December 2016 Income Report

Hey, Scott here.

If you are new to my site and wondering what the heck this page is, here’s the deal:

I started my personal finance blog in March 2015. I never intended to make money with my blog. I wanted to work on my show, write books, finance courses, do some public speaking, and maybe someday write some kick-butt piece of software.

I published an average of two articles per week on my blog, never once focusing on making money. One day (September 2016) I realized how my website had grown over the past seventeen months. I spent some time optimizing my blog to make money and made $11,400 in less than three weeks.

That was crazy (it still blows me away), so I started blogging about blogging. I write these reports for a few reasons:

  • To encourage and help you start your own blog or side hustle if it’s something you’ve been considering. By writing about what I’ve learned works and doesn’t work, you get the benefit of that knowledge. You can also avoid all the crap products I’ve wasted money on.
  • To prove there is room for new bloggers to make money. I started in 2015 – which is pretty late to the game.
  • Because I love talking about websites. Almost as much as I love talking about personal finance on my show, or my cats.

I hope you find these reports helpful. Let’s dig in…

If you want to start a blog, please check out my step-by-step guide on how to start a blog. You’ll get my special discounted pricing (available through my special link) from Bluehost for $2.95 a month if you sign up for the 12-month plan. Plus you get a free domain name. Online business is the only type of business I know where you can get started for such a tiny investment. Yes, you can make money blogging, and there is room for new bloggers. My blog isn’t even 2-years old.

numbers

Note: Some of the links below are affiliate links. All of the products listed below are products and services we’ve used before. If you have any questions about any of the income or expenses you can leave a comment and we’ll do our best to reply.

Product Income – $772.00

Affiliate Income – $27,176.36

These are all of the affiliate programs I participate in and earn money from. They are listed in alphabetical order. The reason I don’t break out the income for each affiliate is because my business is different than yours.

This list gives you an idea of the types of companies you can earn money online from through affiliate sales.

Total: $27,948.36

Expenses – $1,395.79

  • Contractors and Staff – $648.00
  • MailChimp – $80.00
  • Microsoft Office 365 – $10.81
  • Adobe Creative Cloud – $32.46
  • Long Tail Platinum (keyword research) – $37.00
  • Speak Pipe (leave voicemail via website) – $7.00
  • Dropbox – $10.65
  • Libsyn (podcast hosting) – $30.00
  • Google Business – $16.66
  • Yoast SEO Plugin – $69.00
  • Facebook Ads – $306.31
  • Soundcloud – $121.50
  • AWS – $21.05
  • Adobe Stock Photography – $5.35

Net Income: $26,552.57

Note that doesn’t include taxes or health insurance which I have to pay myself for being self-employed.

takeaways

December was slightly higher than November. I didn’t do much in the way of promotion. It was basically a cruise control month. I was a bit lazy.

Upcoming Priorities

How did I do on last month’s goals?

I kept December light because it’s the holiday season and I knew I would be working less. I posted my usual amount of articles and spent most of my time thinking about 2017 and what I wanted to accomplish.

  • Pick my first project to work on in January.
  • Learn more about SEO. I get most of my traffic from Google and I’m focused on growing my site that way.

January Goals

  • Start working on my next book.

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