I never expected to be able to say this at 25 years old, but I just brought in a six-figure
income for the year.
This was a major achievement for me because last year I made $54,842 before taxes, which
means I approximately doubled my income in just one year.
I’m not making this video to brag, but because I took specific and repeatable steps to make
this possible, and by sharing my progress, I’m hoping that I can pass on some knowledge
to help others increase their income, as well.
So in this video, I’m breaking down exactly how I managed to double my income in just
one year.
I’ll start with going through all of my income sources and how much they made me in
2021.
Then I’ll go in-depth with the 3 specific steps I took to make significantly more money
fast, so that you can apply them yourself and achieve similar growth.
Of course, earning money is only one half of the equation.
I’ll be wrapping up with where I’ve spent a lot of my earnings this year so you can
see how I’m carrying this momentum into 2022 to keep my income growing.
Let’s take a look.
This year, I had at least 6 significant sources of income contributing to my six-figure total.
And keep in mind all of these are my pre-tax figures, so I will end up taking home less
money than you see here.
But starting with my biggest income source for 2021, we have my full-time job at Facts
Verse, which contributed $59,466.42 to my total earnings for the year.
I manage several YouTube channels for the business, specifically handling video production,
where I am currently salaried for $55,000 a year.
Fortunately, when the business does well, I also get bonuses based on our earnings.
We had a really strong year which explains the substantial earnings above my base pay.
My next source of income is from the Koncrete Klips YouTube channel.
I help run the channel by creating content and split any revenue that the channel makes.
This totaled $14,362.50 for the year.
Pretty self-explanatory here, the better the channel does, the more money I make, and we
had a couple viral videos this year that brought in a lot of money.
Next up on the list is freelance writing, which made me $12,577.75.
I’ve been freelance writing for a marketing agency in the medical space for a couple years,
which has been a great source of secondary income for me.
However, this year, around June, I decided to stop doing freelance writing so I could
focus on other side hustles that were more lucrative.
I didn’t think I could scale my freelance writing like I could my YouTube channel to
grow my income, which meant I was always going to be trading my time for a fixed amount of
money.
Still, it was great to have while it lasted, and if you want to get started with freelance
writing, you can check out the video I made a few months ago on the subject.
Up next, we’ve got this YouTube channel, which has brought in $8,133.88.
My channel just got monetized in March of 2021, so this is only about 8 months of monetization
so far.
I had a big month as soon as I got monetized, which was great, but things have been pretty
steady since then.
By the way, this image includes revenue that won’t be paid until January, which is why
it’s not included in the number I just mentioned.
With these numbers, I’m not making a whole lot of profit on the channel given the time
and money I’m putting into it, but that’s something I’ll discuss more in a few minutes.
Next, we’ve got the Celsius platform, where I’ve been earning yield on my crypto as
well as referral bonuses from sharing my link on YouTube and TikTok videos.
This brought in $7,391.23, which is pretty wild considering I just started getting serious
about using Celsius in September.
Approximately $7,000 of that comes from referral bonuses, which means viewers on my videos
have also earned a total of $7,000 in Bitcoin and that is so awesome.
But that really comes directly from your support, so thank you so much for supporting me in
that way and I hope you’re loving the compounding passive income you're earning on Celsius as
much as I am.
My last significant source of income for the year is mining the cryptocurrency Waltonchain.
I did a video covering this whole experience, and to be honest, I put way more money into
this than I have been making.
In 2021, I mined approximately 4,670 Waltonchain coins.
The difficulity in calculating this one is that I’ve been selling these as they’ve
been mined, and the price has fluctuated throughout the year.
So my tax advisor and I are going to have a real fun time figuring this one out, but
for the purposes of this video, I’m estimating an average price of $1 per coin for $4,670
in earnings.
Finally, I have a couple miscellaneous figures to add to the mix that don’t add up to be
much on their own.
This includes the stimulus checks from earlier in the year, my retired Amazon affiliate site
that still makes a few dollars each month, a brief project I did with My Financial Times
and some other referral bonuses from platforms like M1 Finance that didn’t make it over
$600 for the year.
This all adds up to an additional $2,500 or so of income.
I’m also not including any investment returns in this because I actually realized net losses
throughout the year, which means I lost money on paper.
I reinvested those proceeds elsewhere and they are currently unrealized gains, so I
don’t plan on having any taxable investment income this year from the stock market.
That concludes the list, which brings me to a total of $109,101.78 for the year, which
is almost an exact doubling from the year before.
So how did I achieve this?
I think there are three specific steps that perfectly map out my income growth for the
year.
The first was building multiple streams of income, specifically with side hustles.
In 2020, I only did my full-time job and freelance writing, so building out extra streams of
income beyond that definitely made a difference in 2021, and I’m still surprised at how
quickly it produced such massive results.
I’ve learned that it’s so much easier to build secondary income streams that add
up to a few thousand dollars a month than it is to increase your salary at the same
rate.
If you’re early in your career or not in a line of work with substantial pay, the fastest
way to make more money is to make it yourself on the side.
