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Business and Income Report April 2017

April was another very busy month.

Several businesses continue to perform extremely well and the increased team has definitely increased the amount of work we are able to get done.

Balancing tasks between immediate pay-off and long term growth is always tricky. Time will tell if we get that balance right!

My first 2 full time staff were a huge success and I am trying to grow my in house team rapidly adding 3 additional summer co-ops to determine the right size/makeup of my in house team.

This report covers the results of the business during April!

The Business “Divisions” For My Online Business:

  1. Money Site Portfolio
  2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
  3. Services – Web Development, Content Marketing & Link Building:
  4. Amazon FBA Business
    • Brands 1-6 – All have specific targets for 2017
    • ListingEagle – Amazon FBA Hijacking and Suppression Monitoring
  5. Put Outside Capital to Work Efficiently in the Online Asset Space

Key Successes

  1. Content Refined Continued Success & Self-Reinforcing Competitive Advantage – ContentRefined.com continues to grow at a rapid rate with ever improving systems/procedures. I think it is becoming clear that there is a gap in the marketplace for a reasonably priced content writing service that focuses on the effectiveness of the content to drive results and not just $/word. As we continue to geek out on the data we are uniquely positioned to collect we will continue to drive a gap between our contents performance and competitors. This is a unique opportunity where our competitive advantage of being a systems/data driven marketing first content marketing service becomes self-reinforcing as we grow (since we get more and more data).

2. Money Sites – With a reorganization of my internal team Kelley has taken over the running of my portfolio of sites and is doing a great job here! Although we didn’t see the earnings jump we really want it was a solid month.

3. BrandBuilders Turnkey Sites – The turnkey sites continue to be in HIGH demand! We sold out in a matter of hours and are continuing to scale again… you can get on the early bird list here.

4. Traveled Drove & Flew With 3 Kids Aged 4 and Under! – For any parents of little ones out there that have pulled off any trip you can relate to this being a success! My wife and I traveled to Florida with our 4yr, 2yr and 4 week old… 8hr drive and 2hr flight… no crying or screaming on the plane (although I am sure I aged from the trip).

Key Failures

  1. Singular Focus? Every once in a while I get tempted to rethink if my diversified approach makes sense! I am not planning to make a change but wonder if I am leaving an opportunity under-realized due to my split focus.
  2. Vacation Productivity – I was able to keep things moving but was not as productive on my vacation as I had planned!
  3. 80/20 – Due to both my decreased hours (vacation / new baby) and increased demand on my time (3 new staff) I have slipped a little in my email response time and realizing I am likely not working in the sweet spot of the 80/20 principle.
  4. Amazon Stops Selling Product – One of the FBA business I was growing and was showing promise had all the products pulled by Amazon (all the products in the category, not just mine!).

2017 Business Goals

Below is my businesses main goals for 2017…

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

3 Goals in 2016 for my Website Portfolio Business

  1. Everyone Win at the Mortgage Crushing Competition

Apr Update – The site is doing well with a solid increase in traffic. I need to improve my earnings per visitor but happy with the start of the site. To get to the target of this site crushing any mortgage payments I have to stay on it!

  • Traffic = 6,233
  • Earnings = $31.27

2. Buy 1 Site Per Month

Apr Update – Some interesting sites came my way this month but I decided they were a little too unstable for me to purchase. Although I didn’t buy a couple I was able to get them into the hands of some others who did buy them (I am definitely not a broker but if I can connect someone I will).

  • GOAL = 1 New Website Purchased
  • ACTUAL = 0 New Website 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)
  • SEO done to the site can be questionable and that increased risk will be reflected in the sales price
  • Site being associated with a banned Amazon Associate is still possible to sell (but STEEP discount!)
  • Understand that the benefits of the bullet points above means the sales multiple will be lower than if you went a more traditional route

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

3. Scalable New Site Creation Strategy adds $5k to Portfolio

Apr Update – Although the graph looks rough! The results are still promising and we will be working hard to really increase the earnings per visitor. Overall I am impressed with the strategy and the majority of this trend is the result of one site taking a seasonal nose dive.

  • Traffic – 26,044
  • Earnings – $163.04

PRIMARY GOAL – OVERALL INCOME FOR WEBSITE PORTFOLIO GROW TO $15k/MONTH CONSISTENTLY

Apr Update – Decent results for the portfolio, it fell a little short of the 10k target but still solid results!

