February 2015 – Monthly Income Report

Here we are in the second month of 2015 and I’ve had my best month yet.

Before I begin breaking down my income report, I want to thank all of you for stopping by and checking out how I’m doing. There many times that I get frustrated with my progress, but many of you give encouraging words in the comments and this is truly appreciated.

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) and the time I spent working 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. Unfortunately the “make money online” industry is full of scammers that make ridiculous promises like “Work 10 minutes and make $5,000!” The reality couldn’t be further from the truth, this online business gig is a lot of hard work and these reports show you how much time I put into my business and how much income I make from that effort.

2) These reports help me keep track of my own progress. By creating these reports every month, I’m able to see where I’m spending money and how much time I’m spending doing various tasks.

3) These reports hold me accountable. Each month I list goals I have for the following month and my hope is that my audience will hold me accountable.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s dive into the report.

How much time did I work this month?

I did a lot less work than I usually do this month. Although I can’t elaborate why that is yet, I have been dealing with some personal things and will make a really big announcement near the end of this month. With that being said, I still put in quite a bit of hours of work.

Discussing this month’s time worked

Unfortunately, there was still a lot of work this month that many of you will probably never see. As I mentioned previously, I’m in the process of creating another course on Udemy in an effort to give myself a steady stream of passive income.

The first piece of content I worked on this month focused on explaining how to use the Hootsuite bulk upload tool. This is actually something that was requested by my audience after numerous people commented how they wanted it because of my blog post explaining how most online entrepreneurs don’t measure their ROI.

The next piece of content that I created focused on explaining my experience so far with Udemy. Since it started building courses there, people have asked me if there is a real benefit to it and I have to say that I am finding some. You can read more about my experience here.

So how is it that I am able to consistently work on my website while working full-time job and teaching part-time at four different colleges? In case you missed it, this blog post explains exactly that and I feel that it is something anybody can do.

How did the income report turn out this month?

If you’ve been following this blog for a long time, you know that I’ve been struggling to make income since the beginning. Sure, I’ve had a few affiliate purchases, but nothing substantial. This month was a little bit different as I was able to generate over $400 in revenue. With that being said, not everything was passive but the income was a direct result of this website.

Discussing this month’s income

Not many people realize this, but I do offer consulting services on my website. Not only that, I also offer website design services where I utilize my own team of designers to complete projects. I haven’t been actively promoting this because I’m definitely not hurting for money at this point in time due to my full-time job and I haven’t had the time to do any of this.

With that being said, there is an individual who contacted me in February who told me they needed some website design worked on and offered to pay me an adequate amount for my services. I agreed to complete the work and was able to complete everything to the client satisfaction within 72 hours.

If you have an interest in having me help you create a website, create a marketing strategy, talk about your business directly, or complete some marketing services for you, feel free to reach out. I’m selective in what I choose to take on, but I am more than willing to hear about your business to determine if I can be of service.

Well, this month proved to me that there are people who would really love to get their hands on

Yet again this month, ShutterStock contributed a affiliate sale to my income. It was a little weird though because the revenue gained from the purchase was less than what I’m used to, but it’s still something and I’ll never complain about that.

Thankfully someone took my advice and continues to use Aweber email software. Again, this is in a ton of money but I’ll take what I can get.

Discussing this month’s expenses

This month was pretty typical on expenses. You cansee that I had my typical fixed costs with Aweber, HostGator, and Long Tail Pro. There is an interesting deal right now where I’m able to purchase Long Tail Pro access permanently and it’s something that I’m determining if it’s worth doing.

In total it would cost around $200, but I don’t know if I’ll be getting rid of the software in the next year and it would pay for itself by that time. This cost may show up in the next months income report.

I continued my Google ad words experiment and although I was able to generate over 230 clicks to my BlueHost affiliate link, amazingly nobody ended up purchasing anything. This was frustrating, but I have yet another idea of something that I can do to try to make this a little better and I’ll share more when I have completed this experiment.

Simply put, I’m trying to leverage the Google display network to find ways to get extremely cheap traffic to my website that actually converts. I found ways to get the traffic to my website for cheap, I’ve also found ways to get them to click on links, but I’ve yet to make an affiliate commission off of my efforts.

One big expense this month is Elance. As I mentioned earlier, I’m in the process of creating another Udemy course and with that I need a transcriber and a video editor to help me out. Luckily, I’ve already found some pretty stellar providers and am really happy with what I’ve been getting.

The content in this course is much better than my last one and I have a feeling that the course will do really well once I finally release it. I expect these expenses to continue in the next month, but I really do feel that this will contribute to my income in the future.

Did I Meet my Goals for February?

1) Prepare my new Udemy course

As I’ve said, I am making a new Udemy course and my goal for February is to record all the audio and make sure that I have that part of the content completed.  As I mentioned earlier, some personal issues have made me cut back this month in terms of work hours but this course is about halfway done already.

2) Guest Posting

I also want to make sure that I continue to do some guest posting as this is growing the amount of back links to my website as well as letting people know who I am. So, one of my goals in February is to get at least two guest posting opportunities and publish them.

Similar to above, the amount of hours worked didn’t really allow for this but I have a feeling that I’ll be able to do much more of this in the future.

3) Show a profit

The third and final goal for February is to be profitable. Now, I’ve said this time and time again that I’m not in this for the money, but I need to be profitable in order for people to give me credibility in this space.  After all, my entire website is focused on helping people create and market online businesses to earn extra cash, but I’ve burned through a lot of cash in last few months so I’d like to show a month of profit.

As I’ve clearly stated in this blog, my motivation was never to make a ton of money but I want to continue doing this so I have to find ways to make the blog self-sustaining. I was able to do that this month and it feels great.

Goals for March:

1) Prepare my new Udemy course

I didn’t make this goal a reality last month so I’m going to keep it. I still have a lot of work to do in this Udemy course but the sooner I launch it, the better chance I’ll have of making extra money.

2) Manage the creation of Udemy videos

As much as I would love for my focus to be on guest posting, I know that this month also won’t let me succeed in that goal because of a personal issues that I’m dealing with. I’ll explain what those are in about a month’s time, but for now just know that I’m going to be working even harder on managing the Udemy video creations for my new course.

3)Show a profit

I’d like to show a profit for the second month in a row and I’m hoping that a few recent possible consulting arrangements will allow me to do this. Was the consulting is pretty small and just relies on my expertise, but I think if I start to let people know that this is an option I may be only get some one-off projects here and there that will cover the costs of this website which is great.

One last thing….I always make sure to send my income reports to those who have signed up for my newsletter so if you like this post and want to keep hearing how I’m doing, make sure to sign up today.  Oh, and don’t worry, I promise that I’ll never spam you.

So, what are your goals in March? Tell me in the comments below.