May has come and gone and it was a very busy month (again) on a personal level.

I officially live in Brazil and though I’m still not settled in, it’s starting to feel like home.

My wife and I are currently in the 2 Bedroom apartment she has had for the last year and although it’s very cheap to live here ($400/month) we’ve decided that the location needs to change.

This is for two reasons:

• The apartment is simply too small for our needs. It is myself, my wife, a dog, and a cat.  We are all fitting in a space that is probably around 700-750 sq feet and we just need more room to spread out.  Below is a quick video tour of our apartment that we put on our new vlogging channel:

• For me, this particular location is pretty tough because there is absolutely nothing that I can walk to. It’s not that it’s in a bad area of Sao Paulo, it’s just that it’s surrounded by residential housing and there isn’t anything close to where we live.  Adding on to all of that, I can’t even drive because most of the cars in Brazil are manual and unfortunately, I don’t know how to drive a manual car (yet).

But 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?

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:

• Personal VLOG Channel: The new Video Blog (VLOG) channel that my wife and I created made just over $30 this month and I couldn’t be happier with that number.  I’m used to creating websites that take 6-12 months to show any  But this YouTube channel is already showing some income which is great.  We have expenses related to the channel (about $144 per month) as we outsource all of the video editing, but I have no doubt that in time this channel will make over $1000/month as my wife has multiple YouTube channels doing that already.
• net Revenue: My revenue through this channel was pretty good this month and that’s because I’ve put ads on to Website 4 , the THQ website, and on Website 1ub.  All of these sources combined increased my revenue, but most of it was through Website 1ub.
• THQ Website Revenue: The revenue on this website was over $200 this month and I expect that to grow even more in June because I’m increasing the amount of ads on the website.

Discussing This Month’s Expense Outliers

Similar to the income I make every month, there are certain expenses that I consider “fixed”.  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:

• Epidemic Sound: Because my wife and I are now creating Youtube videos, we needed some music in the background during certain parts.  After speaking with my wife, she told me about this website and it’s probably the best there is when it comes to royalty free music, but you have to pay a $45/month membership fee to use it.
• Freelance Writing: My writers are still one of the biggest costs I have and I expect this to continue to be my biggest cost each month.

Project Updates

Website 1 Update:  Last month I explained to you how I was going to change the job results page on Website 1 because Indeed.com changed their program and I could no longer make any money from them.

Well, it looks like this was a blessing in disguise.

In May, I ended up making an additional $860 from these pages.  Even better than that is the fact that Indeed.com is opening up their AWebsite 7 for my websites which means I can show sponsored jobs again, which is how I was making money from Indeed.com in the first place.

Though this will cost some money in website development, I’m expecting to see an additional $300 per month from Indeed.com once everything is said and done.

Consulting Update:  I only had a half-hour of consulting happen in May.  It isn’t much, but I was happy to get it.  If you’d like to speak with me about consulting to help you with your project, please click here.  Please note that my consulting starts at $100 per hour and depends on availability.

Udemy Update: Again, my Udemy earnings dropped and that’s fine.  I don’t put too much effort in the platform any longer so I’m fine with that.

OneHourProfessor.com Website Update: No courses sold for the month of May and I had really low affiliate commissions as well.  It kind of sucks, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.

Authority Website THQ Update:  This THQ website continues to grow and I see a lot of positive things happening here.  I’m really pumped up as I’m hoping this website will match my traffic and earnings of Website 1.

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

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

• Sessions in May nearly doubled and I expect this to continue to climb. I’m working to restructure pages from the penalty that occurred previously and expect that when I’m done, Google will see a lot more value in this website.  Unfortunately, this is all just me guessing to try to make the best results possible, but we’ll see what happens once it’s all done.  I expect the website to be fully fixed by the end of July.
• Referring domains increased by 38 for the month and I think this will continue to climb in June as well. This is all because of my link outreach and to be honest, this is what will separate me from competitors.  I’d say that this has taken roughly 80 hours of work to complete and it’s an expensive process that I think will pay off in the future.  At this point, I’ve had my assistant reach out to over 6,500 contacts and will continue to reach out daily.
• Earnings increased by about $100 and I’m hoping that this will increase even more in June. I don’t want to put too many ads on the website yet because it could deter link building efforts, so I’ve chosen to put ads on key pages instead.  My hope is that this will add a couple hundred more dollars to my revenue each month.

