Income Report Roundup – Dec 2019

December is often a slow month for online business. Unless you are in an industry that can take advantage of the Christmas shopping period, you might see traffic dip quite significantly. But slow traffic doesn’t mean you have to slow down, just be sure to take some time to enjoy the holiday season as well! 

The team internally has been pushing hard to finish up Q4 and get ready for a big year in 2020! 

There are a few growth opportunities the team is busy working away on and I am very excited about! More on these will be revealed over the coming months. 

#1 Takeaway – Goals – Several of the websites on our list saw revenue and traffic (expectedly) dip during December. This is why our number #1 tip for December is to stay focused on your growth goals. Use these slow periods to invest in your future, instead of becoming discouraged. Don’t be complacent, here are a few ways you can set yourself up for the future:  

• Accountability and Specifics – One of the most important parts of setting goals is to be specific and hold yourself accountable. Be very specific about the amount of traffic and revenue you are aiming toward. If you have clear metrics and numbers, you will find it easier to focus in on what you want. A big reason many of these entrepreneurs write these income reports is to hold themselves accountable!
• Short and Long Term – It is important to separate your goals into long-term projects and short-term achievable goals. Have an idea of what you want from your business in the long run, but also give yourself goals that you can reach any given day. As an online entrepreneur, there is always something you can do in the short term to improve – whether it is generating content, working on SEO, narrowing in on a niche, or more! 

Quick December Update on my End:

• Posts at AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com (more to come!)
  • How to build grit as an entrepreneur
• Family trip before skiing takes over our lives for the winter
• ContentRefined is set to beta-test a new service – something big is coming!
• blade.software user base has grown nicely – see dashboard
• MotionInvest is continuing to see very large demand for its services
• Ski Hills opened the earliest they ever have! 

My Reason for This Round Up:

When I started my online entrepreneurship journey I took a lot of inspiration from others that were sharing everything they did online. Seeing that people like me were making REAL money and that the opportunity to replace my day job was possible. 

It has been 3 years since I left my day job – https://websiteincome.com/quit-my-job/

The more transparent the report the more I appreciated and was motivated by it. 

Over the years I have tried to be as transparent as possible sharing along the way my goals, business successes/failures and the ultimate results(profits). 

After years of sharing monthly income posts I decided that it made sense to stop these… a decision I actually regret as I wish I had found a way to keep sharing some of what I was doing. 

My reason for stopping was my online world and “real” worlds became more connected and it was becoming very odd to share these numbers.  

Looking at many of the people that originally had an income round up posts they have also stopped. Namely the most famous in the space Pat Flynn no longer does income round ups. 

In this post I will cover…

1. List of inspiring income report posts and how they earned their profits
2. Recognize motivating people showing not just telling people the results they are achieving
3. Learn from others – What the key learning is from the people

Last Month Profit – $20,757.55

Name – Ron Stefanski

Website – onehourprofessor.com

Business Model – Authority Affiliate Site      

Income Report – https://www.onehourprofessor.com/december-2019-monthly-income-report/

Key Lesson(s):

• Ron finds December to be a stressful month, as traffic tends to dip. 
• A competitor was stealing some of the top terms from Ron’s most successful website. Ron sees this as a big drawback of having one main point of failure (one website that makes the most money). Ron has some fixes in mind to fix these problems in 2020. 
• Overall, 2019 was a big success! Ron has been able to surpass his goals in traffic and revenue each year. 
• The overall growth rate has been great! (look at the graph below)

·            

Checkout the video I did with Ron and be sure to read his gripping story here!

Last Month Profit – $4,051

Name – Lidiya

Website – letsreachsuccess.com

Business Model – Blogging

Income Report – https://letsreachsuccess.com/earn-over-4000-blogging/

Key Lesson(s):

• Lidiya focused on SEO this month, including deleting a substantial amount of old, outdated content. This way, Google can stop crawling thin content and focus on the long form content she wants to promote. 
• Lidiya created a new freebie for subscribers, a comprehensive blogging guide! Hopefully this will incentivize even more subscribers.  
• Lidiya saw her traffic drop pretty significantly this month, but she knows this is pretty normal for December and January. 
• She published 23 new articles on the blog this month. 

Last Month Profit – no update this month

Name – Spencer Haws

Website – NichePursuits.com

Business Model – Authority Affiliate Site

Income Report – https://www.nichepursuits.com/get-ready-niche-site-project-4/

Key Lesson(s):

• No income report published this month.

Last Month Profit – $3,178.22

Name – Johnny FD

Website – johnnyfd.com

Business Model – Mixed – Dropshipping & Investing

Income Report https://www.johnnyfd.com/2020/01/chiang-mai-expenses-costs-of-living-and.html

Key Lesson(s):

• Johnny spent the month in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and attempted to live on a tight budget. 
• Johnny earned less this month, but spent a lot less as well. 
• Johnny invested a lot of money that he made from selling his dropshipping stores, and his investments performed quite well this year. He invested 90% of the income he made in the past two years. 
• Johnny mainly works on his passion projects these days, including two podcasts and a Nomad Summit. 

Last Month Profit – $28,665

Name – Jon Dykstra

Website – fatstacksblog.com

Business Model – Authority Website (display ads)

Income Report – https://fatstacksblog.com/income-report-december-2019/

Key Lesson(s):

• Revenue dropped in December due to lower traffic, but this was expected. 
• Jon hired a new writer that he was quite happy with. 
• Jon made the usual investments in content, but otherwise “coasted” through the month. 
• Jon picked a new niche for one of his websites. He hired some new writers and will keep us updated as this goes on.  

Ryan Robinson

Last Month Profit – $22,344.89

Name – Ryan Robinson

Website – ryrob.com

Business Model – Authority Website (affiliate earnings)

Income Report – https://www.ryrob.com/blog-income-report-december-2019/

Key Lesson(s):

• Ryan saw traffic stay roughly the same for December. Income dropped a bit but he was expecting this. 
• Ryan spent time generating fresh content, publishing 2 long-form articles. He also focused on updating top-performing content. 
• Ryan took a two-week vacation where he stepped away from any work whatsoever.  
• Ryan wrapped up his website redesign project

Honourable Mentions:

Although they don’t do exactly income reports, there are a few reports that are worth mentioning and when they publish new reports I will be sure to include.

Last Month Profit – $8,101

Name – Jonathan Holmes

Website – CrowSurvival.com

Business Model – Authority Website (affiliate earnings)

Income Report – https://www.crowsurvival.com/income-report-january-2019-to-december-2019/

Key Lesson(s):

• Jonathan has shown impressive earning and traffic growth since starting his site 2 years ago. 
• It is unique to see the income report for an authority site on the authority site itself. Provides a great opportunity to really see how he has gone about achieving the results he has. 
• Google core updates in December caused a large traffic impact (-30%)
• Jonathan has some big content goals! 2,000 articles published by 2021

Am I missing any I should include? Please drop a message in the comment section below with anyone I should include next month!