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January was a pretty awesome month and I was able to start 2019 right by having this be my best month ever for both revenue and income.

I had some insanely high expenses of just over $5,500 for the month, but a lot of that was in website development which also lead to my increase in income.  So, even though expenses were really high for the month, in the long run it makes perfect business sense. 

This all spawned from a competitor and after tweaking a few things, it looks like I’ll end up making more than I ever have before.  I’ll get into this in further detail in the project update for Website 1. 

This month my total income after expenses was $16,846.90 which comes out to $543.44 per day.

This month’s highlights included;

  • Website 1 had a 39% increase in overall revenue. 
  • Consulting income increased significantly as I now have two steady clients.
  • Website 3 had a 32% increase in revenue.

Personal Life Update

January was a pretty relaxed month all things considered.  My wife is in visiting from Brazil and we’re still at the tail-end of her becoming a US citizen.  We’re still waiting on immigration to approve the final paperwork and anticipate a response by the end of this week.

Aside from that, we’re also still tearing apart and renovating our house.  There were quite a few delays to this in January because we got hit with the Polar Vortex, but our floors are getting done and they’re pounding away as I type this.

It’s been difficult to stay focused considering all of the house issues and my wife visiting, but I was still able to manage things well in the month of January to a record-breaking profit and I’m obviously happy about this. 

My hope is that this new income stream has staying power, but early signs point to the fact that it will.

If you’d like to begin a similar journey as myself and try to create a passive income business, I recommend you read this write-up I did. It should help educate you before you begin to move forward.

Before I dive too deeply into 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$20.70$20.70
ShutterstoWebsite 5 Images$24.52$24.52
Udemy Course Sales$45.75$45.75
OHP Course Sales$79.00$79.00
Thrive Themes$342.00$342.00
Website 4 FBA Merchandise Sales$458.64$458.64
Consulting$600.00$600.00
Partners and Affiliates Revenue
Website 5 Partners and Affiliates$54.50$54.50
Website 4 Partners and Affiliates$324.11$324.11
Website 3 Partners and Affiliates$776.74$776.74
Website 1 Partners and Affiliates$6,755.23$6,755.23
YouTube Revenue
Personal VLOG Channel$11.37$11.37
OHP YouTube Channel$65.15$65.15
Media.net Revenue
Website 3 Media.net Ad Revenue$15.25$15.25
Website 4 Media.net Ad Revenue$81.01$81.01
Website 1 Media.net Ad Revenue$198.77$198.77
Google Adsense Revenue
OHP Adsense Revenue$3.08$3.08
Website 2 Adsense Revenue$10.41$10.41
Website 4 Adsense Revenue$227.08$227.08
Website 5 Adsense Revenue$347.41$347.41
Website 3 Adsense Revenue$2,488.65$2,488.65
Website 1 Adsense Revenue$9,484.03$9,484.03
Software Expenses
Intuit Quick Books$10.00-$10.00
Adobe Photoshop Account$10.61-$10.61
Manage WP$14.00-$14.00
Mailshake Email Software$19.00-$19.00
Google Business Drive Storage and Apps$32.09-$32.09
Deadline Funnel$37.00-$37.00
Ahrefs$99.00-$99.00
Incorp Services$99.00-$99.00
App Sumo - Accuranker$117.00-$117.00
Active Campaign$135.00-$135.00
Siteground Hosting$257.50-$257.50
Freelance Labor Expenses
Freelance Writing$1,840.77-$1,840.77
Freelance Research, Editing, and Misc. Labor$2,895.53-$2,895.53
TOTALS$22,413.40$5,566.50$16,846.90
Revenue By ChannelWebsite 1Website 3OHP WebsiteWebsite 4Website 2Website 5ConsultingUdemyYouTube
January 2019$16,483.03 $3,280.64 $469.30$1,009.83$10.41$401.91$600.00$45.75$76.52
December 2018$11,776.03$2,488.53$483.96$2,078.19$20.16$487.37$0$98.43$73.60
November 2018$12,886.78$2,324.75$657.86$789.26$10.67$386.31$0$205.87$79.91
October 2018$13,246.69$3,135.04
$369.22$747.29$15.46$306.89$150$93.27$83.86
September 2018$11,784.71$3,853.20$321.67$628.97$0.00$210.72$175$14.94$82.99
August 2018$11,556.29$3,266.47$512.72$980.89$5.31$39.81$0$97.18$93.63
July 2018$12,864.08$4,991.15$722.76$707.66$8.05$26.84$0$91.48$84.33
June 2018$11138.00$6,858.01$432.01$797.02$11.06$52.42$0$50.92$95.96
May 2018$9152.94$4,288.26$391.63$699.19$6.96$40.23$0$44.40$100.82
April 2018$9637.30$2,028.65$545.01$804.71$11.74$236.23$0$24.90$85.48
March 2018$14236.64$778.01$380.29$1362.83$13.78$224.68$0$80.61$94.79
February 2018$10918.94$382.03 $644.36 $838.51 $22.27 $454.08 $0$23.90$86.86
January 2018$7993.31
$467.71
$757.59
$718.04
$14.26
$486.99
$0$113.95
$67.06
December 2017$6707.43$432.22$785.74$555.72$28.50$114.05$0$59.21$96.12
November 2017$7545.13$574.91$480.41$479.34$17.70$4.31$0$187.01$90.40
October 2017$6859.17$617.67$265.38$319.02$13.06$0$135.59$66.71
September 2017$6781.51$348.16$673.87$223.95$11.31$0$81.39$58.13
August 2017$7429.92$391.68$945.04$181.93$16.36$0$133.91$63.57
July 2017$5658.64$344.91$1055.57$85.84$58.55$1,496.38$41.80$94.84
June 2017$5924.41$423.04$403.84$31.71$11.87$600.00$148.88$79.81
May 2017$6805.18$214.18$79.00$9.67$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

