5 Steps to Efficiently and Effectively Manage Your Email

I think it is safe to say that we all believe that the more efficient and effective we can be with email the better off we will be!

This quick post is to provide you with a summary of my current strategy at getting the most out of each email opportunity without spending all day in email. (more…)

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July Income Report

July was my first full month as a full time online entrepreneur! It was a lot of fun!

I am not sure if it will ever wear off but the lifestyle change has certainly had me smiling/pinching myself a few times in July…

  • Taking my 3 year old son “camping” in the backyard mid-week
  • Biking home from work to jump in the pool with the family (and a cold beer) mid-afternoon mid-week
  • Having some of my biggest revenue number days while on a canoe trip

In this income post I will try to share what I have learned and failed at over the month and the performance of the businesses!

My Business Focus Points:

  1. Passive Income Website Portfolio
  2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
  3. SEO & Expired Domain Services:
  4. Amazon FBA Business
    • Brand #1
    • Brand #2
    • Brand #3
    • New Web App Project

Key Successes

  1. FBA Brand #1 – After June where the FBA business I sold but still own one third of struggled due to the associate account getting suspended it was great to see a very solid bounce back for the business.
  2. Partnerships – With the added time I have had there have been several interesting partnership opportunities that have come up while I have been in discussions with people. The challenge is to ensure I do not take on more than I can handle and continue to build my teams capacity at handling projects.
  3. Backlink Analysis & Discussions with Clients – After talking to over 50 readers of AuthorityWebsiteIncome last month it became clear there was a need for a couple things one of which was more help to answer the question of “how many backlinks do I need to rank on the first page”. Because of those discussions and how my team already does this analysis I created a very simple little offer that provides a lot of value to people with a website.
  1. Training – While I had the day job one of the areas that I was definitely not spending enough time on was education and training. My information “diet” had been very very lean and I read very few websites/took no training. With the added time I have scheduled some time each week to spend time completing high quality training and focusing on deliberate training/practise. Here are a few of the great training programs I am taking right now (in addition to listening to about 1 book/week while I bike to/from work)…
    1. 1 authority machineAuthorityMachine + Internship – The training created by Hayden and Spencer is great and I have heard awesome feedback about the internship from some individuals who have gone through it. Highly recommended!
    2. 2 udemyInvesting in Website (Free Udemy Course) – This course is for people looking at how to invest in websites. It is created by Eric from DigiStrats who I have worked with and also take some of his training before. Great information + right now the course is free!
    3. 3 amz aff bootcampAMZ Affiliate Bootcamp – This course is created by Tung Tran and provides a lot of information on how to make money with Amazon Affiliate sites. Lots of great information for a beginner wanting to make money with an Amazon Affiliate site.
    4. New LinkBuilding Strategy – More to come on this but as we test out different strategies we are finding a lot of success with one particular strategy to get the worlds best links.

Key Failures

    1. Productivity Increase Not 1:1 With Increased Hours – With the added hours my productivity has not increased 1:1. I don’t find this too surprising and will continue to work on being more effective and productive. Listening to a great book right now bye a fellow Canadian Chris Bailey The Productivity Project and I am liking how actionable it is!

  1. Realizing Several Teams are Not Setup for Success! – After I did an analysis on a few of my businesses I realized that several of my teams are not setup for success. The main reason is that I have deviated from my favourite business book (E-Myth Revisited) and don’t have the Entrepreneur / Manager / Technician clearly defined. I wrote more details about this failure here.

 

2016 Business Goals

Below is my businesses main goals for 2016

4 goals

Download This Easy to Edit and Printable Goals Template – FREE

(Note – FBA Brand #2 Has Been Replaced With my SAAS Business)

Part 1 – Passive Authority & Niche Website Income Profit/Loss

5 passive income goals

3 Goals in 2016 for my Website Portfolio Business

  1. Systematize Top 20 Sites in Portfolio

July Update – I have plans in motion to grow my team and this one may come down to the wire but will have a new project manager to help me with managing my passive income portfolio.

