It has been a long time since I’ve disclosed my personal income stats from my business, but I’d like to give an update.
If you’re just here for the number here it is: I made $41,370.67 in profit for October 2013
So in one month I’ve earned more than what I earned in my first year at my full time sales (the one I recently celebrated getting fired from 4 years ago), but there’s more to it than just a number. First…
Let me explain why I’m not a douche…
Look I get it.
You come by my blog, or perhaps you’ve been reading a while and you’re thinking to yourself
‘Why is this douche bragging about all of this money he’s making?’
I’m not sharing these stats to brag.
I drive the same now nearly 6 year old car I should have never bought new in the first place and even if my income grew enough to justify it, there is no Ferrari in my future (Besides, I’d prefer a Tesla Roadster if I wanted an incredibly fast car).
I also bought a relatively cheap house for my area at $130,000 last year instead of picking up the Guthrie Castle (I’m still a little short on the funds to buy that).
Instead, I’ve been spending my surplus money on growing my business, a complete remodel of our fixer upper house, fertility treatments (wife now pregnant with twins – boo yah), paying down my wife’s remaining student loans (which we should have never got in the first place – story for another day) and maxing out my SEP IRA contributions (capped at 20% of your income or $50,000 max).
I’m just trying to enjoy what I do for a living, grow my business, build meaningful relationships with fellow entrepreneurs, help people willing to put in the work to get started and have plenty of free time left over for friends and family.
Why I stopped posting income reports years ago
The last real in depth income report I did was back in early 2011 when I showed how I got fired in 2009 and in my first full year on my own earned over $150,000.
To go from working a corporate sales job, getting fired right before the holidays and then to follow it up the next year with earnings that exceeded 2.5x that day job felt like a great accomplishment for me at the time.
In the past few years I shifted most of my focus away from blogging regularly here and instead onto more lucrative projects (such as other websites I was running, websites I bought, software projects I was creating, etc).
Because I was already writing a lot less it just wouldn’t make a lot of sense for me to just post income report after income report on my blog with little extra content, so I just didn’t do it.
Where my money comes from – and why I can’t provide all of the details
This is the part that may disappoint some people, but let me explain why it’s incredibly stupid for me to go down to the penny listing out every income source on a project by project basis.
The vast majority of my income comes from stuff that I’m out on the internet doing – not related to my blogging and podcasting here at UpFuel.
(No hate for the folks making most of their money from their blogs of course. I just make this distinction to help further explain why I can’t be so specific in my reports.)
Income Source 1: Running my portfolio of websites
How my websites make money: Google Adsense, Amazon, LinkShare, CJ, Kontera, Vibrant Media, Value Click Media, other affiliate programs, etc.
I’ve already shared URL’s of websites I’ve built and sold, bought�and run and I do have a full on case study I’ll be doing soon to reveal more about that.
Unfortunately,�sharing every URL would potentially risk tens of thousands of future dollars for me and my family.
Income Source 2: Buying and occasionally selling websites
How buying and selling websites makes me money: I make money by increasing the value of websites I buy (in the form of increased monthly revenues or driving more traffic). I also make money when I occasionally sell a website although my investment strategy is more buy and hold.
I sold another website recently (to add to the roughly half dozen I’ve sold this year), but the wire from Escrow.com didn’t come in until November and because a deal is never done until you have the money in hand I didn’t include it in this month’s stats.
For next month’s report I’ll film a short video by logging into my Escrow.com account just to quell any of the doubters out there.
So… sure, I could disclose the URL of the website but I’d rather have the money than a breach of contract on my hands so I can’t really tell people about this sale as much as I’d like to.
However, I have shared some examples of URLs on my blog before and I discuss several more sales in my�Kindle book on buying and selling websites.
(Amazon Prime members can borrow it for free here).
Income Source 3: Software products I hire others to develop
How software products make me money: I hire people to create software products that solve pain points in my business and that I know others experience as well. I then sell these software products at ideally a profit over their thousands – to tens of thousands of dollars – in development costs. I’ve never written a single line of code (besides basic HTML and CSS), but I do know how to identify pain points and solve them through well thought out software solutions.
Example: EasyAzon
If you have a niche or authority website that you’re trying to monetize with Amazon’s affiliate program without a doubt you’re leaving commissions on the table if you’re not using EasyAzon.
