Welcome back to Flexibility Is Freedom and here we are at the end of the shortest month already!
Nonetheless, it was a crazy month, with so much happening both in Canada and internationally, and all within the last few weeks.
From my end, I've been holding down the fort, so to speak, putting in the hours at my full-time job and starting to work on my basement renovations.
So far, I've designed my basement kitchen and bought all the appliances, courtesy of IKEA Canada (on sale, too!).
Unfortunately, a few cabinets are out-of-stock, so I am waiting on those to finish the kitchen. In the meantime, I'll be fixing up some floors and insulating an additional room as well.
All in all, I'm hoping to have this basement unit ready by June or July so I can put it on the rental market. 👍
Next, let's take a look at the results from my digital business last month.
Overall, the performance was in-line with January levels, and if adjusted for the number of days (28 vs. 31), February was nearly identical to January.
That's good news as it means website traffic was stable - and revenue was pretty stable as well.
There was no change in profitability (RPM) but Amazon risk did creep up to 43% thanks to greater earnings from Amazon-centered affiliate content.
In February, I spent very little direct time on my website - I haven't written or edited a single piece of content since I started my job with Treefrog.
However, I've spent time creating content briefs and providing instructions to my freelancers, as well as reviewing their work and uploading and editing content in Wordpress.
Going forward, I plan to track exactly how much time I'm spending each month on my website to have a better sense of the incremental ROI on my time, and allocate my time accordingly to the highest ROI projects.
Last but not least, I finally got around to publishing my annual report 2021 - it's a much shorter annual report than my previous ones.
In this report, I summarized the main theme of 2021 ("traffic recovery") and discussed my business activities, success with outsourcing, and strategic pivot into real estate in light of the current inflationary environment.
Next up, I'll be putting together a Next Steps 2022 plan to recalibrate my long-term strategy and articulate my short-term tactics.
In addition, I'll be making more concrete plans for building and scaling additional web properties to supplement and diversify my portfolio.
Finally, I may also discuss my renewed interest in cryptocurrencies like BitCoin as a strategic hedge against the emergence of authoritarian governments and power-hungry bureaucrats in the West, as we've seen here in Canada.
I hope to see you on my next month's income report and take care!
To Flexibility and Freedom,
Tom