November was a big month for me. Not necessarily income wise (although I have to yet log into my accounts and see how I did – especially with this blog), but much more so on a personal level: I turned 30. Scary!
All I could think about was “man… that is like 10 years away from 40. Yikes!”
I tried poking fun at it saying I just did a software update to version 3.0, but truth is, 30 is a scary number. Especially if you get there right after turning 25 (at least that is how it felt). Hehe!
All joking aside…
How did I do?
I worked on SEODagger.com less in November than I did in October.
First, I found my writing time (per post) decreased significantly. I like to think I have gotten more efficient at doing them, which would definitely be a good thing.
Secondly, I did not do any active marketing. This is NOT a good thing. I had planned on doing a couple guest posts to help promote this blog and drive some traffic to it, but I didn’t even go out to comment on other blogs. That was the least I should have done.
You could say it was a lazy month for me – at least as far as this blog is concerned. I could (and definitely should) have done more – especially considering I wanted to make $1000 between October 1st and December 31.
Last month (if you remember from my previous income report here) I confirmed earning $124.48 plus $120 in free advertising credit in October as a direct result of this blog.
Let’s see if we did any better for November.
Income for November 2015
Disclaimer: I will link to sites that I promoted throughout this blog in November and that I earned 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) at no extra cost to you. Having said that, I will never promote something I do not believe in and/or use myself.
With that disclaimer out of the way, I should also say that this ONLY includes earnings I can directly trace back to this blog. If I made a sale through my list or any of my many other ventures, it will NOT be listed below.
Sound fair? Alright…
Here we go:
- Lightning Rank: $45
- As you know, I have been using Lightning Rank with great success on some of my niche sites, hence me always recommending it. Again, earnings shown here are only the ones I can trace back to this blog. It was the same as last month.
- Samson Elite: Inconclusive
- It is my own product that I promote on a bunch of my niche sites as well as this site. Same as last month though, I made numerous sales but have no way of tracking exactly where they all came from. So I can not confirm how much (if anything) I earned as a result of promoting it on this blog.
- MyeCoverMaker: $35.85
- I’m happy to see that this ended up being a little more than last month. The last time I promoted MyeCoverMaker on this blog (and what probably contributed to it earning commissions on here now) is when I did a quick Pixel Studio FX review in September.
- LinkLicious: $4.04
- This is an indexing service I promote on the “Services I Use” page. Considering I don’t promote it directly much, I’m happy for every dime it earns me, even if I earned less with it than I did in October.
- RankCrew: $10.00
- Unlike the month before, I actually earned a cash commission from RankCrew in November. On top of that, I got approximately $80± worth of free advertising credit with them. A little less credit than I got in October, but still not bad if you ask me 🙂
- HyperBuilder: $11.54
- I had a random sale come in from my Hyper Builder WP plugin review post that I wrote back in September. This sale came long after I promoted the plugin via my other mediums (likely as a result of a Google search), which is a good example of why I love being an affiliate blogger: you get paid for random things you promoted weeks, months, sometimes even years before.
Total confirmed income: $106.43 USD
Total confirmed RankCrew credit: $80.00±
Aftermath
It is natural for humans to expect things to progress and increase over time – especially where money is concerned – but I am just happy this blog proved itself profitable again.
Truthfully, as little work as I put into it last month, I am ecstatic it still made me money.
My goal was to have this blog (alone) earn $1000 by the end of the year (starting October 1st), and now – with 1 month to go – I am not sure it will hit it. Even if I add the free advertising credits (that I received through RankCrew) in as income, we are sitting at $430.91. Meaning to hit it’s $1000 target, it would need to earn a total of $569.09 in December alone.
Will it hit it’s target? It certainly could, although I have a feeling it won’t.
If I committed to making it happen by working around the clock on promoting it, I know it could do it. But as you know, this blog (at this point) is a small piece of a huge puzzle for me, so it would be unwise for me to abandon all my other projects to solely focus on this alone.
If you only have one blog though, this would certainly be the way to get into profits fast. In my case though, my time (especially this time of year) is better leveraged on some of my more seasonal projects (at least for now).
Goal for December
If you remember from my previous income report, my personal goal for November was to spend more focused time while working, as well as while with family. As noted before, I believe I made great progress in that regard – especially where work is concerned.
I definitely could (and need to) do a lot better though!
Which is why I just now – as I’m writing this – went ahead and deleted some apps from my phone that were inviting distractions into my life. I realized I had put them at a very convenient spot on my iPhone screen where I would open them – habitually – every time I opened the phone.
So moving forward into December, I have 2 areas in my personal life I want to focus on:
- Start reading again. Ever since the birth of my daughter 17 months ago, I excused myself as not having enough time to read. Which is possibly how – to my shame – the kindle app got moved into a folder on the the very last page of my iPhone.
I have a handful of books I need to finally finish up and a dozen more waiting for me to get started. Just the thought of reading again somehow excites me.Side note: Most of the books I read are business and mindset development type books. I never was much into fiction. In fact, the last fiction book I read was Robinson Crusoe – a 1719 fiction novel by Daniel Defoe about a man stranded on a deserted tropical island. It took me over a year to finish.
I’m told I should read more fiction – especially if I want to improve my creative writing skills. Any grand fiction book recommendations (that do not involve vampires or zombies)? - Listen to podcasts more consistently. With just about every great business mind in the world now sharing their knowledge through podcasts (either through their own channel or by being interviewed on someone else’s) for FREE, it’s a shame I don’t listen to more of them.
What about SEO Dagger?
My goal for this blog this month is to get more exposure. So if you have a blog in a somewhat similar niche that you would be open to me doing a guest post on, please let me know 🙂
I went ahead and set up a pinterest account for this blog last month (check it out here) and will eventually reorganize my other social accounts too, but then it will be a matter of learning to actually use them to drive traffic. I am not too sure I will get started on that this month though.
My main aim – marketing wise – is to do 2 guest posts on other SEO / IM type blogs to help drive traffic.
Perspective
I managed to publish 5 posts in November. Like I said before, that is pretty much all I did, and yet earned over a hundred dollars. Meaning I got paid roughly $21 per post.
Would you write a post for someone else for $21? I know a lot of writers – who are even more experienced than me -that will do it for even less. And yet can’t get themselves to write a post for their own blog. I always cringe at their lack of vision.
I am not saying this to beat down freelance writers. Not at all. I outsource to a lot of them. But what I am simply saying is, most of them could do so much better – financially – than what they are doing by simply writing for themselves too.
Again, there is nothing grand about earning $21 per post. Heck, there is nothing grand about earning $100 per post. So why brag about it? Because I KNOW those posts – over time – will result in multiple hundred dollars worth of income to me.
This is what they call Passive Income: You do the work once, and yet get paid over and over again for it!
Conclusion
It wasn’t a bad month. Getting paid to practice a skill is always good. Even if it was less than hoped for. Also, seeing how some older posts are starting to make me money without me directly promoting them is also a good sign.
While taking a step back to look at the bigger picture, one thing became clear to me: I need to start focusing on actually marketing and driving traffic to this blog. I think I’ve had a decent streak of quality posts which act as a good foundation, now it’s time to make those posts profitable by getting them read.
All in all I am happy with where month two took this blog, but am looking forward to have it do a little better for this month (December). Stay tuned!