Authority Website Website 4 Update:

Finally, I’m starting to get some real Google love for this website.  The interesting thing is that all of this link building took place in March and I’m just now starting to see my rankings increase for the website.

Here are my statistics for this website so far:

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

• Referring domains increased to 67. I am not really sure where most of these links came from.  I suspect that now that I’m starting to get traffic, some links are happening organically and Google is picking up on links I already acquired.
• Again, sessions doubled for the second month in a row and I believe that this will continue in June. This is because Google is starting to put me into the search results and seeing that the website has quality content.
• Earnings for the month of May almost hit $10 and that’s pretty good considering I started the ads about a week ago. Interestingly enough, based on a study that I saw, Media.net ads are much better for this type of website and I’m trying to test to see if that’s true.  As of now I only have Media.net ads on the website, but I intend on testing that against Google Adsense and seeing which does best in the coming months.

GNG Website Update:

Month three is down for the GNG website and I’ll admit that I’m beginning to get a little nervous about the website.  The reason is because our costs are sky high (right around $500 per month) and the revenue is very minimal right now.

Though I’m starting to get nervous, I’m going to choose to ignore my thoughts right now.  While we invest, our “revenue” will only be the visits that we get and the Facebook followers that we gather.  As I saw with Website 4 , it took me 6 months to get any traction and I assume the same will happen here.

YouTube Channel Update:

You know, this channel is actually doing really well so far and I’m having a great time with it.

The process that we have now is my wife and I record ourselves throughout the day, then we pass that raw footage to our video editor.  She edits it and sends it back to us and we publish videos on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Here are the key metrics for our channel so far:

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.

• Websites take 6 months to hit their stride: I hate to make this determination after only one website, but I think this is true.  Based on what I saw with Website 4 , it looks like it takes around 6 months to get Google to show a new website in their rankings regularly.  I can’t say this for every website, but what I do believe is that this shows you need to work hard on a website for 6 consecutive months until you see how it will actually do.
• YouTube Channels Make Money Quickly: As I said previously, websites usually take 6-12 months to make revenue but our YouTube channel has already made over $30.  I don’t think everyone would have this same experience as we leveraged my wife’s following from her other channels to get a quick 30,000 subscribers, but it’s good to note how quickly YouTube can be monetized.

May Projected Expenses

Did I Meet my Goals for May?

Move to Brazil (SUCCESS)

I’ve officially moved and although it wasn’t easy, I’m here and this is home for the next year or two.

Record Three YouTube Videos Each Week (FAIL)

We recorded quite a few videos since starting our channel, but I know we didn’t record videos each week.  I think we had two weeks where we only had two videos recorded.

Automate YouTube Channel Video Editing (SUCCESS)

I am incredibly happy with our editor, she’s great at what she does at a reasonable cost and allows us to focus on producing content with little effort other than recording.

Goals for June

Get THQ and Website 1UB Indeed Work Completed

By the end of June, I want to make it so that Indeed.com works with the AWebsite 7 on both THQ and Website 1UB website.  If I’m able to achieve this, it will increase the income for both website and my overall income as well.

Record Three YouTube Videos Each Week

I’m going to keep this on here as I’d like to make sure that we record all of the videos we’ve promised our followers for the month.  Three times a week seems a little daunting, but we do live pretty interesting lives given our work so hopefully we can make it happen.

Get Databases for THQ Built and Have Two Completely Revised

The THQ website has a few pretty significant revision projects underway and I want to get these completed by the end of June.  If I’m able to do this, I’m hoping that I can start ranking for some very high traffic terms in Google.  We’ll see if it’s possible, but I hypothesize I can do it if all goes well.

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