Income Report – October

October was a month where I found myself splitting time into multiple projects with the launch of my Amazon FBA business and creation of my completely free guide to building your own PBN (here)

Many many problems popped up in October with most of them being relatively new. For me new problems usually represent progress on a project/business. The problems that are an indication of us not doing a good job are recurring problems…I had some of those this month as well!

In this report I will talk through my monthly results for…

1. Passive Income Website Portfolio
2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
3. 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!)
4. Amazon FBA Business

Key Successes

1. New Amazon FBA Strategy – In October I was able to really push the pace of my Amazon FBA business and was able to get it into a position to hopefully capitalize on the holiday push. I reveal more details about my somewhat unique strategy here.
2. Clear Goal for the Business – Beyond providing financial freedom for my family and giving my mind something to do when everyone else is sleeping what is the purpose of this business…that question now has a more refined answer with a detailed plan on a spreadsheet after some work on the subject in October. More details to come eventually.
3. Content for Passive Income Sites – Right now I have a few great writers who I have been using extensively lately getting a lot of content up on my Amazon Affiliate sites to setup for the Christmas rush.

Key Failures

1. Hosting, Hosting and Hosting– I have dozens and dozens of hosting accounts and for some reason in October we had more challenges than ever before. My key team member who has helped me build this business and been working with me via UpWork for over 6 years is in charge and worked extremely hard to get all clients sites back up as quickly as possible!
2. Cost Control– Although I don’t reveal my revenue and costs because I want the focus to be on the net profit costs continue to grow! My strategy coming up over the next few months to control costs is similar to my personal finance strategy of introducing scarcity (every year I increase my savings percentage by an amount so that whatever raise I received from my day job only a portion of it hits my bank account). My plan is to do something similar and although there are resources I can deploy now on new projects I need to make sure I stay focused on the ultimate goal of the business and control costs.
3. Purchase of Foreign Language Site – I am not sure if got intentionally ripped off or if something simply happened to the site but I purchased a site that was making a very solid income for a decent multiple and then overnight it is now making 1/6thof what it was before! Losses are an inevitable part of my investment plan since I am usually buying lower quality sites at cheaper multiples quickly with the aim to grow them but this site was too far out of my skill set – lesson learned.
4. Stupid Expense – What Idiot Is Running This Thing? You know when you have an interaction with a business and you think “what idiot is running this thing” or similar when you are at your day job… well I won’t talk about it this month since it actually occurred in November when I corrected it but a simple fix resulted in a 14% savings on a solid 5 figure expense item! The moral of the story is that I was that idiot in this case…need to step up my game on attention to detail without sacrificing speed.

2015 Business Goals

Download This Easy to Edit and Printable Goals Template – FREE

Part 1 – Passive Authority & Niche Website Income Profit/Loss

5 Goals in 2015 for my Website Portfolio Business

1. Build Six Figure Website

OCT UPDATE – The site still grew in Oct even though it should be a slower month for the site. The site is very much on auto-pilot now with only a lot of content being pumped out. 3 articles per week plus the occasional 301 Building Block strategy is how I will continue to push this site. What is great is that the content quality has been enough to attract some high quality links!

Oct Stats

• Traffic = 30,548
• Income = $521

 

1. Continue Building Smaller Profitable “Niche” Sites

OCT UPDATE – Plan to restart building some Amazon affiliate sites focused on FBA potential niches in the coming months. No progress on this front yet.

 

2. Systematize Top 20 Sites in Portfolio

OCT UPDATE – Although not as systematized as I would like I am putting a solid push on my best sites in terms of content! For my business to go to the next level I need to build better systems around managing my portfolio of websites.

 

3. Buy 2 Sites Per Month

OCT UPDATE: 3 Websites purchased in October! October was my biggest month for investment yet with the purchase of a website in my Amazon FBA niche for $12k and a foreign language site.

• GOAL = 20 sites purchased by Oct 2015
• ACTUAL = 25 sites (+3 in Sep)

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)
• Sites are medium-questionable quality (questionable SEO, non-native English articles are OK)
• High quality sites making over $500/month often make sense to sell via other channels (EmpireFlippers is a great marketplace)
• Understand that the benefits of the bullet points above means the sales multiple will be lower

If you have an Amazon Affiliate site you are looking to sell please let me know!

 

1. Improve Monetization of Existing Sites

OCT UPDATE – I can definitely see that this is a difficult goal to achieve! Some progress but it is very time consuming and not an easy skill to teach! October I have started to order and add a lot of content to my best performing sites.

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

1. Post 1-2 times per week

OCT UPDATE – October I definitely slipped with getting posts published. However, with a couple month left I am in striking distance of my goal! The ultimate guide to building a PBN took up a lot of my time with writing in October so my regular posting schedule slipped. Overall a really weak month for posting articles to AWI though!

• Plan = 4
• Actual = 2

1. 2 EPIC Posts Published

OCT UPDATE – One mini-epic post has been published with me revealing the 301 building block strategy (Part 1, Part 2) and now after publishing my PBN post in early November I have published my 2 EPIC posts for the year!

 

2. PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH

I have moved several posts to LightningRank.com which will put me a little behind on this goal…but no excuses I still want to hit this goal this year!

With only 2 posts and neither being exceptional I am not surprised my traffic numbers were down in October!

Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss

1. Create Stand Alone Business

OCT UPDATE – Framework is in place with Zaxaa but phase 2 of setting up more robust systems is still to come.

2. Rework and Customize Systems

OCT UPDATE – Small tweaks continue. The only way I will be able to tackle this is with a week long vacation deep diving into my teams procedures.

3. Systematic Customer Acquisition

OCT UPDATE – No new streams for customer acquisition but affiliates, Market.Source-Wave.com and Perfect Audience PPC are still new channels for customer acquisition that are all working well.

PRIMARY GOAL – STAND ALONE SYSTEMATIZED SERVICES BUSINESS

This goal is within reach!

Overall Income Update

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

• Target Net Income = $7,775
• Actual net Income = $14,979
• 2015 Average Monthly Net Income = $13,211

Final Comments

This business continues to have some months that are substantially better and worse than other months and as I fulfill orders from one month in the next month the see-saw graph continues. Looking to definitely put a strong push on the last couple months of the year to push my income numbers up.

Note About Amazon FBA Business – I have included it in the graph above to start to show the net income it is producing. Minimal in the first month but starting to grow.