August was the type of month I like most where I felt like we were pushing hard on lots of fronts and risking more then we have been recently and the result was some big wins and some big failures!

As an old ski racing coach liked to say…

If you are not falling occasionally you aren’t trying to go fast enough!

Another month and another little canoe trip! 3 done this year and only 1 left.

Below is my income and business report for Aug…

Hopefully, this post will shed some light on how I build/operate my online business and gives you some useful insights. There are plenty of areas for improvement in my business and I try to highlight these as well! (more…)

Any month we are able to hit our targets is a good month.

July was a month where it felt like a couple businesses plateaued and a couple were able to break free from previous plateaus to new heights.

Summer is in full swing and I was able to get away a couple times for 2 canoe trips in July. On a conference call while in the middle of the woods was a fun time.

It was also the first time I was able to take my 4yr old son on a Canoe Trip and he had a blast!

I am in a constant battle for balancing speed and control… for some projects, I like to step on the gas while others need a little more infrastructure built up to handle the growth.

Thoughts on Team Building:

A VERY large amount of my time in July and Aug has been on thinking about building my team and when to hire locally or remotely.

One critical thing I have decided is…

Hire in house for culture fit / ambition / work ethic / raw intelligence AND pay for skill sets on the open marketplace. What I mean is I would rather have a hard working ambitious, intelligent great cultural fit who never heard of SEO then a poor fit that has all the skills. All the “skills” in this space can be purchased on UpWork.

Below is my income and business report for July…

Hopefully, this post will shed some light on how I build/operate my online business and gives you some useful insights. There are plenty of areas for improvement in my business and I try to highlight these as well!

Hope your summer is going well and your business is growing J

The Business “Divisions” For My Online Business:

1. Money Site Portfolio
2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
3. Services – Web Development, Content Marketing & Link Building:
   • Domain Finding Service (buy domains that meet my metrics)
   • Done for Your Private Blog Network (let my team build you a personal PBN)
   • LightningRank (get access to the most powerful PBN available!)
   • Brand Builders (FBA Branded Site Creation & Affiliate Site Creation)
   • Content Refined (Your in house content marketing team)
4. Amazon FBA Business
   • Brands 1-6 – All have specific targets for 2017
   • – Amazon FBA Hijacking and Suppression Monitoring
5. Put Outside Capital to Work Efficiently in the Online Asset Space

Key Successes

1. Portfolio Earnings – There were a handful of sites that really showed substantial improvement in $/visitor.
2. BrandBuilders – Continued product/market fit is evident and we are having a lot of fun helping the team Andrew has built grow the business.
3. Content Plan – It has been too long but I finally have a solid content plan/schedule for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com.

Key Failures

1. High Potential Low Probability – There were a couple projects/deals I put some effort into that had great potential but ultimately nothing came of them.
2. Facebook Ads – Similar to last month I had another failure trying to get some paid traffic working to one of my services. My thinking has shifted that I now just need to hire an agency or specialist to handle this for me. If you know anyone that is a killer with paid traffic please have them email me.

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

July Update – It is tough to understand the performance of this site right now with the number of 301 building blocks I have applied to it plus some spikey articles.

• Traffic = 15,071
• Earnings = $97.53

2. Buy 1 Site Per Month

July Update – One little AdSense site purchased and one small productized service business purchased. I will be talking more about the one soon enough (some people may have already received an email about that story).

• GOAL = 1 New Website Purchased
• ACTUAL = 2 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…

• Desire a simple/efficient/non-invasive sales process (no option is easier to sell to)
• 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
• 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

July Update – Although it doesn’t really show it there has been some good progress on increasing the earnings per visitor on several properties associated with this scalable new site creation effort for the year. Traffic continues to move in the right direction and I need to still substantially improve the earnings for several more properties.

• Traffic – 53,202
• Earnings – $276.52

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

July Update – The portfolio performance doesn’t look way better then other months but for the first time in about 6 months we had a month I was satisfied with in terms of our efforts showing clear results. Looking forward to continuing to improve the performance here!

Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss

3 Goals in 2015 for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com

1. Post Once Per Week

July Update – A “perfect” month… no missed posts and me and my team put a lot of effort into trying to provide as valuable posts as possible!

• Plan = 5
• Actual = 5

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

July Update – No Progress

3. Increased Intelligence with Email Automation

July Update – No Progress

PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH

May Update – 12,456 which is lower than I would like to see! Need to continue to push

Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss

1. Systems First Focus

July Update – Seeing the team come up with procedures without me prompting them and it being fundamental in everything we do is starting to pay off. We are seeing a new problem where the rate of procedure creation and the organization of those SOPs is not where we need it to be.

2. LightningRank.com – Quality and Efficiency Improvements

July Update – This is moving into becoming a new offering that will open up natural link building to even more people! We are continuing to see great results for clients on both the Done For You PBN and UseMyPBN service.

Visit LightningRank.com for Link Building Services!

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

June Update – A weird billing nuance where anyone who signed up on the 31^st got billed on the first showing up in July vs June has this number a few thousand less. CHURN is the enemy of any growing recurring subscription business! For us we were experiencing some awesome growth numbers but with a big push last month and then some normal/happy customer churn we have seen this growth slow.

• Planned MRR = $23,313
• Actual MRR = $27,919

Visit ContentRefined.com for Content Marketing Services!

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

June Update – Achieved – 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
  • July Update – Distribution received – always a good month when we can do that!
• Brand #2 – CF – Quarterly Dividends Ahead of Baseline
  • July Update – Continuing to perform well and need to setup for SOLID Q4!
• Brand #3 – NT – Path To Strong Market Position and Successful Pillar Product
  • July Update – Waiting to sell out of stock and then kill entity (first failed FBA project)
• Brand #4 – CK – Systematic Growth to $20k/month Profit
  • July Update – Performing okay… not where we want it!
• Brand #5 – PC – Successful launch and $5k/month Business
  • July Update – Despite pushing heavy on this business and great reviews it seems to be SLOW to move!
• Brand #6 – SE – 4X Value Expansion with Dream Team!
  • July Update – One more hail-marry attempt here coming up!
• LE – Hijack and Listing Suppression Monitoring Service
  • July Update – Steady/boring SAAS business

Part 5 – Put Outside Capital to Work Efficiently

July Update – We are working on another larger deal at a discount. The Due Diligence for this one has a little more “hair” on it then we would like!

Overall Income Update

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

• Target Net Income = $11,450
• Actual Net Income = $53,983
• 2017 Average Net Income = $47,109

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

Final Comments

July was a solid month… there continues to be a LOT of opportunities on the go and I am continuing to try to best balance everything that is in front of us.

The extra help from the co-ops this summer has been great and their contributions will be missed!

For me the mortgage crushing challenge or MCC is a great opportunity to test out some very efficient hands off strategies in an attempt to build up my site.

What is the MCC? The mortgage crushing challenge is a goal we set with our internal team and invited others to join in that results

This post is going to cover…

• A couple successes people are having with their site!
• My Exact 3 Part Strategy
• Results So Far

Special Note – I am very happy to say that a few people participating in this challenge are having a LOT of success! (more…)

June was a solid month. Although the results did not hit the target we were still able to push forward a lot of larger initiatives.

In particular, the team has a few big projects that are on the go and we are pushing hard on some larger goals.

The results from this month were a little disappointing! Having been growing nicely and having a string of very solid months back-back it felt like a step backwards when the final results of this month came in. However, when I sit back and look at the overall/absolute results I really shouldn’t be disappointed… but alas human psychology is cruel and regardless of the size of the earnings one key to satisfaction is growth. (more…)

May was an interesting month!

It was a month that started out very poorly and with my increased staff costs it was looking like it would be a tougher month than I would like. But… a strong end of the month for a few of the businesses really turned it around.

The team stepped up nicely and really pushed the business through the middle and end of the month.

Several parts of the business are not performing where we want them to be and we are working on making adjustments so we are more reliably hitting our goals!

The traffic to our money sites is growing very very nicely but our monetization is still weak. (more…)