  1. Buy 1 Site Per Month

July Update – A great website purchase was made in July. It was a good deal for both the seller and myself, with only a couple months of earnings history it would have been tough for him to sell anywhere else while we were able to combine a purchase price, earnout and services from LightningRank.com to come up with a deal that has everyone happy.

  • GOAL = 1 Website
  • ACTUAL = 1 Great Website Purchased

6 websites purchased

If any readers are looking to sell their profitable site(s) VERY 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 Here

I have found the right sellers are those…

  • Looking to sell FAST (under 24hrs has been accomplished!) (shorter time for due diligence on my end increases risk for me)
  • Not wanting to spend a lot of time on the sales process (analytics and income proof is all I need)
  • High quality sites making over $500/month often make sense to sell via other channels (EmpireFlippers or FEInternational are great places)
  • SEO done to the site can be questionable and that increased risk will be reflected in the sales price
  • Understand that the benefits of the bullet points above means the sales multiple will be lower

If you have a website you are looking to sell fast please let me know

 

  1. Sell Websites Strategically for $100k Total

July Update – The website sale is still on track with the group that has taken over the site still doing a great job.

 

PRIMARY GOAL – OVERALL INCOME FOR WEBSITE PORTFOLIO ABOVE $10k/MONTH

7 passive income portfolio

July Update – The ongoing issue with the partnerships associate account at Amazon is still holding this number down lower than I would like.

 

Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss

8 awi goals

3 Goals in 2015 for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com

  1. Post Once Per Week

July Update – Now that I am working full time I should have no excuses to not hit this goal. There are plenty of topics I want to talk about that I believe would add value so it is good to see me back to hitting my target numbers with my first full month working online.

  • Plan = 4
  • Actual = 4

9 number of posts published

  1. 10x my Outreach

July Update – Continued success on this front with a lot of effort spent performing podcasts in July. The story/strategy of turning an Amazon Affiliate site into an FBA business and then selling it continues to be a story/business model that resonates with people as it connects a lot of dots in the online business space.

  1. Site Redesign – Completed!

July Update – Already Completed

PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH

July Update – 16,364 uniques’ which represents a +66% year over year increase. I believe if I can achieve my weekly posting plus my 10x outreach I can achieve this goal by the end of the year!

10 traffic to awi

Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss

11 services goals

  1. Systems Overhaul/Refresh

July Update – Kelley the project manager for the services business has joined me full time in the office and we will be undertaking this large review over the coming months.

  1. Improve email marking and sales automation

July Update – I am continuing to do some small tests to collect data before a larger overhaul. I need to get this done soon.

  1. BrandBuilders.io Becomes The Go-To Resource for Done 4 You Amazon FBA Private Label Websites and Done 4 You Amazon Affiliate Sites

July Update – Continues to be a clear winner when it comes to product/market fit with steady demand for the services offered.

PRIMARY GOAL – STAND ALONE SYSTEMATIZED SERVICES BUSINESS IN 2016

 

Part 4 – Amazon FBA Business

12 fba goals

  1. Sell FBA Business for 30x with 3+ Solid Months

July Update – SUCCESS

  1. Launch Brand #2 – Personal

July Update – After additional due diligence it turns out the business model for this affiliate site to FBA migration would not work with only $12 profit margin on a $120 product. In addition there are some interesting partnership opportunities I am exploring and will be moving quickly on.

  1. Launch Brand #3 – Investors

July Update – Sold out of most sizes of our initial order (no profit on initial order as all units were flown in) and now the first sea shipment has arrived in the US.

  1. LE – Hijack Monitoring Service

July Update – Similar update for June with GREAT metrics and user feedback but our ability to accelerate our customer acquisition has been tricky!

13 listingeagle setup

Overall Income Update

 

Original Monthly Net Income Target (original goal $15k/month reliable income by age 35)

  • Target Net Income = $9,350
  • Actual net Income = $31,869.24
  • 2016 Average Monthly Net Income = $30,296 (stretch goal is 30k average for the year)

14 tracking net income

Gross revenue is a vanity number for my business and I do not share it.

