The end of September is here! 

My oh my, time sure is flying. 

It’s amazing how much time passes without even thinking about it. 

Even though I have passive income sources, I’ve spent so much of my time this year launching new businesses that time has been moving really quickly. 

Why?

Because I am still laser-focused on hitting my goal of $10,000 each month and I have to be honest….I’m getting nervous.  I am getting right around $8000/month revenue each month, but that extra $2000 is quite a mountain to climb.

I still think there is a chance…..but we’ll see.

One announcement I need to make before I get into this income report is that I’ve decided to start live-streamed chats with all of my followers every Friday at 12:00 CST.  My plan is to focus on one topic related to online business & internet marketing each week and then have time for Q&A at the end of each live chat. If you’re interested in being reminded about these live chats, please input your first name and best email address below so that I can send you the reminders.

Before I dive too deeply 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.

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 four items that jumped out to me this month:

• Google Adsense Income: Income on Adsense across my portfolio was down by 13% in September.  This sucks….but I am not too nervous about it for two reasons.  First, we had labor day and during holidays traffic is always a little less.  Second, it was a short month with only 30 days.  All things considered, I think I only would have had a drop of about 5% if it was a regular month which I see as regular fluctuation. 
• Website 1ub Partners and Affiliates: There was a big increase here and it’s because I found a new partner.  At one point I sold leads for $10 each, but now I sell them for $20 each.  So, I’ve basically doubled my income in a relatively short time in this area and very happy about it. 
• Website 4 Income: Income from this website increased again this month by 18%  This is a big win for me as this website is only about 11 months in.  I do expect it to increase a little more in October, but I feel like I’m hitting a cap with my current monetization strategies.  I think I’ll have to get more creative here with how I monetize.
• Udemy: Unfortunately my Udemy income fell by 39% in September.  Why?  Well, I decide to try opting out of the “fixed price promotions”.  Moral of the story?  Don’t opt out of this if you’re on Udemy. 

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 are two items that I think are worth discussing this month:

• Facebook Ads: This is the last of my “big” expenses when it comes to Facebook. This was from my failed GoodNewsGum website and I’m happy to be done trying to figure out the puzzle that is Facebook ads.  I may them a little bit to get more people to my new webinars, but for now I’m taking a break.
• Siteground Hosting: No, I didn’t have to increase my hosting plan on Siteground.  What happened is I had a renewal come through for Cloudflare, which is a service I use to keep my websites secure and faster. 

Project Updates

Website 1 Update:  In the month of September there wasn’t a whole lot to report with Website 1ub.  My writers are still working on a database that should increase the leads I provide to expungement lawyers and that’s really about it.

One thing I may end up doing this month is hiring an editor, which will take me completely out of the equation of managing this website.  I’m not 100% sure if I’m going to do it yet, but I have an excellent writer who is hungry for more work, so I’m thinking it makes sense to hire her on as an editor and see how she does. 

So far, she’s done amazing work and I’d hate to let her go. We’ll see if I pull the trigger on that and how much it’ll cost.

Consulting Update:  I have had a few people reach out to me about potentially being a consultant for them, but no one has paid for anything yet so I’m still going to sit patiently and wait.

If you’re interested in my consulting services, shoot me an email.  Note: My consulting starts at $150 USD/hr.

Udemy Update: I mentioned last month how I pulled my course “Creating a Successful Authority Website” course off of Udemy altogether.  So far, absolutely no regrets. 

Yes, my income did drop a bit this month but I chalk that up to me opting out of fixed price promotions.  I do expect an overall drop from this channel in the coming months, but I honestly don’t think it’ll be that large.

OneHourProfessor.com Website Update:  Just like the JFFhub website, I don’t have a whole lot to report on here. 

There are a few things I want to do in the future with OHP:

First, I want to create an in-depth review on Thrive Architect, which is the new version of Thrive Content Builder.  I didn’t do this yet because I wanted to dive in and actually use the platform a lot before I wrote about it.  I laugh because the day the plugin came out there was so many people writing about it, but I’d rather hold off until I’ve really used it to give feedback.

