October 2015 Income Report

As announced in a post at the end of September, I am going to be sharing my monthly income reports (from this blog) with you. THIS is the first one.

It is a bit intimidating to say the least as I haven’t actually looked at any hard numbers yet, but it’s exciting at the same time because no matter how bad the numbers look, they can only get better from here on out.

I have also never shared income reports from any of my blogs before so making myself vulnerable like this… let’s just say the German in me isn’t too comfortable with it yet.

Transparency is good for the brand though, so I’m determined to stick with it. At least till this blog brings in six figures a year or flat out fails. Hoping to avoid the latter 😉

As explained in a previous post, any income I make from my list, my niche sites, or any of my other sources of income will NOT be listed here. Only money earned as a direct result of this site will get broken down on here – just to show exactly how I take it from 0$ per month to $1000, $2000, or even $10,000 per month.

I have made a bit of money with it over the years (a couple dollars here and there from affiliate sales) when I actually posted regularly on it but when I changed the domain from EmpireMarketing.ca to SEODagger.com, all income from it more or less died.

So it will be exciting to see where it ended up after the first month of working with it again. I’m not expecting much (if anything) as I know it will take time to build and grow this blog, but every little bit would be inspiring for sure.

So how did I do? Let’s get into the numbers and find out 🙂

Income for October 2015

For transparency sake, I will link to outside sites that I promoted throughout this blog over the last month and made money with. If you click on any of the links or buy through them, I MAY earn a small commission (which would positively reflect on the next income report). Having said that, I will never promote something I do not believe in and/or use myself.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s look at the facts, shall we?

Here we go:

• Lightning Rank: $45
• Samson Elite: Inconclusive
• PingAutomatic: $35.04
• MyeCoverMaker: $32.32 
• LinkLicious: $12.12 

Total confirmed income: $124.48 USD 

I’m pretty sure I made a sale or two for the Samson Elite WP plugin as a result of promoting it on this blog, but because I never used tracking codes for it, I am unable to confirm just how many came from this site versus from my niche sites that I promote it through. I own the plugin and get regular sales for it every month (without affiliate URL), making it a little difficult to track just where all of them came from.

A good problem to have I suppose, but it makes it a little too unsure to include as confirmed income in this report.

I also earned $120 worth of advertising credit with RankCrew for referring paying customers through this blog. I can’t cash those credits in but can redeem them for free advertising. Not a real profit, but I do consider it noteworthy enough to mention.

Again, this only includes earnings I can directly track back to coming from this blog.

Nothing to write home about, but definitely not a bad first month. Frankly it is quite a bit more than I expected. Most blogs never make a dime until a few months down the road, so I am totally excited to see where this will take me months and years down the road.

Expenses for October 2015

Of course starting a business comes with expenses, but you can start on a shoestring budget. In fact, you could start for free if you wanted to on free blogging platforms like WordPress.com or Blogger.com, but for the sake of saving time later, I would strongly recommend getting a paid domain with paid hosting.

In my case, I pay hundreds of dollars a month in running and growing my various sites but did not pay a dime in October for SEODagger.com specifically.

Let me explain: SEODagger is hosted on my dedicated server at HostGator that I pay $174/mth for. I host a lot of my sites on there though, so even if it wasn’t for SEODagger.com, I would still be paying that $174/mth. I use a dedicated server simply because of the large volumes of traffic my (and my wife’s) sites process every day. So theoretically it’s not an expense for SEODagger. If this site was all I owned I would probably have just gone with one of HostGator’s WordPress Hosting service plans and would pay around $7.50/mth.

So, you could say my expenses for the month (for this site) were $7.50 but that is not entirely true. It’s more like $0.00.

My October Takeaway

Considering it was my first month of getting back into content writing (for this blog), I realized 2 things:

1. It’s hard. It’s hard to commit to writing a post or two every week.
   I was reminded why I originally started outsourcing content writing for my niche sites. It’s not always easy to sit down and get focused enough to crunch out a quality piece of content. In fact, it’s a grind more often than not just to get a post started.
   It got easier as time went on and I know it will keep getting easier the longer I do it, but for a few of my longer posts I found myself still spending a couple hours one day and an hour or two the next just to finish it up.
   I guess my writing skills had gotten a little rusty… but I will get more efficient as I continue doing it.
2. I loved it. As much as it’s challenging, it’s rewarding. I always felt good after I finished another post. Even if I wasn’t completely happy with it (who ever really is?), it felt good to have powered through and gotten one done. Definitely something I look forward to doing more of.

Living in Coffeeshop paradise (Chiang Mai, Thailand), I usually take 2 – 3 hours 6 days a week to go out and work from one of the many local coffee shops. It might not be ideal for some, but it’s truly a dream lifestyle for me. Good coffee, friendly people, and a relaxed atmosphere. What more could I want?

I usually try to also get an hour or two of work in later in the day after my baby girl has gone to bed. So my workday is nicely broken up, but I certainly don’t work as much as I could and perhaps should be. I do however spend a lot of quality time with my family – something that I believe to be ultra important, especially once you have kids.

Things to Change

What will I do differently for this month (and after)?

One of my resolutions moving forward into November is to be more intentional about the time I spend in front of the screen. To not necessarily spend more time working, but to be more focused when I do go out to work.

The same goes for family time… to be more fully with them.

Spending quality time with my daughter while in Cambodia last month.

As mentioned before, I really only work 3 – 6 hours per day for 6 days a week. It is easy to get distracted though by a facebook update, emails, etc. All stuff that very quickly robs you of the time you originally planned to use to get work done.

I could also totally work 7 days a week (I honestly love working), but to keep our family life balanced, we as a family decided that we take one day a week off to spend with each other – away from the computer screen. I believe this to be important to keep you and family happy, keep stress levels down, and to prevent you from burning out.

Also, I just realized I hadn’t set up analytics for this site yet, so that is something I will get done shortly here so I can show some traffic stats with the next income report.

Conclusion

Making over $100 from this blog within the first month of focusing 1 – 2 days a week on it, is not bad. In fact, it was a lot better than I expected it to do.

Most of my niche sites take a month or two before I make the first sale from them, so again, I’m happy, and somehow weirdly confident that I may actually come close to having it hit $1000 for the year (it is 12% there).

I will create a followup post soon that outlines exactly what I spent those 1 to 2 days a week doing to get the results I got, and also how I plan to scale that to new heights. So be on the lookout for that.

Any other details you would like me to include in future income reports?