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Income Report: February 2015

Welcome to the third income report for the Income Bully blog. This is one of my favorite things to do for this blog because I get to track progress and show you what I’ve done, haven’t done, thoughts, what I plan to do, etc.

This has become a nice little experiment I’ve been running and I really enjoy it. It’s very nice to share information and hear how it has helped you so far. The experiment, is building a side income or a more passive income in comparison to my offline businesses.

See, the truth is, even though I do a lot of internet marketing for clients, I don’t know much about doing internet marketing to “make money online” or bring in a passive income so while I learn and try out different things, I will be sharing it with you as well.

What Happened In February?

Of course, I published the January income report February 1st.

Other blog posts include:

Does PageRank (PR) Still Matter?

Mobile Renegade: B2B Sales Leads Generator

SEO in the Boonies: Marketing Your Business, or Client’s Business in Small Cities

Guest post: 7 Awesome Tips for Conversion Rate Optimization

 

Now, I know this may seem like it is a drop in content compared to last month which is an accurate observation. However, I have been able to boost blog content by a new friday night webinar series I put together and have been able to repurpose the webinar replays as blog posts.

To see these webinar replays you can find them here:

Webinar #1 – Ultimate Local SEO Training

Webinar #2 – Closing More Sales by Implementing Lead Nurturing

Webinar #3 – Everything You Need to Know about Cold Email Marketing

So far I’ve been very happy with the webinar series, the value offered, and I’m thankful for all of you that have been showing up. It’s been a good time and I definitely enjoy it.

Another cool thing…

This month I’ve been asked to be a part of a few expert roundups that will be published pretty soon, I will share the links with you guys once it is published.

Problems and Struggles in February

The biggest problem has been time. Offline, personal, business, blog, Father Time has not been kind to me in February. It’s been very difficult for me to stay focused, be productive, and get things done that I wanted to get done.

One thing I announced was a case study, 3 businesses in 3 months that was supposed to start February 1st. This didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. When will it happen? Will it happen in March? No, probably not.

I know a lot of people were excited to see what I can do, and I’m excited to put myself to the test, I simply wouldn’t have been able to dedicate the amount of time necessary.

Clearly, I need to figure out a better time management system, that would allow me to spend more time creating content, promoting content, doing cool case studies and that was one of my goals in February. While I was able to make strides in time management and in productivity, it still isn’t where I want to be.

Earlier in the month I also tested out having my blueprint WSO listed for $37 instead of $27. This may have been a mistake, and I will likely drop the price again to see the difference in sales.

 So Lets Get To The Income Breakdown.

I had an expected dip in income via online efforts this month, and unless I expand my efforts in March there will be another dip.

Start A Web Agency WSO – $3,016 (-$1,000)

Affiliate Income – 223.65 (+$177.17 )
Mobile Renegade
Clicks Magazine
Power Press Pro

Total Income = 3,239.65 (-$822.83)

Alexa Rank – 1,492,063

Twitter Followers – 95

Youtube Channel Subscribers – 7

Email Subscribers – 336

Other Metrics

Unique Visitors – 1,361

Bounce Rate – 49.74%

Pages Per Session – 2.63

Average Session Duration – 3:22

The metrics aren’t bad, I’ve had an increase in traffic. Last month I tested out some fake traffic with fiverr that technically put me over the 1,361 uniques but since it was such a bad idea, I excluded that from my overall stats and the total uniques in January ended up being at 921.

The one thing I AM concerned about though, is the average session duration aka average time on site. I think I have a logical explanation for it, and that could be because of the lack of blog updates and since about half of the blog updates were webinar replays, if someone spent an hour watching a replay it wouldn’t register as that in analytics. So that could be on explanation for the shorter time on site.

