As I was laying in the dentist chair today – trying hard not to fall asleep with the bright light in my face – I was reminded of a time less than a decade ago where I had gotten used to constant tooth pain.
I had quit my day job and consequently had no dental insurance. Meaning any much needed dental work would have cost me many thousands of dollars. As someone trying to make his first paycheck online, I simply did not have that kind of money laying around.
Needless to say my teeth got really bad – and I was in constant pain. So when I was in Penang, Malaysia in 2012, I had major dental work done and the dentist yelled at me “For a guy your age I should not have had to do this kind of work.”
I guess that’s what happens when you let fillings fall out without getting them fixed right away. I took great care of my teeth personally, but didn’t have a professional look at them for many years.
I tell this story for two reasons:
- First, to gross people out. I’m partially kidding, but now that your imagination and sensory levels skyrocketed, you’ll never forget reason number two.
- Don’t quit your job to go full time in your online business unless it is in a position to take care of you.
It can be done. You can hit the ground running and replace your job income within a few weeks of hard work, but its like intentionally putting all odds against you. Luckily I was single when I pulled that stunt, but in hindsight I should have kept a part time job for just a few months longer.
Instead I sacrificed in a lot of areas: finances (especially my credit), diet, health, and just about everything else money can buy.
Hence my encouragement to entrepreneurs who are tempted to burn all bridges as they go for their dream: get the dream going first. Often the peer pressure is so high that we try to make a statement by going for it without common sense and it ends up hurting everyone involved in the long run.
It happened to me. It has happened to many people I know. So, moral of the story? Start this online marketing “thing” part time, and – only once it is at a level where it supports your basic living needs – go full time.
Make the transition slowly. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone.
Thoughts? I would love your thoughts on this in the comment section.
SEODagger.com Income for November 2016
Let’s leave “starting a business” advice for another day and dive straight into the income report. How did this blog do in November?
As usual, a quick disclaimer before talking about numbers:
DISCLAIMER: I never include earnings from ventures unrelated to this blog. I own and am a partner in a bunch of online business ventures, but – for the sake of a fair case study (not to mention legal reasons) – only earnings directly related to SEODagger.com will be shared here.
The Income Breakdown:
- MyeCoverMaker: $500.60
- This month I did not mess with the ecover maker review post aside from building a few links to it (explained in the expense section). This is the 5th month in a row where earnings from it beat its previous monthly record. Half a G-note a month – passively – from one affiliate program alone is not bad if you ask me. It’s half a mortgage payment for many people I know. Not bad at all!
- Konker: $0
- Konker is the new name of Source Market. Although my press release review post on this blog is starting to get targeted search engine traffic, I did not make a single penny as an affiliate with it this month. I blame it on the affiliate links that stopped working in November some time. No idea when, but I guess since the domain name changed from SourceMarket to Konker, all my affiliate links were dead. I was made aware of this just a couple days before month end. Hoping to make some money with it this month though.
Total November earnings I can trace back to this blog? $500.60 USD
SEODagger.com Expenses for November 2016
Same as with the income section, only expenses resulting because of this blog will be listed here. For example: I do pay monthly for a SEO Group Buy membership, a dedicated server, a SerpBook membership, etc. If I didn’t have this blog I would still be paying for those. As such I do not consider them to be expenses specific of this blog.
The Expenses for SEODagger.com Breakdown:
- HostGator: $0
- I used to count a $5.97 per month expense for hosting just as a reference point for what someone else would pay to host a blog similar to this, but truth is: I pay for a dedicated server that is capable of hosting 200 – 300 sites like this. Meaning, because I have DOZENS of niche type sites, I would be paying for the server even if I didn’t have this blog. Hence, from this point forward, I will not be adding that artificial expense. I may continue making a point about it though just so potential bloggers are aware of what they would have to pay should they start their first paid blog.
- Hatred’s PBN Service: $200
- As a general rule I like to build my own PBN (Private Blog Network) to link to my money sites just because I am a control freak and am not a big fan of how most people run their networks. Hatred (Dillon) is an exception however. He knows what he is doing when it comes to PBNs and runs a pretty tight ship. I had ordered from him before and knew the kind of results his PBN links are capable of bringing. Which is why I bought the gig for this site and pointed it at the ecover maker post.
I will do an in depth review of his gig later on this month (fingers crossed). Long story short, I believe they are largely responsible for the boost in income from that post.
- As a general rule I like to build my own PBN (Private Blog Network) to link to my money sites just because I am a control freak and am not a big fan of how most people run their networks. Hatred (Dillon) is an exception however. He knows what he is doing when it comes to PBNs and runs a pretty tight ship. I had ordered from him before and knew the kind of results his PBN links are capable of bringing. Which is why I bought the gig for this site and pointed it at the ecover maker post.
- Fiverr: $11
- I got a whole post coming out on this strategy later this month, but long story short: I logged into my webmaster tools account for this blog and downloaded all links Google knows are linking to the ecover maker post. I then went on Fiverr and purchased a couple bookmarking gigs and had each of those links bookmarked at random. This – in SEO terms – is known as tier two link building and the strategy behind it is to boost the links that are already pointing to your site. It’s a something I do regularly for links pointing to my money sites and it works really really well.
Total November expenses directly related to this blog? $211.00 USD
November Takeaway
Although the blog earned me $500.60 USD, I only took home $289.60 USD because of the overdue reinvestment into the blog I did. Just realized it was actually 37 cents less than I took home in October, but I feel good about it.
I spent a little extra time working on this blog in November. The main focus was at the end of the month when I decided to optimize the press release service review post. It didn’t make me any money in November (likely because of dead affiliate links) but I know it has potential and hoping to bring it to a few hundred dollars a month in passive income by mid next year.
It’s exciting to see income grow from this blog. Especially while doing so little on it. Although planning to keep work on this blog to a minimum for December, I have another three posts planned for it that I’m hoping to hit publish on before christmas.
The key takeaway for November is consistency. As in, if you keep working your blog consistently – even if to a bare minimum like I have been – the income from it can and likely will continue to grow.
Goals for 2017
One of the things I cherish most is family. I love spending time with my family and I love talking business with them. Most of my family is fairly entrepreneurial so there are always a lot of inspiring things to talk about.
What I am grateful for most though (in that regard) is that my wife “gets” what I do. In fact, she is a very successful food blogger and when it comes to scaling her blog’s profitability, marketing it, growing as a brand, etc, a lot of what she does overlaps with what I do.
Meaning we can carry on lengthy conversations about “business” without ever really going into “I haven’t got the faintest idea of what you’re talking about” territory. Business is a sexy topic for us both, which is a tremendous blessing in my opinion.
We (my wife and I) sat down last night to set some personal as well as business goals for 2017. This involved her blog, my niche sites, and of course this blog. The big goal for SEODagger.com is to have it generate $1000 per month in passive income by July of 2017.
To me it means I need to get a few other strong performing product reviews up and ranking. Aside from that I need to overhaul the “products I use” and “services I use” pages and update them with products and services I actively use today.
There is still a fair amount of work to be done to get it to that point but I very much believe it is doable.
How was your November? Any big “ahah” moments for you? I would love hearing your thoughts and feedback below.
