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August 2017 Passive Income Report: Making Money As a Digital Nomad

I'm back! It's been a fun six months or so of early retirement and it was amazing for the first couple of months of doing nothing for a while. I was in Bali when I sold my last business back in February of this year and used that time to learn how to surf, go scuba diving and trekking with komodo dragons, manta rays and had some incredible adventures. Then I took a week to hike across the wicklow mountains in Ireland, ate tapas and drank sangria every night in Barcelona spain, and really just enjoyed myself without any responsibilities or worries. Best of all I still made an average of $8,000 a month in passive income from all of the various income streams I had built the years prior so not only did I have money in the bank from selling my dropshipping stores, I also had investment income coming in so my bank balance wouldn't decrease.

It was fun, and it was a much needed break. But honestly, after month 4 of not doing anything and not having anything to do, I got bored. I also realized that even though it was nice living off of passive income, I was hesitant to spend money on things like flying business class, buying the new iPhone 8 when it comes out, or buying a new Macbook with top specs as I didn't want to dip into savings or risk my passive income slowly going down after months of not adding to them. If I actually wanted to retire and live a cheap, simple life in Thailand or somewhere similar, I could comfortably spend $1,800 a month for the rest of my life and not worry, and honestly, I thought that was what I wanted...and maybe my old self really did. But now, I want to be able to give my parents money every month so they don't have to work. I want to be able to be generous with my friends and treat them out to dinners and trips. I want to be able to splurge once in awhile on myself as well. But this time around, it's different. Coming back from retirement, I've vowed never work for just money again, whatever I do from now on will have a higher purpose or passion to go with it. So here it is, keep reading for my monthly updates.






Where I Traveled:




It's almost crazy to think, but I've been in Ukraine for two full months now. The funny thing is, it hasn't gotten any easier to communicate or get around. Honestly, if it wasn't for me working on my new project I wouldn't have stayed as long as I did as it's not really a great country to site see. Lviv was awesome and I loved it for about a week. Kiev is a big city without much charm so honestly there's no real reason to be there. And now I'm in Odessa which is the perfect mix of old city with beautiful architecture, great restaurants, bars and the seaside. Aside from traveling, I finally had the chance to write the blog posts about becoming a divemaster, packing as a minimalist, and got to dive in deep and explore the pros and cons of real estate investing.

But most of the month I was in Kiev and Odessa working out of coworking spaces and launching my new course Income Boss that took up most of my time this past month or two. Luckily, there's a huge beachside nightclub called Ibiza here in the Arcadia district of Odessa which has been a great way to relax and have fun on weekends as well as a great place to lay out and get some sun during the weekend days.



The Vegas style nightclubs of Odessa


The Course Launch




It was pretty crazy recording the videos from random coworking spaces in Kiev and even editing the promo video for the course while on a train to Odessa. But as of two days ago, Income Boss is officially launched and on sale! The grand total sales from the course in August were $5,952 which was amazing but I have a feeling that the signups will slow down a bit after the initial new course 50% launch discount expires. We'll see how it goes next month, but making close to $6,000 in sales the first two days of the course going live is a great feeling, especially since working on it for the past two months with zero guarantee anyone would buy it was scary.

As for expenses, I prepaid for 12 months of the course and video hosting platform Teachable for $999 which was a bit scary but well worth it. Also even though I'm hugely against domainers squatting on domain names for profit, after almost two years of looking for a short, suitable domain name, I finally gave in and spent $1,895.00 for IncomeBoss.com which was really the perfect name for what I wanted my course to represent. (thanks Chris for the suggestion!)

I also spent $214.20 for two years of email marketing with GetResponse, a few hundred bucks on other random things like logos and software so in total, the course was around a $3,300 investment to launch, even before making a single sale! Luckily, it was a success and I was able to recoup all of the expenses during the launch and everything else is profit from now on.







Other Online Income




The great news is aside from the new course launching, which added a whole new stream of income, I still have passive income coming in from my amazon kindle books, youtube ads, affiliate marketing commissions, udemy courses, investments, and my partner dropshipping stores, one of which is getting ready to be sold soon, so that'll be another nice profit month!

