In an effort to be as transparent as possible, I’m going to be posting my online income each month. I’m not trying to brag but I want to show you that it is totally possible to make money online. It will hopefully give you an idea of how much you can expect to earn through various online business opportunities. I know that I was always motivated to work harder when I saw what others were making in their online endeavors. I wanted a piece of that pie for myself!
I am still trying to figure out the best way to present this information so the format of these income reports may change from month to month as I tweak things. I am going to break down the sources of my income to give you an overview of how each one is doing from month to month. I’ll provide a summary of what changed each month that may have affected the income I made that month. I will end the report with a few goals for the next month to help me stay on track, keep me motivated and to give you a glimpse into what is coming up on the blog. If you have any questions or comments on how I can improve this report, I’d love to hear them. Thanks!
December Overview:
- I published 100 articles to niche website #8 (see chart in link below).
- Published first post on BrainstormingInMotion.com on 12/14/2017 (read it here).
- Outsourced 93 articles for niche website #6.
Income Sources:
Niche Websites (27) – Amazon Affiliates: $810.70
*Click here to see a chart showing the income of all 27 websites
Authority Website – Amazon Affiliates: $106.38
Infobarrel (referral link) (162 articles) – Amazon Affiliates: $10.51 – Advertising Program: ???
Gross Total: $927.59
*I plan to add expenses starting with next month’s income report.
I’m a bit disappointed with my December earnings. November and December are supposed to be the biggest shopping months of the year and, yet, they were my lowest months in terms of earnings this year. Even my July and August earnings beat out November and December which is unusual. Not sure why this happened but reading other message boards, I feel like it wasn’t just me with low earnings this holiday season. I sure hope this isn’t a trend.
What I Learned
1. Looking at my 27 niche websites, I realized that they are very low quality plus they haven’t been updated in forever. Some sites sit empty with no content while others haven’t had new content added in over 2 years. I really need to bust my butt to post a bunch of high quality, non-affilated posts, create some social media accounts and update the current content for all of these sites. It will be a lot of work but I think it could really help boost the traffic and earnings of the sites.
2. Even though I’ve been working online for over 10 years, I still need to remind myself to be patient and think long term. In November, I posted 100 articles to one of my niche sites. I expected the income to go up in December but instead, it flatlined. In fact, that site made less in December than in November. With my other niche sites, I found that it takes Google at least 6 months to start sending organic traffic after publishing an article. The articles I posted in November probably won’t start getting traffic until next summer or even next fall. Instead of worrying about how the site isn’t getting traffic or earnings, I just need to keep publishing articles and improving my sites. The traffic and earnings will come eventually.
3. The last thing I want to mention is that it is important to diversify. All of my income is tied to Amazon’s affiliate program. If Amazon decided to delete my account for some reason, then I’m screwed. I’m hoping to add Adsense to my authority website in the next few months and eventually start selling an eBook on the site. I’d also like to start selling t-shirts on a couple different websites (Amazon, Redbubble & Etsy). If I can make a full-time income with 3-5 sources, then I won’t be in trouble when something happens to one of them.
January Goals
- Post 14 articles to my authority website.
- Post articles to Brainstorming In Motion every Monday, Wednesday, Friday
- Outsource, edit and publish articles to 4 niche websites
- Start a Facebook group for Brainstorming In Motion
- Start working on a resources page for Brainstorming In Motion
- Find 10 ideas for t-shirt designs (I’ll be doing a case study on this towards the end of the month)
- Start planning for my vacation in February (scheduling articles, deciding how to deal with comments while I’m gone, getting a vacation response email set up, etc)