This is the first time when I use my quarterly template. Hopefully it is good and covers all the relevant parts that you would like to see. Click here in case you want to read my previous quarterly report or enjoy the read below for my Portfolio Quarterly earnings report quarter 4 2019.
The idea of this post is to show my active and passive income streams and highlight the profit and loss statement for each, the investments done in each and the returns. In parallel to this, I will mention the challenges faced and the decisions I took to overcome them.
If you are reading an older post, but want to check my progress towards my goals, then you can check my passive income goals or just check out my monthly updated portfolio.
Active Income
Consulting Firm – My consulting services
Due to the confidentiality of information, my active income for the consulting firm will not be shown in this post or any other future quarterly earnings. This is still my bread and butter (>90%) of revenue and I must respect my customers and my company’s confidentiality.
In order to generate notoriety for my company and to start promoting eBook and eLearning sales from my website, I have incurred the cost of 585 EUR for new Hosting, SEO services and some ads.
Personal Blog
I currently have no revenue from the blog. This is currently only generating a cost which I expected as the initial investment. Because I created my consulting firm website + online eBook/eLearning platform together with my blog, I am covering the cost for this one together with the one associated with my firm.
The profits made from the blog are listed below:
|
What |
EUR |
Comments |
|
Ads |
0 |
No ads on blog for now |
|
0 |
Nothing so far |
|
|
Donations |
0 |
No donations button on blog for now |
|
Total Revenue |
0 |
This means that I am currently at a loss of 585 EUR with my blog site and blog because I had no revenue from it. This is 403 EUR less than the previous quarter as I am working on reducing these costs.
Passive Income
Paying off Debt
As you remember from my active and passive income streams article, I consider paying off debt a good part of my passive income. Why? Simple – reducing the amount paid in loans increases the amount invested.
We planned to further pay 10,000 EUR, but have delay this to the 1st quarter of 2020. This will be covered in the next portfolio earnings report, but we are still thinking if we go for 10 or 20 as we only have 3 more years of fixed interest prior to reaching the variable one. The reason why we do this is listed on my view for prepayment on the mortgage.
Currently our mortgage has reduced to a monthly cost of 1,295 EUR as the apartment is not rented, but let to family. The next steps here remain the same as before: to sell the apartment in 1-2 years from now and put all the money from the sale as an early payment on the mortgage.
Stock and ETF investments
The core of my passive income is my investing. This is the area towards which I want to allocate most of my savings and go long. As my strategy is buy and hold, I can easily flag this under my passive income stream. During the last quarter I have added some additional VC investments + single stocks and ETFs as you can see in my portfolio.
As this is my first quarterly report, I will add here the total P&L and in each future report, I will compare to the prior quarter. My total profit from investments since the previous quarter report is of +2,632 EUR and you can check my unrealized P&L since inception in my financial portfolio page.
Venture Capital investments
| Symbol | Position | Currency | Market Value |
| Carwow | 447 | GBP | 1,500 |
| Etergo | 13,350 | EUR | 5,340 |
| Total | EUR | 7,125 | |
| vs previous Q | EUR | +65 | |
Single Stocks
Added Baidu to my portfolio 1 day prior to their earnings report and it went up. I have changed my cash position with the amount spent on this stock.
| Symbol | Position | Currency | Market Value |
| AAPL | 10 | USD | 2,794 |
| AEO | 20 | USD | 292 |
| ATVI | 20 | USD | 1,187 |
| BABA | 10 | USD | 2,126 |
| BIDU | 10 | USD | 1,274 |
| BMW | 20 | EUR | 1,483 |
| CLF | 50 | USD | 411 |
| DPW | 30 | EUR | 1,034 |
| TLRD | 100 | USD | 436 |
| VOD | 210 | GBP | 315 |
| Total | EUR | 10,645 | |
| vs previous Q | EUR | +2,369 | |
ETFs
Although this is the area in which I would like to invest most of my money, currently everything was up and I thought it more profitable to get some single stocks instead.
| Symbol | Position | Currency | Market Value |
| CSEMUS | 4 | EUR | 864 |
| EQQQ | 12 | EUR | 2,301 |
| CSSPX | 1 | USD | 320 |
| EXS3 | 4 | EUR | 965 |
| MEUD | 12 | EUR | 2,056 |
| TNOW | 7 | EUR | 2,213 |
| WSML | 162 | USD | 894 |
| Total | EUR | 9,504 | |
| vs previous Q | EUR | +721 | |
Cash
| Symbol | Position | Currency | Market Value |
| Cash | 3,957 | EUR | 3,949 |
| Cash | 3,686 | USD | 3,690 |
| Cash | 8 | GBP | 8 |
| Total | EUR | 7,316 | |
| vs previous Q | EUR | -999 | |
Hint: I use Revolut for my currency exchange.
