Hey everyone! This Friday I will be publishing my September Goals Update. In last month's update, I stated that my goal for September was for $10K in side hustle income. In August's income report, I just slightly missed my goal of $10K, and made $9,554 in side income. I made it this month though!

I definitely reached my September goal and passed it by a good amount. September was a great month for income, and I was able to add a few new clients, and there are also a couple of new services that I am offering as well.

Even though September's income was great, I do think I could have topped it if I would have tried just a little bit harder. Many days I went home from work and didn't work on a single thing because laziness took over.

Since my extra income last month was great, it made me even more excited about self-employment. I'm not going to lie, the small dip in last month made me wonder if my income was just going to forever trend down. I'm glad that was not the case!

Don't worry, I will announce it soon once my switch is complete.

In September, I made $13,435 in extra income, before expenses. Just last September, I made $3,275 in extra income. I am definitely happy and proud of my progress. What a difference one year makes! I never even thought that I would be anywhere near this amount. I always thought that other freelancers who posted their income were just “lucky.”

My side income last September was my first big jump in side income, so it was definitely still fairly large for “side income.” However, my progress over the past year just seems unreal.

I know that this is a lot of “extra income” but please keep in mind that I spend many, many hours every single day on my side hustles. This is definitely not passive income. I have also been growing this for quite some time, and for around one year I was not making a single dollar, but I was still putting full-time hours into my side jobs. Taxes also take approximately 30% to 40% of my extra income. This is something that not everyone thinks about.

There were some expenses, and they are listed below. In case you are new to my blog, “Extra Income” consists of all income that I make on the side, and does not include my office job that I have in the financial services industry.

Extra income also does not include any money that W makes either.

As I say every month in my income update posts as a reality check: this is still work. I spend enough time to make this a full-time job on top of my already full-time job. Luckily, I do enjoy what I'm doing so it's not like I'm dreading anything. The goals that we have are also a great motivator. The fact that I plan on making the jump to self-employment is the biggest motivator that I will ever need! Read further on my Extra Income page.

As always, if you have any questions about my monthly extra income that you would like me to include next month, please let me know.

This is for the month of September and before fees and expenses (expenses that lower the amount above include approximately $1,100, which includes payments for staff writing on my blog, work with FITnancials, PayPal fees, etc.) being taken out.

September's number above includes a rent payment from my sister. So after all expenses and fees, I made approximately $12,334. In the amount above, I do not count the amount that I bring in to blogs that I help run, I only include the amounts that are my actual earnings from my services.

You can find my 2013 goals update here.

All of my past income updates can be found here as well.

Blog News

With blog news, there is nothing new to share that I can think of. I have been thinking about another site design because I am in love with the new design on Canadian Budget Binder.

My sister's blog is still doing well. Please subscribe to FITnancials if you haven't yet. Lots of new things are happening to her, and she is planning a move to Chicago soon. Follow her while she tries to plan her move to Chicago. One negative is that she had to start a new Instagram because her old Instagram with over 4,000 followers stopped working. After over 50 emails to Instagram, they never replied so she had to start a new one. Follow her at @FitAlexis

My newest blog Diversified Finances is doing really well also. Being able to talk so much about self-employment and get direct feedback from readers is great. If you want to continue hearing all about my switch to self-employment, because follow me over there! I love being able to talk about self-employment on my new blog, and I'm sure those of you who aren't interested are happy that 100% of my posts on Making Sense of Cents aren't related to self-employment anymore 🙂

If you are looking to start a blog, don't forget to read my post How To Start a Blog. It gives step by step instructions on starting your own blog. Also, one of my most popular posts this past month was How To Make Money Blogging.

There have been some problems with being too public with my income reports.

With my side income reports, I receive a lot of emails and questions about what exactly I do. I am always very honest about everything.  However, I have been having a small problem with going into too much detail in my income reports and the services that I offer, and this has been leading to some issues.

I don't know what I should do to prevent this in the future. I may start keeping some of my services more secretive until I am more established. Everything won't be a complete secret, but maybe just certain areas of my services.

As a freelancer, have you ever come across this?

FinCon 2013

FinCon is this month, and I cannot wait. This is my first blogging conference. I've been looking over the schedule for the conference and everything looks great. I don't know how I'll fit everything in. I also don't know how I'll meet everyone that I want to meet. I want to meet everyone!

Also, last month I published a post about all of the fun things that you can do in St. Louis. So, if you are coming to FinCon, don't forget to read my wonderful post. St. Louis is a great place to visit, especially for financial bloggers as most things are absolutely free (the Zoo, museums, brewery tours and so on are FREE). I am so happy that FinCon is right here where I live.

Are you going to FinCon? Why or why not? What is one tip that you would give to a new FinCon attendee?

Staff Writing

Staff writing is picking back up again. September was rather slow for staff writing, but I did add two new gigs for October, which is great!

So, here's a shameless plugin: If any of you need a staff writer or just a random content writer, please let me know. Whether you need a couple of articles every week, or just a single post with no on-going relationship, I am your girl. I can write regular content, content to fill in gaps in your writing schedule, content for advertising and so on. My turnaround is fairly quick and I would definitely say that I am reliable 🙂

I made a post titled So You Want to Be a Freelance Writer?, so please read further about this topic in that post.

Update on my newest side hustles – Blog and Social Media Management

My blog management side hustle is still going great. I manage different aspects of several different blogs, and that is what has helped me ramp up my extra income in the past couple of months. All of my new services are a lot of fun, as I really enjoy blogging and social media. If you need a blog or social media manager, please let me know.

I can manage your blog for a short period of time as well. If you just need one week, one month, or some other time period off from your blog (such as for travel, to unplug, a vacation from your website, to start a family, to start a new job and so on), I can help with this. E-mail me with any questions.

Thank you to everyone who replied to my question last month about what you would look for in a blog consultant. I have had even more emails regarding this, and I may start this back up again soon.

Also, I am thinking about starting a niche site. The technical terms and everything sound so confusing but I'm very interested in seeing whether or not I could create a successful niche site. Can anyone recommend any really good articles on niche sites and starting one? Do you have one? What do you think? Also, if you have a niche site, how has the newest Google Secure Search update affected you?

Are you interested in becoming a virtual assistant? Don’t forget to also read about what exactly a virtual assistant does.

Affiliate income – I'm still looking for this.

Affiliate income has definitely been on my mind lately, but I haven't done anything related to affiliate income in quite a while. Thank you all for clicking on my links from months ago, and I'm glad readers are still finding helpful information in my older posts. However, I would really like to increase my affiliate income by publishing new posts.

I signed up for a decent amount of affiliate companies last month, and I can't wait to get started. Don't worry though, I won't be doing too many affiliate related posts. Probably only one or two per month.

Offline side hustles.

I have been thinking about offline side hustles a lot lately. W and I have been thinking about a couple of things. Nothing that will make us a ton of money, but just little things that we enjoy doing that we could possibly make a little money off of.

Once I make the switch to self-employment, I definitely want to ramp everything up as much as I can. I want to work my hardest towards earning income and I really want to get my freelancing services out there.

What offline side hustles do you have?