Here is a breakdown of my income for August.
| Interest | $3.29 |
| Amazon FBA | (4.59) |
| Uber | $208.02 |
| Ebay/Other Selling | $25.31 |
| Cashback | $56.07 |
| Dividends | $13.29 |
| Focus Group | $100 |
| Unemployment | $640 |
| Mystery Shop | $19 |
| Amazon Merch | $2.21 |
| Job | $433.49 |
| Total | $1496.09 |
My income improved in August after a few poor months. I collected a couple weeks of unemployment and then started a new job the last week of the month which helped increase my income quite a bit.
Amazon FBA income was negative for the month. I sold one item and it was returned before the month was over. Whenever an item is returned I have to eat some fees which is what caused the loss this month. I have had terrible luck with items getting returned this year. I haven’t been selling much on FBA and with my results so far this year I don’t plan to sell much more there.
I’m going to do more selling on eBay and Facebook Marketplace. I had a couple of small sales on those platforms giving me a profit of $25.31 for the month.
My online income was negative. I had to pay to renew a domain name and I did not have any income during the month. That isn’t too surprising since I haven’t been posting or doing much else online. I’m still considering making a new wager with HealthyWage and blogging about the process which will hopefully lead to some affiliate commissions. I need to lose some weight before I can make another wager though. My links for Bluehost (aff link) and (aff link) Hostgator for web hosting didn’t result in any commissions. I’ll keep trying. I need to do some review posts or something different to create interest.
Dividend income was up some since more of my stocks pay quarterly dividends in August. I do my dividend investing with Robinhood. If you sign up using my Robinhood referral link we will both get one share of free stock. Thanks to anyone who signs up using my link. Every little bit helps.
I made $100 from participating in a focus group. They send me emails about focus groups every month but I usually don’t qualify. For this focus group they invited more participants than they needed. They ended up not choosing me for this group after I showed up but I still got paid the same $100 I would have received for participating. That was a pretty good deal.
I made a tiny bit from shirt sales on Amazon Merch. I paid $30 last year to have a couple of designs made and I haven’t recouped that money yet. I think I’ll get it back eventually. I need to research how to promote my designs. I might write more about my efforts to make money with Amazon Merch later this year.
I drove some for Uber to make some extra money. Now that I have a job I won’t be driving for Uber any more.
The big change to my income was getting rehired to the document review job. That will give me the opportunity to significantly increase my income over what it has been the past few months. I’m allowed to work 60 hours per week at the doc review job. There is no overtime pay for hours over 40 though. I plant to work over 40 hours every week to get my savings back to the level they were earlier this year. Since I can work more hours at my job and make a guaranteed return it doesn’t make much sense to invest a lot of time in alternative ways to make income. There will be fewer sources of income this month.
Although I had several sources of income, none of them add up to very much. The job is what provides me with a decent amount of income. I already have a two-week vacation scheduled for October, but after that I plan to work straight through next summer and work two jobs during tax season in order to build up a significant cushion of savings.
How was your month?