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Well, June is behind us and I must say that I’m really happy with the progress that all of my websites are currently making.

On a personal level, I’m still settling into Brazil but I’m beginning to get used to it.  It’s definitely a big adjustment but I really am starting to like it here.  Sure, I miss my friends and family, but I’m starting to make some new friends and I make sure to call mom and dad on a weekly basis.

But anyway, let’s move on to the income report.

Before I dive too deeply 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) 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.

2) These reports help me keep track of my own progress.

3) These reports hold me accountable.

In short, I don’t create these to gloat about my earnings. I create them to help you understand the true “earning curve” of online business. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s dive into the report.

How did the income report turn out this month?

PRODUCT OR SERVICEREVENUEEXPENSESNET INCOME
Aweber Email Platform$5.70$5.70
ShutterstoWebsite 5 Images$39.25$39.25
OHP Course Sales$39.99$39.99
Udemy Course Sales$148.88$148.88
Thrive Themes$267.00$267.00
Consulting Revenue$600.00$600.00
Indeed.com Revenue
Website 3 Indeed Revenue$0.30$0.30
Partners and Affiliates Revenue
Website 2 Partners and Affiliates$6.00$6.00
Website 4 Partners and Affiliates$8.74$8.74
Website 3 Partners and Affiliates$14.00$14.00
OHP Partners and Affiliates (Excluding Thrive)$50.00$50.00
Website 1UB Partners and Affiliates$428.13$428.13
YouTube Revenue
Personal VLOG Channel$32.24$144.00$-111.76
OHP YouTube Channel$47.57$47.57
Media.net Revenue
Website 4 Media.net Ad Revenue$9.74$9.74
Website 3 Media.net Ad Revenue$11.51$11.51
Website 1UB Media.net Ad Revenue$539.21$539.21
Google Adsense Revenue
OneHourProfessor.com Adsense Revenue$1.90$1.90
TranscriptionJobsHQ.com Adsense Revenue$5.87$5.87
GNG Adsense Revenue$12.53$12.53
Website 4 Adsense Revenue$13.23$13.23
Authority Website - THQ Adsense Revenue$397.23$397.23
Website 1 Adsense Revenue$4,957.07$4,957.07
Google Drive Storage$2.09-$2.09
Adobe Photoshop Account$10.61-$10.61
Gmass Email Software$12.95-$12.95
Intuit Quick Books$16.99-$16.99
Legal Shield$29.90$29.90
Namecheap$33.98-$33.98
Epidemic Sound$45.00-$45.00
Meet Edgar Social Media Platform$49.00-$49.00
Email Hunter$49.00-$49.00
Siteground Hosting$120.00-$120.00
Active Campaign$135.00$135.00
Facebook Advertising$143.05-$143.05
Flippa.com$157.00-$157.00
ConvertKit Email Software$179.00-$179.00
Freelance Research and Labor$585.34-$585.34
Freelance Writing$803.95-$803.95
TOTALS$7,356.09$2,372.86$4,983.23

Revenue By ChannelWebsite 1Authority Website - THQOHP WebsiteAuthority Website - Website 4News Website - GNGWebsite 2ConsultingUdemyYouTube
June 2017$5924.41$423.04$403.84$31.71$12.53$11.87$600.00$148.88$79.81
May 2017$6805.18$214.18$79.00$9.67$3.94$8.71$51.50$76.08$82.58
April 2017$8175.11$116.65$106.71$3.57$0$80.25$57.76
March 2017$9527.42$224.16$355.12$6.43$0$137.29$59.11
February 2017$3726.98$160.48$438.54$32.99$125$165.43$52.40
January 2017$4005.52$104.19$267.33$0$222.20$41.60
December 2016$3553.43$52.63$384.57$125.00$138.07$41.32
November 2016$3778.45$22.10$357.77$125.00$259.26$48.13
October 2016$3841.36$1.37$213.88$126.00$238.90$48.92
September 2016$3102.56$402.32$112.01$271.02$57.14
August 2016$3318.70$44.72$731.05$423.49$55.08
July 2016$3353.06$347.47$135.19$186.34$52.12
June 2016$3219.41$132.77$330.00$397.55$72.22
May 2016$4677.02$253.67$206.25$135.25$75.89
April 2016$5008.23$286.38$497.50$353.02$62.52
March 2016$2311.67$265.29$556.75$301.06$60.14
February 2016$2760.21$250.70$431.25$324.58$62.00
January 2016$233.00$117.58$1140.00$400.97$46.19
December 2015$121.30$76.00$1163.75$17.15$38.83
November 2015$138.11$39.00$1150.25$245.68$36.78
October 2015$107.72$89.54$760.50$49.50$40.65
September 2015$102.95$113.10$1112.32$17.49$27.46
August 2015$39.68$51.75$1463.75$12.05$25.09

