This report is so late it’s embarrassing. So let’s not talk about it.

In December, I was still focusing on the Quantum Physics book, and started to write a second one.

I am still freelancing, but the time I devote to it has significantly reduced. So has the income coming from it. Which makes it difficult to pay the bills.

I also really don’t see myself freelancing more than 50 hours per month and fulfilling the duties of being a dad at the same time. I just don’t have the time. Any advice you might have, would be welcome.

Data Freelance

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Data Internships

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xTopics

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Soccrbets

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Freelancing

Still doing it. Reduced hours, same rate. Barely pays the rent after taxes.

Publishing

After having published the book at the end of the November I spent aggressively on ads for the whole of December. I found out that December is probably the worst month to launch, since ads are very expensive. Also, I think I made a mistake launching the e-book and the paperback at the same time. Note to myself, next time do:

• Publish the e-book
• Gather reviews for the first 2-3 weeks (10 or 15 should be enough)
• Publish the paperback
• Run ads after

The launch was quite slow, but I managed to sell 169 copies of the book (40 paperbacks and 129 e-book copies) including the free ones. My main goal this month was to gather reviews, and I was able to get to 15, but I think I can get more, especially because some of my ARC readers have not submitted one yet.

Since it’s very hard to get reviews these days, it’s unrealistic for me to push much harder. It won’t help my rank unless I get to 100 reviews and I do not have the budget for it. But I hope to slowly get them organically over the next few months. I am keeping my e-book price very as low as I can at $0.99 and this helps to attract some readers that might leave a review. So basically, I use the e-book for the reviews, I’ll make the money with the paperback.

My BSR (Best Seller Rank) as of today is 152K, but I could get as low as 52k at the beginning of January. Ideally I would keep it lower than 100k, but I would have to spend much more on ads.

The cashflow

Time to look at the income for this month (without freelancing).

I am in terrible red. But I was expecting it, especially with the money spent on ads for the book launch. January seems to be already at break-even or even slightly profitable.

The book promotion could and should go on, and I am exploring a few ways, mainly using socials. For example, a post on Threads the other day got more than 50k views, and I am sure it was responsible for a spike in sales right at the beginning of January. TikTok is next, I already know what to do, I just need to find the time to execute.