Nov Income Report – Record Numbers

It has been awhile since I really had a huge breakthrough of a month.

This month it turns out a few things lined up to really deliver a GREAT month and was able to blow through a barrier!

Despite a few parts of the business not working out as I would like (LE and my Amazon Associates Account) the overall business performed well.

On a personal note it has been a great month for validation of my decision to leave the day job…I finally moved into our new house at the very end of the month, projects I would not have been able to start had a great month and I have been able to get out on the ski hill with my kids!

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 (launched!)
   • Brand #4 – Product First Brand (launched!)
   • – Amazon FBA Hijacking and Suppression Monitoring

 

Key Successes

• ContentRefined.com – Both the demand of and quality of delivery of the service has been great. The demand for the service was large and the initial customers were all very happy with the support from the team and quality of the product delivered. With faster than expected scaling of the team we are now able to re-open to another set of customers to come in the door!
• Happy Team Members – Working to show how much the key team members mean to me and this business I put a large effort into ensuring they are very happy with both challenging work and some nice perks. For my in house staff we have instituted a “take whatever vacation you want but have your shit covered”, “powder morning” (if it snows a lot and we don’t have meetings we get first runs in) policy and a couple shiny new MacBook’s have them extremely happy. For a key team member in the Philippines who heads up one of my bigger teams in my services business I helped him throw a charity event for a local school where they received food and gifts.

 

• CyberMonday Services Sales – Cyber Monday services sales were very strong!
• Website Purchase Success – Structuring some unique deals with people has allowed me to acquire some sites with reduced risk. One site in particular that had a substantial earn out but was a VERY trendy site (75% of earnings all year made in one weekend!) ended up being a success for everyone involved and has ultimately resulted in me being paid back in 1 month!
• FBA Product Launch Successful – With the changes at Amazon launching a product is a little more challenging than before but with a great product and some extra effort we launched a product Early Nov that went on to sell 89 units all organically on Cyber Monday and be the #1 new release product in its category! The image below shows the $25k in revenue the product did in essentially the first 30 days it has been live!

• Affiliate Site for FBA Brand + Outreach – Using essentially the 301 building block strategy I was able to get an affiliate site to #1 for its target keyword “best (product name we are selling)” and then in addition was able to reach out to 2 other sites ranking in the top 5 and get our product positioned as the #1 seller. It made over $500 in month 1 and is on track for $2,000 in Dec!

Key Failures

• Covering Key People – We had two critical team members that had MAJOR surgeries in November (they are both doing well!) and I was very occupied at the end of the month with the upcoming house move. Our coverage plans worked okay but have room for improvement.
• FBA Brand Launch – One of the brands has been slower to launch…the product is way better than the competition but the price point is a little high and it is currently fulfilled by merchant. I think long term this product is going to be a great fit for Amazon and the brand it is just a little slow out of the gate!
• LE – As mentioned in last weeks post com is continuing to provide a valuable service to its existing and new customers but it is essentially going to be run very lean as I have been unable to find a scalable path to growth.
• Amazon Associate Account – Hearing people earning 12% commission on native ads while my sites make WAY less than they would have been able to hurts! Part of the business but getting you Amazon Associate account suspended REALLY REALLY hurts!

 

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

Nov Update – Great progress but the growth of ContentRefined has pulled my key managers attention away from this side of the business. However, our weekly meeting to review the portfolio definitely has us moving out of 2016 in much better shape to manage the portfolio than we were coming into 2016.

2. Buy 1 Site Per Month

Nov Update – With my post discussing how to sell a website a few leads came in, but no acquisitions occurred in Nov through traditional means.

• GOAL = 1 Website
• ACTUAL = 1 Site purchased and used as a 301 Building Block with great success

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)
• Site making $100-$1,000/month typically the right fit
• 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

If you have a profitable website you are looking to sell fast please let me know

 

1. Sell Websites Strategically for $100k Total

Nov Update – The unique website lease/sale deal is still going to plan.

 

PRIMARY GOAL – OVERALL INCOME FOR WEBSITE PORTFOLIO ABOVE $10k/MONTH

Nov Update – One unique deal REALLY paid off nicely in Nov and the rest of the portfolio performed well. A couple smaller sites were sold that will have a small impact on the portfolio moving forward but the timing was right for their sale. The result from Nov I am happiest with on my portfolio side of the business is the success of launching a new site using a great expired domain and deploying a modified 301 building block strategy.

Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss

3 Goals in 2015 for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com

1. Post Once Per Week

Nov Update – Achieved 4 posts with 3 of them being solid posts but actually missed 1 week of posting. I put A LOT of effort into the post talking about how to systematize content marketing!

• Plan = 4
• Actual = 4

2. 10x my Outreach

Nov Update – Still weak efforts on this front!

3. Site Redesign – Completed!

PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH

Oct Update – 15,839 users which represents a +21% year over year increase. I never want to admit defeat until it is over so I am going to push to try and achieve this in Dec!

Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss

1. Systems Overhaul/Refresh

Nov Update – We are working through each procedure and working to improve quality, consistency and efficiency as we work through everything.

2. Improve email marking and sales automation

Nov Update – not done yet – but I am going to get it done this year!

3. Brandbuilders.io Becomes The Go-To Resource for Done 4 You Amazon FBA Private Label Websites and Done 4 You Amazon Affiliate Sites

Nov Update – Andrew at BrandBuilders continues to deliver great sites and scale his team.

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
  • Nov Update – The results of this business are not as good as we would like with the loss of our affiliate account and are working to test out different options with our own Ecommerce platform.
• Launch Brand #2 – Investors – Affiliate Site Focused (External Traffic Focused)
  • Nov Update – Despite inventory challenges sales were solid, with expensive cost of goods landed I have been a little too tentative to deploy resources for this business and really ramp up inventory. Even with these challenges the business generated $14k in FBA revenue.

• Launch Brand #2 – Partner – Product First Focused (Brand Vision Focus)
  • Nov Update – 1,000 units landed at our 3^rd party logistics company. Sales were slower than we would like in Nov and the start of Dec but overall the reviews from unbiased people have been great and we will look to continue grinding on the promotion front.

• Launch Brand #4 – Partner – Product First Focused (Unique Product Focused)
  • Nov Update – 1,300 units have landed and sales were flying after a little promo with giveaways, Facebook ads running at break even and affiliate site driving sales. Including selling 89 units on Cyber Monday. We now have inventory concerns and have placed another large order. What I am most impressed about the images below is the comparison of the previous 30 days compared to the 30 days before that… this business is flying out of the gates…

• LE – Hijack Monitoring Service
  • Nov Update – Seeing the results from Nov we were a little disappointed, we tried hard to do a big push with some paid traffic to a more “fear-inducing” sales page we had created… the results were not good and I discussed the overall lack of success with this business in my failed SaaS business case study.

Overall Income Update

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

• Target Net Income = $10,050
• Actual net Income = $52,928.83
• 2016 Average Monthly Net Income = $32,166 (stretch goal is 30k average for the year)

Notes:

• Gross Revenue is a vanity number for my business and I do not share it
• Net Income on the FBA businesses are not as accurate as I would like (likely being conservative)
• The method of counting income usually results in bigger dips in months when sales slow such as December than reality

Final Comments

November looks like a breakthrough month! I am definitely excited that many of the growth projects are going well but also aware that usually Dec is a tricky month for many of my businesses and especially without my Amazon Associates account earning what it could be.

What I am potentially most happy about is that a large % of the income growth came from new projects namely ContentRefined.com, FBA businesses and a unique Affiliate Site deal that would not exist if I had not left my day job.

So thank you to everyone who follows this site