August Income Report
Any income is great but like a lot of you I am sure passive income is the dream.
This month saw my passive income portfolio have a record month. With strong performance from my case study site and increased earnings from other sites it was a very solid month which was great to see!
UPDATE – Have my team create articles and publish them on my POWERFUL Private Blog Network!
But on the heels of last months expensive mistake I have made another which cost me $3k directly!
Gearing up for a very busy time period at my day job August was all about making sure my systems were running smoothly and I had the right team structure to carry on without my at times micro-managing presence.
This monthly report will share all the details about the different “divisions” of my business…
- Passive Income Website Portfolio
- AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
- Expired Domain Services:
o Domain Finding Service (buy domains that meet my metrics)
o Done for Your Private Blog Network (let my team build you a personal PBN)
o LightningRank (get access to the most powerful PBN available!)
Key Successes
- Passive Website Portfolio Growth – Growth on this side of my business continues to be solid with both existing and new sites.
- Domain Finding Team Manager Change – A big change this month was re-organizing my domain finding team putting my most expensive manager in the lead position moving from a $3/hr to a 18$/hr person in this role and the results were immediate. It was an example of my cheapness costing me money!
- Website Purchase Success – After several failures of purchasing a website only to have it tank within a few months of purchase I finally have a solid victory under my belt and will look to continue learning and improving on this purchase.
Key Failures
- Largest Refund To Date – With one large client I fell behind in my PBN site creation commitment and had to issue a refund. Although the sites quality was great the pace that my team was finding domains and then getting content created did no match my commitment. He trimmed his outstanding PBN sites with me and is currently happy with his large (but not as large as originally planned) PBN.
(I was unable to maintain site creation pace for this one client in a difficult niche and it resulted in a full refund)
- AuthorityWebsiteIncome Posts – I had really tried to maintain my commitment of 1 post per week in August but I fell short! With a busy work schedule, out of town weddings and general summer business it was very difficult to find the time to put together quality posts. Those are all excuses but nonetheless I apologize for not maintaining my posting frequency.
UPDATE – For the next 3 months my posting frequency will be at a minimum twice per month. After which I will still try and complete my 2014 goal and publish a lot of great content to catch up!
2014 Business Goals
Here is where I share my progress towards each of my key 2014 goals…
Here they are…
2014 Goal #1 – Increase the number of sites making over $100/month to 15 by building, buying or growing 8 quality sites.
2014 Goal #2 – Publish 52 Posts on Authority Website Income. For the growth of this blog there is nothing more important than consistently producing great articles every single Monday.
2014 Goal #3 – Produce 1 ULTIMATE post that will put my Ultimate Guide to Expired Domains to shame!
2014 Goal #4 – Automate the entire fulfilment process for my services side of the business while also improving quality.
2014 Goal #5 – Launch a new game changing business/service (this one I will not share until the time is right)
2014 Goal #6 – Continue ahead of the monthly net income curve targeting $15k/month in reliable online income by the age of 35.
Stretch Income Targets (BHAG)…
- Hit my undisclosed “money in the bank” target
- Average $10k/month net income for 2014
Part 1 – Passive Authority & Niche Website Income Profit/Loss
After last 3 months increase of 20%, 32%, 9% and now another 21% increase in August!
A great month for my student loan site, recently purchased sites and across the board improvements has resulted in these record earnings.
The downside is that I fully expect a decrease next month after the summer student loan rush is now over.
If any readers are looking to sell their profitable site(s) quickly let me know by emailing me. I can let you know in 12hrs if I am interested and complete the purchase in 24-48hrs – Contact Me
- # of greater than $100/month Sites = 10 (added one and lost one)
o Sites:
- PMSL
- OIC
- ACLSR
- RBC
- RFNF
- BCR
- PPR
- PFA (purchased)
- IFA (purchased)
- GFB (purchased)
- Revenue = $5,868.75
- Costs = -$963.19
- Net Income = $4,905.56 (+21%)
Sites that fell below the $100/month line = One site in August fell below.