This month I also started selling presale tickets for the 2018 Nomad Summit which is going to take place January 20th, 2018 in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

And even though I love building new streams of passive income as a digital nomad, I realize that as far as the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book is concerned, that leaves me in the self employed (coaching, running my own dropshipping stores, blogging) or business owner quadrants (partner stores, kindle books, etc) My goal has always been to get into the investor category and simply buy passive income assets, but I never thought I'd be able to afford it. But the good news is that I took 100% of the money I made from selling my dropshipping stores and used it to buy passive income streams such as real estate, and even something called pre-settlement law settlements that I learned about in episode 59 of invest like a boss.





Goals and Achievements:



My original goals for this month were to learn how to speak Russian, get back into a workout routine, and work on launching Income Boss. It turns out that even though I knew learning the language would make me enjoy the country more, I ended up focusing instead on building the course and working out instead. Russian is really hard, and even though it would be nice to be able to speak it, I've decided not to spend too much more time here as it's not an easy place to live and definitely isn't a digital nomad hotspot.

So instead, I worked on the course and got it launched a month ahead of schedule, while doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu twice a week, CrossFit twice a week and getting back into decent shape after a few month of not exercising consistently at all. Money wise, this month has been amazing at $19,077.59 in total profit before travel, living and business expenses. I'm glad to be back on track with the income as so far this year I've already made $129,390.86 and that's including the 6 months I've been technically retired and just living off of passive income.


Total Profit for August: $19,077.59 

*increase from $7,221.36 last month.







Expenses for August


Airbnb Apartment: $435.00 (city center Odessa)
Train to Odessa: $16.36 (first class)
Uber: $120.00
Food and Drinks: $550 +/-
Misc/Other: $300 +/-
Coworking Space: $175
Gym Membership: $40

Base Monthly Expenses: $1,636.36

Course/Video Hosting: $83.25 (Teachable)
Email Marketing: $58.92 (GetResponse)
Wordpress Hosting: $4.95 (SiteGround)
Ticket Sales: $25.00 (Ticket Tailor)
EA Checkout System: $66 (Sam Cart)
Mother's retirement: $1,000 (blog post)

Total Expenses: $2,843.53 +/-

*decreased from $3,726.64 last month







Monthly Wrap Up



It's been a fun month building and launching the new course, having another one of my dropshipping stores listed for sale, having three new streams of online income start coming in, and being able to do it all while traveling and enjoying summer in Europe. None of this would have been possible if it wasn't for the work I put in to build my income streams these past few years, and I'm so glad I'm able to finally share it inside my course Income Boss. I really hope everyone who has been following along in my journey takes advantage of the 50% off launch special as I'd love to teach you step by step how to replicate the success I've had with my online businesses and monetizing my websites, blogs, and even my Youtube channel, which is celebrating it's 10,000th subscriber this month!

I've said this for the past two years, but my course income will one day surpass my personal affiliate income and I'm excited that this being the start of my new focus. Not on helping myself, but helping you and my other students have a shot at success. Sure it's nice to make $10,000+ a month for myself, but honestly, it's not what drives me. It's not what inspires me to be excited in the morning. Helping you succeed is. I genuinely hope that by me openly sharing every step of the way helps you be able to follow in my footsteps or inspires you to create your own path. What I've learned now from making a full time six figure income these past couple of years, interviewing dozens of other location independent entrepreneurs who have done the same, is that whatever business you get in, whether it be dropshipping, making money with your blog, or any of the hundreds of other business models I've shared on the Travel Like a Boss podcast, they all work. None are easy. They all take effort. But they all work! So if you haven't dedicated yourself fully yet in any one model, get off your ass, and get to work!



Warm Regards,


Johnny FD


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Income Report 886794322948475887

Post a Comment

  1. Thanks for the latest post Johnny! Keep up the good work!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your report. Don't you pay taxes ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. People usually pay taxes at the end of the year.

      Delete
  3. I love that you want to help your mom retire. You are a true inspiration. Keep up the great work, and thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete

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