July Income Report

Any month we are able to hit our targets is a good month.

July was a month where it felt like a couple businesses plateaued and a couple were able to break free from previous plateaus to new heights.

Summer is in full swing and I was able to get away a couple times for 2 canoe trips in July. On a conference call while in the middle of the woods was a fun time.

It was also the first time I was able to take my 4yr old son on a Canoe Trip and he had a blast!

I am in a constant battle for balancing speed and control… for some projects, I like to step on the gas while others need a little more infrastructure built up to handle the growth.

Thoughts on Team Building:

A VERY large amount of my time in July and Aug has been on thinking about building my team and when to hire locally or remotely.

One critical thing I have decided is…

Hire in house for culture fit / ambition / work ethic / raw intelligence AND pay for skill sets on the open marketplace. What I mean is I would rather have a hard working ambitious, intelligent great cultural fit who never heard of SEO then a poor fit that has all the skills. All the “skills” in this space can be purchased on UpWork.

Below is my income and business report for July…

Hopefully, this post will shed some light on how I build/operate my online business and gives you some useful insights. There are plenty of areas for improvement in my business and I try to highlight these as well!

Hope your summer is going well and your business is growing J

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. Portfolio Earnings – There were a handful of sites that really showed substantial improvement in $/visitor.
  2. BrandBuilders – Continued product/market fit is evident and we are having a lot of fun helping the team Andrew has built grow the business.
  3. Content Plan – It has been too long but I finally have a solid content plan/schedule for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com.

Key Failures

  1. High Potential Low Probability – There were a couple projects/deals I put some effort into that had great potential but ultimately nothing came of them.
  2. Facebook Ads – Similar to last month I had another failure trying to get some paid traffic working to one of my services. My thinking has shifted that I now just need to hire an agency or specialist to handle this for me. If you know anyone that is a killer with paid traffic please have them email me.

 

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

July Update – It is tough to understand the performance of this site right now with the number of 301 building blocks I have applied to it plus some spikey articles.

  • Traffic = 15,071
  • Earnings = $97.53

  1. Buy 1 Site Per Month

July Update – One little AdSense site purchased and one small productized service business purchased. I will be talking more about the one soon enough (some people may have already received an email about that story).

  • GOAL = 1 New Website Purchased
  • ACTUAL = 2 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…

  • Desire a simple/efficient/non-invasive sales process (no option is easier to sell to)
  • 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
  • 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

 

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

July Update – Although it doesn’t really show it there has been some good progress on increasing the earnings per visitor on several properties associated with this scalable new site creation effort for the year. Traffic continues to move in the right direction and I need to still substantially improve the earnings for several more properties.

  • Traffic – 53,202
  • Earnings – $276.52

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

July Update – The portfolio performance doesn’t look way better then other months but for the first time in about 6 months we had a month I was satisfied with in terms of our efforts showing clear results. Looking forward to continuing to improve the performance here!

 

Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss

3 Goals in 2015 for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com

  1. Post Once Per Week

July Update – A “perfect” month… no missed posts and me and my team put a lot of effort into trying to provide as valuable posts as possible!

  • Plan = 5
  • Actual = 5

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

July Update – No Progress

  1. Increased Intelligence with Email Automation

July Update – No Progress

PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH

May Update – 12,456 which is lower than I would like to see! Need to continue to push

Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss

  1. Systems First Focus

July Update – Seeing the team come up with procedures without me prompting them and it being fundamental in everything we do is starting to pay off. We are seeing a new problem where the rate of procedure creation and the organization of those SOPs is not where we need it to be.

 

  1. LightningRank.com – Quality and Efficiency Improvements

July Update – This is moving into becoming a new offering that will open up natural link building to even more people! We are continuing to see great results for clients on both the Done For You PBN and UseMyPBN service.

Visit LightningRank.com for Link Building Services!

 

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

June Update – A weird billing nuance where anyone who signed up on the 31st got billed on the first showing up in July vs June has this number a few thousand less. CHURN is the enemy of any growing recurring subscription business! For us we were experiencing some awesome growth numbers but with a big push last month and then some normal/happy customer churn we have seen this growth slow.

  • Planned MRR = $23,313
  • Actual MRR = $27,919

Visit ContentRefined.com for Content Marketing Services!

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

June Update – Achieved – 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
    • July Update – Distribution received – always a good month when we can do that!
  • Brand #2 – CF – Quarterly Dividends Ahead of Baseline
    • July Update – Continuing to perform well and need to setup for SOLID Q4!
  • Brand #3 – NT – Path To Strong Market Position and Successful Pillar Product
    • July Update – Waiting to sell out of stock and then kill entity (first failed FBA project)
  • Brand #4 – CK – Systematic Growth to $20k/month Profit
    • July Update – Performing okay… not where we want it!
  • Brand #5 – PC – Successful launch and $5k/month Business
    • July Update – Despite pushing heavy on this business and great reviews it seems to be SLOW to move!
  • Brand #6 – SE – 4X Value Expansion with Dream Team!
    • July Update – One more hail-marry attempt here coming up!
  • LE – Hijack and Listing Suppression Monitoring Service
    • July Update – Steady/boring SAAS business

 

Part 5 – Put Outside Capital to Work Efficiently

July Update – We are working on another larger deal at a discount. The Due Diligence for this one has a little more “hair” on it then we would like!

Overall Income Update

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

  • Target Net Income = $11,450
  • Actual Net Income = $53,983
  • 2017 Average Net Income = $47,109

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

Final Comments

July was a solid month… there continues to be a LOT of opportunities on the go and I am continuing to try to best balance everything that is in front of us.

The extra help from the co-ops this summer has been great and their contributions will be missed!

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July Income – Grinding it Out


July I was able to get back to working and building my online business and it felt great!

Although I didn’t get as much done in July as I had planned (rarely do) it was great to see forward movement on several of my goals for 2015 that hadn’t made much progress through the first 1/2 of 2015.

Income was solid again but I didn’t see an immediate uptick for my increased effort but believe the changes in July will pay dividends moving forward.

Already the first week in Aug has been a record week in part due to having the Top Selling product at the Source Wave marketplace – Done for You PBN Delivered in 24hrs w free hosting for 1 year! (great reasonably relevant introductory PBN offer & very promising Marketplace!)

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

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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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