Aug Comment – $5k in “passive” income is a great milestone I have almost achieved…it was one of the first major milestone targets I had set and being able to achieve it with just my passive income portfolio portion of my business would be great. However, like I mentioned above my income is highly depedent on my biggest sites which are coming off of their peak season.
I have also recently purchased a couple sites with fantastic traffic but the monetization to date has proven incredibly difficult!
AuthorityWebsiteIncome started with one case study – This site was started the same day as my case study site and every month I documented in detail exactly what I did to grow the site. It turned into a great site for me earning over $3k/month in its peak months and helped launch AuthorityWebsiteIncome. The monthly case study income reports have grown beyond just one site but I want to keep tracking this site separately from all the others so everyone can keep tabs on it.
- Net Income = $3,448 (+67%)
- Traffic = 32,318 (+3%)
- Citation Flow = 40 (+11)
- Trust Flow = 22 (+1)
Aug Comment – The results this month were great…the first full month of the new affiliate link (which was only temporary over the summer). Next month will likely see a drop off!
Progress on Key 2014 Goal…
2014 Goal #1 – Increase the number of sites making over $100/month to 15 by building, buying or growing 8 quality sites.
Progress:
Aug Comment – This goal is frustrating me! I have increased the number of sites from 7 to 10 but the amount of movement within that group has been large! It is telling of a few things…I picked the $100 because my thinking is it took a relatively solid site to earn $100/month. However, based on the movement on and off the list I may look at increasing the number of even larger earning sites if I am going after reliable income.
Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss
My commitment on this site is to provide once per week posts from me in and one MONSTER of an ultimate guide a little later in the year.
Here are the monthly stats for my site…
- Visitors = 16,890 (+11%)
- Subscribers = 2,988 (+5%)
- # of Posts = 4
- Affiliate Income = $564 (-14%)
Aug Comment – 4 posts published but I still missed one week. Traffic growth was ok…still pretty flat lined over the last year and I am in need of something big and new within the next few months to give a real shot back into my traffic numbers. The one number that continues to impress me is the number of returning visitors averaging over 50% returning!
For the next few months I will plan on creating 2 articles per month minimum and then ramp up the number of articles I create by the end of the year to hit my goal of 52 quality posts.
Progress on Key 2014 Goal…
2014 Goal #2 – Publish 52 Posts on Authority Website Income. For the growth of this blog there is nothing more important than consistently producing great articles every single Monday.
2014 Goal #3 – Produce 1 ULTIMATE post that will put my Ultimate Guide to Expired Domains to shame! Plan is in motion but it will take several months to assemble all the moving parts! Finding the time is going to be a challenge…it is going to come down to the wire at the end of the year.
Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss
This is definitely where my biggest opportunity lies and although I want to keep a balanced portfolio of income producing assets.
The key metrics I am going to share on this side of the business each month include the following for my Done For You PBN Service (here)…
- # Sites Built = 118 (doesn’t cover all sites)
- # of Domains Found = 205 (doesn’t cover all sites)
- Net Income = $11,465.06*
*Note about the Net Income – each month varies greatly since the expenses for building the sites incur the month the sites are built while the income occurs the month the sites are sold. So there are months like December(and June) where I only have a handful of new clients but I am still building sites for all the others who paid in the previous month. For the accounting purists, yes, I am aware I am violating a GAAP accounting principle (revenue is to be counted in the months the expenses to earn the revenue are realized – but that creates more accounting headaches for me).
Aug Comment: August was a healthy month with a good balance of orders for all services. I put a lot of effort into getting fully caught up on some old orders and revamping my domain finding team for continued growth.
Progress on Key 2014 Goal…
2014 Goal #4 – Automate the entire fulfilment process. I am personally still approving all domains and supporting client’s requests.
No progress this month but my part time sales manager is doing a great job and all customers are getting personal support during the process.
