Well, as with many of the other months, January has been nothing short of a whirlwind.

I created my first consulting website and everything didn’t go as planned, I made a really awesome tutorial showing you how I redesigned my own website without coding, and I began work on another consulting website. All this while I continue to work on my new authority website as well.

You’re probably thinking, “That’s a lot of websites!” Well yeah, it is and I agree with you.

Continue to read below to understand exactly what I did.

Before I begin the income report, if this is your first time on my website let me explain why I write a detailed income report each month that outlines the money I made (or lost) and the time I spent working each month.

I’m doing this for a number of reasons:

1) I strive to be transparent about what it takes to make money online. Unfortunately the “make money online” industry is full of scammers that make ridiculous promises like “Work 10 minutes and make $5,000!” The reality couldn’t be further from the truth, this online business gig is a lot of hard work and these reports show you how much time I put into my business and how much income I make from that effort.

2) These reports help me keep track of my own progress. By creating these reports every month, I’m able to see where I’m spending money and how much time I’m spending doing various tasks.

3) These reports hold me accountable. Each month I list goals I have for the following month and my hope is that my audience will hold me accountable.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s dive into the report.

How much time did I work this month?

Discussing this month’s time worked

I spent more time blogging this month than I did previously and I have to be honest, it feels good to do again.

Previously I was blogging to try to get ranked for different SEO terms, but now I’ve just decided to blog out of passion and I’ve fallen in love all over again.

Here are the posts from the month:

The Ultimate Thrive Themes Tutorial And Review:  This one is an absolute gem and something that I think everybody needs to take a look at. Basically this blog post shows how I redesigned my own website without any coding knowledge and I sincerely believe that you can do it too.

9 Things I’ve Learned While Being an Online Entrepreneur for 9 Months:  There are a ton of lessons that I’ve learned my first nine months as a online entrepreneur, and these are nine of the most important ones.

Quit Being So Cheap And Outsource!: Many people are hesitant to outsource their work, but I think that this blog post might sway you to do so. Don’t worry, it’s in your best interest.

December 2015 Income Report: As always, I completed an income report and December wasn’t too shabby.

Aside from the blogging, I completed the launch of my first consulting website (LawyerInternetAds.com) and unfortunately things haven’t gone as well as I had planned.

After spending over $160 to send individualized emails and run Facebook ads as well as LinkedIn Ads to a free webinar, I had the realization that lawyers get pitched on stuff all the time.

Oops.

Probably should have thought of this before because I spent quite a bit of time creating a funnel as well as the website itself.

But I think that this is a pretty common mistake people make. You get all excited about idea, you jump on it and build it, and then afterwards you begin to wonder why it isn’t working.

It’s okay though, I’m still going to keep the website up and have been utilizing other platforms to connect with potential clients. While I don’t know if this is going to work just yet, I’d much rather have this website up and show it to them as opposed to not having it at all.

Now I’ve begun work on another consulting website, but this one is focused on a particular niche and is more of a “Full service agency” type feel.  I’m doing this because I’m realizing that people don’t just want a specialist in one area of internet marketing, they want someone who understands the full breadth of Internet marketing and I’m definitely that guy.

In addition to that, I’m really passionate about the businesses that I’ll be helping with this consulting website and I discovered previously with my Website 1 that if you can align your morals and aspirations with profitability, it’s a win-win.  I’ll be updating all of you once I launch the new consulting website.

I did almost no work this month on my main Authority Website. Yet, I still made some income and this is pretty cool because it’s the passive income dream that everyone talks about.  If you’d like to learn more about how I made this website, click here to get my free mini course.

I also put a lot of my outsourcing efforts towards building out the new authority website that I’m creating.

I still don’t want to disclose what the topic is, and I recently told my freelancers to put everything on pause as I want to conserve spend, but I have high hopes for this one.

Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Google +:  Next we had the typical social media time which is never a large amount of time.

General website maintenance is my catch-all bucket for random tasks that I complete throughout the month. I don’t typically detail all of these because there’s just a lot of random things that you deal with on a day-to-day basis.

How did the income report turn out this month?

Discussing this month’s income

Overall, my income this month was just over $600.  Not a bad month considering I spent way too much money for my liking, but you gotta spend money to make money!

Here’s how I made my money this month:

MyPerfectResume.com:  This is a really awesome resource that I found for Website 1, my first authority website.  Basically it lets people create their own resume online with the use of some awesome templates and it’s a great service to help those who aren’t trained in creating resumes.

