Passive Income Report – March Edition: Progress, Challenges & Wins

Welcome to the March edition of my Passive Income Report!

If you’ve been following along, you know I share these monthly breakdowns to be fully transparent about my journey toward financial freedom through passive income. Whether you’re just getting started or already deep into multiple streams of income, my goal is to show you what’s working (and what’s not), where I’m placing my bets, and how I’m learning as I go.

Spoiler alert: March was a mixed bag. Some streams really took off, others flatlined, and a couple actually cost me money. That’s the nature of this game—ups, downs, and lessons at every turn.

So grab a coffee, get comfy, and let’s unpack it all: the numbers, the wins, the facepalms, and the action plan for April.

March Passive Income Breakdown

Let’s not waste time—here’s the breakdown of what each income stream brought in during March:

Income Stream	March Income	February Income	Change	Notes
Dividend Stocks	$742	$645	+15.04%	Stronger payouts from utilities and REITs
Real Estate (REIT + Crowdfund)	$366	$385	-4.93%	Slight dip due to late distribution
Digital Products (eBooks, PDFs)	$423	$491	-13.85%	Lower launch activity, evergreen sales only
Print-on-Demand	$147	$89	+65.17%	Surprise bestseller in niche apparel
YouTube Ad Revenue	$203	$161	+26.09%	Higher RPMs and a viral short
Affiliate Marketing	$1,082	$1,219	-11.24%	Slowed traffic from organic SEO
Online Course Sales	$934	$667	+39.99%	New promo campaign helped a lot
Blog Display Ads	$312	$291	+7.21%	Traffic bump = more ad revenue
Peer-to-Peer Lending	$66	$74	-10.81%	A couple defaults hurt returns
Crypto Yield (staking, lending)	$109	$98	+11.22%	Still cautiously testing this space

Total Passive Income for March: $4,384

Compared to February’s $4,120, that’s a 6.4% month-over-month increase, which I’m happy with—especially given the hiccups in traffic and some passive funnels stalling out.

Where Things Went Right

Let’s unpack what actually worked this month—and where I faceplanted a little.

Wins Worth Celebrating

• YouTube Shorts Momentum
• One of my finance-related shorts unexpectedly picked up traction. It brought in thousands of views and pushed ad revenue up by 26%. Lesson learned? Keep experimenting.
• Print-on-Demand Surprise
• A t-shirt in a very niche audience started selling after a Reddit post caught fire. I didn’t even promote it. Organic wins feel great.
• Course Sales Rebound
• I tested a 72-hour promo email sequence for one of my evergreen digital courses. The open rates and click-throughs were solid, leading to nearly $1K in sales.

Challenges That Slowed Me Down

• Affiliate Marketing Downtrend
• Organic SEO traffic dipped due to some Google core update volatility. I’ve been hit before, but this one felt random. Time to rework some cornerstone content.
• Digital Product Sales Stagnation
• I didn’t launch anything new this month, and it shows. My evergreen PDFs and templates still sold, but they need a little love and fresh traffic.
• Real Estate Distribution Delays

• A couple of the crowdfunded platforms I use pushed back March payouts to early April. Not ideal, but not the end of the world either.

Lessons Learned This Month

Let’s get honest: passive income isn’t always passive. Here are a few real takeaways from March:

• Keep feeding what’s working: YouTube and online courses both responded well to small inputs. More videos, more promos—that’s the move.
• Diversify traffic, not just income streams: SEO can be unstable. I’m doubling down on email list building and Pinterest traffic to even things out.
• Don’t sleep on small wins: That $147 from print-on-demand? It may not seem like much, but that came from one design I made six months ago. If I had ten more like that…

Top 5 Action Items for April

• Launch a new mini digital product: I’m creating a budgeting template bundle aimed at Gen Z freelancers. Low effort, high relevance.
• Refresh top affiliate content: Updating product reviews and SEO optimization across five high-earning blog posts.
• Post 3 new YouTube videos: Focused on side hustles, passive income ideas, and one behind-the-scenes vlog of this report.
• Email list re-engagement sequence: Cleaning up dead weight and launching a value-driven newsletter series.
• Experiment with Medium and LinkedIn Articles: Repurposing blog content to test new passive income audiences.

FAQs

How much of this income is truly passive?

That’s the million-dollar question. Roughly 60–70% of the income this month came from assets I didn’t touch during March—like dividend stocks, older blog content, or designs made months ago.

The other 30–40% involved some ongoing effort, like writing emails or uploading a new YouTube short. It’s semi-passive, but still way more leveraged than trading hours for dollars.

What tools or platforms do you use for tracking all this?

• Google Sheets: For monthly income breakdowns.
• QuickBooks Self-Employed: For accounting and tax estimates.
• Affiliate Dashboards: Amazon, ShareASale, Impact, and others.
• YouTube Studio + TubeBuddy: For tracking YouTube metrics.
• Gumroad and Teachable: For selling digital products and courses.

How long did it take you to build these streams?

Some of these income streams (like my dividend portfolio) took 2+ years to build up. Others, like my course and affiliate blog, started showing returns within 6–12 months. There’s no one-size-fits-all. The key is consistency + compounding effort

Do you reinvest your passive income?

Absolutely. About 40–50% of each month’s income goes straight into reinvestments, mostly into dividend stocks, index funds, or funding new digital products. I also keep a “creator reinvestment fund” to outsource content writing or pay for tools that help me scale.

Is passive income worth it in 2025 with so much competition?

100% yes. There’s more noise, but also more opportunity. The creator economy is still growing. People want education, community, tools, and shortcuts. If you solve a problem well and build trust, the opportunities are endless.

Conclusion

March wasn’t perfect, but it was progress—and that’s what counts.

I crossed the $4K mark again, saw surprising wins from platforms I’d nearly forgotten about, and learned some valuable lessons about traffic, product cycles, and what really counts as “passive.”

If you’re working toward building your own passive income streams, remember this: it takes time, patience, and some experimentation. Not everything will work. But the ones that do? They can keep paying you for months—or even years.

Thanks for reading this far. Let me know what streams you’re exploring or what you’d like to see in the April report. Here’s to building more freedom, one income stream at a time.