Discussing This Month’s Income Outliers

Every month I have income that streams in from multiple sources and quite frankly, a lot of that is pretty regular. However, each month I tend to see a few line items that are drastically different from the prior month. In this section, I only discuss the items that have increased or decreased significantly.

There were three line items that jumped out to me this month:

  • Consulting Income: The consulting income this month all came from one individual who has followed me for some time and asked me to build a website for him.  I can’t describe much about his website because of confidentiality, but I really like the idea he has and am a little angry that I didn’t think of it myself.  Seriously, it’s in a very good niche and it’s the type of website I love for a number of reasons. As of now, I’m building the website and although we’ve hit a few snags, I fully expect to complete it by the end of July, but likely much earlier depending on some issues out of my control.
  • Website 4 Partner and Affiliate Earnings: For some time I’ve worked on Website 4 and as I’ve been reporting in recent income reports, it’s finally getting traffic.  The issue though is that display ads pay very little in this niche, so I’ve been working to find ways to make money with the website. It took some time, but I think I’ve finally found the monetization for this website and it looks like it’s going to be the Amazon Affiliates program.  I didn’t make a ton of money last month from this method, but I’m confident that the income from this source will grow in July.
  • Media.net and Adsense Revenue: I’m not going to get into details here as I’ll review specifics in the project update section, but I’m starting to see all of my websites climb in their display earnings.  This is obviously a big win for me and I’m really excited about it as I’m still trying to hit $10k per month in revenue and this will get me there faster.

Discussing This Month’s Expense Outliers

Similar to the income I make every month, there are certain expenses that I consider “fixed” and don’t want to comment about.  But, as I did in the income area, I’m only going to discuss the outliers or new items added as expenses.

There are two line items that I think are worth discussing this month:

  • Flippa.com: In June I tried to sell a few websites and I had with absolutely no luck.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little pissed about this as I felt that one of the websites was worth much more than what I was offered.  But it’s fine, I’d rather let websites expire and die than give them away for super cheap.
  • Active Campaign: I’m trying to make a switch to Active Campaign as an email solutions provider.  The reason is simple, cost.  Convertkit has been good up until this point, but I’ve discovered I can have more functionality at less cost by going to Active Campaign.  The best part is that they have a free migration to their service and to be honest, that’s what’s most important to me as I don’t want to deal with moving email providers again.

Project Updates

Website 1 Update:  This website continues to grow slowly and I keep adding more and more content to make it better.  I was a little nervous this month because my writer said that my blog topic list was low and I honestly thought we covered almost everything we could regarding helping people with a specific handicap find jobs, but I found a bunch of new topics that should keep him busy for another year.

I also added a new state-by-state database to this website focused on specific agencies that can help these folks and that’s proven to already be a good move as it’s making me money each day.

One thing that just happened to me about a day ago is Indeed.com suspended my account.  This is frustrating because at this current point in time, their feed isn’t working on my website and visitors aren’t getting the best experience.

This all happened because I was trying to get paid (like I used to) by referring people to Indeed.com and I don’t know exactly what myself or my developer did, but something must have pissed them off.  So, for now I am considering switching to another job search engine as quickly as possible.  This will be a thorn in my side for all of July, but I’m sure I can get something done quick.

