Retrospective Autumn 2012

I claimed failure in my October status report. It is time for retrospective.

I have 18 people in my Other Stream Creators blog list. 14 of them are past their deadlines. How are they doing?


Successes (or nearly successes) 

Passive Incoming is almost at her $800 per month goal. She has no deadline date. Her last reported month was nearly $700. She writes small eBooks that she sells at Amazon. As she did not have any previous work to build on, this is an amazing result.

Melissa Rachel Black reached her $50 per month goal by drawing vector illustrations. In addition, she has a new source of active income by drawing commission illustrations.

Pierre Bastien did not reach his original $300 goal and reported that as a failure. I still wanted to list him here, since he got over $150 in September. That is a reasonable bunch of cash - definitely worth mentioning.

Also, Pierre was the only "failed"-reporter that I could find!


What About Everyone Else? 

The other 11 people have not written any reports that I could easily find. I assume those people just did not make it and did not bother to report it. Some of them have stopped blogging altogether. One of them has even removed the blog post where his goal was published.


So, Why Did I Fail?

At first, I went through a set of "make believe explanations" in my head. I would have probably continued to believe in them, but then came the time to write this report.

I did not really fail because:

• I was out of alignment with my goal 
• My goal was not phrased in the most motivating way 
• I chose a slow way to make passive income 
• I did not work from my strengths 
• I had no concrete idea how to get to my goal

I failed because I did not provide enough value.

I spent most of my time learning things. The people who succeeded in the challenge were busy publishing valuable stuff. Stuff someone was happy to pay for.

I did publish things... but what is out there is not much. I have about 15 articles in my SBI! site. I have this blog. I planned on creating 2 new passive income streams before Christmas. I have one new stream, and it is *tiny*. The fact that I'm getting at least something tells that my creations are valuable to someone.

Instead of publishing things, I learned things. What I have learned has a huge value to me - but against my goal that work is totally invisible. If I want to reach any monetary goals, I need to start publishing stuff. I need to quiet down my inner self-critic and just do it.

The big question that rises from what I have learned from this passive income challenge is: How do I know (in advance) what people want to buy?

The methods I have learned for finding out niches and evaluating their "profitability" seem to me like first steps to finding an audience to deal with. But my passive-income puzzle is still missing some pieces. I do hope 30x500 delivers them.

In the meantime, I continue to show up.

October 2012 Status Report

Passive Income In October 2012
$5

I'm getting just a trickle of pennies from AdFly, Adsense and SiteBuildIt!


Costs In October 2012
$60

I'm happy to see the costs coming down. I'm still paying SiteBuildIt! monthly and plan to continue with it. I spent the other $30 to books. I needed those as a study material for my own book.


I can't build a 1000€ passive income stream by Christmas 2012

You may call me an early quitter if you want, but I've stopped believing my current goal is reachable to me. That is my subjective reality. I don't feel like I'd be quitting, I feel like I'm moving on.

Due to the collaborative 30x500 prep work I'm beginning to see where I really stand. When I started this project I thought I knew a lot about passive income. Now I know I knew very little.

My approach has been far from optimal. Actually, my approach was like shooting into the dark, hoping to hit something. Thanks to 30x500 I'm seeing that now and I believe it can be changed. But realizing all the strategic mistakes I've made has eaten up the motivation to work.

I don't want to publish new products with my faulty process. 

So, I've been procrastinating. I've tried to push myself to work on my project, but the motivation is gone. I'm going to quit procrastinating now and give myself a permission to NOT work on this project.

I've written over 20 pages for my book, but publishing it does not seem like a smart thing to do. Not now.

I have been mulling over this a lot. On the other hand I feel I should "just do it", but from my new viewpoint I'd be publishing a dead baby. Everything is an experience, but nothing happens without a motivation.


What next?

I still love SiteBuildIt! and my blogs - I'm not going to abandon them. I'm going to continue the pursuit for increasing my passive income - even though this project has made me realize that building passive income takes a lot of work.

30x500 starts next week and I'm targeting to be the next star student.

I'll be updating the stats until the old goal is due and then I'll put up a new goal. For now, just studying and doing 30x500 is enough. Of course I'd love to start increasing my income right away, but there is some learning to do first.

I'll also continue with SiteBuildIt. I kinda see SBI! compatible with 30x500 base ideology. In it you just don't go to the "Customer Safari" to search for your audience. Instead, you'll express your own worldview and attract a compatible audience over the first year or two. No wonder it takes time to earn with that approach! Yet, the approach is solid and the course is really useful. My traffic is in solid increase and I enjoy having the site. I'm still at day 8. Two more to go!

I'll continue posting on the topics of passive income and product building as I stumble to interesting things. Thanks for helping me with this project!