February Income – Worst Month
This monthly report hurt to write…a substantial down month in the services business hits the bottom line!
For 2015 I have set new goals and each months income/goals progress report will reflect my slightly adjusted focus.
This monthly report will share all the details about the different “divisions” of my business and the progress towards each goal…
- Passive Income Website Portfolio
- AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
- 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!)
The purpose of these posts is both to keep me accountable as well as share the details about how I am going about building an online business on the side.
Hopefully this post will give you some ideas on how to grow your business!
Key Successes
- Quality of Lightning Rank and PBN Sites – The quality of both LightningRank and customer PBN sites has continued to improve with some of the articles on the LightningRank sites ranking on the first page along with the clients money site.
- Six Figure Challenge Group – The six figure challenge I announced at the end of 2014 has started out great with some fantastic people in both the private and public group.
- 30 Minute Cost Cutting Effort – My wife who likes to dig into stats dug into all the business expenses and identified all recurring expenses. Several of which I was easily able to consolidate and eliminate saving over $2,000 for 2015.
Key Failures
- Time & Focus – I could make a lot of excuses here (1 month old baby daughter, new role at my day job etc) but the fact is I need to have better focus and take better advantage of the time I have to get work done.
- Sharing Six Figure Challenge Details with You! – I am wanting to be releasing more information on the exact step by step details and will do so in the future but just haven’t been able to find the time. The posts by the private group have been fantastic and lots can be learned along with others who have shared their journey in the free public group.
- Email Open Rate & Click through Rate Drop Off – Due to some changes at AWeber I didn’t take the time to understand my email open and click through rate ultimately cut by 40%! After testing both GetResponse and AWeber it everything has been fixed and I am sticking with AWeber..
- Services Business Loss – The services business has a natural up/down swing with the service selling out when I open and then the next month is dedicated to building out those sites. However I had never had a substantial negative month until February.
2015 Business Goals
Download This Easy to Edit and Printable Goals Template – FREE
Part 1 – Passive Authority & Niche Website Income Profit/Loss
No matter where my future business direction I would have a very very hard time giving up the fun of building, buying and running profitable websites.
It is hard to imagine a better business asset then a passive website that brings in money while you do nothing to it. Of course it is never that simple but the concept is thoroughly addictive!
5 Goals in 2015 for my Website Portfolio Business
- Build Six Figure Website
FEB UPDATE – Decent progress in January, project manager is doing great and content is now getting churned out at a rate of 1 quality article per day.
I broke through the income barrier making $77 in January and had my first 100 visitor day.
A more detailed post updating exactly what I have been doing is in the works.
- Continue Building Smaller Profitable “Niche” Sites
FEB UPDATE – My aim here is to test out a new system, increase the number of profitable sites I have and finally show how people if they want to can build profitable niche sites in 2015.
Progress:
- 32 (+18 sites) as part of detailed test underway
- Minimal income but solid traffic to a couple already
- Obvious some will be winners and some will be losers…not sure where the average will be yet
- Systematize Top 20 Sites in Portfolio
FEB UPDATE – No progress on this front, my focus is on the six figure site getting it moving.
- Buy 2 Sites Per Month
FEB UPDATE: I added a nicely performing site to the portfolio at the start of February, it was a good deal for everyone involved with the seller looking to get funds quickly.
- GOAL = 4 sites
- ACTUAL = 9 site
If any readers are looking to sell their profitable site(s) 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
5. Improve Monetization of Existing Sites
FEB UPDATE – Similar to above, no time/effort spent on this yet which is too bad since I know there is a lot of low hanging fruit!
PRIMARY GOAL – OVERALL INCOME FOR WEBSITE PORTFOLIO
Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss
My commitment on this site is to provide once per week posts from me in and one MONSTER of an ultimate guide a little later in the year.
3 Goals in 2015 for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com
- Post 1-2 times per week
FEB UPDATE – Finally, some consistent posting on AuthorityWebsiteIncome!
- Plan = 4
- Actual = 7
- Be More Involved in Roundups, Interviews & Commenting
FEB UPDATE – Not as much involvement as I would like…
- Interview = 1
- Roundup = 0
- Podcast = 0
- 2 EPIC Posts Published
FEB UPDATE – Right now I am working on both the data for the niche site test which will eventually be turned into an epic post (assuming the results work) and my six figure challenge attack plan will be turned into a monster of a post.
PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH
Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss
- Create Stand Alone Business
FEB UPDATE – No progress towards this, this will come after #2 below has more progress.
- Rework and Customize Systems
FEB UPDATE – Starting to work through each system and identify how we can combine them most efficiently.
- Systematic Customer Acquisition
FEB UPDATE – No progress planned until later in the year
PRIMARY GOAL – STAND ALONE SYSTEMATIZED SERVICES BUSINESS
Weak progress in January on this front!!
Overall Income Update
Original Monthly Net Income Target (original – $15k/month reliable income by age 35)
- Target Net Income = $6,200
- Actual net Income = $2.787
- 2015 Average Monthly Net Income = $9,341
Final Comments
OUCH! Well I promised to share the good and the bad everything but my password. So there it is. Feb was a month where lack of focus on my part and a slower services business hit the bottom line. In fact if it weren’t for the last week of the month it would have been a negative month across the board.
Unfortunate with the downswing in net income, but surely that is partly due to the fact that your investing a lot of your cash flow into building out your new authority site!
I’m totally impressed by the fact that you already made $77 though, and that you broke through the 100 visit barrier. How much of that traffic is from Google?
Hi Tom, yah $77 in Feb is a nice start. Long way to go before the site is at break-even. Search traffic is over 50% and growing.
Jon,
Have you considered focusing more on affiliate/passive income, and less on service income so you don’t have to work and focus so much?
This swing is quite sharp and would give me worry if this was my FT gig, which I know for you is not.
I’m sure things will bounce back though!
Sam
Hey Sam, thanks for the comment. The monthly swings are a result of the launch/build/launch/build cycle for the PBNs. I believe its the best setup for that services business but it does result in big swings.
Agree the stability of the services income does not meet the “reliable” income criteria. As far as focusing on passive income streams I have several projects in the works as well as building out my existing sites to really ramp up that part of the business in 2015.
Looks like things are going well at FS. Did you decide on what the big project was going to be to grow your site?
I love the way that you have your business goals categorized into 3 main areas. That makes it very easy to see and measure each area.
There are only two legs to my income goals, but I find it hard to balance between them. I’ve finally started bringing on team members to manage and run one leg while I work on the other. I’m new to this VA thing, but it is starting to make sense. I think.
Maintaining a $3k+ per month in passive income is no small feat! kudos on that! I think once you get the service side automated, you are going to really be pleased.
Do you typically add links to the sites you buy? It seems like there is a lot of under-optimized stuff out there that could use a little TLC to 10x the income. I wonder if you find that to be true as well.
And don’t under estimate the kid’s ability to interfere. We finally rented a small office space away from home so I could duck in there when the kids got too distracting. :p
My kids make me richer than a millionaire. But they certainly don’t help the bottom line!
Hi Quinton, thanks for the comment. I can totally relate…the days where I am at home and plan to put a bunch of hrs into my online business it is tough with the kids. My wife and I discussed and if I was to leave the day job I would definitely need to get some office space somewhere to focus and get work done.
Congrats on the great months you have had!
Wow! A few days ago I met your website and I am impressed with all the effort and dedication that has all your projects.
I wish I had known before, but it’s never too late to learn, right? I am now learning more about niches and PBN’s, and I’m sorry for taking so long to figure it out. I lost a lot of time and money!
I am reading almost all of your posts and I will be watching closely increasing its evolution. Thank you