 

Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss

3 Goals in 2015 for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com

  1. Post Once Per Week

Apr Update – Second month in a row where I fell short on my weekly posting goal. Definitely going to beat myself up on this metric… need to push hard to deliver great posts. Last month I had one very interesting post published regarding a cool new tool that can constantly monitor your websites speed!

  • Plan = 4
  • Actual = 3

2. Systematic Promotion of my Content and Building of my List

Apr Update – No Progress  – One of the team members joining will have it on her plate to help develop and execute and improved strategy here by the end of the summer

3. Increased Intelligence with Email Automation

Apr Update – No Progress – Need to carve out a dedicated workday to go through this!

PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH

Apr Update – 13,175… Lots of work to do this year to hit this target! I will continue pushing!

Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss

  1. Systems First Focus

Apr Update – Each business had new procedures created for them!

  1. com – Quality and Efficiency Improvements

Apr Update – Work has begun on a complete new backend system for LightningRank management and are testing out new systems we will be ready to offer to existing clients soon.

Visit LightningRank.com for Link Building Services!

  1. ContentRefined.com – 20k MRR by June & 40k MRR by End of Year

Apr Update – Maddie is doing an exceptional job delivering fantastic customer support and articles! We (and a new summer intern) are working hard to setup the data tracking to keep pushing the science of content marketing forward. See the post at the start of May here… rank content in Google with certainty.

  • Planned MRR = $16,000
  • Actual MRR = $25,432

4. BrandBuilders.io Structurally Well Setup & New Offering Launched

Apr Update – Achieved – expect a very interesting case study soon! The TurnKey affiliate sites ready in 24hrs are selling out in a handful of hours every time we launch!

PRIMARY GOAL – SYSTEMATIC GROWTH!

Part 4 – Amazon FBA Business

  • Brand #1 – HG – Running Lean and Spinning off Cash
    • Apr Update – Running lean and profitable. The business is still being driven by an affiliate site that drives a lot of traffic (100k/month)!

  • Brand #2 – CF – Quarterly Dividends Ahead of Baseline
    • Apr Update – Continuing to run lean and profitable
  • Brand #3 – NT – Path To Strong Market Position and Successful Pillar Product
    • Apr Update – Turned around a little last month… still not a great business!
  • Brand #4 – CK – Systematic Growth to $20k/month Profit
    • Apr Update – This was our first full month back on Amazon, it started to grow again and getting some decent organic sales now.
  • Brand #5 – PC – Successful launch and $5k/month Business
    • Apr Update – We are now selling! Consistent but small organic sales!
  • Brand #6 – SE – 4X Value Expansion with Dream Team!
    • Apr Update – The first test shipment is going to arrive in May and the goal is to make our first sale in May!
  • com – Hijack and Listing Suppression Monitoring Service
    • Apr Update – Staying flat, churn = new customers right now. Great service I still use to be notified when my listing gets suppressed so I can go in and fix it right away!

Part 5 – Put Outside Capital to Work Efficiently

Apr Update – Expect a BIG case study on this

Overall Income Update

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

  • Target Net Income = $10,925
  • Actual Net Income = $49,617.53
  • 2017 Average Net Income = $46,593.96

 

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

Final Comments

April was a very solid month. Just based on the timing of a few things there are some structural challenges to keeping this pace up for May. I am going to try and keep pushing the business forward while taking care to keep laying a strong foundation of procedures and team members.

April the in-house team doubled with summer students and I am excited to see how I can leverage their brains and enthusiasm to help out the business and this audience!

March Income – New Baby and New Records

New month, new baby and a new income record! March was a busy month for the business with many new projects on the go.

Between the hiring of 2 additional staff in house and a BIG new project that is all about putting more capital to work in this space I am excited. Expect a very interesting case study soon about the new project and in particular the BrandBuilders.io deal structure.

It is still a challenge to ensure I am giving all projects the amount of attention they deserve especially with the arrival of my 3rd child and spending more time at home.

This report covers the results of the business during March!

The Business “Divisions” For My Online Business:

  1. Money Site Portfolio
  2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
  3. Services – Web Development, Content Marketing & Link Building:
  4. Amazon FBA Business
    • Brands 1-6 – All have specific targets for 2017
    • ListingEagle – Amazon FBA Hijacking and Suppression Monitoring
  5. Put Outside Capital to Work Efficiently in the Online Asset Space

Key Successes

  1. ContentRefined.com Growth (10% compounding per week!) – Content Refined has continued to grow at 10% per week for 4 months now! Maddie is handling all orders extremely well and we are getting fantastic feedback on both the service and the support!

