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December 2025 Income Report (2025 review, 2026 predictions!)

January 16 2026 – 07:17pm

To listen to an audio version of this report, join the Patreon »

December’s revenue was $2,677, down from November’s $3,823. Profits were $1,575, down from November’s $2,541.

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Record-low income and profit

This is the fourth month in a row that 12-month trailing income was at an all-time low, and the fifth month in a row for profits. Income was $51,770 over the past year, and profits were $25,773. I started beating record-low income in September, with $61,970, and profits in August, with $29,918.

Book sales income/profit still dipping

Book revenues are still in a dip, with revenue over the past year at $33,330, which is the lowest since May of 2019, when they were $33,326. Book profits have been $15,731, and the last time they were that low was May 2021, when they were $14,224.

Finish What Matters Preview Edition

The Preview Edition of Finish What Matters will be helping book sales and overall income. As I write this, the campaign has been underway for ten days, and I’ve earned a bit more than $2,300.

I recorded some predictions as I planned the campaign, but have just now put them into Fatebook:

• 50% confidence I’ll sell between 100–200 units
• 50% confidence the basic tier will comprise of 75–90% of units sold
• 50% confidence I’ll earn between $5,000 and $7,000
• 70% confidence I’ll earn between $3,000 and $9,300

My current confidence levels may be a bit different. Using the Mind Management Preview Edition as a baseline is a little tricky, because that campaign was three months long, and this is thirty days. But in the first third (month) of that campaign I had 87 of the 213 orders.

If I extrapolate that to this campaign and say that 40% of my units (and revenue) have been booked by one third through, that would put me at 130 units and $5,750 revenue, so actually that would be within range for the units and revenue predictions.

However, some factors that may distort this may be that a shorter campaign may raise or lower sales, the previous campaign the late purchasers were able to get a higher portion of the book, which could lower sales this time around, and the introduction of tiers may bias sales towards the end of the campaign, as people consider which tiers they want. Then again, the “Founding Reader” period in the first week of the campaign may have biased sales towards the beginning of the campaign.

In any case, it appears performance is within expectations. You of course hope performance will exceed expectations, but it’s better than falling way short.

I have some stretch goals up my sleeve, but I’m feeling timid now about introducing them, which maybe suggests the campaign is slightly underperforming my expectations.

The Introduction and Chapter 1 are available immediately upon purchase, and Chapter 2 is easily on-pace to be delivered according to the schedule, so please join, and start reading right away!

KU Term Over

After much hand-wringing, I a few months ago pulled MMT from my Shopify store and other ebook retailers, to enroll it in a 90-day, exclusive Kindle Unlimited term. I made the following predictions:

• 10% confidence MMT would make triple or more Kindle revenue during KU term than previous 90 days
• 80% confident MMT would make more Kindle revenue during KU term than previous 90 days

My KU term began several days into October, but I’m not going to bother calculating exactly my earnings during the 90-day and previous term, because it appears it wasn’t even close.

The Kindle edition brought in $489 revenue from October through December, compared to $687 from July through September. So I certainly didn’t make triple the revenue, and didn’t come close to making more.

It is worth mentioning, though, that overall profits were higher: $1,868 October through December, compared to $1,307 July through September. I attribute this to lower ad spend during the period – I spent $946 on MMT ads July through September, and only $329 October through December (none of these numbers count income from foreign rights deals, which would skew results).

Still dismal numbers compared to 2024, when my average monthly profit on MMT was comparable to these quarterly profits.

$50 Services revenue for self-publishing workshop

When I made a recent trip to Austin, I serendipitously arranged a casual self-publishing workshop with the ATX Writing Club. Some members attended for free, but we split the proceeds from non-members attending. $50 isn’t much, but it has gotten my gears turning on how I could run a better-planned and more structured workshop at some future date – or perhaps virtually for my own readers.

2025 in review

Wrapping up 2025, it should be no surprise that my EOY numbers are not looking good. Revenue was down 37% – from $83,007, to $51,769, and Profit was down 40% – from $45,704, to $25,773.

Those are down from their peak in 2022 by 55% and 63%, respectively. In 2022, I grossed $116,023, and netted $69,256.

The big surprise was how steeply book sales declined. Book sales declined 50%. In 2024, I netted $5,237 from HTS, and that dropped to $1,765. MMT dropped from $16,834 to $9,455.

I’m not surprised there was a revenue decline across books, in general, as I spent the year hard at work on Finish What Matters – all that work remained unrealized gains. I’ll only know the value of that work when the trailing indicator that is book sales starts to roll in – I can only tell so much from Preview Edition sales.

Also not surprising is that Miscellaneous Products revenue has dropped 93% since 2022, as I have stopped marketing and even shut down the handful of courses in my archive.