I can say that with complete confidence because just one component of the software can help users make more money from their affiliate links by auto redirecting global traffic from countries like Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and the United Kingdom over to their own respective Amazon website.
So EasyAzon users can now get commissions for those countries that would normally be wasted (Someone from Germany can’t buy from Amazon.com but they can buy from Amazon.de).
It’s also way faster to create affiliate links with EasyAzon than going to Amazon.com every time you want to make one, but at the risk of getting too off track I’ll stop there.
I’m not afraid to sell especially when I know my products are fantastic (EasyAzon has seen nearly 2 dozen updates all free for customers since we first released back in mid 2011).
If I went down the list of every single software product I’ve created in every single market along with revenue stats and expenses for each one there’s a risk of bringing on extra competition when I don’t need to.
Income Source 4: Email marketing
How I make money with email marketing: I promote my software products and sometimes other affiliate offers. I also promote products to the email lists of websites in my network.
Email marketing is more of a monetization strategy for the various websites that I run but because it’s so effective I felt it necessary to break it out into it’s own section.
For example: Last month in a non marketing Kindle niche that I’m in I sent an email promotion out about a new book we’ve put out and we got over 300 sales in 48 hours. That’s absolutely awesome (and just a very small revenue generating example). This is precisely why you should build an email list.
Income Source 5: Miscellaneous stuff
This is more of a catch all category where I generate income from a variety of other smaller sources. A few examples would be things like filling out online surveys, Kindle books unrelated to this blog, Facebook fan pages and so on and so forth.
So Why Can’t I Share Detailed Income Stats?
I said this from the very beginning, but a very low portion of my income actually comes directly from the traffic to this blog.
For example: Last month I made less than $1,000 on hosting referrals (pretty pitiful actually when I look at income reports from other marketing bloggers).
So the primary reason why I can’t really share much is pretty simple.
Either I’m contractually prohibited from sharing the URL on a website sale (for example), or the income that comes from a new business with another partner involved isn’t interested in being so forthcoming about private financial data, or I just don’t want people to see an income break down of every single one of the websites in my portfolio for obvious reasons.
Put simply. I have far more downside to share detailed stats than I do upside.
How I Can Still Help You Out
I agree that it’s cool that there are bloggers out there willing to share every single thing they make money from. Hat’s off to them, but at this stage in my business it just doesn’t really work for me anymore based on the reasons I’ve explained before.
Here’s what I’m doing instead…
My plan is to push forward into 2014 with more detailed case studies where I will show you the complete details from that one specific website, project, etc.
That way you can follow along with me from the beginning with a new project.
We all have to start somewhere and 5 years ago I was earning less than $1,000 a month online and since then it’s taken me several years of very hard work to get to this level.
I’ve met plenty of others that have done better than me and in less time, but for me I already achieved my goal back in 2010 which was to simply make it on my own.
That’s what this blog is about.
If you love your job and “only” want to learn how to make an extra $1,000 a month online, the strategies I discuss here can help you accomplish this goal as well.
Although I didn’t provide a line item by line item breakdown, I hope this report can still help you and at the very least serve as some form of inspiration (as cheesy as it sounds to type that).
With that said, if you’d like to find out when I’m doing new case studies, blog posts, etc., then please join my email list below.
Comment and let me know what you think…
Quick Update: For the more savvy readers that may have tried to look up various sites on this server. Obviously I have different hosting accounts etc that are separate from anything tied to this. (Just thought I’d point that out as I had a snarky comment come through about it)
Cool that you share the variety of income streams, the dollar amount is not necessary. Just brings home the point you must diversify your earnings portfolio to insure continued growth.
Appreciate the guidance and knowledge.
Thanks.
Yes I have a variety of income sources, but that’s not to say that a consistent focus on one strategy can’t do well. I have plenty of other internet entrepreneur friends doing really well (much better than me) and with only one business focus. So it really just comes down to finding something that sticks and then pushing for it as much as possible.
Dude you are my hero. We should hang out more – I think I could learn a lot 🙂
Also – sharing your income isn’t douchey at all, it’s motivating. Keep it up!
Hey Brandon hah thanks. Next month is already bigger thanks to the sale of one of my websites. So it’s a one time pop but still cool. Glad you don’t see sharing the stats as douchey hah.
Another great post Chris 🙂
Thanks Ian 😀
Great post Chris!
Thanks for sharing the valuable information.
