Last year, I published how much I made from side hustles in 2021. I just realized that I have missed the customary update this year. Not that I made millions and decided to keep my spoils private. Last year, I was busy with my day job, personal projects and watching countless RRR reaction videos (damn you, YouTube!) and I have not been paying much attention to the side hustles. Nevertheless, I did make enough to fund my domain fees. So, I thought I will just post an update here. Also, the posts about money and side hustles draw the most eyeballs. So, why not?
I did not set any goal for the past year in terms of side hustles, as it was clear at the beginning of the year itself that I was going to be busy. There was no pressure to meet the target. If you had read the previous posts on this topic, I would have categorized the income stream into three buckets: (1) WordPress Ads (2) Affiliate Marketing (3) Freelancing
WordPress Ads:
In 2021, I got increasingly frustrated with the dominance of Ads everywhere and I decided not to make money from showing ads in my blog. I am still bugged by the number of Scaler academy, Ankur Warikoo and Dev Gadhvi ads that pop-up everytime I open YouTube and I declared that my blog will be Ad free and added a paypal donation button just as an experiment. Revenue from both the ads (prior to becoming ad-free) and the donations were zero and reminded me of how good a blogger I am and helped me stay grounded. To summarize, this pipeline is useless and closed.
Affiliate Marketing:
The keys for success in Affiliate Marketing are the niche, quality and quantity of the content that promotes the affiliate links. I don’t have any of these. Expecting to make money from this while not posting anything is worse than buying lottery tickets. As expected, I made zero from this stream. To be honest, I was surprised even to see some clicks from older links 🙂
Freelancing:
I was not too keen last year on this, however I somehow landed an order to do proofreading of a Tamil translation and then it got converted into some repeat orders. I made $145 from this work in a short time. While it is not a great amount to flaunt, it was enough to fund my domain fees and I did enjoy the work.
That’s it. Not really an inspiring post but these little things may add up somewhere somehow. What’s the plan for 2023, you ask? Nothing. Again. I foresee I am going to be busy at work and on the personal front and probably won’t be pursuing side hustles much. This year I am also planning to invest some time and effort in upskilling myself that would accelerate my chances of increasing the income. I will not shun freelancing completely though and will keep the options open and accept work if it will be interesting.
Pointless & Prosaic 
Interesting and funny as always, Sadagopan! If you’d write more often, you’d get read more. But who am I to speak? Sometimes months go by when I don’t post anything.
True that! Need more inspiration. 😀