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:
   • 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
   • Brand #1 – Sold 2/3
   • Brand #2 – Investors and purchase affiliate site
   • Brand #3 – Product First Brand
   • Brand #4 – Product First Brand
   • – 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.

2. 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

2. 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.

 

2. Improve email marking and sales automation

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

 

3. 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.
• LE – 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!