Here are a couple tables that shows income, traffic and other metrics from recent months:

Month & Year Unique Visitors Affiliate Income Total Revenue
December 2014 N/A $18.10 $3528.10
January 2015 921 $46.48 $4062.48
February 2015 1361 $223.65 $3239.65
Month & Year Unique Visitors Bounce Rate Pages Per Session Time on Site
December 2014 N/A N/A N/A
January 2015 921 51.07% 2.93 4:04
February 2015 1361 49.74% 2.63 3:22
Month & Year Alexa Rank Email Subscribers Twitter Followers Youtube Subscribers
December 2014 N/A 69 N/A
January 2015 2918591 212 72 0
February 2015 1492063 336 95 7

How I Did On My Goals?

February Goals:

Create a blogging schedule – I sort of did this, but instead I’ve been beefing up a master plan for a content marketing strategy which includes a blogging schedule. Is it complete? No… but I can consider this goal accomplished, since it was very primitive and turned into something much more complex.

Figure out a better system for time management – I can’t say I accomplished this. I did make strides but not nearly where I want to be. I need better organization skills as well as something that will allow me to be more productive. I’ve caught myself numerous times this month with the blog, online efforts, AND my main business just not being productive. This needs continued work.

Find quality affiliate products to promote – Eh… I’m not sure affiliate marketing is going to be something I can effectively do because of my high standards. I checked out a few things, there’s a little bit of promise but not like I hoped.

Engage in blogger outreach – I did towards the end of the month, with very little time investment. While I can say I accomplished this goal, this is also going to be a goal next month and I intend to get real results to show you guys.

3 Businesses in 3 Months challenge – Nope… not ready for it, like I said above in the report, it’s not something I can do just yet!

Double my affiliate income – I did this. Nearly a 500% increase actually.

Explore Passive Income Sources to replace WSO income – I have done a lot of exploring, and I understand exactly why so many people fail online. There are so many options, and a lot of things to learn, you can research forever and not get anywhere. So yes, I did accomplish this goal, however, I don’t feel this goal allowed me to make any progress. Useless goal when it comes to action.

Grow Twitter Following to 300 – A BIG FAT LOL. Not even close. I admit, I am not a Twitter expert, most of my clients do not use twitter, nor would it make sense for them to use it. Looks like it will be much harder than expected to grow an audience there. Though, a cool thing happened, SEMrush retweeted a link to 3 Common Local SEO Myths Finally Exposed.

Get Alexa Ranking to 1.9 Million – Yes, it happened. Right now I’m at 1,492,063. I want to reach top 1 million status by the end of march.

Income Bully Plans For March

Well, I am working on a course for SEO. I haven’t decided if I would release this for other marketers or not, I was thinking about using it to target and sell the course to business owners that don’t have the money to invest in someone else’s services. I have an AWESOME domain for this, it would be a great passive source of income if I can pull this off, and also offer a more advanced course for marketers.

Another thing you can expect to see is some testing being done on this blog. As I mentioned above, I’m a little concerned with the pages per session metric with this blog. Bounce rate is okay enough, but could also be improved and I think the more content I have, the better it will be. Anyway, I’m going to run a test with links, right now it is a clean, navy blue colored link but it isn’t underlined. I’m thinking about testing it out in 2 ways… either a navy blue with underline, or use a lime green with an underline. Whatever I choose, I will test the opposite next month.

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I also need to encourage social sharing. I have a lame side bar, super tiny social share buttons that suck. It came with the theme, and even though I love mythemeshop this is something I should have fixed or taken care of in the very beginning.

Goals for March

Whether I complete all my goals or fail some goals, setting goals is very important to me and should also be important to you. Here are some goals for March:

  • Top 1 Million Alexa Rank
  • Blogger Outreach (Get a blog post featured or linked to from another authority site)
  • Implement my content marketing plan
  • Publish more content on this blog
  • Create a NEW LinkedIn Account for content promotion & networking
  • Increase Social Shares
  • Get to 450 email subscribers
  • Increase pages per session and time on site metrics
  • Increase Twitter Followers to 125.

I guess that sums it up guys. I hope to see a decent increase in traffic next month along with income and hopefully share some great information with you all.

I appreciate the support, the views, the emails and comments you all give.

See ya next time.

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