I am a customer of yours and really appreciate the quality of your products and your very honest way of treating people.
Looking forward to seeing the case study in due course.
Hey Paul thanks for the comment. Yah I have a full on case study that I’m excited about sharing very soon – the good and the bad 😀
As much as I would have love to read a breakdown of the income sources, these you have shared are enough for anyone who’s into IM to guess how you’ve been doing your thing and also do theirs.
Chris, I’ve been a fan ever since I got to read your blog since day 1, still would have reminded you about the castle had it been you did not post it here… that post on the former blog is still my fav.
Keep on doing your stuff and I will like to read more of this.
About the case study, guess it will help to scale up some IM businesses as that is the real deal instead of reading how you made your money, I can see how I can as well make mine.
Thanks for the comment, yah more case studies on the way. 😀
Hey Chris-
Thanks for sharing this. What you’re doing continues to help and inspire what I’m working on. I appreciate the inclusion of dreams (Guthrie Castle and all), but refocusing on staying grounded in the realities of life. Great work, man.
Hey Terran thanks – anything I can do to help just let me know.
Man I need help! I have too many sites and don’t know how the hell to just focus on one! Do you come up with a content plan before you get you sites up and going? Any way, great job with your income report.
Hey Bob, yah so my priorities have definitely shifted as I’ve grown my business. But looking back at my (many) failures I’ve realized that I should have never started anything without a plan on how I could be the dominant – whatever – in that space.
So if you’re building a website you’ve gotta think about what you can do to be the best in that space – even if you’re building a niche website. How can you have the best content, an original take on the market, best marketing strategy etc.
The case study I’ll be starting on my site I’ve already have a plan in place to do all of the above.
Hi Chris,
Great post how do find the time? I feel that everything takes time especially with a business too many people want everything to fast. But you prove that it could be done, so Chris thanks again and wish you great success.
Have a great day.
Tony
Thanks Tony
It’s great to have you back blogging here on a regular basis Chris. I really enjoy your content.
I’m really interested in your buy/hold, buy/sell case studies as I’m coming up to 18 months online part-time but have 2 sites that are now in the $800-$1200 per month profit range in Oct. I’m looking at developing sites, selling them and re-investing part of the money in under-valued/under-performing sites that I can build up and hold so super-interested to follow any case studies on that. I can’t find anyone online that is teaching that in detail.
Hey Greg,
Thanks – yah I’ll have numbers on a site I sold in my next income report and I’ll follow it up with a case study analysis on that specific website as well.
You’re right though. Of the two dozen ish or so of people I’ve met basically none of them blog.
Hi Chris – I love the humor -no you’re not a douche 😉 – I appreciate the honesty of the post. You’re just being real and that is very appreciated. I like seeing the diverse projects as well. Your track record of being fired and the portfolio you’ve created is inspiring! FYI – it was the copycatcrafts website that I first learned about you on Pat Flynn’s podcast. I love that site! What a great deal and investment (I hope to create sites like that myself). I always look forward to your updates. Good luck with the twins!
Hey Crystal, thanks for taking the time to comment. Hope to have some more valuable case studies soon.
Great article chris. Glad for your success. Inspiring. marcus
Quit apologizing for not “revealing everything”. Hell, even Pat Flynn doesn’t reveal everything. If you want to still have a business tomorrow, you’ve got to keep a few things under lock and key. 😉
That said, I picked up Easyazon this week. Excited to try to launch a lot of sites before the year runs out on me. Been wanting it for awhile and the sale made it a no-brainer.
Congrats on the $40k! I’ll get there one of these days, darn it!
Insipirational read, great diversity. Stay hungry.
Hey Quinton – hah thanks. Yah I guess I just want to make sure when I am talking about income stats people know my thought process behind them etc. Glad you were able to pick up EasyAzon I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
Thanks
Ditto on everything Paul said. Personally I’ve struggled for about three years and it seems every time I start to make a little something Google steps in. I now have five news type auto blogs and one Amazon affiliate site. I’m hoping to learn from your case study. Thanks for your help.
Hey Monty – I’ve not had any success with auto blogs before. I really think Google’s just getting too good for those style of sites to work long term…
Hi Chris,
You are actually expert about Amazon Niche Sites. I have still follow your journey for 2 years. Your list look very big. I want that I will big a list like this. I buy Aweber and start build list.I ‘m afraid that my subscribers will unscribe me. How to sovle this problem?
