Juggling projects until I reach early retirement

About me:
Hello BHW, you can call me M.

I'm in my early twenties, I live in Scandinavia and I am currently a junior software developer. For as long as I can remember I have always chosen the easy way out - for good and for bad. This is the official start of a journey for a better life for someone like me. One last push.

The end goal?
I want nothing more than being able to enjoy the finer parts of life. I'm tired of the 9-5 grind. I am tired of having to do stuff I do not want to do. I want to change this; hopefully for ever.

The plan:
I've read and seen a lot of these journey threads over the years. One thing most of them have in common is the fact that they focus on one venture at a time. I get it, but that's not the way I want to do it. I want to become the damn best juggler out there, juggling several different projects and income streams until I reach the point where I can finally relax.

1. POD
During the summer of 2019 I got inspired to start POD. As for now I have a RedBubble account with three different versions of one design. After some pretty discouraging results I gave up. Turns out the designs would actually sell organically at a later point and I think I realise exactly why, and I believe I will be able to replicate.

The plan is to register for more POD websites and make sure I actually create more designs.

2. Adult affiliate
Again, early 2019 I decided to test the waters. I bought a domain and started doing the reupload method with my own twist. As for now, I've made $52.97 since I started. The thing is, I gave up after a few weeks of mediocre work. I believe that if I stick to this, even just uploading a few videos a month, it'll be worth it in the end.

3. Android app development
As mentioned earlier, I am working in the software development field. I am still a junior and honestly, I don't feel like my skills are great yet. They are a work in progress, but I believe making Android apps would be good for personal growth in the software field as well as a potentional income stream. As for now, I plan to go 100% white hat on this project, but we'll see what the tides bring in.

4-n. What ever I set my mind to
I want to juggle projects. Of course, some of these mentioned will take up more of my time than others, but I firmly believe in a diversified income stream. Because of this I am definetly up for more projects, different niches, you name it. I just have to discover them and see the potential.

Things I am considering are blogging, YouTube (BH, WH), Social Media in general, taking up streaming again.

Final thoughts:
Thanks for reading through my word vomit. I hope you will join me in this long journey. Be aware that this wont be a quick 1 month thing. It will potentially go on for years. That's fine by me. I'm going to take things slow, I'm going to make sure I'm not overworking on this while doing my 9-5 job, but you've read my text and you know what my goal is. I'm happy with my progress as long as I do something each month.

As a final cliff, thank you so much to my wonderful girlfriend for supporting me through my constant nagging about IM, my goals and dreams. She's the best.

Best regards,
M.

As a software developer myself, I'd advise you to use that knowledge to your advantage. Think about it that way: It's a barrier to entry that you have already passed. Anyone can do adult reuploading or whatever (just an example), so why would you with your skillset? Your chance of success is higher if you do something that requires your skills, as there are less people that can compete.

Either way, best of luck! excited to see how you do!

Progress since last post:
Hello again, it's been close to three weeks since the start of this journey.
As I pointed out, it's going to be one of those long and slow grinds, but I am determined to work on this until I finally reach a stage where I can relax.

1. POD update:
Since the last time I made 4 designs in one of the niches I plan to grind.
One out of the four designs has gotten two orders already for a total of three stickers. The profit on those three stickers is equal to US$1.44. Not a lot, but small amounts can add up to something big one day.

2. Adult affiliate update:
Nothing new here. I did not upload one single video since the start of this journey.
I have some traffic to the links, but no conversions so far. We'll get to working on this one sooner or later.

3. Android app development update:
Nothing new here either. This is postponed for now, a lot of work for something I don't feel like doing right now. I am focusing on making this journey enjoyable, and that means working on the shit I actually enjoy.

4-n. What ever I set my mind to update:
I actually found a fun little project to occupy my time. Do you guys remember Runescape, the MMORPG you played when you were twelve? I decided to use my coding skills for something and I started developing scripts. I am trying to figure out a moneymaker which will actually net me more than membership costs, and when/if I do, I'll try to start a small bot farm.

Total profit since start of journey: $1.44

Replies:

Aulig said:

As a software developer myself, I'd advise you to use that knowledge to your advantage. Think about it that way: It's a barrier to entry that you have already passed. Anyone can do adult reuploading or whatever (just an example), so why would you with your skillset? Your chance of success is higher if you do something that requires your skills, as there are less people that can compete.

