Income Report: August 2015

Welcome to another fun filled Income Report, where I break down what has happened, what works and what doesn’t when it comes to building traffic, online income, subscribers, etc.

My experience isn’t in the “make money online” field. My experience comes from working with businesses to generate more leads and more revenue. However, that experience doesn’t necessarily translate to bringing in more revenue from a blog!

The reason I share this is because it’s useful to analyze what has been done, what needs improvement and show you all my line of thinking as well as getting valuable input from all of you!

Agency work is great… working with clients is a very rewarding process but it can also be a drain. Thus, my adventure and exploration into a more passive income!

Enough about all that….

What Happened In August?

August has been a very tough month for me, probably my biggest challenge so far because I haven’t had as much time dedicated to the blog as I’d like.

A lot of goals that I set, weren’t met but we’ll get to all that a little bit later.

Got To Test Out The New Blog Design

Towards the end of last month, I implemented a new theme for the blog which I think ties things together a bit better than the more empty, spacey theme that I used previously.

It seems like the new theme has been well received by all of you as well!

There’s a lot that I STILL need to do with it, but for the most part I’m happy with how it turned out, and it seems like the metrics have improved a bit since adding it.

The thing I least like about it though is that I don’t have much menu space. I suppose I can use a mega menu plugin to maximize the space and be better organized. I will need to test out a few options and get my thoughts together on that but so far so good!

Sold My Amazon Niche Site

A few months ago I mentioned in an income report that I didn’t have much time to work on that site, but even with very little work it has produced a solid return.

Since that post, I’ve been discussing with a reader of this blog that showed interest in purchasing the site.

I learned a lot about this process.

A niche site that requires frequent content and updates is not a good option of making money online if you truly don’t care about the niche.

People are always saying, “Find something you enjoy” and I’ve always thought that was total BS. Find something that makes you money should be the first priority, is what I’ve always believed.

The niche site wasn’t a passion of mine, and quite frankly ended up being a burden.

I feel I got a premium price for the niche site, and am happy with the deal. The total sum earned from the sale of the site was $1900.

Some may consider that the buyer got the better end of the deal since the site was built, it was making money and very little work was invested into it. The potential earnings are probably at the very least, 4-5X the monthly earnings it was generating for me.

Either way… I’m chalking it up as a small win.

Don’t Miss Next Month’s Income Report – Enter Your Email Below!

Content Production Was At an ALL TIME LOW! 🙁

Including the July Income Report, only 4 posts were created in the month of August.

I can try to play it off like I just wanted to test and see how much of an impact a lower frequency in content production would make on my stats but it wasn’t intentional. I simply didn’t have much time this month.

Reflecting on the month of August, I’m glad it happened that way. In August, a lot of people are either getting ready for school time, doing some vacationing, or have other things going on in their life that they don’t have as much time for internet activities.

My metrics weren’t effected much, and my revenue generated wasn’t really effected either. However, a large portion of my income from the blog this month wasn’t necessarily through Income Bully so that probably helped me avoid the hit on income!

Top 5 Most Popular Posts This Month

1.) Google Rolls Out The 3 Pack Local Stack… What YOU Need To Know To Profit!

2.) How a Vape Store Doubled Their Business with 3 Simple Things

3.) How I ranked a site in 20+ cities, 60+ keywords with on page optimization

4.) Ice Cold Email Gold Has Launched… Did You Get It?

5.) 10 Rookie Mistakes I Made When Starting Out in Business

2 out of 5 posts actually created and published in August made the cut!

I’m a little disappointed though because I wanted to drive more traffic, specifically organic search traffic to revenue generating posts like my Arvixe Web Hosting Review, but that post finished in 14th place this month after being in the top 5 last month! Somehow this didn’t effect my commissions.

Content Created in August

10 Rookie Mistakes I Made When Starting Out in Business

Cold Calling: Hyped Up Marketing Tactic or What?

Google Rolls Out The 3 Pack Local Stack… What YOU Need To Know To Profit!

Income Report: July 2015

As you can see, it wasn’t a big month for new content. I am proud of the content created though, all 3 posts not including the regular income report, was well crafted and in depth content that should add value to visitors of this blog.

Moving forward, I will be implementing a more structured content creation plan, which I will expand on a little bit later in this post.

Until then… Let’s get to the juicy stuff…

August 2015 Income Analysis

Here’s the breakdown.

My Ultimate Blueprint To Start a Web Agency
Ice Cold Email Gold – The Key to Cold Email Marketing Mastery
Total Self Created Product Income : $2,121

I just combined my two guides/courses as one income stream. In the year end report I will break down both of them by income.