Consulting Update:  As mentioned above, consulting income this month was a result of building a website for someone.  There should be more consulting income in July as well, but this was a nice surprise revenue stream for June.  If you have any interest of me doing something like this for you and want to have a quick 15 minute call to discuss, let me know by filling out this form.  Please note, I charge a minimum of $100 per hour and websites typically take somewhere between 10-20 hours to complete.

Udemy Update: My Udemy account came back up a little bit in June and finally showed a little life.  I was obviously happy to see it considering I’ve all but abandoned this platform.

OneHourProfessor.com Website Update: I sold one course this month and also had a big boost in Thrive product affiliate incomes.  I’m still just sitting on the OHP website without making any changes, but I’m hoping with my migration to Active Campaign I can get more creative with my email offers.

TranscriptionJobsHQ.com:  This website is 100% passive and at this point it is just collecting income for me.  I’ve found that it’s complimentary to my Website 1ub website, so now I just funnel traffic here and make a couple bucks a day.

Authority Website THQ Update:  This THQ website continues to grow and I see a lot of positive things happening here.  Another month of growth across all areas and I keep seeing a lot of income potential.

I am doing some pretty significant redesign projects on this website now as it needs a little TLC to be where I think it needs to be, but once my redesigns are done I will be confident that the website is awesome.

Here’s a breakdown of some key metrics for the THQ authority website:

MonthSessionsReferring DomainsEarnings
Jun-1742473187$423.04
May-1736656155$214.17
Apr-1722865117$116.65
Mar-1726530100$224.16
Feb-172255969$160.48
Jan-171403344$104.19
Dec-16483323$49.50
Nov-16309815$22.11

 

There are a few key things that you’ll notice in the figures above:

  • Sessions in June increased again and though it wasn’t a huge increase, it’s still a positive sign.
  • Referring domains increased by 32 for the month and I expect this to slow significantly in July. The reason is that my list of all of my contacts for my VA to reach out to is completed.  She went through about 4,000 contacts and found as many emails as possible and now, that list is empty.  I have another list of link targets that she can work on, but I want to make sure I get the THQ content revisions completed before she does the outreach.
  • Earnings pretty much doubled and I was obviously happy about this. This website is now making some decent money and although I still think there is much more potential, this is a great sign.  This happened because I placed some more ads on the website, but I still haven’t come close to placing ads across the entire website.  I want to keep link building and getting the content as perfect as I can prior to launching any other ads.

Authority Website Website 4 Update:

Now that I’ve gotten the traffic, I’ve been working on a way to make money with this website and as you see by the figures below, I found it.  This website is mostly going to be an Amazon Affiliate website and though I swore I’d never do this type of website because Amazon scares the crap out of me, here I am.

Here are my statistics for this website so far:

MonthSessionsReferring DomainsEarnings
Jun-17789771$31.71
May-17458167$9.67
Apr-17224060$0.00
Mar-17111821$0.00
Feb-1760118$0.00
Jan-1791712$0.00
Dec-161256$0.00
Nov-16330$0.00

 

There are a few key things that you’ll notice in the figures above:

  • Sessions increased significantly. This was big for me because I needed to prove to myself that the ideas I had and the content I had my writer create was good enough for Google, and this proves it.
  • Income tripled. This was mostly because I started to make “best of” affiliate posts that are starting to make some decent money.  We’ll see how the whole month of July ends up with this, but I’m definitely enthusiastic after the way it all started.

GNG Website Update:

We are on month four with the GNG website and FINALLY we are starting to see some positive signs.

MonthSessionsReferring DomainsEarningsFacebook Followers
Jun-1710404$12.532617
May-179862$3.942037
Apr-175520$2.091381
Mar-179300$6.43675

 

I know the earnings are low, but the fact that we made more last month than we have in the entire existence of the website is a pretty big positive to me and my partner.  This was mostly as a result of us getting approved for Google News and the organic traffic that is beginning to come our way.  I’m hopeful that this will grow more in July and we will see an even better month.

YouTube Channel Update:

Our YouTube channel continues to grow and my wife and I are still enjoying it.  Here is a link to it if you haven’t seen it yet.  If anything, I think it’s a cool way to document our experiences as we have them in Brazil and hopefully at some point it will make us a little money.