Hey Roger, I never worry about things before I’ve gotten started. So I wouldn’t worry about your future newsletter subscribers that may unsubscribe when you haven’t started a list yet.
Some people will always unsubscribe. In my case most often it appears people unsubscribe when they recognize that it takes work to earn money online (as evidenced by my open rates for my free course on this blog).
Be genuine with your audience. Provide value and that’s all you can do. You don’t need everyone to stay on your list to earn a living.
Hi,
I purchased 2 of your products. easy Azon 3 and Amasyite.
But I am desperate to get traffic/conversions to my website.
what is the best option shall I use. I have limited funds to spend.
Aleem
Email me here: https://upfuel.com/contact
Hi Chris you are doing a great job Chris, I agree with you 100% on not giving out specific URLs to the websites that you are earning you money from, – After all, you risk hundreds of knock-off artists entering the same niche/area due to the ever so nasty copycat disease that is rampant amongst people who tend to be lacking creativity. Your income report is Great for those of us making money online to stay motivated because you are proof that it is possible to hit the higher end of earnings!
Congratulations!
Hey Jedith thanks for the comment. Keep at it 😀
I’ve been a [lurking] fan for a loooong time. I finally started a podcast with hopes of monetizing it. I have a radio background (will be back on air spring 2014…) and an email list of about 18K… but no products or anything. (I use it to promote local events.) Anywhoo… I just want to let you know that you are inspiring people everytime you post anything!!
Thanks AJ!
Hey Chris,
Thanks for sharing. I appreciate seeing stuff like this but at the same time a bit envious because at the moment, most of my income derive from doing promotional work. My blog explains what I do.
I hope to one day be able to surpass my promo gig with the internet money. Thanks for sharing.
Laurie
Hey Laurie, I’ll check out your blog thanks.
Hey Chris – great post… glad you are doing so well. I wish I had your numbers! Congrats on the EasyAzon plugin. I think when we last emailed you were still working on that.
Hey John thanks!
Is great to have you back on the income report. Feeling motivated.
Chris,
Great post and certainly motivating for the rest of us.!
Just a quick question Chris.
How much of your earnings (% wise) are from affiliate sites like Amazon?
Keep up the good work and keep those URL’s hidden!!
Thanks,
DP
Not planning on giving out percentages for various components. In future reports I’ll give some specific examples and with the case studies I’ll have planned I’ll be sharing every detail though.
Chris,
Great post, and thanks for sharing how you make your income and the diversification of the different streams; much appreciated. Congrats as well on the numbers you are at now; I am sure your family appreciates that you’re doing it while still being available next to them at home.
All the best,
Frank – The “not so good this season – Texans” guy
Hey Frank thanks!
I’ve been a fan since day 1 you posted on the v7n forum. You soon left us but you gained a follower of your products and blog posts. lol
Have a good week and I don’t know why I am still awake at 2:50a.m. and sober.
Hah hey Derek thanks for stopping by to comment. v7n that was a while ago for sure 😀
Hey, Chris,
I just wanted to say THANK YOU for this. It is very helpful to see how people are making money because it is inspiration for the rest of us bc it shows that it is still possible to make money online. It also gives me ideas on what I could be doing.
Best of luck with all of your endeavors!
Yisroel
Thanks Yisroel
Hey Chris,
Thanks for the update. I use EasyAzon on several of my sites and it works beautifully. Looking forward to the case study and in particular how you’re going to plan the content/relationship strategy to become the best in your niche.
Bob, I found, like Chris, that having lots of sites just didn’t work for me. Especially after the Panda/Penguin. I’m now focusing on the websites that are on topics that I personally am involved in so that I can quite happily post things on Google+ and do guest posts as a ‘real’ person.
For example, I play guitar so my guitar website is going to get some focus next year (hopefully following Chris’s case study will help) and my Amazon sites that purely focus on products that I’m not really interested (but happen to be popular sellers) in will be left to retire.
‘Focus and work your system’ is my motto for next year 🙂
Really impressive stats, I also want to reach $1000 a day mark in my online businesses and hope this will happen before 2014 because now I am in the process of collecting email list and helping them out.
Chris,
Thanks for sharing that, it’s very useful.
Can I request one other thing in future?