2025 prediction outcomes

Here are some of the predictions I made at the beginning of 2025, and how they turned out.

• Prediction: 70% confidence Love Mondays subscriber base would be between 12,500 and 15,000 by EOY
• Result: No

I explicitly stated that I would “reduce my focus on growth” and try to “sustain” my subscriber base for Love Mondays. I ended last year with 11,369 subscribers, and I ended this year with 11,015 – a loss of 3%. That’s the first loss of subscribers since 2020.

Last year I spent $2,447 building leads from Meta Ads. This year I spent only $957, for 1,816 leads. So that was about 52¢ per lead, compared to last year’s 51¢. But, I lost leads faster than I gained them.

I did experiment with syndicating Love Mondays to Substack throughout 2025, and achieved 70 subscribers there.

• Prediction: 20% confidence I’d have at least 1,000 Substack subscribers by EOY
• Result: No

I had writing much on Substack as a “maybe” at the beginning of the year, didn’t have much confidence I would get much results, and indeed did not. I don’t feel I write the kind of stuff that does well on Substack, and haven’t had the bandwidth or interest to really try to crack it anyway.

• Prediction: 30% confidence I’d release a new video course in 2025
• Result: No

Reflecting on my improved video production skills, I considered that I might work on a video course, but didn’t want to distract from working on FWM. I did not produce a course.

• Prediction: 70% confidence I’d still have a Patreon by the end of 2025
• Result: Yes
• Prediction: 40% confidence I’d make more from Patreon in 2025 than 2024
• Result: No

As I considered shutting down Patreon at the beginning of the year, I figured the revenue I made from it was not insignificant, and that I hadn’t really tried pushing it. In 2025, I ran a number of experiments trying to build up Patreon revenue, including making these income reports Patreon-exclusive, and producing Patreon-exclusive videos and screencasts.

But, no growth. I made $1,715 from Patreon in 2025, which is essentially the same as the $1,717 I made in 2024.

• Prediction: 50% confidence direct sales would account for 30% or more of my book sales revenue in 2025
• Result: No

My direct sales were riding pretty high at the end of 2024, reaching a 6-month trailing average of 30%. Looking back on this one, I’m surprised I had so much confidence in sustaining that level, as that had only been 30% sure that I would grow sales to that level in the first place.

My current trailing average is 8.7%, which doesn’t seem that bad. Though actually now that I view the peak of my direct sales at the end of 2024, it makes me wonder to what extent cannibalizing my own Amazon sales dropped me out of favor with the algorithm.

• Prediction: 60% confidence I’d increase Affiliate revenue in 2025, over 2024
• Result: Yes

I was optimistic I would increase Affiliate income in 2025 for three reasons: One, I was earning as an affiliate of BYOK (Bring Your Own Keyboard), sending plenty of traffic from my distraction-free writing devices page. Two, I was getting close to creating a new ActiveCampaign Review blog post and ActiveCampaign Review video. Three, Amazon was testing an influencer rewards program that was essentially doubling my modest earnings there.

Most of that didn’t work out. Amazon’s influencer rewards program I don’t think they’ve kept up, or I’m not qualifying for the bonuses. My ActiveCampaign Review hasn’t driven a lot of referrals, and the biggest whammy of all has been that they’ll soon cut off the lifetime referral bonus for my past referrals. Finally, BYOK’s Kickstarter ended, and so did their referral program. Like many Kickstarters, I was hoping to get the item in like May, and now it should finally be arriving to me in a few weeks.

But, that didn’t stop me from barely making more in Affiliate revenue. I made $16,903, compared to last year’s $15,574. Not a huge jump. But the biggest gain was in referrals to The Alliance of Independent Authors. I made $1,535 in referrals to ALLi, compared to 2024’s $731. Most of that increase is probably “thanks” to Amazon blocking my book, which I wrote about and also made a video, after ALLi was my one salvation.

• Prediction: 60% confidence I’d publish at least one hour of YouTube content
• Result: Yes

I didn’t become a regular YouTuber in 2025, but I sensed that I might dabble a little more, with my growing video-production skills. I easily published more than an hour, though I did wonder whether to count my post of the How to Write a Book audiobook. I also recently published a couple pretty long, barely-edited talking-head videos right at the end of the year, such as one sharing my experience meditating 365 hours. These brought me across the one-hour threshold besides the audiobook, though I didn’t consciously produce them to meet this prediction.

• Prediction: 70% confidence I or my pen name would publish a novel
• Result: No

This time last year I had started my third hand-written, 68-page notebook on a novel by my pen name. I got to the end of that third notebook, but then stalled, as I focused my energy on FWM.

I had anticipated receiving the BYOK, which seemed like a good way to transcribe my handwriting without having to spend more time on a computer, but it hasn’t arrived.

