Business and Income Report April 2017

April was another very busy month.

Several businesses continue to perform extremely well and the increased team has definitely increased the amount of work we are able to get done.

Balancing tasks between immediate pay-off and long term growth is always tricky. Time will tell if we get that balance right!

My first 2 full time staff were a huge success and I am trying to grow my in house team rapidly adding 3 additional summer co-ops to determine the right size/makeup of my in house team.

This report covers the results of the business during April!

The Business “Divisions” For My Online Business:

  1. Money Site Portfolio
  2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
  3. Services – Web Development, Content Marketing & Link Building:
  4. Amazon FBA Business
    • Brands 1-6 – All have specific targets for 2017
    • – Amazon FBA Hijacking and Suppression Monitoring
  5. Put Outside Capital to Work Efficiently in the Online Asset Space

Key Successes

  1. Content Refined Continued Success & Self-Reinforcing Competitive Advantage – ContentRefined.com continues to grow at a rapid rate with ever improving systems/procedures. I think it is becoming clear that there is a gap in the marketplace for a reasonably priced content writing service that focuses on the effectiveness of the content to drive results and not just $/word. As we continue to geek out on the data we are uniquely positioned to collect we will continue to drive a gap between our contents performance and competitors. This is a unique opportunity where our competitive advantage of being a systems/data driven marketing first content marketing service becomes self-reinforcing as we grow (since we get more and more data).

2. Money Sites – With a reorganization of my internal team Kelley has taken over the running of my portfolio of sites and is doing a great job here! Although we didn’t see the earnings jump we really want it was a solid month.

3. BrandBuilders Turnkey Sites – The turnkey sites continue to be in HIGH demand! We sold out in a matter of hours and are continuing to scale again… you can get on the early bird list here.

4. Traveled Drove & Flew With 3 Kids Aged 4 and Under! – For any parents of little ones out there that have pulled off any trip you can relate to this being a success! My wife and I traveled to Florida with our 4yr, 2yr and 4 week old… 8hr drive and 2hr flight… no crying or screaming on the plane (although I am sure I aged from the trip).

Key Failures

  1. Singular Focus? Every once in a while I get tempted to rethink if my diversified approach makes sense! I am not planning to make a change but wonder if I am leaving an opportunity under-realized due to my split focus.
  2. Vacation Productivity – I was able to keep things moving but was not as productive on my vacation as I had planned!
  3. 80/20 – Due to both my decreased hours (vacation / new baby) and increased demand on my time (3 new staff) I have slipped a little in my email response time and realizing I am likely not working in the sweet spot of the 80/20 principle.
  4. Amazon Stops Selling Product – One of the FBA business I was growing and was showing promise had all the products pulled by Amazon (all the products in the category, not just mine!).

2017 Business Goals

Below is my businesses main goals for 2017…

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

3 Goals in 2016 for my Website Portfolio Business

  1. Everyone Win at the Mortgage Crushing Competition

Apr Update – The site is doing well with a solid increase in traffic. I need to improve my earnings per visitor but happy with the start of the site. To get to the target of this site crushing any mortgage payments I have to stay on it!

  • Traffic = 6,233
  • Earnings = $31.27

2. Buy 1 Site Per Month

Apr Update – Some interesting sites came my way this month but I decided they were a little too unstable for me to purchase. Although I didn’t buy a couple I was able to get them into the hands of some others who did buy them (I am definitely not a broker but if I can connect someone I will).

  • GOAL = 1 New Website Purchased
  • ACTUAL = 0 New 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)
  • 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

3. Scalable New Site Creation Strategy adds $5k to Portfolio

Apr Update – Although the graph looks rough! The results are still promising and we will be working hard to really increase the earnings per visitor. Overall I am impressed with the strategy and the majority of this trend is the result of one site taking a seasonal nose dive.

  • Traffic – 26,044
  • Earnings – $163.04

PRIMARY GOAL – OVERALL INCOME FOR WEBSITE PORTFOLIO GROW TO $15k/MONTH CONSISTENTLY

Apr Update – Decent results for the portfolio, it fell a little short of the 10k target but still solid results!

 

Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss

3 Goals in 2015 for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com

  1. Post Once Per Week

Apr Update – Second month in a row where I fell short on my weekly posting goal. Definitely going to beat myself up on this metric… need to push hard to deliver great posts. Last month I had one very interesting post published regarding a cool new tool that can constantly monitor your websites speed!

