For 2025 my main goal was to be profitable.
To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.
My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.
My goal for 2025 was to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.
I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services.
Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not
Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.
I'll report on income as I receive it, not when I earn it. In other words, I report on it when it hits my bank account.
I'll report on expenses in two ways. If I've bought an annual plan for something, I'll break the cost up per month and expense it as I go along. One-time purchases will be expensed the month I make the purchase.
With that, let's get going!
Inbox Dollars: $15.00
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. Most of the income comes from a couple of very active referrals, and it's been reliable for quite some time.
I earned $15.00 in payouts in December. To make things easier, I've been cashing out directly in Amazon gift cards.
EarnApp: $10.31
EarnApp is one of the most passive sources of income I have, aside from bank accounts and dividends!
They changed their payout structure from per MB to per hour, which isn't really good for most people. However, I still get some referral income from a handful of my 145 referrals.
Here are reviews of this app and a few other passive apps.
Website services: $28.46
I have a website design and maintenance client who's a poker player I met at the tables during a sit-and-go.
For hosting his website, I received a recurring $30/month, minus a $1.54 PayPal fee.
Atlas Earth: $5.00
This is kind of a dumb “game” that pays you to watch ads basically, but at this point I've been playing it long enough that I'm earning almost $0.03 per ad I view, and I can view one per hour if I want. I can view six in a row before I have to wait to view more of them.
The game does pay out pretty much instantly, and I cashed out $5.00 in December.
Freelance Writing: $300.00
In December I was paid to ghost-write a newsletter for another freelancer who's had an influx of work.
I was actually pretty surprised by this income stream, but I'm glad to be of service!
The great news about this is it paid for all of my tools in December, and then some.
AdSense: $103.12
AdSense income used to be a substantial amount but now it happens once in a while.
My accumulated earnings topped $100.00 in November, which means that I got a payout near the end of December.
Medium: $11.84
I broke the $10.00 threshold for earnings with the Medium Partner Program and got a payout of $11.84 in December.
Sales on eBay: $15.47
I sold a couple of cool serial number bills for $15.47 net.
TOTAL INCOME: $489.20
At least I ended 2025 on a high note. This was my highest income month for 2025.
But now for the expenses.
Services I mentioned last month: $157.19
Here's a summary of the services I mentioned last month that I'm carrying forward. I'll note that I let the Frase.io add-on I had go, so that's no longer an expense.
- My newsletter provider Kit: $27.99/month ($22/month less)
- Domains at NameCheap: $21.43/month
- Web host at [Hosting.com](): $14.99/month
- Tailwind, a Pinterest poster: $14.98/month
- Canva Pro, a graphic design tool: $10.00/month (I thought it was $15/month but it wasn't)
- Camtasia, video editing software: $5.33/month
- LinkWhisper, internal linking plugin for WordPress: $5.59/month
- CleanTalk spam protection: $2/month
- IFTTT Pro, automation engine: $2.99/month
- GeneratePress One, theme elements: $8.25/month
- UberSuggest SEO tool lifetime deal I'm expensing at $40.84/month
- Publer: social media posting software $2.80/month
Inventory for eBay: $1,314.14
OK, yeah, I bought 964 dollar bills for $1,314.14.
I saw some success selling a few of them this year. They've gone fairly slowly, but I've only listed about 100 of them over the course of the year.
The listings I bought on eBay were great deals as long as I can repeat the success I've had.
Still, selling a dollar for $15.00 is a rush. Even $7.00 is a rush!
And, in a way, I really only need to recoup $1,314.14 – $964.00 = $350.14, because worst case, I can spend the ones or deposit them!
This put me solidly in the red for 2025, but I'm set up for 2026.
TOTAL EXPENSES: $1,471.33
NET INCOME: -$982.13 (-$1,965.13 YTD)
So, I didn't make it in the black for 2025.
Looking forward, though, I'm in good shape.
I have a lot of inventory to carry forward and list.
Also, I'm done expensing my UberSuggest lifetime subscription, so that's $40.84 less each month I'm expensing.
That leaves $116 and change for my toolset each month going into 2026.
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.
Let's do this together!