Even though everybody wants to achieve passive income, the truth is, you are not going to
see a significant amount of income that is actually “passive” right away.
It’ll take a lot of work up-front or a large financial investment to actually flip the
switch and earn substantial income for doing nothing.
For that reason, the best way to start is with an active side hustle.
Yes you’ll have to actually dedicate your time to earning money, but you’ll earn more
money and much faster, which will enable you to invest and build income streams that are
truly passive.
Plus, you can still enjoy a mostly passive lifestyle if you master one specific skill.
That skill is step number 2, outsourcing.
With any active side hustle, your earning potential will be limited by how much time
you’re available to work, which might not be much if you have a full-time job.
However, if you are able to master your side hustle, you can outsource it to a freelancer
to continue making money on the side while doing as little work as possible.
The trick here is that you really need to master your side hustle in every aspect.
You need to be able to explain step-by-step how you do your job, so that someone else
can do it for you with a high success rate.
If you do this right, you can outsource most or all of your side hustle to someone else,
while you still earn a majority of the income.
All of a sudden you have a steady stream of income that requires little to no time at
all.
This is exactly how I’ve scaled YouTube channels at work while managing additional
channels on my own time.
I have detailed documents that explain editing processes for every single channel, so that
freelancers can edit all of the videos without any direction from me.
Once I accomplished this, I moved on to step number 3: repeat and/or expand.
First, you could find more side hustles and repeat the process.
This is where I started, as I built out my own YouTube channel and then other projects
on the side.
The cool part is that with each project, I gain more exposure and more people reach out
to me with new opportunities.
Along the way, I dropped projects that I didn’t think were delivering, like my freelance writing,
where I felt like I peaked, or my Amazon Affiliate website, which wasn’t earning as much as
I’d hoped.
I did this until I got to a point where my hands were full and I had the best available
projects to work on.
Afterwards, I moved into the expansion phase of this step.
I’m gradually outsourcing more and more of my work so that I can focus on areas that
will grow my income even further.
For example, once I started outsourcing the editing for my own YouTube videos, I was able
to experiment with TikTok and find new income opportunities there.
I applied these 3 steps repeatedly throughout 2021, and they are the reason I’ve been
able to create several significant sources of income without being totally swamped with
responsibilities.
Obviously, outsourcing tasks will reduce your earnings slightly, but I think it is worth
the sacrifice to make side hustles more passive and free up your time to find additional income
streams.
And speaking of reduced earnings, let’s take a quick look at where I’ve been spending
money this year.
First up is investing.
My main motivation for increasing my income is to have more money to invest.
Ideally, if I can invest a ton of money early on, those investments can produce truly passive
income that I can live off of in the near future.
So, this year I’ve invested a total of $48,799.31.
This includes $7,375 into my Roth IRA, I didn’t max it out last year so I spent the first
few months of 2021 catching up to max it out for both years.
It includes $20,981.26 into stocks in a standard investment account, and $20,442.95 into cryptocurrency.
Now only about $8,000 of my crypto investments this year came directly from my earnings,
the rest is either bonuses from Celsius or mined Waltonchain coins that I kept within
my crypto portfolio.
Next is business expenses, which I’ve grown increasingly comfortable spending on throughout
the year, at $8,818.68.
These expenses are deductible from my income, which will reduce my tax burden for the year.
But most importantly, I’ve been realizing that sacrificing a few dollars to make earning
money more efficient is well worth it.
Most of this goes to paying freelancers, which again, makes my workload so much more manageable
and makes it possible for me to do everything that I do.
I also invested in a garage studio to make filming these videos more efficient, as well
as pieces of tech here and there to improve my own creativity.
Next, I’ve been pre-paying some of my taxes throughout the year so that I don’t get
hit with anything massive at tax season.
This totals $9,700, which will likely not be my only tax obligation for the year, but
I’ve still got to discuss all that with my tax adviser.
If you have a side hustle, I highly recommend staying on top of these pre-payments so you
don’t get caught off guard when you file your return.
That leaves us with living expenses, which I have estimated to be around $2,000 per month,
or $24,000 for the year.
Of course there are expenses that I can’t predict so this number may be a little higher,
but by keeping a tab on what I have to pay every month, I know exactly how much money
I can put into investments or my businesses at any given time.
With the remainder of my income, I’ve been trying to get better about letting myself
spend on fun things instead of holding myself to invest every dollar I earn, which I explained
in my video about time vs. money vs. happiness.
Doubling my income didn’t come without struggles this year, as I had a really hard time learning
to ease off and let myself enjoy life.
Fortunately, with a combination of skillfully outsourcing tasks and lowering the pressure
I put on myself, I finished 2021 with a healthy work-life balance and some impressive income
growth.
I’m eager to take these lessons and this momentum into 2022 and see how much I grow
from here.
I know I covered a lot in this video, so if there’s anything you’d like me to discuss
in more detail, leave me a comment below.
And if you’re someone like me who’s eager to invest more money, you might want to check
out this video on 5 ways you can grow your portfolio without having to make additional
income.
I’ll see you guys next time.