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 items that jumped out to me this month:

  • Website 1 Income: Website 1 had a huge increase in earnings this month due to one specific partner and after some design tweaks, income has increased dramatically. 
  • Website 3 Income: Website 3 also had a nice increase this month in revenue and I attribute that to my consistent focus on link building. 
  • Website 5 Income: After 6 consecutive months of income increasing, Website 5 unfortunately dipped in January.  This was incredibly frustrating because I’ve continued building a lot of links and traffic is increasing, but earnings are still stagnant and even slightly decreasing.

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 were two items that jumped out to me this month:

  • Freelance Writing: Anytime that I see an income increase, I opt to immediately increase the content output on my websites. This month, I increased my content output by about $500 worth and I believe this will increase my income significantly in the future.   
  • Freelance Development: I spent around $1400 on development in this month alone as Website 1 went through a huge redesign.  In my eyes, this was a requirement and the only way I could keep my website as the #1 resource in my niche.  Though it cost me dearly, it had a nice impact of increasing income significantly and has already paid itself off.

Project Updates

Website 1 Update:  I mentioned last month how I needed to update this website in order to stay relevant and the #1 resource on the internet for information in my niche.  In January, I finished the development of a few things and launched the changes, and now I should be sending my competitor a Christmas card.

Basically, I was fine with how the website was and had no intention of changing anything.

But then I saw what my competitor was doing and got nervous because frankly, the way they had structured things was better than how I did. 

So, I did a redesign and altered a number of things on my website to become better than I was and voila.  I saw a HUGE (and unexpected) increase in earnings due to the redesign and now I’m even more confident in the resource I’ve built.

I still have some more tweaking I want to complete in February for the website and after this is all done, it’ll be back to the top spot of the niche in my eyes.  There’s still a good amount of work to do, but I bet more earnings are on the way as I’ll hopefully be able to increase traffic even more.

Consulting Update: This was my first month with a new consulting client and I also had a coaching call I completed with a long-time reader.  The consulting client is a small business and the coaching call is being done mainly because this individual is working his butt off and has been consistent.  It’s nice to have a little consulting on the side, but I have no intention on greatly increasing this in the future as it’s mainly trading my time for dollars, and I would rather just get passive income.

Udemy Update: A big drop of income on Udemy this month and I don’t really care.  It’s nice when I make some extra money here, but I haven’t focused on it for some time.

OHP Website Update: The OHP website has a surprisingly steady amount of income coming in each month and it’s pretty random to be honest.  No big changes here at all, just the usual affiliate income.

