January 2015 – Monthly Income Report

2015 is going to be my best year yet, I’m sure of it

Welcome to the January 2015 income report.

I want to take a second to thank all of you who have commented on my previous income reports and also thank you for stopping by to check how I’m doing on my website.

In terms of what was accomplished in January 2015, this was one of my biggest months yet. I didn’t necessarily make a ton of money for the month, but I did launch my free course teaching people how to market their websites on the Internet.

If you’re interested, you can sign up here to get access.

Outside of launching the course, I focused my time writing about an individual who shipped glitter and made $85,000, talked about something that most Internet entrepreneurs don’t do, completed a guest blog post about why I embrace failure and think that you should too, and I’m also hard at work and on another course for the Udemy platform.

Before I dive into the report, I want to take a second and say that I’m very excited to report that I’m beginning to get recognized as an authority in my industry. It’s taken a lot of time, but it looks like things are finally starting to pay off.

Some of my recent mentions are as follows:

Richard over at Smart Income Detective mentioned my blog post about the one thing that most Internet entrepreneurs don’t do in his monthly roundup of his favorite articles for January.

Not only did Richard mention me on his own blog, but he also talked about me in a roundup post as one of the top blogs about blogging in 2015.

I want to personally say thank you to Richard for giving me some recognition.

The other one was less of a mention, and more of a completely awesome move by a friend of mine named Dave.

One of the most time-consuming things when you are a online entrepreneur trying to get your name out there is finding opportunities to do guest blog posts. Dave and I have become friends over the last few months and he asked me if I wanted to try out some new software that he’s been working on called Ninja Outreach.

Not really understanding what it was, I said I’d be more than willing to try it and if I liked it, I would mention it to my audience.

I’m going to tell you right now that this software will absolutely blow you away. Dave has done an amazing job creating it and I was astonished at how well it’s put together. It’s still early and I’m sure Dave will make small improvements in the coming months, but it’s absolutely worth going through the free trial to give it a shot.

All right, enough with the intro, let’s get on to 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) 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 worked a pretty good amount of hours considering everything else that I have on my plate. There is definitely some monumental things that occurred this month and we’ll talk about them below.

Discussing this month’s time worked

in January I completed three new video quick tips which I think will be very helpful to anybody that views them.

First, I created a video Quicktip talking about how accurate Dragon naturally speaking software is. If you’re unfamiliar with the software, I highly recommend checking it out. For me, it’s one of the most amazing pieces of software that there is because it gives me the one thing back that I can get more of, time. Overall, I figured out that I “type” three times faster using the software and am getting around 150 words per minute.

Second, I created  video quicktips focused on explaining to people how to install Google analytics and Google webmaster tools. If you have a website and don’t have these installed, you’re a fool.

Without having these on your website, you’re effectively flying blind in terms of understanding what content is popular and what else you should make.

Outside of creating my video quicktips, I also wrote a few blogs this month which are worth mentioning.

The first one was a post talking about how online entrepreneurs don’t focused on one extremely important thing. This is something that I’ve even been guilty of in the past and recently changed my mind set. I attribute this with helping me come closer to having a positive month in terms of income.

Next was a post about how a guy created a service selling envelopes full of glitter which ended up selling for $85,000. I think this is one of those mind-boggling stories that shows anybody can hit it big if they have a good idea.

There was also some time spent focusing on a guest blog post which was pretty personal, but I enjoyed writing. It talked about many of the failures that I’ve had in the past and why I’ve learned to embrace failure when it happens.

Outside of that, I was finally able to reach my goal of launching my free course focused on teaching people how to market their websites on the Internet. In doing this, I discovered the complexities of launching a course and figured out how much time it actually takes to do so.

Although it’s a ridiculous amount of work, I’ve already got over 750 students enrolled and have made some new connections who absolutely love the course itself. If you haven’t done so yet, I suggest that you sign up to get free access.

There was also a few hours spent creating guides that help other people create their own blog. This happened because a friend of mine wanted to start a music blog and asked me if I would be willing to throw together a guide to help them out.

I was more than willing to do so and then realize that I could take that content and spin it a little differently to offer people a three step guide to creating their own blog. It’s pretty simple to read and I’ve gotten a lot of compliments from numerous people so far with it. Hopefully some of you find it helpful, let me know if you do.

The last two things are where I spent the most of my time.