I’ve been transcribing and publishing it online, one chapter at a time. I still don’t know how long it will be or how it will end, but I am making a small amount of progress.

This is an even lower priority than it was last year at this time, given I’m working on FWM, but also given my drop in revenue, I have less resources available to play wildcards. But damn, I want to do this.

• Prediction: 70% confidence I’d finish the manuscript of Finish What Matters
• Result: No

This is the most embarrassing prediction, because I was 60% sure in 2023, and 70% sure in 2024. Interestingly, right now I’m about 70% done with a rough draft, so while I’m technically just as wrong as I was last year, it feels like I’m less wrong.

Overall prediction performance

Visually, it looks like my calibration is improving, versus last year.

My Fatebook calibration as of EOY 2025

2026 predictions

Going into 2026, it feels like I should make a prediction about the biggest surprise area of 2025. It seems I somehow just assumed I’d make about the same amount selling books, but as you’ve seen, sales dropped 50%!

Book profits projections

Given that HTS and MMT are getting older, it seems unreasonable to expect to make more from them this year than last year. Then again, if I manage to release FWM, I’m hopeful the new release will have positive effects throughout the series.

2020 was my most-profitable year for HTS, two years after its release, but MMT didn’t come out until towards the end of that year. MMT’s most-profitable year was 2022, starting roughly one year after its release.

Then again, the drop in 2025 was so dramatic, it seems like there’s some small chance it was a weird anomaly that will correct itself.

So, I’m:

• 40% sure MMT will profit more in 2026 than 2025
• 40% sure HTS will profit more in 2026 than 2025
• 60% sure I’ll profit more in book sales in 2026 than 2025

So, not very optimistic – I feel like I should be more optimistic with a book on the way – but overall uncertain.

Publish Finish What Matters

Now that I have most of a manuscript finished, and have the motivation provided by Preview Edition customers (thank you!), I am going to do everything in my power to publish the book by the end of the year – hopefully much sooner than that.

As a matter of policy, I avoid predicting at 100% certainty, and I only predict in 10% increments. So, I’m:

• 90% sure I’ll publish FWM in 2026

My actual confidence is higher than that, but this accounts for those policies, and that outrageous catastrophes can happen.

Increase Misc. Products revenue

The most obvious lever for me to pull to increase revenue would be to develop and sell digital courses again – currently the Misc. Products category.

I’m not sure how I’ll categorize the small cohort and lecture versions of the FWM Preview Edition – I guess I should categorize those as services, since they’ll call for my ongoing interaction.

A Zettelkasten course of some kind would likely bring the most revenue for my efforts, but I don’t want to paint myself into a corner with a prediction that I’ll necessarily develop a completed course on the topic. I would likely try to design some kind of lower-commitment thing, such as a cohort or lecture series, to validate demand.

So I’m:

• 50% sure I’ll earn $5,000 or more from live and digital courses

This will include the portion of small group and lecture Preview Edition, beyond the price of the basic tier, so since those are not terribly likely to amount to over $5,000, this states some confidence I’ll develop something new.

Defend Affiliates/Advertising revenue

A big revenue source in big jeopardy this year is Affiliates and Advertising revenue. I’m scheduled to stop earning for my past referrals to ActiveCampaign after Q3. After that, my earnings for recent referrals will likely be pretty negligible.

There are other sources, such as ALLi referrals, and I’m hopeful BYOK will introduce a program once they have production smoothed out, but it’s pretty uncertain given how their Kickstarter has gone the interest and margins will be there for significant revenue.

TikTok revenue is also in this bucket. While I’m not making a lot of reels, I am champing at the bit to make more once I have some bandwidth cleared after finishing the book.

I will have to keep my eyes and brain open for other potential ways to prop this category back up, but there aren’t many ideas forthcoming. Given that, I’m:

• 20% sure I’ll earn more from Affiliates/Advertising in 2026 than 2025

Miscellaneous predictions

Other predictions I don’t want to go into a lot of detail on:

• 20% sure I’ll conduct an interview on a podcast: I feel the urge, but not sure how to make it worthwhile from a revenue standpoint.
• 20% sure I’ll publish a golf book: My project hasn’t gone well, and the media environment has changed since starting.
• 30% sure I’ll publish a novel (30k words or more): So want to do it, but not much room for wildcards.
• 60% sure I’ll publish 12 or more original reels in Q3 2026: Want to do more reels. Choosing Q3 because less unpredictable than Q4.
• 60% sure I’ll transition 50% or more of email contacts to an Amazon SES or similar self-directed provider: Early experiments are very promising, but it would be a lot of work and prone to complications – but save a lot of money and provide a lot of peace-of-mind.

Income

Book Sales

Misc. Products

Affiliates / Advertising

Reader Support

Services

Expenses

General

Advertising

Hosting

This post is filed under Income Reports.