Website 3 Update: 

Website 3 was a pleasant surprise this month.  I’m actually not sure if the increase I’m seeing is due to seasonality, or due to increasing performance in the SERP’s, but it seems to me that the links I continue to build are helping.

It’s hard to say with absolute certainty what the cause is, but I can see in Google webmaster tools that my positions continue to get better in the SERP’s, and my impressions are increasing, so I have to assume that the website is getting more Google love.

It’s weird because there is a huge increase of traffic on January 1st of 2019, but I don’t think that’s simply seasonal.  I think it’s both SEO results and seasonality.

Here’s a graph of the last 12 months of progress.

Month

Pageviews

Referring Domains

Total Earnings

Jan-19

161334

441

$3,280.64

Dec-18

97508

450

$2,488.53

Nov-18

100689

462

$2,324.75

Oct-18

118331

460

$3,135.04

Sep-18

137652

471

$3,853.20

Aug-18

145395

408

$3,266.47

Jul-18

186643

383

$4,991.15

Jun-18

247176

339

$6,858.01

May-18

237151

349

$4,288.26

Apr-18

175754

335

$2,028.65

Mar-18

147139

303

$778.01

Feb-18

104511

297

$382.03

Jan-18

131882

366

$467.71

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • It was a great month of earnings and greatly exceeded the last few months
  • The traffic increase was very significant and is showing some very positive trends

Website 4 Update:

On paper, it looks like Website 4 had a very negative month considering it made $1000 less in income than it did in December.  That said, it actually was a very successful month because I was no longer selling as many of my Amazon products. 

This decrease in earnings was expected and I’m totally fine with it as December is really when this website should shine with earnings.

I still intend on making another physical product for this website, but I’m waiting till my website portfolio is in a good place to make these changes.

Here are my statistics for this website in the last 12 months:

Month

Pageviews

Referring Domains

Total Earnings

Jan-19

62079

241

$1,009.83

Dec-18

58605

218

$2,078.19

Nov-18

56881

233

$789.26

Oct-18

56121

201

$747.29

Sep-18

57141

184

$628.97

Aug-18

57128

176

$980.89

Jul-18

54010

162

$707.66

Jun-18

49443

157

$797.02

May-18

47806

147

$699.19

Apr-18

55862

143

$804.71

Mar-18

66996

128

$1,362.83

Feb-18

58672

113

$838.51

Jan-18

57533

112

$718.04

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Though income was down, the fact that it was still over $1000 is a great sign. If I can maintain this level of income in off-peak months, I’ll be happy.

Website 5 Update: 

This was the best month ever for Website 5 in terms of traffic, but income dipped a little bit.  To be honest, this was pretty surprising because usually they coincide pretty closely. 

I am almost exclusively monetized on this website with Google Adsense, so I guess the ads weren’t as relevant as months in the past or just weren’t paying as much.

At this point, I’m continuing to build databases and links to this website.  My domain rating, according to Ahrefs, is an astonishing 66, but I’m still not able to rank for very low competition “best” and “review” types of keywords. 

I’m not really sure what to make of this, but as of now I’ve outsourced my review content in an effort to increase output of this very important monetization channel for this website. 

I haven’t lost hope yet, but I’m getting increasingly frustrated with this website because things I want to rank just aren’t doing so.  I’m writing content for keywords that are extremely low competition and I’m making better (and longer) content, but nothing seems to be working.

I still think a big reason for this is that Google is convinced that I’m focused on the databases I’ve built and not so much the blog and review content I make.  I’m still keeping hope that eventually the tide will turn, but only time will tell.

Here are my statistics for this website so far:

Month

Pageviews

Referring Domains

Total Earnings

Jan-19

80255

359

$401.91

Dec-18

76156

339

$487.37

Nov-18

66606

323

$386.31

Oct-18

52613

293

$306.89

Sep-18

39651

286

$210.72

Aug-18

40756

259

$39.81

Jul-18

34117

240

$26.84

Jun-18

35544

226

$52.42

May-18

31276

216

$40.23

Apr-18

32821

206

$236.23

Mar-18

32968

201

$224.68

Feb-18

50782

192

$454.08

Jan-18

73491

170

$486.99

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Traffic and earnings aren’t always directly correlated.
  • Traffic is still increasing, so maybe Google is getting more trust with my website.