After my first launch for my course and realizing that Udemy has a ton of potential, I’ve begun work on another course which is going to teach people how to use Google analytics to increase their Udemy sales. I’m not even close to done with it yet, but I have a feeling that it can do exceptionally well onsidering every single person who has a course on Udemy can benefit from it.

The thing that I spent a lot of my time on this month was my autoresponder sequence. You see, previous to January, I basically was signing people up to my email autoresponder and then not giving them any other content that was valuable aside from a broadcast saying they should go check out my newest blog post. This isn’t what an autoresponder is for, so I decided to really look at it and see if I can make it better.

After seven hours of analyzing and writing new content, I can confidently say that I feel my autoresponder sequence for people who sign up for my emails is incredibly valuable. I put a bunch of content there that isn’t available on this blog, and I also have been contacted by 10 people (so far) on my list saying thank you.

In an effort to provide more value, I also give people access to over 600 high quality photos that they can use anywhere on their own website. I figure this is really helpful because if someone is just starting a website one of the most common issues they have is that they need images.  If I offered any more photos, I’d probably have to get a photo management software to help.

How did the income report turn out this month?

In previous months, I talked about how I was still in “investment mode” for my website. I feel that I’m finally beyond that and I’m comfortable with the software and structure of my website as it stands today. This is really a big deal because a lot of my money in the past has been spent on fixing things or creating new projects that ended up costing a substantial amount.

Discussing this month’s income

First off, the software that I have been (quietly) using to my advantage is finally beginning to get recognized. I had mentioned Dragon Software in the past, but didn’t really talk too much about it. Sure, I mentioned it in a few different blog posts but it wasn’t one of my most recommended products.

Well, this month proved to me that there are people who would really love to get their hands on the software and quite honestly I don’t blame them. Speaking into a microphone and having your computer type is one of the most convenient and efficient things that you can do.

Many people don’t know this, but I work at a standing desk and with Dragon Naturally Speaking software I’m able to walk around the room while I write my blog posts using a bluetooth headset. For me, a guy who sits at least 40 hours a week in office chair at his full-time job, this is a godsend.

In addition to that, this has increased the words per minute that I can “type” at least three times and that in itself is a pretty amazing benefit.  You can see the software in action here.

Like clockwork, I was able to count on someone to purchase a website image over at ShutterStock. This is one of those things that has happened literally every single month since I put ShutterStock on these reports and for me it makes sense. I’ve done a lot of shopping for high quality website images and realize that Shutterstock has a very affordable price and a great selection of images.  I like it so much, I wrote a Shutterstock review so you can better understand it.

Next, Google AdSense increased revenue since last month and although it was just because of one single click, that particular click came from my Niche Website. Each week I’m having a writer create a blog post for this site and I’m going to continue to grow the amount of articles on it so that the traffic continues to increase. I still think that this website needs a bit of a redesign and could use some SEO love, but for now I’m happy to see this.

Lastly, we have Aweber email software which continues to bring in just under six dollars a month. While working on my autoresponder and creating some additional opt in this month, I discovered that Aweber is much more powerful than I originally thought and plan on creating some type of guide or post about it soon.

Discussing this month’s expenses

This month really wasn’t too bad on the expenses. You could see that I had my typical fixed costs with Aweber, HostGator, and Long Tail Pro.

The only costs that I incurred this month that were outside of the norm were Google Adwords advertising which is an experiment that I’ll blog about soon and Elance which is me paying the writer for my Niche website.

I’m hoping to possibly reduce my costs even further in February.

Did I Meet my Goals for January?

1) Launch the Internet marketing course

Yes, I was finally able to launch my Internet marketing course which I decided to name “How to market your website on the Internet” for mass appeal. As a stated earlier, it’s been very well received and although the audio quality isn’t ideal, I think that this course showed me that what I have in my head is very valuable.

2) Revise the internet marketing course and give it a final launch

Again, I was able to launch it and spent a significant amount of time revising the content to make sure that everything made sense.

3) Fix my email autoresponder

Yes, I was able to fix my email autoresponder and have already gotten some positive sentiment about what I have. In total, there are seven emails and I only send them out once a week, but I’d rather do that then flood people’s email boxes with a bunch of junk that they would get annoyed about.

If you haven’t signed up I suggest you do so now to get access.

WOOHOOO! It feels great to hit all of my goals for the month and I want to make sure to do this more often.

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.

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.

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.

Thanks for reading everyone, I hope you enjoyed this income report. What are your goals for February?