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I sure miss this platform. For a long time it seemed like a golden goose. Being paid good money for my writing was a dream come true. I still hold out hope that the crypto market will rebound. However up until last year I was highly dependent upon Steemit for income, and when the collapse really arrived in full force, I had the rug pulled out from under me.

What was I to do? I needed replacement sources of income, and quick. One of those avenues I explored was Medium, a paid blogging platform like Steemit but which pays you directly in USD. There's a $50 per year subscription fee to be a Medium Partner, required if you want to make money. Let's see how I've done in the past 9 months:

You can see my income steadily ramp up, buoyed by upvotes from the owners of Medium publications I've published my articles through. Then a steep dropoff as they withdraw their upvotes, like a mother bird tossing her chicks out of the nest. Still, the organic growth in the two months since then has not been too shabby.

Let's assume my next three months pay the same. I expect to see further increase, but just for the sake of a conservative estimate. I'll have made $817 in a year, with the annual partner fee subtracted. Not great, but still better than Steemit can do for me right now. I also intend to keep investing in my Medium account and hopefully grow it to the point that I one day earn in a month what I currently earn in a year, at which point I could just about live off it if I had to.

But since it's nowhere close to that lucrative yet, what else have I been doing to stay afloat? Driving for Postmates, and lots of it, for several months. It's a risky business since your insurance doesn't cover collisions that occur while using your vehicle for commercial purposes unless you have a commercial driver's license. Very high risk of financial self-ruination, so of course I looked earnestly for a way out of that ASAP.

I'm doing pretty well on Patreon, thanks to going viral some time in October. Yes, I build underwater hamster habitats. I kept this part of my life separate from Steemit until now, but most fans of the hamster project have found my Steemit already so there's no longer any point. The income from Patreon let me stop risking financial ruination driving for Postmates every day of the week just to make rent.

Naturally I capitalized on this development as much as I could figure out how to. Merch was an obvious direction to go in, but I waited until I'd done enough research to ensure I wasn't partnering with a company that sells poorly reviewed products or anything. It's important to me that I never put my name or brand on anything that's crap.

There's also an option on Youtube to display your wares underneath all of your videos, which I thought was rather neat:

Around this time I also made a NewProject2 and Subscribestar account, for people who wanted to support my endeavors but felt uncomfortable using Patreon due to their recent history of political censorship.

My Youtube channel is itself also monetized now, with over 15,000 subs. I make fuck all from it. It looks like I will make $13.72 this month, if the predictive algorithm is to be believed.

I don't anticipate Youtube ever becoming a major source of income for me, but although I am always short on cash, I am never short on ideas. For example I've recently gotten started building an audience on Twitch, on two accounts. The first, Hampturehamcam, is where I stream live footage of my pet hamsters 24/7:

There's also the main channel here, which I stream myself gaming on from time to time:

besides all of that, I'm working on getting licensed to fly my drone professionally, as I discovered recently from a bit of googling that drone photography and videography are quite lucrative indeed. Is that everything? I'm not even sure. I have my fingers in so many pies right now. It's good to be industrious I suppose, but lately it really feels as if you have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are.

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Nice to see you guys again!