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.
I seem to recall that you were going to do more followup on the ‘Start A Web Agency’ product in terms of a)supporting those who bought the product and b)delivering more info around outsourcing; has that also been shelved?
Steve, what do you think 99% of the content on here is? As for supporting those that bought the product, I can’t support it if you don’t let me know there is a problem or something you’re having trouble with. 🙂
As for more info on outsourcing, no I never said that but as far as delivery of services go I think that’s been accomplished through this blog and the webinar series, don’t you?
Awesome. That is an impressive increase in affiliate income in terms of percentage.
Thank you 🙂
Steve, I recall at one point he mentioned building a website around it to sell independently from warrior forum. I think it would be difficult to claim that the content on here doesn’t do what you expected, lol. One of the only people to create a product and also produce all this kick ass content and webinars for us at no additional cost.
Yeah for sure. That still will likely happen in the future too but in the aspect of a new revenue stream. THIS IS the resource for ya! Thank you Rachel for all the kind words.
I asked nathan about outsourcing a while back and after discussing with him i realized that I have a lot of learning to do myself when it comes to fulfillment before I should be outsourcing.
If you want to learn fulfillment of local seo watch the seo replay webinar. Never digested so much information before in such a short amount of time
Yeah this is a problem that face a lot of people offline. Outsourcing is necessary at some point, or hiring an in-house team. Problem is, how do you know what to look for if you don’t know what you’re outsourcing? Outsourcing SEO is the biggest struggle with offliners because very few people really know how to execute it properly. Glad you enjoyed the webinar replays!
Nathan and Rachel,
I wasn’t saying I had a problem, nor was I claiming “that the content on here doesn’t do what you expected”. I was merely suggesting opportunities for potential products which could add to revenue streams.
What is being created on this site is much appreciated and contains a huge amount of info.
Hey Steve, I appreciate it. You’re absolutely right, I have the website startawebagency.com so it is a decent domain to use. I intend to build it out at some point, and planned to build it before this site actually. However, I thought since I wanted to cover a variety of things that wouldn’t fit under that domain I decided to do this first. Once I build it out, I would like to do some case studies with FB ads and some other stuff to share with you guys.
It certainly makes me appreciate the difference between online and offline. Offline, if I want a boost in sales, I can do a lot of upselling and cross selling to an existing customer base. Online is an entirely different game it seems and am open to any suggestions!
Thank you for your comments Steve.