals - we’re at 1020 now. I hope you enjoy this bad decision you’ve all collectively made.
🐥 I let the Tweeting slip this month, but I’m quickly realizing I don’t want to get into this weird circle-jerk of regurgitating bullshit, so I’m adjusting my content to be more of my own free-flowing thoughts; I’ll let you know how that goes…

🏷 My Gumroad sales of ~$106 came from about ~200 views, which is awesome; it means the revenue generated in the middle of my funnel has an RPM of ~$500.
$63 came from Clarity, a personal guide on how I live my life, and $43 came from my free (pay what you want) Productivity Database.

I eventually want my products and services to make up the bulk of my solo-creator revenue, and the strategy for that currently is “make good shit.”

And that’s the plan.

💺 Armchair Advice (The New Column)

It’s a working title, ladies and gents, but this will be a question-time ask-me-anything type deal.

I get my fair share of questions ranging from very specific to very general all over Medium, Email, Twitter, and more.

In this section, I’m going to delve into those and answer them with as many failed attempts at comedy as you can take.

Emails and Substack comments get preference, and we can all get out the popcorn - here’s one I got recently.

Dan K. - When did you start making money on the internet?

Oh Dan, oh Dan…

My brother and I set up a Blogger.com account back in 2009.

For those of you who don’t know, it was the easiest CMS/web builder to start on back in the day, and I had heard of this cool thing called Google Adsense.

Google did (and does) this wonderful thing where it gives you a share of the ad revenue you generate. Our income for our gaming blog was $36… 1 day after we launched… from 20 views… with all ads meticulously clicked… by us…

That was our first dollar, and we were immediately (and understandably) banned for it.

Got a question? Don’t be shy and hit reply.

🔗 Linkilius Dumpius

☀ A little write-up on the life, work, and happiness theory.
🕌 Interesting infographic breaking down the dimensions of culture.
🏎 I’m revisiting an old episode of Top Gear where they have a hilarious Vietnam adventure that, now I’m thinking about it, probably embedded the idea of traveling there years ago.
💏 A tweet I saw recently where I just had to laugh and sigh at the same time.

And that’s it for this one, guys and gals; chat to you in the next one!

Again, let me know if you like me sharing things like growth and earnings. Also, don’t forget to blast me with questions, or check out my getting robbed story 😂

Catch you,

✌🏼 Sah

The Professional Generalist