Either way, best of luck! excited to see how you do!

Click to expand...

I appreciate the advice, Aulig. I'll make sure to use my software developer skills in some way, I just need to figure out how. As for all the other things that everyone does, I truly believe I can achieve better results than the majority of the others. I'd rather have 10x$100 incomes in stead of 1x$1,500. Thanks for the reply, I hope to bring better news in the next update!

Best regards,
M.

Aulig said:

As a software developer myself, I'd advise you to use that knowledge to your advantage. Think about it that way: It's a barrier to entry that you have already passed. Anyone can do adult reuploading or whatever (just an example), so why would you with your skillset? Your chance of success is higher if you do something that requires your skills, as there are less people that can compete.

Either way, best of luck! excited to see how you do!

Click to expand...

I second that. As a dev, your time is worth a shitload of money OP. I would not spend the majority of my time on the stuff everybody is capable of doing without skills or at least try to learn how to automate most of the parts of common methods. Anyway, good luck!

Edit: Answered before I read your last update so Im happy to see you're using your coding skills with Runescape

GucciBoyRolex said:

Progress since last post:
Hello again, it's been close to three weeks since the start of this journey.
As I pointed out, it's going to be one of those long and slow grinds, but I am determined to work on this until I finally reach a stage where I can relax.

1. POD update:
Since the last time I made 4 designs in one of the niches I plan to grind.
One out of the four designs has gotten two orders already for a total of three stickers. The profit on those three stickers is equal to US$1.44. Not a lot, but small amounts can add up to something big one day.

2. Adult affiliate update:
Nothing new here. I did not upload one single video since the start of this journey.
I have some traffic to the links, but no conversions so far. We'll get to working on this one sooner or later.

3. Android app development update:
Nothing new here either. This is postponed for now, a lot of work for something I don't feel like doing right now. I am focusing on making this journey enjoyable, and that means working on the shit I actually enjoy.

4-n. What ever I set my mind to update:
I actually found a fun little project to occupy my time. Do you guys remember Runescape, the MMORPG you played when you were twelve? I decided to use my coding skills for something and I started developing scripts. I am trying to figure out a moneymaker which will actually net me more than membership costs, and when/if I do, I'll try to start a small bot farm.

Total profit since start of journey: $1.44

Replies:

I appreciate the advice, Aulig. I'll make sure to use my software developer skills in some way, I just need to figure out how. As for all the other things that everyone does, I truly believe I can achieve better results than the majority of the others. I'd rather have 10x$100 incomes in stead of 1x$1,500. Thanks for the reply, I hope to bring better news in the next update!

Best regards,
M.

Click to expand...

Congrats on your first POD order! It might not be a lot money wise but its actually not that common to get an order with just 4 designs. You must be doing something right Good luck!

Progress since last post:
Hello beautiful people. Sorry for going MIA for two months, but here I am, back again. Let's start by addressing what has been going on since last time.

Corona hit my country. It hasn't been that bad, but everything got shut down. In other words, I have been working from home for about three months now. The first month was great- finally, the ability to work from home without feeling like I am letting down my team. Working from home is everything I've ever wanted! Sadly, my mental state started going downhill. There is something a bit off-putting about being at home 24/7 while working full-time. I got lazy, I got sad - I only stayed in my room in fron of the computer doing nothing productive at all.

These past two weeks I got tired of the bullshit and decided enough was enough, I am back at it baby!

1. POD update:
Things started popping off here. Total amount made since the start of thise BHW journey is at US$68.95. Best month was during April where I made >$43 - sadly the top-selling design, which was worth approx. $20 of those sales got removed. No worries, we're just gonna keep scaling up with designs and make sure we push even higher monthly profits later in 2020. Total designs as of today are at 29.

2. Adult affiliate update:
Seeing as I have been inactive for such a long time, Adverten decided to freeze my account. No worries, I'm gonna let it stay frozen for now. Once I have time and the desire to focus on this niche I will unfreeze it and get to work here. For now, this part of the journey is postponed until I have a higher monthly income from the POD.

3. Android app development update:
Still nothing, unsure about whether I am actually going to work anything on this during 2020 at all. We'll see what I decide on.

