December (and 2024!) Side Hustle Income Report

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2025

This is the wrap-up of twelve months of reporting side hustle income!

I did this all of 2024 to maintain accountability and to document lessons learned.

I'll provide my final monthly numbers as well as a summary for all of 2024, and reflect on what it all means. I'll also chat briefly about how things will change for 2025!

Links to the other eleven months are at the end.

Google AdSense income: $8.68 – 2024 total $167.00

Google AdSense income has been there for most of my blogging run. Even though it's been way higher than it is now, with the blog just mostly sitting there, people continue to visit and interact with the ads.

Mid-year I decided to cut the number of ads showing on the pages. I turned off Auto Ads on my main blog because the ads dominated the site rather than the content. I analyzed the revenue from each ad type and kept the ones that provided the most revenue.

At the point I did this, my AdSense income halved, but I enjoyed the cleaner look of the site, and I hope my visitors did as well.

I have noticed more sign-ups for my newsletter from the blog, which is a positive. Also, the better site experience seems to be reflected in the traffic!

I applied for AdSense on my online presence blog but it hasn't been approved yet. It could be anything at this point, but it may be navigation that's causing the issue.

Going forward I'm going to reach out to a couple of ad companies that I met up with at a money conference in Atlanta this past fall. I may need to work my traffic up a bit but they'll let me know. I've also signed up for a service that will give me ideas for boosting organic traffic to my main site.

Medium Partner Program income: $1.22 – 2024 total $129.33

I started out strong on Medium the beginning of the year, then tailed off at the end. My best months were in the middle of the year, and the past two months I've barely made a dollar each month.

I published 116 stories in 2024, roughly two per week on average. Some months I published nearly every day. December, I published twice.

Still, even with this inconsistency, I wrote far more in 2024 than in the previous year, so I call that a win!

I'm also grateful to my over 400 followers on Medium for cheering me on and leaving great comments!

I plan to keep publishing my work on Medium: experimenting, learning, listening, iterating, and creating!

Mr. Rebates: $5.18 – 2024 total $30.33

Mr. Rebates is a cash-back rebate site that I've used for nearly two decades. People simply sign up for a free account, click through to online stores, and get a percentage back in their account.

Most income recently has been from referral commissions. (I used the site to purchase a plane ticket and got my rebate posted!) I have a small number of dedicated referrals that continue to buy through the site, so I benefit from their activity rather than my own. Mr. Rebates rewards members with 20% of what their referrals earns, for life.

(Note, the link above and others in this article are affiliate links, which means that if you sign up I stand to earn a commission, at no additional cost to you.)

This is one of several accounts that just sit there and send residual income my way, so my plan is just to keep the account active.

Inbox Dollars: $10.00 – 2024 total $111.37

Inbox Dollars is a get-paid-to site that pays out cash for surveys, trials, sign-ups, and other activities.

Inbox Dollars pays 10% of my referrals' earnings for life. Like Mr. Rebates, most of the income comes from a couple of very active referrals, and it's been reliable for quite some time.

I was able to cash out a $10 virtual MasterCard from Inbox Dollars in December. The goal is simply to keep this account active and kicking out some income every once in a while!

Swagbucks: $0.00 – 2024 total $30.00

Swagbucks is a get-paid-to site similar to Inbox Dollars that pays out cash for surveys, trials, sign-ups, and other activities.

Swagbucks pays 10% of my referrals' earnings for life.

My referrals on Swagbucks were more active than they are now, but I get a little bit here and there. I cashed out $30 in the past year and look to keep this account active as well.

MyPoints: $25.00 – 2024 total $25.00

MyPoints is yet another site to Inbox Dollars and SwagBucks (and again, owned by the same company) that is a get-paid-to site similar to Inbox Dollars that pays out cash for surveys, trials, sign-ups, and other activities.

It's actually the oldest one of its kind I report on here. I've had an account for over 20 years. It was a lot easier to earn gift cards back then, because nearly every email (“BonusMail”) rewarded points simply for clicking on a link. Only a handful of the emails are incentivized this way now.

MyPoints pays 10% of my referrals' earnings for life.

I was able to cash out a $25 virtual MasterCard from MyPoints in December, which was my only cash-out from MyPoints in 2024.

Amazon Associates: $3.30 – 2024 total $23.94

My main blog has a lot of Amazon links, but very little traffic through them. I found in 2024 that articles which focused on the products themselves did better for converting to sales than just casual mentions in the middle of some paragraph.,

An article I wrote on the OXO Brew 8-cup Coffee Maker over a year ago finally generated a sale.

Going forward I plan to do some videos to add to the articles. Done properly I can put similar videos both on YouTube and on Amazon itself, as long as I follow rules for both sites with the videos.

CardCash: $0.00 – 2024 total $5.00

CardCash.com is a site for buying discounted gift cards. People sell their unused gift cards at a discount to CardCash, and then they sell them to others at a lesser discount, and profit from the spread.

Everyone wins: The seller converts their card to cash, the buyer gets a gift card they want at a discount, and CardCash profits a bit from each sale.

I referred someone to CardCash earlier in the year who purchased a card, and got a $5.00 credit toward a discounted card

Landa: $0.00 for the moment – 2024 total $9.81

Landa offers shares of rental properties in several states. These shares pay “dividends” each month, based on the net income the underlying properties bring in.