2. BrandBuilders Deal – The launch of the turnkey sites was CRAZY… they sold out in a matter of hours and we are quickly scaling to be able to handle additional volume! You can sign up for the early bird list here.

3. FBA Businesses – After a few months of struggles with the FBA businesses we have had the start of success on a few fronts with these brands and look

4. Quality of Applicants & New Hires – I posted a job to hire a summer intern and ended up with an incredible number of quality applicants! I am excited about the 3 people I will be adding to my in-house team and their potential contributions to the company and this website/audience.

Key Failures

  1. # of Projects and Unrealized Opportunity – With the number of projects I have it is clear that a few have some pretty amazing potential but I am spending time on projects that even if they hit their targets won’t deliver the type of results a small incredible increase in the other projects would yield. This is an ongoing struggle but allocating my time to balance both diversification of risk and optimizing my return on time. My hope is that with the increased staff my capacity will continue to be increased and I will be able to give increased attention to the projects that are morst deserving of it!

2017 Business Goals

Below is my businesses main goals for 2017…

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

3 Goals in 2016 for my Website Portfolio Business

  1. Everyone Win at the Mortgage Crushing Competition

Mar Update – The team is doing very well in the MortgageCrushingCompetition. Everyone struggles with the same issues of finding time to invest in this project but all sites are looking good!

  • Traffic = 4,175 Unique Users
  • Earnings = $12.72

2. Buy 1 Site Per Month

Mar Update – This was the first month in a long time where I did not actually add a content site into my portfolio! I did buy an Amazon FBA business and through an entity I will talk more about later we made another productized service acquisition but for me personally, I did not buy any content site!

  • GOAL = 1 New Website Purchased
  • ACTUAL = 0 New Website 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)
  • SEO done to the site can be questionable and that increased risk will be reflected in the sales price
  • Site being associated with a banned Amazon Associate is still possible to sell (but STEEP discount!)
  • Understand that the benefits of the bullet points above means the sales multiple will be lower than if you went a more traditional route

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

Amazon FBA, SAAS or Larger Websites I Can Close on Quickly As Well – Contact Me Here

 

3. Scalable New Site Creation Strategy adds $5k to Portfolio

Mar Update – This project is going well with a LOT of traffic rolling into these sites. The earnings are behind where I want them to be but I made some organization changes that have put Kelley who is a wiz with this stuff in charge of my portfolio with a CO-OP student to help part time.

  • Traffic – 40,089 Uniques per month
  • Earnings – $351.72 (lots of opportunity for improving! currently behing plan!)

PRIMARY GOAL – OVERALL INCOME FOR WEBSITE PORTFOLIO GROW TO $15k/MONTH CONSISTENTLY

Mar Update – The graph looks awesome! Except there is a one-time earnings event in here that will not be repeated. Definitely, have a lot of work to do to drive up the earnings for my sites. Many sites with great traffic but not earning enough from them, many tests are now underway.

 

Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss

3 Goals in 2015 for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com

  1. Post Once Per Week

Mar Update – March was not my best month for the site! The posts were not as in depth as I would like and were more mind-set then tactical. I am working to fix that this month! My excuse… baby… but it is a weak excuse since we had ~9months to prepare for me not working much for a few days.

  • Plan = 4
  • Actual = 3

2. Systematic Promotion of my Content and Building of my List

Mar Update – No Progress  – One of the team members joining will have it on her plate to help develop and execute and improved strategy here.

3. Increased Intelligence with Email Automation

Mar Update – Good progress last month with proper tagging, now it is up to me to better define the process.

PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH

Mar Update – 17,257… Lots of work to do this year to hit this target! I will continue pushing!

Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss

  1. Systems First Focus

Mar Update – Great continued focus from the manager of the services.

  1. ListingEagle.com – Quality and Efficiency Improvements

Mar Update – The ranking improvements we saw from the tests we ran are continuing this month!

Visit LightningRank.com for Link Building Services!

  1. ContentRefined.com – 20k MRR by June & 40k MRR by End of Year

Mar Update – We have had an average compounding growth rate of 10.76%(PER WEEK) for 13weeks! Customers are thrilled and we are blowing through our targets. Many long hours are being put in by the team led by Maddie but we are very excited for what options we have for this business!