15 net income by division

(note Amazon FBA Income May Be Off By A Little Here – FBA Affiliate Site Income Counted in Passive Income Portfolio – Total FBA Business Income ~$10k)

 

Final Comments

July was a good month to see that my increased effort on all fronts have resulted in growth on all fronts. Having sold off 2/3rd of my FBA business which had first helped push my business over the $30k threshold and to have now bounced back to it in what is often one of the slower seasons for online business it is great to see.

Right now I have reason to be excited about the next phase of the business with lots of growth projects on the go, a growing/awesome team, more hours for me to devote to the business and plenty of room for improvement for the steady divisions of the business I am excited for Q4! Even with all the good news there is still plenty of projects which are not yet on the trajectory I want them on!

I hope these income reports provide an insight into how I organize my various projects and include actionable details for others…most importantly I hope the historical nature of these reports show to people at the stage I was at a few years ago that it is possible to build up an online business that can fund your desired life.

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3 Steps to a Productive Work Day for Entrepreneurs

As I have talked about I recently left my day job and started working from an office on my online business full time.

With my new schedule I have tried to make myself as productive as possible.

This (intentionally short) post is the 3 keys I have found to ensuring I have a productive day…

  1. Do the most important/biggest/ONE task first thing in the morning
  2. Have a plan for the day
  3. Have a schedule for the day
(more…)

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Amazon Affiliate Site to FBA Business

Today’s post I get into the weeds of how to analyze an affiliate site you either own or are considering buying to convert to an Amazon FBA model.

Basic Strategy – What the heck am I talking about?

This strategy is the basic strategy I followed to build and sell an Amazon Affiliate Site and Amazon (Fulfilled By Amazon / Private Label Product) business in 8 months with a 530% return and made $334k including sales price and net earnings.  See the full case study here – how to sell Amazon FBA business.

  • Step 1 – Build or buy an affiliate site that is generating sales of a product you believe you can source and private label yourself
  • Step 2 – Start an Amazon FBA business leveraging your affiliate website to drive traffic to your sales page.

What if you own  an affiliate site and are considering using it to build an FBA Business? Although a lot of the details in this post talk about considering the FBA model when buying a website, the information below is the same approach you would use if you own an affiliate website already and are looking to convert it into an FBA business.

phase1

What I Will Share in This Post:

  1. How to analyze the potential of an affiliate site for an FBA business
    • A – 10 Point Checklist Weighted Average Matrix to evaluate if the site could work
    • B – How to get and analyze the data to estimate potential sales driven by affiliate site
    • C – Assumptions to use based on my experience to gauge the impact Amazon organic sales will have
  2. Run the numbers (what is the expected net profit for the FBA business?)
  3. Spreadsheet I use to do this analysis – Free Download (Completed for One fake Site)
  4. A clever/slight twist on the Affiliate to FBA conversion model

ONE – How to analyze the potential of an affiliate site for an FBA business

A – 10 Point Checklist and Weighted Average Matrix To Evaluate Multiple Opportunities

Whether you own the affiliate site or are looking to buy one here are 10 key questions including their weighting in order of importance(from my perspective) to help evaluate the potential opportunity.

  1. Product can be easily sourced
  2. Not a restricted product (weapon, ecig, liquor, uranium)
  3. Similar Private Label Product Selling on Amazon
  4. Website Focused on a specific product
  5. Price point of product $20min to $40+ ideal
  6. Target $3k/month minimum amazon associate income
  7. Product is small/light (not oversized & cheaper shipping)
  8. Traffic Growing
  9. Industry Growing (easy to check with Google Trends)
  10. Backlink Profile & Risk

question

B – How to get and analyze the data to estimate sales

In order to determine the size of an opportunity, there is some critical data that is needed.

The key question we are trying to answer with this step in the process is…

“How many sales of a similar product to the one we could source does this website drive per month?”

This is a key piece of the equation when working on the next step.

So here are the detailed step by step instructions.