  • Plan = 4
  • Actual = 3

2. Systematic Promotion of my Content and Building of my List

Apr Update – No Progress  – One of the team members joining will have it on her plate to help develop and execute and improved strategy here by the end of the summer

3. Increased Intelligence with Email Automation

Apr Update – No Progress – Need to carve out a dedicated workday to go through this!

PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH

Apr Update – 13,175… Lots of work to do this year to hit this target! I will continue pushing!

Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss

  1. Systems First Focus

Apr Update – Each business had new procedures created for them!

  1. com – Quality and Efficiency Improvements

Apr Update – Work has begun on a complete new backend system for LightningRank management and are testing out new systems we will be ready to offer to existing clients soon.

Visit LightningRank.com for Link Building Services!

  1. ContentRefined.com – 20k MRR by June & 40k MRR by End of Year

Apr Update – Maddie is doing an exceptional job delivering fantastic customer support and articles! We (and a new summer intern) are working hard to setup the data tracking to keep pushing the science of content marketing forward. See the post at the start of May here… rank content in Google with certainty.

  • Planned MRR = $16,000
  • Actual MRR = $25,432

4. BrandBuilders.io Structurally Well Setup & New Offering Launched

Apr Update – Achieved – expect a very interesting case study soon! The TurnKey affiliate sites ready in 24hrs are selling out in a handful of hours every time we launch!

PRIMARY GOAL – SYSTEMATIC GROWTH!

Part 4 – Amazon FBA Business

  • Brand #1 – HG – Running Lean and Spinning off Cash
    • Apr Update – Running lean and profitable. The business is still being driven by an affiliate site that drives a lot of traffic (100k/month)!

  • Brand #2 – CF – Quarterly Dividends Ahead of Baseline
    • Apr Update – Continuing to run lean and profitable
  • Brand #3 – NT – Path To Strong Market Position and Successful Pillar Product
    • Apr Update – Turned around a little last month… still not a great business!
  • Brand #4 – CK – Systematic Growth to $20k/month Profit
    • Apr Update – This was our first full month back on Amazon, it started to grow again and getting some decent organic sales now.
  • Brand #5 – PC – Successful launch and $5k/month Business
    • Apr Update – We are now selling! Consistent but small organic sales!
  • Brand #6 – SE – 4X Value Expansion with Dream Team!
    • Apr Update – The first test shipment is going to arrive in May and the goal is to make our first sale in May!
  • com – Hijack and Listing Suppression Monitoring Service
    • Apr Update – Staying flat, churn = new customers right now. Great service I still use to be notified when my listing gets suppressed so I can go in and fix it right away!

Part 5 – Put Outside Capital to Work Efficiently

Apr Update – Expect a BIG case study on this

Overall Income Update

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

  • Target Net Income = $10,925
  • Actual Net Income = $49,617.53
  • 2017 Average Net Income = $46,593.96

 

Gross revenue is a vanity number for my business and I do not share it.

Final Comments

April was a very solid month. Just based on the timing of a few things there are some structural challenges to keeping this pace up for May. I am going to try and keep pushing the business forward while taking care to keep laying a strong foundation of procedures and team members.

April the in-house team doubled with summer students and I am excited to see how I can leverage their brains and enthusiasm to help out the business and this audience!

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July Business and Income Report – $15k/month

Things are continuing to move in the right direction and I am happy to report on both some of the wins from last month and some of the challenges I have faced.

Why don’t I track Gross Income? I had a question from a few people why I don’t track Gross Income…the reason is that I believe it is a “vanity” metric for most online businesses. If we are building a business to support a lifestyle/replace a job than the reliability of the net income is what matters!

With summer in full swing and social commitments on weekends my work hours were not the same as they have been other months.

This monthly report will share all the details about the different “divisions” of my business…

  1. Passive Income Website Portfolio
  2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
  3. Expired Domain Services:
    1. Domain Finding Service (buy domains that meet my metrics)
    2. Done for Your Private Blog Network (let my team build you a personal PBN)
    3. LightningRank (get access to the most powerful PBN available!)

Key Successes

  1. Passive Website Portfolio Growth – Growth on this side of my business continues to be solid with both existing and new sites.
  2. Key Team Players – Several players this month really performed well including the website development team lead and the services business manager. These positions really are the foundation of the business with one taking care of the majority of the front end sales interactions and the other in charge of order fulfilment.
  3. New CPA Offer at Student Loan Site – Continuing to test affiliate offers has resulted in me adding an affiliate which created a sizable increase in earnings at a couple sites.

