HAMY

My 4 Side Project Income Sources - A Breakdown

Date: 2024-07-03 | create | business | shares | iamhamy |

We're nearing the end of June which means it's the end of another half and time to reflect on how it went / where I want to go in the future.

Over the past year I've launched several new projects from starting a membership to writing / filming more videos. I regularly get questions about why I do these things and how they're working out so here I'm going to share a breakdown of my side project income sources to give more context for these discussions.

HAMY LABS - Income Breakdown

Overall I have 4 side projects that actually make money. This means that a majority of my projects (46 and counting) make zero money (and really make negative money as I pay for their upkeep).

HAMY LABS - Income Breakdown

In order of income share:

Shares Income Deep Dive

Something to highlight about this income is that 85.5% of it comes from my Shares category - money directly or mostly attributable to the blog posts and videos I create.

HAMY LABS - Shares Income Breakdown

  • YouTube - Videos I create
  • HAMINIONs - Membership to support my creations and get access to project examples I share about
  • iamhamy - The blog posts I write

I might also argue that a majority of my CloudSeed revenue is attributable to my Shares because I don't run ads so not sure how anyone would find out about it if they didn't stumble upon one of my shares.

I get asked pretty regularly why I make videos and why they are in the form they are - they're essentially me reading and providing commentary on my blog posts. The reason they're written is because I enjoy writing and think I'm good at it. The reason I make videos is because they simply outperform in terms of reach and revenue (~13x this year). So I've tried to find a happy medium between what I really enjoy and what seems to be working.

I'll admit they are probably not the best quality things out there to watch but they work for me and I think enjoying the process is key to long-term satisfaction / success.

Income Moving Forward

So it's great to see that my Shares continue to bring in income. I enjoy creating them and this income helps offset the costs of experimentation which makes this seem like a fun and sustainable hobby for me long term and thus something I will continue to invest in.

That said I think it's clear that Shares alone are not and can not be enough to support myself full time. They can be a fun hobby but my Shares are too niche and technical to reach a critical mass necessary to reach ramen profitability on ad revenue alone.

For reference tech videos often get RPMs of around $3 and the most popular tech videos like mine (mine are not popular) get around 10k views meaning revenue of ~$30. Each of these videos can take anywhere from 4-20 hours to produce depending on the video which means making $1.50 - $7.50 per hour. It's money but you're better off sticking to your day job if that's what you're after.

Related: How much money my 2k subscriber YouTube channel made in its first month of monetization

This is a common thing in the Creator economy - most Creators (tech or not) cannot go fulltime on content. The latest statistic I heard is that ab 50% of Creators make < $15k per year (and I'm making WAY less than that). If they want to make money from it or go full time on it they really need to lean into other source of income - partnerships, service offerings, products etc.

While not ideal (ideally I'd just have infinite money) overall this may be a good thing. I've found that sometimes hobbies are best kept as hobbies - trying to go all in on them sometimes makes it feel like a job and steals the fun away.

So going forward I'm going to explore other routes of monetization to see where this thing takes me. Probably building more side projects and seeing if those make money.

But largely I'm going to just keep doing what I'm doing - I like thinking ab things, crystallizing my thoughts, and discussing it with others. If I can find a way to do that enjoyably long term then that's a win in my book.

But you know if the money is just lying there I might as well pick it up right? Right?!

Next

Thanks for following along on my internet journey thus far. More to come!

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