I have been and will be donating 100% of it!
Side Note: Yes, I am wearing Donut pants in this photo…
For 2021, I gave myself the stretch goal of making $1K of side hustle income. To be totally honest, I had no idea how I would achieve this, and didn’t really expect to… But as I took a look at the books this month, I was really surprised when the numbers added up 🙌
Today, I will share a breakdown of where this income came from and how I put it to use-by donating it to worthy causes on behalf of my friends and family!
Freelancing
Since I studied abroad back in 2019, I stayed in touch with a Resume Writing firm in Singapore. Although I no longer help clients with resumes, I started preparing and hosting career-related webinars with students and professionals in Malaysia and Hong Kong.
Recently, I started getting more involved with the marketing and content creation side. A couple of my paid gigs included crafting an email newsletter draft and rewriting a blog post which you can find here. In 2022, I look forward to doing more of this type of work.
Resume Rescue
This year, I introduced premium packages for my Resume Rescue service which included resume rewriting and career coaching. The free service is still available to students and people who don’t want to pay with the condition that they allow me to do a live resume review on TikTok (where I anonymize their resumes) for educational purposes. You can see an example here 😅
Miscellaneous
This was the tiniest source of income this year, but every dollar counts!
This bucket includes earnings from selling my Career Walking Deck templates. Note: I did not officially launch my shop yet (it’s coming in 2022 so stay tuned ☺️), but someone actually reached out to me on LinkedIn asking about templates, so I did an early-bird sale.
I also started making a bit of money from Google AdSense. However, you need to reach the $100 threshold to get paid out-so I am not quite there yet!
Giving it forward
Back when I was student, my goal was to make extra money for my Sushi 🍣 & Bubble Tea 🧋 fund.
However, my full-time job at Microsoft has given me many opportunities to save and invest towards my future, and has even allowed me to pay off $40K of student loans and purchase my first home this year.
Hence, knowing how lucky I am to be where I am at today, I’ve become more passionate about giving it forward. With my $1K of side hustle income this year, I have been and will be donating all of it towards causes and charities that I am passionate about as well as on behalf of special people who have made an impact on me and my career! Microsoft also matches most, if not all, of my donations-which is even better 🎉
Last year in 2020, I focused on #BlackLivesMatter and made a $5 donation for every person who re-shared my blog posts Part 1: The Broken System and Part 2: The Broken Intention. Through personal donations, peer donations, and matches from both Microsoft and Apple, we managed to contribute $1,200 towards the Black Health Alliance, Egale Canada Human Rights Trust, Innocence Canada Foundation, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
This year in 2021, I am glad that I can continue using the #kkarenism platform to make a positive impact in my own way. I am grateful to everyone who took a minute to visit this blog, make a purchase, or share a post/referral.
Thank you for being a part of this journey, and I can’t wait for what’s next!
Originally published at https://kkarenism.com on December 30, 2021.