 

Key Failures

  1. Costs Growth & Profit Margin Erosion – My focus has been on delivering for my clients and monitoring costs. Now that most of my systems are straightened out and I am producing consistent quality (still some struggles with content!) it is time to optimize my costs. There is waste in my systems and it is time to start trimming the waste and getting my profit margin back to their target.
  2. Routine Is Key for Online Business – It has never been more clear than these last 2 months that having a routine is key for me delivering results to my online business. When I am gone for 4 days it is not just those 4 days of productivity that is lost but it takes me time to get back into a routine. When I am routinely pushing out 2-3hrs/night of productive work and then 5-10hrs on weekend the work flows easily…stopping and starting and breaking my routine really impacts my ability to get big, meaningful work done.
  3. New Sites Moving Slowly – Some great initial jumps in rankings but with clients being my number one priority I have struggled to systematize my passive income site creation. I would really like to fix this in the next month.

 

2014 Business Goals

Here is where I share my progress towards each of my key 2014 goals…

Here they are…

  • 2014 Goal #1 – Increase the number of sites making over $100/month to 15 by building, buying or growing 8 quality sites.
  • 2014 Goal #2 – Publish 52 Posts on Authority Website Income. For the growth of this blog there is nothing more important than consistently producing great articles every single Monday.
  • 2014 Goal #3 – Produce 1 ULTIMATE post that will put my Ultimate Guide to Expired Domains to shame!
  • 2014 Goal #4 – Automate the entire fulfilment process for my services side of the business while also improving quality.
  • 2014 Goal #5 – Launch a new game changing business/service (this one I will not share until the time is right)
  • 2014 Goal #6 – Continue ahead of the monthly net income curve targeting $15k/month in reliable online income by the age of 35.

Stretch Income Targets (BHAG)…

  • Hit my undisclosed “money in the bank” target
  • Average $10k/month net income for 2014

Part1

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

After last 2 months increase of 20% & 32% another increase of 9% was realized in July.

The combination of adding more content to existing sites and improving some recently purchased sites has pushed my niche/authority website side of my business along again this month.

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

  • # of greater than $100/month Sites = 10 (added one and lost one)
    • Sites:
    • PMSL
    • OIC
    • ACLSR
    • GFD (purchased)
    • RBC
    • RFNF
    • BCR
    • PPR
    • PFA (purchased)
    • IFA (purchased) (NEW in June!)
  • Revenue = $5,005.51
  • Costs = -$952.92
  • Net Income = $4,052.59 (+9%)

Sites that fell below the $100/month line = One site in July fell below.

1-passive-income

July Comment – This is a great result for this month with a $4k addition to my business income coming from my niche/authority sites. There is still a lot of room for me to improve this side of the business with a stronger consistent growth plan. I hope to have that implemented over the next 1-2 months and will share my plan with you. But basically I will continue to leverage the strengths…ability to produce decent quality content at low costs and get incredibly powerful backlinks.

Public Case Study Site Status

AuthorityWebsiteIncome started with one case study – This site was started the same day as my case study site and every month I documented in detail exactly what I did to grow the site. It turned into a great site for me earning over $3k/month in its peak months and helped launch AuthorityWebsiteIncome. The monthly case study income reports have grown beyond just one site but I want to keep tracking this site separately from all the others so everyone can keep tabs on it.

  • Net Income = $2,064 (-10%)
  • Traffic = 31,364 (+9%)
  • Citation Flow = 29 (-1)
  • Trust Flow = 21 (+2)

2-PMSL-Authority-Site-Income

July Comment – The results this month were great…especially considering one of the affiliate links was not working for ½ the month (whole story here). August I have hope for a banner month!

 

Progress on Key 2014 Goal…

2014 Goal #1 – Increase the number of sites making over $100/month to 15 by building, buying or growing 8 quality sites.

3-Passive Income Portfolio

July Comment – One more site added in July and one removed. I am starting to think this may not have been the best metric to track considering the growth of my income in my website portfolio is not very well correlated to the number of sites I have.

part2

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.

Here are the monthly stats for my site…

  • Visitors = 15,247 (-10%)
  • Subscribers = 2,842 (+5%)
  • # of Posts = 2
  • Affiliate Income = $690 (+146%)

4-AuthorityWebsiteIncome Stats

 

July Comment – Only 2 posts published is disappointing! I was hoping to do much better but as mentioned without having a consistent work schedule producing articles was a challenge! No excuses though…my commitment to my audience on this site is 1 post per week. I will still aim to hit the 52 posts this year!