Second, I think I need to create more affiliate content about things I use.  For instance, I’ve never written a proper review/tutorial for LongTermPro and my keyword research strategies and I think I could write a nice review for Gmass.  Both of these are tools I use, I’ve just never written about them.

Third, I’m thinking about courses….again.  My strategy here might be different than the past though because I’m thinking it makes sense to create free courses on Udemy, which will then expand my reach of my emails.  Not 100% sure yet if I’ll do this, but I found a really cool tool called MySimpleShow which really makes creating explainer videos super easy.  This is key to me because I used to use PowToon and though it did the job, I had to pay for the software AND an editor to create the content.  With MySimpleShow, it’s built in a way that’s really efficient and I think I could do this myself now very quickly as opposed to hiring an editor. 

Authority Website THQ Update:  Revenue and traffic decreased a bit in September, but I’m very optimistic about this website moving forward.

One of the key things I’ve been focusing on for this website is a content makeover that’s ALMOST done and makes all of the information on the website SO MUCH BETTER.  I’m really pumped at the content quality of what we have now and know it goes above and beyond all of my competitors by a significant margin. 

So, next is to get this content 100% completed (I will get this done in October) and then to begin link building…again.  I’m link building again because although I have a domain authority of 49 (according to Ahrefs) this website still isn’t ranking as high as I need it to on some key terms.

So, the obvious solution is to get even more links to the website, which should increase overall rankings.  I really think this content update that I’ve done puts us on another level when compared to competitors and am anticipating success in my link building campaign, but we’ll see what happens.

One I have more link, traffic should increase and when I’m satisfied with rankings, I’ll focus on ad and revenue optimization.   

Here’s a breakdown of some key metrics for the THQ authority 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.

• Selling courses is (still) hard: So far, my conversion rate to sell my course is 5%.  To be honest, it’s still too early to make any determination from this number as it’s such a small sample size.  That said, I was hoping it would be about 10%, but I suppose that was an optimistic number.  We’ll see where this ends up, but it’s hard to sell your own course!  That’s all you need to know.
• Monetization on all websites is very different: As I continue to build websites, I’m starting to notice how different each of them can be monetized. For instance, with Website 1ub Google Adsense does well, but with THQ and Website 4, it doesn’t.  My takeaway here is that you need to realize this going in and try multiple things to succeed.
• Content (still) doesn’t’ equal traffic: In my eyes, CK is a lesson for those looking to write content and never build backlinks.  49 pieces of quality content, 50,000-60,000 words later, I had 92 pageviews last month.  Takeaway?  You need to build links or you’re wasting your time.

Did I Meet my Goals for September?

Finish the THQ website (Fail – but ALMOST done)

The content of the THQ website is literally one page from being completed.  However, my goal was to finish it this month….so I failed.  But obviously this will be done in October.

Put Courses Tab on OHP Website (SUCCESS)

It’s pretty, it’s sooooo pretty! My “Free Course” tab is on the OHP website and it looks good.  There has been an increase in signups for the free course rom this, so that is encouraging. 

Sell More OHP Courses (SUCCESS?  Kind of…)

I sold one of the full authority website courses this month.  It is on par with other months, but there is a higher price now indicative of it’s true value.

Start Link Building to Website 5 (FAIL)

I didn’t even start this.  No real reason other than my developer was finishing up some complex programming things, but that’s since finished.  This will be a goal in October.

Goals for October

Link Build to the THQ website

Now that the revised content is just about done for the THQ website, it’s time to build more links.  In October I’ll start a link building campaign on this website and hire a researcher to find emails.  I don’t see any other option to this as I need more links in order to increase traffic.

Sell More OHP Courses

This month will be a full month of Q&A’s and I have an established audience that seems to enjoy these.  That said, we’ll see if I can end up selling more courses with these.  For the month of October, I’ll do a Q&A every Friday and keep giving away free help.  If this sells a few courses, I’ll be inclined to continue.  If it doesn’t sell courses, I may consider Facebook ads to grow the audience and see if I can find better people to get into these calls.

Link Building to Website 5

This will start in October as well.  That said, I will have a lot of link building to do in October, but it will pay off if it works.  Ideally, I can get some links built in October because this website could see a spike in traffic during the holidays and I want to capitalize on that for sure.

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