  • Planned MRR = $14,000
  • Actual MRR = $22,187

Visit ContentRefined.com for Content Marketing Services!

4. BrandBuilders.io Structurally Well Setup & New Offering Launched

Mar Update – Achieved – expect a very interesting case study soon! The TurnKey affiliate sites ready in 24hrs are fantastic and feedback has been great (selling out in under 24hrs again)!

PRIMARY GOAL – SYSTEMATIC GROWTH!

Part 4 – Amazon FBA Business

  • Brand #1 – HG – Running Lean and Spinning off Cash
    • Mar Update – Running lean (don’t have the numbers for this business so not included in the income report)
  • Brand #2 – CF – Quarterly Dividends Ahead of Baseline
    • Mar Update – Continuing to run lean and profitable
  • Brand #3 – NT – Path To Strong Market Position and Successful Pillar Product
    • Mar Update – This business may be the first one we need to kill… unfortunate and we will test a couple more ideas but our landed cost is simply too high for this product to be really profitable.
  • Brand #4 – CF – Systematic Growth to $20k/month Profit
    • Mar Update – GREAT NEWS – we are back on Amazon and selling!
  • Brand #5 – PC – Successful launch and $5k/month Business
    • Mar Update – We are now selling! With 2 websites pushing sales we are looking forward to seeing how we are able to compete in this space.
  • Brand #6 – SE – 4X Value Expansion with Dream Team!
    • Mar Update – Products are on the boat for the first very small validation order!
  • com – Hijack Monitoring Service
    • Mar Update – Continuing to run very lean with little effort on growth. Great solution for people who want to be notified ASAP if their listing goes down.

Part 5 – Put Outside Capital to Work Efficiently

Mar Update – I will have some big news on this front soon!

Overall Income Update

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

  • Target Net Income = $10,750
  • Actual Net Income = $60,065.61
  • 2017 Average Net Income = $45,586.10

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

Final Comments

March was a month where I definitely felt I started to be more active working on my business and not in it. The next phase of growth for the business I believe is clear and that is continuing to get better at managing my team, pushing out more value to my audience at AuthorityWebsiteIncome and focusing on my largest opportunities within my portfolio/investments.

There will be what I hope is a very interesting case study coming soon about how adding a 3rd option (not just sell/don’t sell) for world class operators who aren’t necessarily looking to sell but want to take some risk off the table. If this might apply to you please reach out to me and I can let you know more details.

February 2017 Income Report

Although February was a short month it was a very busy one! We have a lot of projects on the go and have the feeling of momentum behind many of them.

Definitely sometimes struggling to ensure I give new projects enough of a push before I try and hand them off. I have a concept that I am still thinking through but essentially it takes a 10x increase in my effort to onboard/launch a new business vs maintain it so I only have a limited amount of energy I can invest in those growth projects. When I have too many in the critical phase it doesn’t go well… but the flip side is that once I correctly get on onboarded it takes limited effort. So, basically I need to limit the number of growth projects, give them 110% focus and then not move until it is above my imaginery “self-sustaining” line.

In February, I was also very appreciative of my key team members both in house and over-seas they have been able to continually take on more and more work but what is most impressive is how much they are continually invested in growing the business which is fun! Although the dream was to work from home initially working from an office with talented staff pushing in the same direction is fun!

This report covers the results of the business over the course of February.

The Business “Divisions” For My Online Business:

  1. Money Site Portfolio
  2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
  3. Services – Web Development, Content Marketing & Link Building:
  4. Amazon FBA Business
    • Brands 1-6 – All have specific targets for 2017
    • ListingEagle – Amazon FBA Hijacking and Suppression Monitoring
  5. Put Outside Capital to Work Efficiently in the Online Asset Space

Key Successes

  1. ContentRefined.com Customer Support – Maddie is going the extra mile including a few examples of getting a clients unique dog food sent to her so she could get photos with a dog
  2. BrandBuilders Deal – A deal was finalized in February that increased my % stake in BrandBuilders, provided a vehicle to look at bigger deals moving forward and setup the existing team to build the business even more.
  3. New Website Growth Strategy – Several of the sites I have been building have been having some great success out of the gate! I am looking to continue testing this out myself and then scaling and sharing it!
  4. FBA Deal – I am starting to purchase some small Amazon FBA deals and the first one is performing well. There are not very many outlets for people looking to sell Amazon FBA businesses making under $2k/month but they can be solid little businesses. I am working to setup systems to onboard these businesses efficiently. If you are interested in selling your FBA business let me know.