You’ve given a total figure and you’ve given a breakdown of the income streams. What would be really great is a rough percentage contribution to the total. That way we can see the importance of each stream and thus shows what’s working well at any one time and we could see how those build over time. Pie chart ?
Keep up the great work!
Chris
Thanks for sharing your income report with us, it’s very motivating to see someone doing this stuff so well. Quick question for you. I know you mention hiring other people to do your software development. Do you outsource in other parts of your business? Just curious to know whether you have grown your business as a one-man band or if you believe you have to hire people to do the ‘stuff’ while you focus on driving your business forward.
Hey Marion great question. I would 100% not be where I’m at now had I not started hiring people to help me. I have outsourced just about every thing in my business to some extent but I’m still involved in some areas.
For example, I recently hired a customer support rep to help me but I still have to do higher level tickets. So that saves me time, but I’ve not been able to completely remove myself from the picture – and I think in some ways it’s a good thing to have that close of a connection with customers.
Another example, I hired someone to create a Kindle book cover then I hired another person to write the Kindle book (non marketing niche) then I hired another person to edit the book. So I didn’t actually even fully read the book that I published.
I believe that it’s very difficult to scale to a 7 figure business as a one man band without any help (if not impossible). So that’s why I try to hire on for a lot of what I’m working on.
Hey Chris, awesome month! Glad you are back to posting one here again. Let me ask your opinion real quick on something – I am about to get started either doing Kindle books or Niche Sites. My plan with niche sites would be to build some and maybe buy some of the low end sites just to learn how to manage them and use wordpress, etc. I have some extra money from my real estate business so I think rather than putting in the time to find winners I would just buy a few sites making around 500/month and hold. For a beginner, would you suggest one route over the other? I guess what I would want is something that shows a little success so I don’t give up when I get results, as well as the fastest route to a decent monthly income. Thanks!
Hey Eric,
I’m working on a post to answer that question of sorts. It’s sort of a tough one though to say one way or the other because both models are much different than one another.
I got my start doing websites and am only more recently getting into Amazon Kindle stuff so I think I need more data to say for sure.
Chris
Great post Chris you shouldn’t have to feel bad about your success. You have provided more than enough tools and information for us to become successful making Maloney online, we just need to take action and strike out on our own! Thanks for all that you’ve done so far I’ve been following you for over 2 years and I now need to take action
Hey Nick, thanks for stopping by and commenting. Appreciate that you’ve stuck around for so long 🙂
Chris – cool to see an income report from you – even if it didn’t have the juicy details. Heck – cool just to see a blog post! Looking forward to any interesting case studies you come up with. Your approach seems slightly different than some of the other big names in the IM space. Should be really cool to see what you come up with.
Hey Matthew, thanks. Yah there are a lot of different ways to build a business. Often it’s just a matter of trial and error and finding what works. Looking forward to sharing more details.
You have shown the merits of getting stuck in, and have excelled. I have tried so hard, but truly I have stuck in, but that has only been ‘in the mud’. I like what you have said, especially how you are moving forward for 2014. Many thanks, Brian
Hey Brian, thanks for taking the time to comment. Yah it’s a lot of hard work, persistence, trying new things and more.
Hey Chris,
I remember you telling me how hesitant you were to do this when we last spoke. Glad you decided to do it. Most people will never accomplish something they haven’t seen someone else do. Don’t apologize for your success. You don’t even know how many people are counting on you to show them the way.
Nice work buddy~
Hey TJ, thanks for the encouragement as well as the comment. Yep looking to do more case studies and more soon 😀
I love Chris’ no nonsense approach. There is no fluff, no hype, his tools just work and his courses are interesting, engaging, but get straight to the point.
Thanks Julia
That was an awesome month.
I love all your Software products and they have been very helping for my Amazon Affiliate business.
It would be even better if you could break down the numbers per 5 income source (No need to disclose all details per site per say). I’m interested in seeing the proportion if you don’t mind. Which one is the best income stream?
Hi, Chris
This is amazing post. I’ve just starting my blog to write something useful. I really want to share stuffs like this too. But I’ve only been worked in online business for 2 years as past time job. I need to do more thing. I know you from Pat flynn’s podcast. But I really enjoy reading your blog.
Thanks
Nice to see your post, the big number, and the promise of new case studies!
I met my goals for 2013, but I need to ramp up for 2014, so this will be well-timed!