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.

  • Never Think Your Website Can’t Make More: One of the biggest things I’ve learned in the last few months is that you can never believe your website is capped on earnings.  There’s almost ALWAYS another income stream if you think creatively.  For a long time I thought Website 1 was capped with earnings, and here I am this month with an income increase of over 40%. 
  • When in doubt, build backlinks: I’ve said this over and over again, but the results showing for Website 3 prove my point.  If you have content and editing outsourced, the main thing you need to do for a website is build links.  These links WILL help you, even if Google takes their sweet time to reward you for your hard work.
  • Never Snooze on Competitors: Though I’ve been the #1 resource on the internet for my Website 1 niche, I have always kept a watchful eye on my competitors.  That watchful eye delivered huge gains to me this month and has allowed me to grow this website even larger.

Did I Meet my Goals for January?

Fix CK Opt-in For Email List (Success)

I needed to adjust the opt-in for Website 5 and I’m happy to report that doing so has increased my Amazon affiliate income by over 100% for the month.  I was hoping for these results and obviously I’m happy with it. 

Revise Website 4 Review Posts For no Dead Links (Success)

I had my VA handle this and she revised all of my affiliate articles to make sure no dead links were listed.  This work paid off and now many pages that had issues have been corrected. 

Revise Website 1 (Success)

Though it took a lot of money and work, this has also been completed. 

Launch PI Officially (Fail)

This failure occurred because of all of the other development projects my team is working on.  End of the day, if I have a development project that will make money, I’m going to put that ahead of launching a new website and that’s what happened this month. 

What Are my Goals for February?

Revise Website 3

Website 3 uses the same partner that Website 1 does which resulted in the significant increase in income.  That said, I think I could probably increase the income to Website 3 quite a bit if I make these changes.  So, in the month of February, I will be making sure revisions are done to try to mimic the success I have had with Website 1. 

Launch PI Officially

By the end of February, I think we’ll be able to launch this website.  It’s actually really close to being done already, but there are some small tweaks needed. 

Revise Website 1 Main Keyword Page

There is one main keyword I need to win back on the SERP’s with this website and I’m in the process of making that page much better than it used to be.  There is a lot of work to be done with that, but the research is done and now I just need to QA everything to make sure it’s all set.  I think I’ll be able to do this and get my developer to create what is needed to launch the page.

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

  • Hey Ron, so good to see that you successfully countered the threat from competition. Hope applying same fixes to the other site improves performance there, too.
    I have a question re the CK site: You mention that you fixed something with the email opt-in process. Do you now get more subscribers to your newsletter? How big was the increases (%). Also, does your newsletter just build on promoting amazon affiliate products?

    Thansk again for providing so much detail to us and good luck with getting your private life (wife, house) in order as well
    All the best,
    Tom

    • Hey Tom!

      Thanks for the comment, appreciate it.

      To answer your questions;

      You mention that you fixed something with the email opt-in process. Do you now get more subscribers to your newsletter? – I definitely get more now. Basically what i did is made it so that the opt-in was much more relevant for my most high traffic pages. I did this because my old “general” call to action wasn’t converting that well on these pages, and I thought I could do better. Now I get 4-6 subscribers a day vs the 1-2 I used to get.

      How big was the increases (%)? Over 100%. When I first start a website I always do a very general call to action, and then as I see where traffic is falling I create a CTA on the highest traffic pages to get the most subscriptions. Usually I focus on the top 10 pages. The good thing here is that those top 10 pages were all very similar, so it was only one additional CTA.

      Also, does your newsletter just build on promoting amazon affiliate products? – I have a mix of informational articles and “best of”/review type articles that promote Amazon products. I never actually promote the affiliate products in the email itself because that’s against Amazon TOS, but I do point people to articles that promote Amazon products.

      Thanks again for reading, appreciate it!

  • Hi Ron, I also own a job website in another niche, but I don’t make anywhere near that. BTW, where do you find your writers? I did not have much luck with Upwork.

  • Thank you for sharing the behind the scenes activities of what it means to manage a successful business online.

    My goal for the new month is to focus on promoting more affiliate products on my blog. Still having issues with my traffic but I’m already working on fixing that soon.

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