Side Hustles & Real Estate Dreams

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Focusing on side hustles

Every now and then I think it's nice to write an update about what's currently keeping me busy. Today is one of these moments. I have been focused on my current work for some time now although I always have good plans for future projects, life always seems to be taking up the rest of my time or leave me without focus to start pushing these ideas through. I already wrote a little while ago that I picked up writing my book so that was the kick-off to start focusing on other projects too. I actually added this to my weekly planner and stuck with it as well since.

I had a little writers block in terms of the book the past weeks but I didn't sit still and kept building on my other side hustles as I know sometimes it takes a certain flow to be able to write and when this flow is absent, I often have this other creative flow which I will mention later on in this post.

Affiliate marketing

Remember the Listnerds journey? Well, it made me realize if I can do it there and have a successful team of 72 people within that period of time, I can also use affiliate marketing for other successes. I didn't plan on being your average affiliate marketer though and sure have no interest in clicking on emails again every day, no, I'm talking about becoming an Amazon associate as it's such a big company that I see a lot of potential to join the program and build something there that can earn me a passive income if I use it correctly.

I'm currently reading more about it and have set myself some goals before I sign up as I don't want to get rejected not qualifying and I hope that I can start that within a few months, 6 months tops. I already have some content that I never shared so far which I'm now keeping offline until I'm close to starting the sign up process. I see huge potential to build that to something valuable over time, I just need to make sure I do it correctly, and that's what I'm prepping at the moment.

Selling t-shirts with my own designs

Now this is something that's been around forever as well and the competition is fierce. That's actually the reason I never started to act upon this desire to have an online shop with my designs printed on shirts. And then dear old Instagram kept sending me a sign so it seemed, I kept seeing these videos from people that have this side hustle and turn that into a nice passive income so my interest was back and I signed up on Bonfire who seem to have good quality t-shirts (which I find very important) and good customer service as well. You can set your own price and see how much you earn per shirt, I'm not aiming for high earnings per shirt but would like to get the word out and sell some here and there eventually.

So far I made 3 designs, that I will not share yet, for two different lines I have in mind. I will reveal them when these are done. On top of that, I uploaded my daughter's artwork as well because I will also create a line with a few of her artistic outbursts to show her the options she has while growing up. I want to teach her about seeing possibilities and taking the opportunities presented, if I can sell a few on the way there to add to her savings, that's great.

I will not launch every new design when it's done but first have the other designs ready too and then start promoting the shop. The great thing is that when someone signs up and starts selling on Bonfire too, you earn 1 dollar per sale from their orders too, so this goes hand in hand with the affiliate marketing goal too. My goal is to eventually motivate a bunch of people to try this out themselves as some of them already have the art ready to use, the setting up of the shop on Bonfire is super simple and wouldn't take more than a few hours to fill if you have the artworks ready to use.

Real estate dreams

Another thing I want to explore this year is a bit more complicated but still worth checking out for future plans after we have moved to a better area, namely real estate. This is not something new in my head honestly, it's been there for years! With a few years of not even thinking about it anymore, my boyfriend and me used talk (and maybe dream lol) for whole days about wanting to start a real estate business at some point when we had the funds to do so and mostly when we were in the right area. Things faded as we weren't happy in Budapest and this was not going to happen for as long as we were staying there. But now we're in the country we wanted to be in again and a little birdie reminded me about this idea.

I realized that I totally forgot about my younger years when I just became a mother and started a real estate course from home but the situation I was in didn't allow me to get through the tough part of it: code of law. I remember it drove me nuts, I didn't get through this tough part and didn't push through because of the situation I was in. The timing was bad and I didn't have the backbone to make it a priority. Now that I remembered this earlier interest to become a real estate agent, I figured that it may be much simpler to become one here in Spain than it was in Holland.

Turns out I was right

I did some quick digging for info and quickly discovered that I was right. This was enough to put it on my to-do list to read and learn more about the steps that I need to take to explore if this option is a solid one to focus on for the next year. I collected a bunch of website and documents to go through. I will only gain knowledge for the time being and decide if and how to act upon taking the steps to start a real estate agency after we are fully settled in the right area. Until then, I will use my time to learn the ins and outs so that I come prepared.

I have this vision for years now that at some point, we will run an agency together and be a great team selling and renting out houses. This is not a short term goal to focus on but I see us doing this as our job until we retire at some point. Even reading about this and dreaming a bit about the future makes me already excited so I know this is a good step to take. Even if results will not show up until maybe years from now, I'm dedicated to keep this one on my focus list.

Exciting times ahead

I feel much more focused than I was a year ago for example because almost all my extra time besides work went towards the emigration because that was priority number 1. Now we will be moving to another area in the next 6 months or so again but this is such a baby step compared to what I had to arrange a year ago that I'm not worried at all. The road towards accomplishing the next move will contain some weekends of exploration which we hope to start soon. All much better than trying to get stuff done from another country, I can assure you.

So that's all for now, as soon as I created enough t shirt designs, I will start shilling them. Hopefully, you will come back to see them :)