(And maybe it is just me, but it looks like commentluv might be broken!)
Hey Chris,
been a long time reader of your blog now, and you’re posts are always inspirational and motivating. I really do like UpFuel much better than makemoneyontheinternet for sure. Nice change. 🙂
Even though you don’t include every little detail in your income reports, they still are very helpful and I can pretty much understand where your income comes from. I totally understand why you don’t share all the details since there’s way too many hijackers and a-holes online these days.
I will say one thing that separates you from all the other top internet marketers out there, IMO. A lot of you’re online hustle is done on the down low. We might not hear from you for months….. maybe you quit or maybe you’re in a slump …. just some thoughts that go in my mind. Then, BAM! You bust out with a post telling us what you’ve been upto and you always blow me away with the amount of money you be bringing in from your online efforts.
Bravo, brother. If I could only be making a small percentage of what you make monthly, I’d be one happy camper. And BTW, $1000 per month from just hosting referrals is nothing to sneeze at.
I just wanted to commend you for your hard work and thank you for helping us little guys out with your blog and etc. Looking forward to the case studies.
Hey Matthew,
Thanks for sharing. It’s true, I’ve been inconsistent to say the least with regards to writing. That’s what it comes down to though is that I’m just out doing a lot of stuff I guess so I end up having less time to write. In 2014 I’m doing more case studies that will require more on going updates and that offloads the task of coming up with ideas to write about in some respects.
About the “maybe you quit or maybe you’re in a slump” it’s funny you mentioned that because I saw a comment from someone (after I hadn’t posted for months) and they were like “Where are you did you go back to a day job or something?” so seeing that actually kicked me in the butt a bit to get moving.
Chris
Thanks for the update. I do love reading these updates from the mentors like you, Spencer, Pat Flynn et al.
I believe I speak for all us that we understand why you don’t share ALL of your income sources.
Just looking forward to reading more.
Thanks, I appreciate the understanding and hope these will help you.
Hi Chris,
I have purchased EasyAzon and it’s awesome. Such income reports always encourage a newbie like me. Hope you will come up with some case study very soon.
Glad you like it and everyone’s gotta start somewhere that’s for sure 😀
I’ve been a follower of your blog. It’s been a while before there was an update but I still keep on checking it out every month. Keep us posted and good job on that outstanding earnings.
Thanks Gary, I’ve got some more great stuff planned before the end of the year and into 2014 as well 😀
Nice writeup
Congrats on a great month? Honestly, I think posts like this suck.
I get it, you have a secret sauce that you can’t tell anyone about… but why share the numbers then if you wont go into details?
Not suggesting you are lying, but in reality, you could have pulled a number out of a hat and showed that.
There are plenty of ways to show traffic/revenue reports/etc. without outing your sources.
Quick summary of this post: You own some sites, You sold some sites, You build and sell some products, and you email people to generate more sales. Oh, and you made a ton of money. Perhaps in the future you will give more details.
Why not at least give a breakdown of income from each category?
Sorry for the rant, I generally like what you offer in terms of content… but these posts don’t help anyone in reality, and I know you are better than this.
Hey Adam,
You’re entitled to your opinion and I appreciate you being honest about it, but it’s just not worth the risk for me to share every detail. Don’t you think it would be stupid if I was to say here is my entire portfolio of websites and here is what this website made and here’s this other website etc. I understand why people like reading “transparent” earnings posts but when those posts do little more than show that the vast majority of the money earned came from the very blog you’re reading the post on then there isn’t really any risk to the blogger to share those earnings at all.
On the other end, as I stated in this post because most of my income comes from doing stuff and not from this blog it’s just not worth it for me to expose everything. From reading the first page on your blog it appears you’re very skeptical of what you read from others online – which is understandable I suppose. So just look for my next month’s income report and I’ll log into my Escrow.com account live and show how I sold one of my websites for $42,000 in November. That will be just under half of my income for that month but will still show an example.
Regarding “secret sauce” every method that I’ve made money with in this month’s income report I’ve discussed at some time or another in past blog posts (and in some cases with other real example URL’s as well…)
In any case, I was expecting a comment like this and to be honest I’m surprised it took as long as it did for the comment to come in. That’s precisely why for the case studies I’m doing in 2014 instead of just giving a number and some context as I did in this post (i.e. sharing the primary sources of my income) I’ll be doing detailed earnings from that specific project start to finish. That admittedly should have more actionable info for those that are looking to replicate my success.