Long Tail Pro: The absolute best tool for keyword research. I have no idea who it is that purchased this, but I thank you, grasshopper.

Themeforest: I’m a big fan of Themeforest because they have a lot of cheap themes that you can use for your website, but I must say that at this point Thrive Themes has stolen my heart as it lets me do 95% of everything I need without a developer.  With that being said, somebody ended up purchasing a theme and I hope it worked out for them so far.

YouTube Channel: Big money on YouTube this month!  Why?  I have no idea, but I was happy to see it.

Google Adsense: A pretty good jump in earnings on Google AdSense this month, and I can only thank my authority website for that.

Bluehost:  Someone out there took my advice and signed up on Bluehost. No idea who this was, but I really hope that you’ve already launched your website and are getting some traffic.

Indeed.com: Thank you authority website!  Never thought that I’d be getting this much money from my authority website considering it serves an audience that doesn’t have disposable income, but it continues to amaze me.

Udemy: My jaw dropped on this one.  You know why I made so much money? It was astonishingly simple, I just sent promotional announcements to my previous Udemy students and they purchased a course.

Two emails and $400, I REALLY hope that continues.

Consulting:  Had a handful of random things happen this month and I’ll take it!

Shutterstock: I had someone purchase an image through my affiliate link here and I don’t blame them because this really is the best platform that I’ve found.

Discussing this month’s expenses

Expenses this month were really high!  Most of this is to blame on my consulting website and second authority website that I’m in the midst of creating.

Aweber: Even though I made money with this platform, I still have my monthly fee that I have to pay for.

Hootsuite: Everyone talks about social media and how important it is, but have you taken the time to look in your analytics to see how many email sign-ups or purchases social media is accounting for? In most cases, the answer is none. This is why I use HootSuite.  At $10 a month and auto scheduling my posts, it’s well worth it.

Acquity Scheduling:  This is the scheduling platform I have chosen for my new consulting website.  This makes it so that people can request a time to meet with me and it automatically syncs with my Google calendar which was important to me.

Namecheap Domain Names: You know what becomes annoying very quickly? It’s when you are unhappy with a website hosting provider and have to switch, but your domain name stays with them. I recently consolidated all of my domain names with Namecheap and this month I purchased yet another domain name which is why it’s showing up on this income report.

Siteground Hosting: Gasp!  But this isn’t Bluehost, why are you using it, Ron?!?!?!

I use this hosting service because I have numerous online businesses and need a platform that has more to offer than Bluehost.  But again, I still think that Bluehost is a great solution for the beginners.

Ultimate Social Deux: You see that nifty little counter in the right sidebar that shows my connections on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube? This is the plug-in that allows me to do it.

Fiverr:  By far my favorite place to find logos for my websites. Yes, I can always go to really expensive places, but I prefer just having two or three freelancers on Fiverr create something and picking from the best of the bunch.

Call Rail: This is the platform that I’ve been using to record my client calls for my paid search consulting gigs.

LinkedIn and Facebook ads:  Unfortunately, I was targeting lawyers when I posted these ads so my cost per click was much higher than I’m comfortable with. But, I had to give it a shot and wasn’t really impressed with the results.

Powtoon Animation Software: This was a painful price to pay, but Powtoon is what I use in all of my Udemy and YouTube videos so I had to re-up my yearly membership.

Upwork.com:  Woof.  It’s amazing how much money I spend on freelancers every month without even realizing it. This was absolutely necessary to launch my LawyerInternetAds.com website, but it was still quite a bit of money.

Did I Meet my Goals for January?

1) Get New Consulting Website Completed

Success!  I was able to launch my new consulting website in a little under a month and I was happy about this.

2) Get new consulting clients

A big fat fail here because things didn’t go as planned, but I think I still have a fighting chance.

3) Reduce Costs

HA!  No, I definitely didn’t do this but I feel that the money was well spent.

Goals for February:

1) Get New consulting website completed

I’m going to challenge myself this month and try to get my new consulting website completed. This would be my second consulting website in as many months and hopefully this one goes a little bit better than the first.

2) Get new consulting clients

I’m just going to have to find some clients in order to keep doing what I’m doing. I’ve already got some irons in the fire, but we’ll see if anything happens by the end of the month.

3) Reduce Costs

No JK this time, haha.  I really plan on reducing my costs in February and have already taken the steps to do so.

What are your goals for the month?  What questions do you have?  Let me know in the comments below!