4-n. What ever I set my mind to update:
As some of you might remember, I was talking about an Oldschool Runescape bot I was considering making. Well, I made one, and it's actually not been detected yet - meaning each account I run the bot on brings in about 30M OSRS gold per month. This is worth about $20.

I am curious about scaling it up with more accounts, but I am unsure about how. I would need a VPS and a high quality proxy for each account. Possibly a residential proxy. I have no clue where to start, so if someone has any ideas about where to get those for under $10/month, please let me know.

Other than that I have been focusing on self-growth. I am a software developer, and while I hate the corporate grind I still have to make sure I get better as a way to reach a higher salary. Because of this I have been studying for the AI-100 Microsoft Certification Exam as a way to show my current boss/future bosses that I am eager to learn new things.

I am gonna try to update the thread more frequently, but we'll see.

Total profit since start of journey: $68.95 (+ 30M OSRSGOLD)

Replies:

issorc said:

I second that. As a dev, your time is worth a shitload of money OP. I would not spend the majority of my time on the stuff everybody is capable of doing without skills or at least try to learn how to automate most of the parts of common methods. Anyway, good luck!

Edit: Answered before I read your last update so Im happy to see you're using your coding skills with Runescape

Click to expand...

Totally, and thanks! As mentioned earlier in this post, I am also trying to grow as a developer. The thing is, I don't enjoy software development and coding in general, only when I have something fun going on. I'll do any project no matter the skill requirements, my only goal is to become financially free earlier than if I just worked the regular 9-5 job.

Aulig said:

Congrats on your first POD order! It might not be a lot money wise but its actually not that common to get an order with just 4 designs. You must be doing something right Good luck!

Click to expand...

Thanks, man! Not my first POD order overall as I started the journey with $20 profit on RedBubble, but the first one since the start of this journey is always fun! As you see, the profits snowball. Just gotta get those designs up there and grow the shop!

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Best regards,
M.

Progress since last post:
Hello everyone. Once again I've been bad at posting updates to this journey.
It might seem like there is no progress going on, and to some degree that's correct.

I have not been working on this as hard as I had hoped I would do, but I've still come a long way since the previous post. Sadly, my (small amount) of focus has been on POD only.

1. POD update:
Believe it or not, there has been progress. Let's start off with total profit since start of journey: US$162.61.


The shop has been growing in terms of total designs and I believe september is going to be a better month than June, but pherhaps not better than April. The thing is, POD is a lot of work. I am not doing this white hat, nor black hat. I would say it's grey hat and I always know there is a possibility that my shop will be shut down at one point. We'll see if that happens eventually. Last post I had a total of 29 designs uploaded to my shop, this update we're at 35. 6 designs since last time, not good, but better than none.

During my research and time at RedBubble I believe I found a potentional goldmine. I have just started my second RB account and we'll see whether this is accurate or not. The niche is quite low effort and will allow me to get more designs out in a shorter time period. So far the other shop has 17 designs that have already sold for $7 in a week. Yes, it's equal to a burger or two on Burger King, but I sincerely believe this is what will boost my monthly payout at some point.

In other words, I have 2 RB shops at the moment, and even though I've made sales on the second one, I will not include it in the total profit until next update when things are more settled.

2. Adult affiliate update:
There's not much to say about this one. I have been slacking.
I do have plans ready for this one though. My domain is still bringing in a small amount of traffic and I want to make that source bigger.
I am also highly considering just leaving Adverten as they set my account on pause. If I was to do so, I would try out the Chaturbate Revshare way and see if it's something that would work with the traffic I bring in.
Depending on which option I choose, my goals are one of two: Whitelabel Chaturbate or reactivating my Adverten account and growing the traffic.

3. Android app development update:
I will just remove this one from the journey. It's not that I don't think I would be able to develop something, it's just a lot of work for something that I am not really interested in, nor is it any easy way to get income. We'll see, it might come back later at some point?

4-n. What ever I set my mind to update:
I mentioned in the last post that I developed a goldfarming bot for the game Runescape. Even though it worked(works) perfectly, it's a little bit to hands-on for me. My goal is to create a (semi-)passive liveable income at some point. For now I am heavily investing my time in stuff that I in theory could work on for a year and later forget about, all while it's still providing me with income.

We'll see if I manage to achieve that, worst come to worst, I'll do more hands-on methods and start investing in dividend payout stocks.

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Best regards,
M.