Key Failures

  1. Passive Income Portfolio – Both my time and a team members time I hired to help run the portfolio is getting pulled in other directions. The immediate payback is low but the long term payback is great so I need to figure out a way to put more effort in here. The solution I am looking at in March is a re-organization of my team to re-balance workload.
  2. FBA Brands – I still don’t quite feel like I have nailed the business model here, plenty of challenges with existing brands and lots of learnings again this month.

2017 Business Goals

Below is my businesses main goals for 2017…

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

3 Goals in 2016 for my Website Portfolio Business

  1. Everyone Win at the Mortgage Crushing Competition

Feb Update – The team is doing very well in the MortgageCrushingCompetition. Everyone struggles with the same issues of finding time to invest in this project but all sites are looking good!

  • Traffic = 1,199
  • Earnings = $2.64

2. Buy 1 Site Per Month

Feb Update – 1 larger site was purchased and a new business was spun up with a manager and investor. It is a unique dropshipping business that existed for 9 years and the deal had a substantial earnout component to it. So far it is performing on baseline for revenue with a lot of efficiencies already realized. We are looking at some nice growth opportunities moving forward.

  • GOAL = 1 New Website Purchased
  • ACTUAL = 1 New Website 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)
  • SEO done to the site can be questionable and that increased risk will be reflected in the sales price
  • Site being associated with a banned Amazon Associate is still possible to sell (but STEEP discount!)
  • Understand that the benefits of the bullet points above means the sales multiple will be lower than if you went a more traditional route

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

Amazon FBA, SAAS or Larger Websites I Can Close on Quickly As Well – Contact Me Here

3. Scalable New Site Creation Strategy adds $5k to Portfolio

Feb Update – Some great progress here! Several sites have started to perform well that were brand new builds using a unique strategy. The goal of this strategy is to add $5k/month to the portfolio.

  • Traffic – 37,281 uniques per month
  • Earnings – $177.24

PRIMARY GOAL – OVERALL INCOME FOR WEBSITE PORTFOLIO GROW TO $15k/MONTH CONSISTENTLY

Feb Update – With some  changes in how one site is being monetized I had a big drop in earnings but expect it to bounce back nicely next month. Overall the portfolio is performing well in terms of traffic but not getting the level of attention it deserves!

Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss

3 Goals in 2015 for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com

  1. Post Once Per Week

Feb Update – Some big posts were published in February including my post and tool about how to calculate your drop in amazon affiliate program earnings.

  • Plan = 4
  • Actual = 4

2. Systematic Promotion of my Content and Building of my List

Feb Update – No progress – need to develop system to systematically promote posts. With my Amazon Affiliate Program earnings calculation tool I did a bunch of outreach to let people know I had a tool for them to easily calculate the change in their earnings and as a result received a large number of links back.

3. Increased Intelligence with Email Automation

Feb Update – Progress moving all customers and contacts into one database with established tagging practises so we will be able to take the next step of applying some intelligent automation.

PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH

Feb Update – Lots of work to do this year to hit this target! I will continue pushing!

Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss

  1. Systems First Focus

Feb Update – Continued focus point during my meetings with each business manager. As businesses are growing we are continually finding ourselves outgrowing our systems and needing to adapt quickly.

  1. LightningRank.com – Quality and Efficiency Improvements

Feb Update – The tests are part of the new systematic money site creation strategy that resulted in 37k visitors within a couple months after starting a series of sites. The results we are seeing are fantastic and are looking forward to continuing to explore these strategies with more tests.

Visit LightningRank.com for Link Building Services!

  1. ContentRefined.com – 20k MRR by June & 40k MRR by End of Year

Feb Update – Another great month for this new and promising business. With happy customers, VERY low churn numbers we achieved the target growth rate. To hit our end of year goal it is clear we need to develop additional sales channels and branch into new markets. We expect some learning curves branching into additional markets but are looking forward to it! Maddie as mentioned above is doing a great job at taking care of all customers and growing the business.

  • Planned MRR = $12,000
  • Actual MRR = $12,989

Visit ContentRefined.com for Content Marketing Services!

4. BrandBuilders.io Structurally Well Setup & New Offering Launched

Feb Update – This goal I can now call complete for 2017! It is structurally well setup, new office for this business has been established and the team is growing. The TurnKey affiliate sites ready in 24hrs are fantastic and feedback has been great.