 

Progress on Key 2014 Goal…

2014 Goal #2 – Publish 52 Posts on Authority Website Income. For the growth of this blog there is nothing more important than consistently producing great articles every single Monday.

5 Number of Posts Published

2014 Goal #3 – Produce 1 ULTIMATE post that will put my Ultimate Guide to Expired Domains to shame! Plan is in motion but it will take several months to assemble all the moving parts! Finding the time is going to be a challenge…it is going to come down to the wire at the end of the year.

Part 3

Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss

This is definitely where my biggest opportunity lies and although I want to keep a balanced portfolio of income producing assets.

The key metrics I am going to share on this side of the business each month include the following for my Done For You PBN Service (here)…

  • # Sites Built = 118 (doesn’t cover all sites)
  • # of Domains Found = 205 (doesn’t cover all sites)
  • Net Income = $11,465.06*

*Note about the Net Income – each month varies greatly since the expenses for building the sites incur the month the sites are built while the income occurs the month the sites are sold. So there are months like December(and June) where I only have a handful of new clients but I am still building sites for all the others who paid in the previous month. For the accounting purists, yes, I am aware I am violating a GAAP accounting principle (revenue is to be counted in the months the expenses to earn the revenue are realized – but that creates more accounting headaches for me).

6 Services Business

July Comment: July was a solid month for my services business with a good balance of new customers and existing customers increasing their PBNs. I also faced a couple quality challenges both with a few domain orders and some PBN content issues. For both I have beefed up my systems to try and improve these 2 critical areas.

 

Progress on Key 2014 Goal…

2014 Goal #4 – Automate the entire fulfilment process. I am personally still approving all domains and supporting client’s requests.

No progress this month but my part time sales manager is doing a great job and all customers are getting personal support during the process.

2014 Goal #5 – Launch a new game changing business/service (this one I will not share until the time is right)

I am unsure if this service will still be offered…I have some ideas but unsure if it still makes sense.

 

Overall Financial Goals

 

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

  • Target Net Income = $4,975
  • Actual net Income = $16,207.65

7 Goal 15k 8 Overall Income

“Money in the Bank” Target

For those that have been trying to track their online income and reconcile with money in the bank it doesn’t take long to realize just because you think you made $1k in a month your business bank account doesn’t go up by $1k that month. The reason for this is that it takes some time for advertisers to pay their affiliates. Plus, some affiliate commissions you earned will be voided in the next month and you will not be paid for that commission you thought you made.

So for this reason a metric I am going to track in 2014 is my Money in the Bank target. Although I share a lot I am choosing to not actually share my bank balance…I will simply make it a % of my overall goal.

9 Money in the Bank

 

July Comment: The money in the bank target is no longer going to be realistically achieved since I have made changes where I pay my wife a salary for the work she does. Forward progress each month is still going to be key though!

2014 Monthly Income Target

This is another big time stretch goal. In 2014 I am targeting to average $10k/month in net monthly income.

RUNNING AVERAGE = $12,736

  • January = $11,141
  • February = $12,193
  • March = $6,719
  • April = $14,484
  • May = $21,135
  • June = $7,275
  • July = $16,208

Final Comments

A solid month that resulted in overall net income breaking through the $15k goal again!

Here is the summary of this months results…

  1. Niche Websites – Great month led by my student loan websites performance. But, I need to get more structured at building out my new sites into larger sites to replicate success I have had with other sites.
  2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com – Published only 2 posts! This is a problem and I need to make sure to come back from it!
  3. Services Business – A great month in terms of domains found and sites completed. Costs are starting to not trend linearly with work output so I need to work on cutting costs/becoming more efficient while at the same time improving quality.

How was your month?

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May Income Report – Record Income Achieved – Milestone Crushed

Well it has happened!

In this months report I get to share the great news that record earnings have pushed me well past my target net income goal of $15k.

However, I will also share why I am not popping the Champaign (or in my case cold domestic beer). The nature of the revenue this month has my team running FLAT OUT right now and May will be a very busy and expensive month!

This monthly report will share all the details about the different “divisions” of my business…

  1. Passive Income Website Portfolio
  2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
  3. Expired Domain Services:

(more…)

Read More

April Income Report – So Close to 15k

Well April was another great month, last month my earnings were down but I was able to see a solid bounce back with record revenue and net income.

Spring has also finally arrived and as a result I was spending a little more time outside doing yard work etc. Being time-poor is nothing new and I know there is no “solution” but I need to continually work to maximize every minute I get to be able to continue to push each part of my business forward. (more…)

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