P2P Lending
P2P lending seems somewhat new and it looks like a fad, but I prefer to invest into it rather than cryptocurrencies because this is something that I understand. As an EU citizen, I decided to use 2 main platforms: Mintos for small buyback loans and Crowdestate for secure debt real-estate and company loans.
Today I am very happy of my decision as there are two platforms that have issues. One of them is considered a scam: Kuetzal and the other own is suddenly down(404): Envestio. Both these platforms are P2B focused and had rate of returns of over 16%.
As for my investments, one of mine from Crowdestate has defaulted and they have initiated the procedures to recover the amount as it was a secure loan. There are some challenges with the lender as they transferred their assets prior to defaulting. In total the value is of 126 EUR and I am counting this as a loss.
Due to automated investing and a review and configuration of the platforms every 2-3 months, I currently have a profit of +476 EUR on top of the previous quarterly report.
| P2P Lending | Invested | Total Value | Profit/Loss |
| Mintos | 8,000 | 8,989 | 989 |
| Crowdestate | 7,031 | 7,685 | 528 |
| Total | 1,517 | ||
| vs previous Q | +476 | ||
Sell eBook online
This is one of the standard passive income streams as shown in all media by bloggers or by the passive income community. As my experience is in the niche of a niche, I have created and published an eBook on it (222 pages). This eBook was created by using Canva and I have published it on Teachable.
After running a new campaign of ads on Facebook and Linkedin in order to advertise a free online course for the 1st chapter of my eBook, I managed to have 60 subscriptions to the free course and my 2nd eBook sale.
I will start to omit my costs for the platforms as they are covered together with my quarterly costs for maintaining my firm website and this blog. As I count that at a loss at the beginning of this post, then I could say that I am at a profit of +15 USD. This is less than in the previous report as the 1st buyer opted for a payment in installments and cancelled the credit card after the first payment.
Sell Course online
This supplements the book, but I need to learn from my mistakes. As the eBook sales are low, I have created the first chapter of the course and launched it for free. I currently have 61 enrollments and it is growing by 1-2 per week after I stopped my ads. As I am still trying to collect leads, I have started working on a YouTube channel where I save and release videos that I can both use in the course and link to my articles on my consulting firm website.
As the costs to sustain this are linked to the blog and the firm website, these are already included in the expense listed at the start of this post.
Affiliate marketing
At this point in time I do not have the actual time, nor the willingness to invest a lot in affiliate marketing. This is why I have no investment, nor profit in this category for now.
You can find a full list of my affiliate links (only products I use – either free version or paid/subscription) at my Resources page (just check the Menu).
YouTube videos
Last, but not least is YouTube. I have created my YouTube channel and have 9 videos there. As I need 1000 subscribers or at least 4000 hours of of watched videos to monetize, this will take some time. I currently have 25 subscribers and under 2 hours of watched time.
Conclusion
In order to conclude my Passive Income Portfolio Quarterly earnings report for Q4 2019, I have listed below the overall profit and loss across all mentioned segments.
| IN | OUT | |
| Company | N/A | 585 |
| Blog | 0 | N/A |
| VC | 65 | 0 |
| Stocks | 2369 | 999 |
| ETFs | 721 | 0 |
| P2P Lending | 476 | 0 |
| eBook | 0 | 3 |
| Course | 0 | 0 |
| Affiliate | 0 | 0 |
| YouTube | 0 | 0 |
| 3,631 | 1,587 | |
| Bottom Line | 2,044 | |
I am happy to say that I am at an overall profit of 2,044 EUR between Oct 19 and Dec 19.