I put $250 in for fun to see where it goes.

I plan to buy more shares as I earn enough from dividends, but don't plan to put more money in unless the prices dip substantially. Results for 2024 were less than I hoped for but this is case in point why diversification is a good thing!

Atlas Earth: $22.00 – 2024 total $86.00

I had two payouts hit my account in December, and cashed out $86.00 for all of 2024.

For some completely brainless low-energy money, sign up for Atlas Earth here.

Receipt Hog, IBotta, and Fetch: $10.00 – 2024 total $71.15

I have several grocery receipt apps that I “stack” for receipt rewards. This is completely legit.

Grocery receipts for money: Stacking apps

I got a $10 payout from Fetch in December. Payouts from this one as well as from Receipt Hog, and IBotta totaled $71.15 for 2024.

EarnApp: $5.59 – 2024 total $64.23

A little snag is putting a damper on EarnApp as the new year passes. I'm confident this will be resolved.

Google currently is flagging the site as dangerous and presenting users with a red screen. I visited the EarnApp Discord community and they're aware of the issue and working with Google to fix it. For now, I'm not linking to the site; I had a YouTube video removed when the site was marked dangerous, and don't want that to happen elsewhere.

I'm still earning from EarnApp as they go through this, as they've assured their users that the site is safe.

EarnApp is about as close to passive income as you can get for an app. It runs on my computer, transfers anonymized packets from one place to another, and I get paid for allowing this.

There's no intervention on my part, and I hardly notice the performance hit.

I have 95 referrals now, and 17 of them have installed the app and used it for long enough to generate some referral income. The referral income is 10% of their income for life (at no cost to them as it's baked into the rate everyone gets).

I received two payments in December and three payments in November.

I talk more EarnApp and other very passive income sites here.

Shopkick: $0.00 – 2024 total $10.00

ShopKick is a grocery store app similar to Ibotta but lets you scan items in store for points called “kicks.”

I don't really use the app a whole lot, frankly. I can get 10 kicks for having the app open when I walk into Walmart. (The app knows when you're near the entrance so there's no cheating it, haha).

I earned enough kicks to redeem a $10 Amazon gift card in 2024.

Honeygain: $0.00 – 2024 total $80.71

HoneyGain is a site similar to EarnApp. Very passive income. I share my bandwidth and I get paid.

I have nine referrals now. Not much referral activity, but that's all right.

I reached the last $20 threshold for payment in November, and earned $80.71 in all of 2024.

Social media services: 2024 total $70.00

Earlier in the year I did a small task of doing a few shares on social media.

It had the side purpose of getting me more active on X (formerly Twitter) again.

Get-paid-to sites I said goodbye to in 2024: 2024 total $21.38

I stopped using several get-paid-to (GPT) sites in 2024. Yeah, it was money, and not particularly difficult money, but it was a lot of attention for very little reward.

Timebucks ($11.38 payout), Reward XP ($5.00 payout) and Prize Rebel ($5.00 payout) are done, kaputt, bye-bye.

It was fun, but we're done.

Piano lessons: $0.00 – 2024 total $520.00

This year I've driven a few miles to give a one-hour piano lesson.

It has been enjoyable for both myself and my student. Not bad as far as trading time for money goes!

This is my favorite side income currently because of the interactions, to be fair. Not at all passive, but that's just fine!

Website services: $30.00 – 2024 total $250.00

This one started out of the blue a bit!

A poker player I'd met and visited his Kick channel wanted a website, so I did that for him! To be fair, I had followed his Kick channel, provided some tips for promoting his Kick channel, and chatted with him a lot before it got to that point, but it paid off.

Of this $60, $30/month will be recurring for website maintenance and hosting. The other $30 was for writing articles.

Global Poker: $106.35 – 2024 total $727.65

I had a couple of cash-outs in November at Global Poker.

I play for fun. I have enough of a winning record on micro-tournaments and $0.05/$0.10 cash games to not go broke. Also there's a small daily sign-in reward that subsidizes my playing.

I talk more about how I earn regularly from online poker here.

TOTAL for December: $222.14 (within a dollar of last month)

I ended the year holding steady with the previous month of $222.75.

TOTAL for 2024: $2,432.90

As far as revenue goes, this year was better than 2023. As I've mentioned each month, this is revenue, not profit.

I still have a ways to go for profit.

Coming into 2025, I'm going to do the same kind of reporting I did in 2024, but I'm going to also report expenses along with income.

My primary goal in 2025 is to be profitable with my side hustles so that my day job isn't subsidizing them. I believe that I'm doing these side ventures for more than just amusement. I'm doing them to put my family in a better position.

Like I've also said each month: We can only start from where we are.

The best time to start earning side income was twenty years ago.

But the next best time is right now.

Let's encourage one another in 2025.

Let's do this together!

Here are the other reports for 2024

Thanks for reading!

Hi, I'm John and I encourage people to work on themselves, and for themselves, so they can sleep better at night.

Join nearly 400 savvy people with my Solid Cash Tips newsletter for regular insights on side hustling and saving money, with a generous portion of productivity, habit-building, and working smarter!

Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

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