Affiliate Income

Mobile Renegade – $247.83

Clicks Magazine – $17

Infographic Megapack PLR – $28.10

Arvixe Web Hosting – $420

BlueHost – $65

TOTAL Affiliate Income – $777.93 (+$191.93)

Amazon Affiliate Niche Site – $87.31 (-$44.55) Partial Month

Sale Of Amazon Niche Site – $1,900

*Miscellaneous Income – $3,500

Self Published Product Income – $2,121 (-$783)

Total Overall Income – $8,386.24 (+$4764.38)

Pretty Good month eh?

The miscellaneous income doesn’t belong in any specific section but it is money I wouldn’t have made if this blog didn’t exist.

I’m pretty happy with the results of this month, but if it weren’t for the miscellaneous income, or the sale of the Amazon Niche site, this would be a pretty bad month and would have resulted in me being under $3,000 for the month which is unacceptable.

So while it is cool that I had a record month in income from the blog, it come with a shot of bitterness because I know the future numbers look gloomy if I don’t do something to turn it around.

One upside is the increase in affiliate income, once again. Bluehost was a nice surprise because I haven’t actively promoted it, but maybe I will.

My Agency Blueprint and Ice Cold Email Gold still account for a large chunk of the income generated here but I am concerned by the shrinking income. This month was a decline of close to $800.

Other Metrics For The Blog

Alexa Rank – 242,955  (Last Month was – 290,185)

Twitter Followers – 1,339 (This time last month was at 1063)

Youtube Channel Subscribers – 40 (Last month was 38)

Google+ Followers – This has been a ghost town for me, for the last month or so. The previous month I LOST a follower, this month I gained 2 somehow, to sit at 19. I don’t really care about this platform because the only use I have for it is the communities feature.

Aweber Email Subscribers – 1,054( 896 last month, still consistent at roughly 20% growth rate.)

More Metrics:

Unique Visitors – 6,209

Bounce Rate – 65.03%

Pages Per Session – 1.72

Average Time On Site – 1:57

Not bad for a month that only produced 4 posts with very little promotion done for the content besides email you guys!

The metrics are doing good, since the new theme my pages per session and average time on site increased. Bounce rate had a slight reduction.

Traffic could definitely be better but I think the majority of the traffic reduction has come from the lack of content in August.

We’ll see what happens this month with an increased content production schedule.

Here’s some data so you guys can see my progress month over month.

How Did I Do On My Goals?

I did meet one goal, having over 1,000 subscribers in my AWeber account, so that’s good.

I missed my twitter goal by 11 followers.

Other than that, I didn’t even make a solid attempt to meet a single goal.

To put it simply…. I did awful.

This is the 2nd month in a row that I didn’t accomplish my goals, or even come close. I’m putting an end to it in September. No more. I’m not even going to list any goals in here this month because the goal is that I need to go back and look at all my missed goals, and finally accomplish them. Time to get serious!

Plans For September

I have a lot of work to do in September. Catching up on missed goals, keeping up with content, promoting content, building my social networks, possibly launch a FB page.

I also want to launch a new niche site since I sold my previous one.

Another thing I plan to do this month is to make some changes to a few pages, find new affiliate offers, work on my email sequences, etc.

I’m very frustrated by a few affiliate offers I’ve been promoting.

The first one, is Mythemeshop. I love their themes but I hate the fact that I send so much traffic without getting 1 conversion. I would be better off replacing the right sidebar ad with an additional opt in.

The next issue I have with an affiliate offer is Bright Local. I’ve driven 14 signups to their platform but according to the affiliate dashboard, nobody is paying beyond the free trial. I believe they said they have a 1:3 conversion rate from free trial to paid plan. Either they’re lying, or they’re just screwing me out of affiliate commissions.

Anyway… the plan is… I’m going to be busy doing lots and lots of work this month!

Final Thoughts

I think this month was the biggest eye opener for me so far. It shows that hard work pays off when it comes to building an online income but it also shows me that if you slack off, that income can drastically decline.

This month would have been a very low income month, close to record lows if it weren’t for a few one-time things.

Not publishing a lot of content really screwed me up with traffic and possibly income. Not following through on my goals has also hindered me a lot.

If you look at the revenue… it’s great… it’s a record month but I know that even with very hard work and time invested that next month I may not even bring in half the income I did this month. It’s almost like a smoke screen, but thankfully I can see through it realize the problems that are ahead if I don’t take the proper action.