July Income Report
July was my first full month as a full time online entrepreneur! It was a lot of fun!
I am not sure if it will ever wear off but the lifestyle change has certainly had me smiling/pinching myself a few times in July…
- Taking my 3 year old son “camping” in the backyard mid-week
- Biking home from work to jump in the pool with the family (and a cold beer) mid-afternoon mid-week
- Having some of my biggest revenue number days while on a canoe trip
In this income post I will try to share what I have learned and failed at over the month and the performance of the businesses!
My Business Focus Points:
- Passive Income Website Portfolio
- AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
- 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)
- Amazon FBA Business
- Brand #1
- Brand #2
- Brand #3
- New Web App Project
Key Successes
- FBA Brand #1 – After June where the FBA business I sold but still own one third of struggled due to the associate account getting suspended it was great to see a very solid bounce back for the business.
- Partnerships – With the added time I have had there have been several interesting partnership opportunities that have come up while I have been in discussions with people. The challenge is to ensure I do not take on more than I can handle and continue to build my teams capacity at handling projects.
- Backlink Analysis & Discussions with Clients – After talking to over 50 readers of AuthorityWebsiteIncome last month it became clear there was a need for a couple things one of which was more help to answer the question of “how many backlinks do I need to rank on the first page”. Because of those discussions and how my team already does this analysis I created a very simple little offer that provides a lot of value to people with a website.
- Training – While I had the day job one of the areas that I was definitely not spending enough time on was education and training. My information “diet” had been very very lean and I read very few websites/took no training. With the added time I have scheduled some time each week to spend time completing high quality training and focusing on deliberate training/practise. Here are a few of the great training programs I am taking right now (in addition to listening to about 1 book/week while I bike to/from work)…
AuthorityMachine + Internship – The training created by Hayden and Spencer is great and I have heard awesome feedback about the internship from some individuals who have gone through it. Highly recommended!
Investing in Website (Free Udemy Course) – This course is for people looking at how to invest in websites. It is created by Eric from DigiStrats who I have worked with and also take some of his training before. Great information + right now the course is free!
AMZ Affiliate Bootcamp – This course is created by Tung Tran and provides a lot of information on how to make money with Amazon Affiliate sites. Lots of great information for a beginner wanting to make money with an Amazon Affiliate site.
- New LinkBuilding Strategy – More to come on this but as we test out different strategies we are finding a lot of success with one particular strategy to get the worlds best links.
Key Failures
- Productivity Increase Not 1:1 With Increased Hours – With the added hours my productivity has not increased 1:1. I don’t find this too surprising and will continue to work on being more effective and productive. Listening to a great book right now bye a fellow Canadian Chris Bailey The Productivity Project and I am liking how actionable it is!
- Realizing Several Teams are Not Setup for Success! – After I did an analysis on a few of my businesses I realized that several of my teams are not setup for success. The main reason is that I have deviated from my favourite business book (E-Myth Revisited) and don’t have the Entrepreneur / Manager / Technician clearly defined. I wrote more details about this failure here.
2016 Business Goals
Below is my businesses main goals for 2016
Download This Easy to Edit and Printable Goals Template – FREE
(Note – FBA Brand #2 Has Been Replaced With my SAAS Business)
Part 1 – Passive Authority & Niche Website Income Profit/Loss
3 Goals in 2016 for my Website Portfolio Business
- Systematize Top 20 Sites in Portfolio
July Update – I have plans in motion to grow my team and this one may come down to the wire but will have a new project manager to help me with managing my passive income portfolio.
- Buy 1 Site Per Month
July Update – A great website purchase was made in July. It was a good deal for both the seller and myself, with only a couple months of earnings history it would have been tough for him to sell anywhere else while we were able to combine a purchase price, earnout and services from LightningRank.com to come up with a deal that has everyone happy.
- GOAL = 1 Website
- ACTUAL = 1 Great 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…
- 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)
- High quality sites making over $500/month often make sense to sell via other channels (EmpireFlippers or FEInternational are great places)
- 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
If you have a website you are looking to sell fast please let me know
- Sell Websites Strategically for $100k Total
July Update – The website sale is still on track with the group that has taken over the site still doing a great job.
PRIMARY GOAL – OVERALL INCOME FOR WEBSITE PORTFOLIO ABOVE $10k/MONTH
July Update – The ongoing issue with the partnerships associate account at Amazon is still holding this number down lower than I would like.
Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss
3 Goals in 2015 for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com
- Post Once Per Week
July Update – Now that I am working full time I should have no excuses to not hit this goal. There are plenty of topics I want to talk about that I believe would add value so it is good to see me back to hitting my target numbers with my first full month working online.
- Plan = 4
- Actual = 4
- 10x my Outreach
July Update – Continued success on this front with a lot of effort spent performing podcasts in July. The story/strategy of turning an Amazon Affiliate site into an FBA business and then selling it continues to be a story/business model that resonates with people as it connects a lot of dots in the online business space.
- Site Redesign – Completed!
July Update – Already Completed
PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH
July Update – 16,364 uniques’ which represents a +66% year over year increase. I believe if I can achieve my weekly posting plus my 10x outreach I can achieve this goal by the end of the year!
Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss
- Systems Overhaul/Refresh
July Update – Kelley the project manager for the services business has joined me full time in the office and we will be undertaking this large review over the coming months.
- Improve email marking and sales automation
July Update – I am continuing to do some small tests to collect data before a larger overhaul. I need to get this done soon.
- BrandBuilders.io Becomes The Go-To Resource for Done 4 You Amazon FBA Private Label Websites and Done 4 You Amazon Affiliate Sites
July Update – Continues to be a clear winner when it comes to product/market fit with steady demand for the services offered.
PRIMARY GOAL – STAND ALONE SYSTEMATIZED SERVICES BUSINESS IN 2016
Part 4 – Amazon FBA Business
- Sell FBA Business for 30x with 3+ Solid Months
July Update – SUCCESS
- Launch Brand #2 – Personal
July Update – After additional due diligence it turns out the business model for this affiliate site to FBA migration would not work with only $12 profit margin on a $120 product. In addition there are some interesting partnership opportunities I am exploring and will be moving quickly on.
- Launch Brand #3 – Investors
July Update – Sold out of most sizes of our initial order (no profit on initial order as all units were flown in) and now the first sea shipment has arrived in the US.
- ListingEagle.com – Hijack Monitoring Service
July Update – Similar update for June with GREAT metrics and user feedback but our ability to accelerate our customer acquisition has been tricky!
Overall Income Update
Original Monthly Net Income Target (original goal $15k/month reliable income by age 35)
- Target Net Income = $9,350
- Actual net Income = $31,869.24
- 2016 Average Monthly Net Income = $30,296 (stretch goal is 30k average for the year)
Gross revenue is a vanity number for my business and I do not share it.
(note Amazon FBA Income May Be Off By A Little Here – FBA Affiliate Site Income Counted in Passive Income Portfolio – Total FBA Business Income ~$10k)
Final Comments
July was a good month to see that my increased effort on all fronts have resulted in growth on all fronts. Having sold off 2/3rd of my FBA business which had first helped push my business over the $30k threshold and to have now bounced back to it in what is often one of the slower seasons for online business it is great to see.
Right now I have reason to be excited about the next phase of the business with lots of growth projects on the go, a growing/awesome team, more hours for me to devote to the business and plenty of room for improvement for the steady divisions of the business I am excited for Q4! Even with all the good news there is still plenty of projects which are not yet on the trajectory I want them on!
I hope these income reports provide an insight into how I organize my various projects and include actionable details for others…most importantly I hope the historical nature of these reports show to people at the stage I was at a few years ago that it is possible to build up an online business that can fund your desired life.
So awesome to see you bounced back to where you were when you still had the big FBA site.
Love how quick you make decisions. Definitely a millionaire character trait you’ve developed 😉
Thanks Konrad, bouncing back to the $30k line after the sale was definitely a goal! Moving quickly is a lot of fun so I certainly try to keep moving quickly with the business. Thanks for the comment.
Jon, awesome update as always. I see you’re placing lots of emphasis on outreach, and after our call I’m doing the same thing. I think it will pay off eventually and it’s a sound strategy.
Also, couldn’t agree more about Hayden and Spencer, those two guys are awesome and everyone on their team is great!
Thanks again!
Ted
Great stuff Ted, thanks!
great to see all the progress over the last year. Question – with all the sites you are buying(not sure how many sites you have but the chart looks like its 5-6 a month being added?) in your passive portfolio and being able to apply your own link building team to them….how come that part of the business hasn’t just exploded in growth ?
Hi Brian great insight… the site buying rate is at about 1/month not 5-6/month…plus often they are relatively low $/month sites ($100/month). The other piece that is missing from the graph is the sale of sites I have sold one website for $100k and my FBA business including affiliate site. So although it looks flat the portfolio continues to perform well. However, there is plenty of room for improvement I am looking to take advantage of.
Love these updates Jon. Very motivating. Are you only investing in domestic US websites or does your portfolio include international assets? Just curious. Best of luck!
Great work Jon, the only way is up. You’ve hit some big targets early and have a solid grounding for growth and diversification. I’m a little surprised about your passive website income given the apparent size of your pbn’s… I would have thought you could upscale that significantly, perhaps you’re managing risk?
Good stuff Jon! Have you made any significant changes to your FBA model since selling the big one?
No significant changes to the strategy…I am working on building up a team that can help to run the business.
Nice update and wow, another great report! Nice to see that stable traffic income too.
Great numbers. Once again congratulations. I’m following your website since of couple of months and it is a great source of learning. I love the way you have organized everything in manners.
Congratulation, keep it up by sharing your progress report with us.. it motivate us to do something more for better future.. my 1st visit to your website and i am happy by saying this that ididnt waste my time by stopping here.
keep it up
Thanks Muhammad, glad you found value here!
Hey Jon. I keep coming back to your site. I just admire the way you organize your income reports. And most importantly, I really admire that you diversify your business to a number of different niches, maybe this itself is worth a post? Explaining how is your methodology for business diversification works?