  1. Get the data – Login to Amazon associates account, go to reports, click on download reports, select max relevant date range and all associate tags attached to one website, download report
  2. Slice the data up using some excel tricks – Open the spreadsheet in Excel, sort all the orders by the date, create a pivot table with (filter on for relevant categories, row label = names, values = sum of items shipped). This pivot table will now show you how much of every product the site has sold. The next step is to copy that pivot table into a new tab and paste it as text then filter on the quantity so you can see the number of each unit that has been shipped starting with the most.
  3. Group the data based on the type of product you could replace – Based on looking at this table make some assumptions on the number of a similar product

Simplified Example – Download the template at the bottom of this post

category

The result for this step is that we can say in our fake example that our website sells around 500 3D Printing Pens in the given time period (for the purposes of this example assume 1 month)

C – Assumptions to use based on my experience

Back when I first launched my affiliate site to FBA case study I shared several assumptions I made well before I knew if they would be true. Some held and some didn’t, however based on a very small sample size here are the assumptions I am using to evaluate a sites potential…

item

salessplit

TWO – Run the Numbers – What is The Potential Profit?

For this section we just punch the numbers we have collected into the summary tab on the spreadsheet and it provides a very rough approximation of what kind of volume and net profit the business is going to do.

YES – I know this is simplistic and there are many ways to get into more detail (which I do in the template) but when evaluating any potential opportunity this is great way to start!

product

So after this analysis a Printing Pen (no I didn’t check if any of these numbers were reasonable) would be able to generate an additional $4k/month net profit if the little affiliate site added an FBA arm to it.

THREE – Spreadsheet I use to do this analysis – Free Download (Completed for One Site)

To get the same template I used to do my analysis on this “fake” site for the post or many other potential acquisitions simply click on the link below…

[thrive_link color=’blue’ link=’https://www.dropbox.com/s/6oy780twlcl0gzu/FBA%20Business%20Model%20Analysis%20-%20PUBLIC.xlsx?dl=0‘ target=’_blank’ size=’medium’ align=’aligncenter’]Download Template[/thrive_link]

FOUR – What About Buying Both an FBA Business and Complimentary Affiliate Website

Slight Twist – Eric from DigitalStrats made the interesting suggestion that flipping the model would deal with a few of the downsides of my suggested model… meaning buy an FBA business and then add on acquiring Amazon Affiliate sites in the space. This would result in a much faster return on the investment since you would see the increase in earnings immediately. There are 3 main downsides to this model I currently see…

Upside:

  1. The time until you realize your return is higher… as soon as you point a related affiliate site at your FBA business you will see the benefit.
  2. If you can acquire both your probability of success for the overall investment goes up vs acquiring just one. This is mainly due to there being fewer unknowns that could derail the business.

Downside:

  1. Total investment required would be more substantial
  2. The ability to find complimentary affiliate sites and FBA sites all willing to sell is tricky
  3. The return on your investment is lower than if you completely added the FBA side potentially

Wrap Up

I hope me sharing this method and spreadsheet for quickly evaluating the potential is helpful to some of you. Although one of my recent migrations is not going as planned I still strongly believe in this model and am looking forward to continuing to test it out.

Here are some additional resources:

If you are doing anything cool in this space please let me know I always like connecting and learning.

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3 Key Positions Required For a Successful Team and Online Business

This post is to try and share what I have learned building multiple teams online and a recent review of my business teams revealed some of my failings (which I share below).

Here is an updated post for 2020 on how to manage a remote team including all of our procedures.

There is a common question I get about how do I manage to get so much done…. The fact is “I” don’t.

In reality within my business I don’t do many of the day to day tasks. The majority of my day is reviewing reports, weekly one on one meetings with my managers, writing these posts, talking with clients, strategy for clients and coming up with new business ideas is the majority of my non-email work week.

For every new project I look to setup a team, sometimes this isn’t possible and I do most of the activities myself (IE my initial FBA business). But for the most part the benefit I have seen from using a team has been huge and one of my key questions when evaluating new projects is who am I going to work with on that project.

This post is going to focus on how I go about building and setting up a team for a new project whether it is existing team members or new people I am partnering with. (more…)

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