PRIMARY GOAL – SYSTEMATIC GROWTH!

Part 4 – Amazon FBA Business

  • Brand #1 – HG – Running Lean and Spinning off Cash
    • Feb Update – Running lean (don’t have the numbers for this business so not included in the income report)
  • Brand #2 – CF – Quarterly Dividends Ahead of Baseline
    • Feb Update – First loan repayments have been sent and the business is operating efficiently and ahead of baseline. Unfortunately for me as manager with a big hole to dig out of before I get any upside consideration it isn’t adding a lot to the monthly profit yet.
  • Brand #3 – NT – Path To Strong Market Position and Successful Pillar Product
    • Feb Update – This business might be on its way to be my first FBA flob… the product is great but the price point is simply too high to compete with the much cheaper competitors. We have a few more tricks up our sleeve to pull out to see the results.
  • Brand #4 – CF – Systematic Growth to $20k/month Profit
    • Feb Update – Still having issues with Amazon and needing to get our listing live again. Great product which had been doing great sales! We have $30k worth of inventory waiting to start selling again!
  • Brand #5 – PC – Successful launch and $5k/month Business
    • Feb Update – Had a few bumps in the road with the labels for the products. It took a while to get that sorted out now and Amazon will have the products in March.
  • Brand #6 – SE – 4X Value Expansion with Dream Team!
    • Feb Update – The investment needed for this project has started to make it look less attractive but coming up with some other strategies to validate the idea before launching.
  • ListingEagle.com – Hijack Monitoring Service
    • Feb Update – Continued slow growth.

Part 5 – Put Outside Capital to Work Efficiently

Overall Income Update

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

  • (very old) Target Net Income = $10,575
  • Actual Net Income = $52,155
  • 2017 Average Net Income = $38,346.34

 

 

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

Final Comments

 

Feb was a short month but definitely one where a lot of great progress was made. My disappointing performance with FBA is still a pain and I have some ways I am looking to solve it moving forward. In addition some great progress on setting up unique opportunities looking longer term, excited to keep the momentum going in March!

Hope your year is starting well!

 

January Income Post – Goals for 2017

In this income post I layout the goals for 2017 for my business and what parts of my business will be getting my focus and energy!

January was by the numbers not the start to the year I was looking for but as we were still getting a lot of the orders from a massive November wrapped up it is understandable.

Many new tests are looking like they are winners while several cash cows of my businesses seemed to stumble a bit in January.Continue reading

December Income Report 2016

After a record month in November I knew it was going to be hard to top!

Although the numbers were not as impressive as the previous record income report and a few of the numbers show reason for concern it was another solid month with a couple projects paying off nicely!

Overall this is the final income report in a year that saw the business double in total income over the previous year!

The plan is to keep pushing hard in 2017!

Here is how my business is broken down…

The Business “Divisions” For My Online Business:

  1. Money Site Portfolio
  2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
  3. SEO & Expired Domain Services:
  1. Amazon FBA Business
    • Brand #1 – Sold 2/3
    • Brand #2 – Investors and purchase affiliate site
    • Brand #3 – Product First Brand
    • Brand #4 – Product First Brand
    • ListingEagle – Amazon FBA Hijacking and Suppression Monitoring

 

Key Successes

  1. Content Refined – Great feedback so far. Only a couple clients where we were not the right fit for and we failed on one delivery but other than that we have had nothing but positive comments. Maddie has done a great job taking the initial process and procedures and building it out.
  2. One Website Purchase – One website I purchased in October in a bit of trendy product absolutely killed it! Generating over $10k in affiliate earnings! Although due to the unique deal I didn’t keep every dollar of it.
  3. FBA Sales – All brands except one are selling on Amazon and doing reasonably well. Inventory issues plagued a couple brands stunting sales but lots of promise for these brands in 2017!

 

Key Failures

  1. Amazon Associate Account – This will be the last time I mention it but not having my Amazon associate account really hurts the monetization of my portfolio especially in Dec!
  2. Not Working Through the Holidays Enough – I will likely take some flak for saying this one but I am fortunate that working on my business is fun and when I manage my energy level it doesn’t feel like work. However, through the holidays mostly due to eating crappy food and cutting on sleep I didn’t suck it up and get enough work done.