2014 Goal #5 – Launch a new game changing business/service (this one I will not share until the time is right)
I am unsure if this service will still be offered…I have some ideas but unsure if it still makes sense.
Overall Financial Goals
Original Monthly Net Income Target (original – $15k/month reliable income by age 35)
- Target Net Income = $5,325
- Actual net Income = $13,189
“Money in the Bank” Target
For those that have been trying to track their online income and reconcile with money in the bank it doesn’t take long to realize just because you think you made $1k in a month your business bank account doesn’t go up by $1k that month. The reason for this is that it takes some time for advertisers to pay their affiliates. Plus, some affiliate commissions you earned will be voided in the next month and you will not be paid for that commission you thought you made.
So for this reason a metric I am going to track in 2014 is my Money in the Bank target. Although I share a lot I am choosing to not actually share my bank balance…I will simply make it a % of my overall goal.
Aug Comment: The money in the bank target is no longer going to be realistically achieved since I have made changes where I pay my wife a salary for the work she does. Forward progress each month is still going to be key though!
2014 Monthly Income Target
This is another big time stretch goal. In 2014 I am targeting to average $10k/month in net monthly income.
RUNNING AVERAGE = $12,793
- January = $11,141
- February = $12,193
- March = $6,719
- April = $14,484
- May = $21,135
- June = $7,275
- July = $16,208
- August = $13,189
Final Comments
A solid month that resulted in overall net income falling short of the $15k mark but with a once a year expense and a sizeable refund it was definitely a good month!
Here is the summary of this months results…
- Niche Websites – Great month led by my student loan websites performance. I expect next month to not perform as well since the peak student loan season is now past.
- AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com – Published 4 posts and saw traffic growth. However, I still missed one Monday post. Great engagement on the posts that were published including case studies and tutorials.
- Services Business – A solid month for both results and business improvements. Continuing to improve my team is going to be key!
How was your month?
Hi Jon,
I congratulate you for having another record breaking month for your online businesses this august even if the net income is a bit lower than the previous month.
I have a couple of questions for you based on this report?
– Like how much are you offering to site sellers while buying your websites?
– What expenses are you making on the sites bought? Contents/Links e.t.c. You have not been able to report those!
– What do you think at this time, building new sites vs buying sites that are already generating some income, which do you think is better?
Thank you for posting this as i love reading income reports.
Have a nice day ahead Jon. I will share this on Twitter.
hey jon –
Looks like you had a pretty good month – i’m constantly impressed by your services business revenue, and that’s where I’m trying to take my business in the future, though I’m still doing most of the work myself (but am working on systems).
You mentioned wanting to build up other niche sites – have you thought about what level you’d like to hit? If yo get 200/mo from each site instead of just 100, you’ll only need 8 sites. perhaps you could increase the quality of some of the sites that you’ve got now and go after more long tail traffic. Just a thought.
Looking forward to your guide at the end of the year.
Also, Im curious as to what you hired your wife to do…I’ve been looking at getting a VA but am having trouble figuring out exactly what I want them to do.
Great to see this as usual Jon. Fantastic progress towards your end goal you’ve made as well. I wonder what the figure you really be once you are 35 hey?
We are going to be turning 35 at a similar time, I’m a few months behind you. Will be good if I can also reach the same goal!
5K a month just from niche sites and that is also passive is one of my longer term goals and it is awesome to see you almost hit that. You are great motivation, keep up the good work!
Good stuff Jon!
Can you share how many hours you spend a month on your service business? With an income over steadily over $10,000 now, what makes you keep with your job instead of go all out on your online business?
Cheers, Sam
Oh, you asked how was my August. Pretty good! I just calculated my numbers, and I made more YTD in August 2014 than I did my last year as a Director in Investment Banking. Took 5 long years, and 2.5 years after leaving my job to reach the level, but it finally happened.
I linked to the post in the Website field.
Sam
Another great month!
I do really like the way you organise and schedule stuff. I myself find it hard sometimes to really stay focussed.
Keep up the good work.