In the beginning of 2023, I set myself the goal to earn 100k this year.

For years, I have been working on multiple sources of income, and at the start of the year, I wrote an article about my 8 sources of income that would make me 100k:

My 8 Sources of Income in 2023, that will Make me 100k

Now, almost a year later, I am proud to say that I have achieved my goal.

So, how did I do this? Let me give you a short breakdown.

1. My day job — $35.279

As a day job, I’m a cybersecurity IT consultant. I do cybersecurity audits, assessments, give advice and sometimes implement security measures for companies.

I do it for a company, so I’m on their payroll. I’m not self-employed (yet) — that is something for next year.

As you can see, this is a pretty large amount, already 1/3 of my 100k.

However, still 2 thirds to go… just to say that with ONLY a day job, your income potential is limited.

2. Create art & put it up for sales on Print on Demand Websites (passive income) — $13 731

For years, I’ve been passionate about Print on Demand.

You can find many articles about POD here. I answer questions such as:

• What is Print on Demand?
• How does it work?
• Best ways to get started with Print on Demand
• Most profitable POD platforms
• Must-have POD Tools to increase profits
• And much, much more.

You might think “Ahhh, $12.731 is not that much for all the effort he puts into it”.. sure. But it’s an extra $1000 per month, which I invest in other things (which you’ll see below).

3. Create art and sell it on Etsy & Amazon ($1682)

Now, this has been a bit of a failure to be honest.

I did get started on Etsy and made quite a lot of sales, but I nearly spent an equal amount of money on ads.

However, recently (Q4), things have been going better. I’ve uploaded more products, improved my “SEO” (keywords, titles etc.) better (mainly thanks to roketfy and everbee.io), which resulted in some more sales.

My goal for 2024 is to improve my Etsy shop even more.

Uploading products is 1 thing; but effectively selling them is another.

4. Invest in stocks & crypto ($26.941 profit)

In all transparency, this has been my biggest gainer.

For the past year, I have been investing A LOT into crypto.

Nearly EVERYTHING I earned with all my side hustles, I put into crypto, stocks and silver — but mainly crypto.

As I’ve written in multiple articles, crypto was really, really low the past year, and has started to gain momentum the past months. My portfolio has increased with 43% just over the past few weeks.

Important sidenote: It’s not “profit” until you sell. So I’ve set myself some sell targets in 2024, and I’ll be using this profit to buy real estate.

Staking: Add to that XRP, ETH, ADA, SOL and LINK staking → This easily earns me $100 per week extra (which accumulates)!

5. Buy income generating Real Estate and rent it out ($14.400)

At the moment, I have 2 properties:

• 1 small studio condo, which I rent out for 500/month income
• 1 large condo with 3 bedroom— in which I live, and from which I rent out 1 room via Airbnb: +/-$700/month income (I had an exchange student for the past year).

That’s a total of $1200/month extra, which is $14.400 this year.

6. Grow my YouTube Channel ($3281)

As you might or might not know, I was really profitable with YouTube Automation in 2022. Unfortunately, my channels were shut down by YouTube due to re-used content.

Since then, I have started a few new channels and earned a bit of money with it. One channel failed as well (because I experimented with AI generated content etc, YouTube doesn’t really like that either).

Overall, my YouTube journey hasn’t been extremely profitable, but hey — still better than nothing!

P.S. August 2023, I started a new channel, which has been monetized just last week, earning me a staggering… $8,12!

It’s not much, but it’s a start, right? All I can do now is improve, increase my revenue, watch time etc…

P.S. a nice tool that I use for increasing revenue etc, is TubeBuddy (or VidIQ is also good). I made a comparison between both tools here.

7. Affiliate Marketing ($1728)

Since mid 2023, I started focussing on affiliate marketing.

I started sending out newsletters, created my own affiliate marketing blog website: → www.michielschuer.com, and I started adding links to Medium articles.

Note, I only add links to products, tools and services that I use myself. Hands-on experience. If I don’t like it, I don’t promote it. Just so you know.

It not that much, but still, $1728 is nice I believe. Many of it is recurring as well (subscriptions)!

8. Write on Medium ($2003,12)

When I wrote my “My 8 Sources of Income in 2023, that will Make me 100k” article, I JUST monetized my Medium account.

Funny enough, that article has been my best performing article of all:

So, writing on Medium made me a very nice $2003,12!

Even though my views and earnings have been declining month by month, I’m still extremely happy and more motivated than ever to continue writing!

The amount of support and positive feedback trumps the money by far! It’s so encouraging. Thank you!!!

9. Personal Training & Health Coaching ($3773)

I’ve been fascinated by the health of mind and body for years.

Apart from blogging and coaching clients, I’ve been teaching classes and personal training sessions for the past year.

My main goal in 2024 is to focus on growing this business.

I want to teach people how to improve their health, their life AND by doing so, also increase their income (because they’ll have more energy and I’ll be helping them to set and achieve goals).

For this, I’m creating a course (via podia) — more on that soon.

10. Amazon KDP ($98.83)

I’ve converted a bunch of my Print on Demand designs to notebooks and put them up for sale on Amazon KDP.

FYI I use Bookbolt.io for this, should you be interested.

I didn’t sell that much, but it’s still nearly $100.. I am extremely grateful for everything that I get — I work hard for it.

Summary

This challenge is by far the coolest, most interesting, motivating and challenging thing I have ever done.

Especially keeping track of EVERYTHING, and making it VISIBLE with my Excel file, is what really kept me going.

For example, if your income goal would be 60k, you can break it down and see how much you still need to earn the coming month(s).

My final tip to you is:

If you put your mind to it, you can do ANYTHING!

Let’s go!

Thanks for reading!

If you’ve got questions or thoughts, drop them in the comments and I’ll get back to you! Follow or ???? if you’d like to see more content like this. Or buy me a coffee, this stuff is magical 😉

P.S. did you claim your copy of my free e-book yet?