Here are the key metrics for our channel so far:

MonthTotal ViewsSubscribersTotal Revenue
Jun-17105,03633,162$29.80
May-17198,75629,530$32.38
Apr-1716,63814,765$0.00

Lessons Learned

Every month, I’m going to reflect back and tell you a few different lessons that I’ve learned. My hope is that the lessons each month will be a cautionary tale for you that makes it so that you don’t make the dumb mistakes that I do along the way.

  • Big Companies Don’t Care About You: Even though this situation hasn’t played out fully yet, I’m realizing that big companies don’t give a crap about your website with 100,000+ visitors monthly.  If they want to ban you (Like Indeed.com did to me), they will and they don’t care about your livelihood.  This is a little scary to consider and something that frightens me a bit, but I also guess I just have to deal with it.  As mentioned above, I still have no idea what I did and am upset about Indeed not telling me anything, but when you use these services you’re at the mercy of their review teams. I’ll find a solution soon and go from there.
  • Amazon’s affiliate program actually works: Time and time again, I was frustrated trying to get people to buy something.  This month though, I discovered that Amazon affiliate links actually work and one of the best ways to make purchases happen is to consider buyer intent.  It’s one thing to write an informative article with a few affiliate links, but it’s entirely different when you write a “best of” product comparison article like Website 4 has been focused on.  When you write these articles, people are already comparison shopping and if you make those comparisons easier, you’re likely to be rewarded.

July Projected Expenses

ItemFixed CostsVariable Costs
Google Drive Storage$2.09 
Adobe Photoshop$10.61 
Gmass Email Software$12.95 
Intuit Quick Books$16.99 
Legal Shield$29.90 
Epidemic Sound$45.00 
Meet Edgar Social Media$49.00 
Email Hunter$49.00 
Siteground Hosting$125.00 
Active Campaign$135.00 
Convertkit$180.00 
THQ Writer – 1 Blog Post Per Week $60
Website 4 Writers – 3 Blog Post Per Week $120
GNG Writers $140
YouTube Channel Editor $144
Website 1UB Writer – 3 Posts Per Week $160
GNG Facebook Ads $175
THQ Backlink Prospecting $200
Estimated Developer Costs $350
TOTAL$655.54$1,349
MONTHLY EXPECTED SPEND: $2,004.54

Did I Meet my Goals for June?

Get THQ and Website 1UB Indeed Work Completed (FAIL)

I was well on my way to having this done and then the team over at Indeed gave me the ban hammer.  Not sure what my next step is yet, but I’m going to make it a goal to fix this issue in July.

Record Three YouTube Videos Each Week (SUCCESS)

Myself and my wife have done this and it’s going pretty well.  We keep seeing more subscribers to our channel and people (for some reason) find us entertaining, so I’m happy with it thus far.  The whole process is really easy to be honest.  All that we do is record and then hand it off to an editor.  She does all of the editing, we review and make any tweaks, then post.

Get THQ revisions done (FAIL)

I got all of my databases created, but I’m still proof reading and inserting content.

Goals for July

Fix Indeed AWebsite 7 issues

I am not sure if I will stay with Indeed.com at this point or look for a new job search engine, but I’ve already reached out to a number of other companies to see if we can find a better fit.  Indeed really pissed me off because they just banned me and told me nothing about what I did wrong.  I am sure somewhere myself or my developer did something incorrect, but it was an honest mistake and for them to just shut everything down like that was pretty poor business practice.  They never had good support anyway, but this was a kick in the stomach because I rely on them for my job listings.

Switch to Active Campaign

This will be tough to do this month because I have so much else going on, but I want to make the switch to my new email provider this month.  I need to start cutting costs a little bit and though this is a huge pain to do, I know they are a better solution moving forward.

Insert all THQ content

The THQ website is a beast and already has around 1,000 pages.  This month I’m focused on revising the key pages that I need to rank to provide users a better experience and increase the likeliness that Google will rank me.  It is taking a lot of time to do this as I’m being a perfectionist, but I’m sure the end result will be worth it.

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

  • Very informative and inspirational – as usual. It is interesting that you can live in Brazil and maintain business as usual.

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