 

2016 Business Goals

Below is my businesses main goals for 2016…

Download This Easy to Edit and Printable Goals Template – FREE

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

3 Goals in 2016 for my Website Portfolio Business

  1. Systematize Top 20 Sites in Portfolio

Dec Update – This one I can happily say was achieved in 2016 by hiring a manager to help with the running of these sites and then building systems to manage the process.

  1. Buy 1 Site Per Month

Dec Update – No new sites were purchased in Dec but I achieved my goals in 2016 of buying 1 site per month.

  • GOAL = 1 Website
  • ACTUAL = 0

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)
  • SEO done to the site can be questionable and that increased risk will be reflected in the sales price
  • Site being associated with a banned Amazon Associate is still possible to sell (but STEEP discount!)
  • Understand that the benefits of the bullet points above means the sales multiple will be lower than if you went a more traditional route

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

  1. Sell Websites Strategically for $100k Total

Dec Update – The unique deal was a win-win for both parties in 2016

 

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

 

Dec Update – Not having my Amazon account definitely resulted in this month not being as awesome as I would have liked but I am happy with a couple of the sites really generating a LOT of earnings! In addition several new tests I will write about soon seem to be doing well also.

 

Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss

3 Goals in 2015 for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com

  1. Post Once Per Week

Dec Update – Although I pushed hard in 2016 to get 1 post out per week I did not achieve this goal. It was close and I am happy especially in the second half of the year with the quality posts that were getting published!

  • Plan = 4
  • Actual = 3

  1. 10x my Outreach

Dec Update – Not achieved for 2016

  1. Site Redesign – Completed!

PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH

Dec Update – 15,164 users up 15% over the previous year. Overall the traffic for the year grew by 63% but I did not achieve the 30k/month goal.

Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss

  1. Systems Overhaul/Refresh

Dec Update  – Achieved this goal for 2016 with a lot of work done by the team leads Kelley and Maddie.

 

  1. Improve email marking and sales automation

Dec Update – This is one of the failed goals that I wish I

 

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

Dec Update – A great year for BrandBuilders! Andrew did a fantastic job and we have BIG plans for 2017!

PRIMARY GOAL – STAND ALONE SYSTEMATIZED SERVICES BUSINESS IN 2016

Part 4 – Amazon FBA Business

  • Brand #1 – Sell FBA Business for 30x with 3+ Solid Months
    • Dec Update – Great progress in Dec testing out this site using a combination of both Shopify and Amazon for order processing. An evolution of the Affiliate Site to FBA theory right now is to use the affiliate site to drive traffic to Amazon for 1 week a month to push up the sales rank and then shift the traffic to Shopify where the earnings per visitor is higher (no Amazon fees). We are still testing this but it seems like it could be promising.
  • Launch Brand #2 – Investors – Affiliate Site Focused (External Traffic Focused)
    • Dec Update – Unfortunately we were out of stock for 2 critical weeks! I had screwed up… I timed the inventory well but cut it close and the freight forwarder missed the delivery date by 1 day with Amazon resulting in the delivery to Amazon being pushed back 2 weeks and those were the two weeks we were out of stock.
  • Launch Brand #3 – Partner – Product First Focused (Brand Vision Focus)
    • Dec Update – This brand has been the slowest to grow. It is also the one with what I think is the best brand vision and the product is clearly the best in its market. Although the growth hasn’t been crazy our hope is that with some more aggressive initial promotions we can push our way into a

 

  • Launch Brand #4 – Partner – Product First Focused (Unique Product Focused)
    • Dec Update – We ordered 1,250 units to start this product and after a VERY fast launch $25k revenue in month 1 we were concerned we would be selling out so started increasing price to slow sales before our next shipment arrived. In addition a small bug in how the product works was revealed and has been fixed for our next shipment which will arrive early February.
  • ListingEagle – Hijack Monitoring Service
    • Dec Update – The listing monitoring (hijack and suppression monitoring) tool is continuing to be appreciated by many who use it and will continue to be a profitable but not explosive growth SAAS product.

 

Overall Income Update

 

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

  • Target Net Income = $10,225
  • Actual net Income = $36,240
  • 2016 Average Monthly Net Income = $32,505.50 (stretch goal is 30k average for the year)

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

Final Comments

December was a very solid month with a couple BIG successes but there were a couple concerning parts of the business I need to focus on. The growth on a few parts of my services business was slower than I would like and my inability to find a solid alternative to Amazon Associates really hurt my portfolio’s performance in Dec!

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