Thanks for the feedback though,
Chris
I have read all your posts on this blog. Everything is very helpful. Thank you! But I think for all this to work, you have to have huge traffic. And that is the biggest problem every blog/website/online store owner has. Could you make a blog post about getting more traffic? I had a blog. I posted every day. After a year I had a handful of readers. Now I have online store. Had it for 3 years. I have had only about dozen sales! How do I get people to notice the site I want them to visit? I have tried sponsoring blogs that my target market reads, but it did not help. Spent around 4 thousand dollars. 🙁
Good idea for a post series. I’ll work on this. Regarding traffic it’s all about niche selection and the quality of traffic that you do receive.
I had a site getting 500,000 page views per month that only ever made $500 per month with Google Adsense, but I’ve had sites with less than 20% of that traffic make 10x as much. I like to say that success or failure with a website almost always starts at niche selection.
Dam, bro. You are F&%&’in killing it! Props! I like that you don’t make all of your, or much of it at all, hawking services to your readers. I’ve been keeping a distant eye on you ever since I came across your blog about two to three years ago, and it’s amazing how far you”ve come. Since I didn’t see you posting much, I assumed the worst and figured maybe you got wiped out and went back to a day job. Haha.
It’s inspiring to see that it has actually been the complete opposite — you’re not only still doing your thing, but you’re absolutely killing it! I wish you nothing but good fortunre, bud!
-Julian
Hey Julian hah thanks for stopping by and commenting. Yah I had a few comments from people asking where I’d been and assuming that I had failed and gone back to a day job but fortunately I’ve just been busy putting in the work and doing a lot of the stuff I’ve talked about on the blog. Quite frankly I’m working too much. Near the tail end of this year I’ve put in my fair share of 100 hour work weeks.
With regard to making money off my readers. The share of my income that does come from my blog, emails lists etc is more concentrated around software projects such as EasyAzon.com etc. So there is a very real cost associated with the creation of those products as opposed to info products. I don’t have any hate for the info product creators and in many cases the information is definitely worth the price. I’ve spent at least $10,000 but probably closer to $20,000 over the past several years on education, marketing software, conferences etc. Not everything is free and it doesn’t have to be in my opinion.
Either case I’m cruising along and just trying to keep on growing.
Chris
Big bucks! What are you doing with the after tax proceeds?
Also, can you discuss what your revenue and operating profit before tax for the full year? It helps is understand whether the $40k is recurring or not.
Cheers
Hey Sam,
Well I’ve actually written part of a guest blog post outlining some of what I planned for the money based on our conversation a while back so I’ll have to follow up with you offline regarding that but the first thing I always do is max out my SEP IRA at $50k but I can hold off on doing that until April 15th, 2014 if I happen to find something else that requires my capital. As I assume you’re already aware the SEP IRA caps out at 20% of your income or $50k and I’ve made over $250k pre tax again this year so that’s all I can put in. Right now I have it in some American Funds but to be honest I don’t know if they’re the best, everyone seems to always suggest Vanguard Funds because of the low fees whereas American is higher.
I’m good at making money from websites etc but I suppose I’m lacking a bit in knowing what the best use of my surplus cash is beyond my business (which is the primary area I tend to put it into). My wife went back to school to get her masters degree at a cost of nearly $90,000 in debt (again major fail on our part for her to even go back) because as soon as I was making a lot more money than she was we made the decision for her to stay home and for us to try and get pregnant instead. That ultimately lead to five rounds of fertility treatments over the past two years which cost another $40,000 (would need to check on that). We also bought a house last year and have been fixing it up so basically every thing was getting worked on. I paid out of pocket for the ongoing remodel, the fertility treatments and we have about only $30k left on the loans that I could pay off but I’ve held off on paying them until our twin girls are born (just in case). So I guess you could say my money has gone to a lot of personal expenses (some of which were dumb like $90k in student loans for a job my wife isn’t currently performing), my SEP IRA, remodel stuff in 2013 and the rest back into my business.
Overall, I’ve fallen short of $500k which was my goal for the year but if I can execute well on my plan in 2014 I should be able to exceed that and work more towards my main goal which is to hit $1MM per year in profit.
Regarding the revenue, recurring etc it’s sort of a question that won’t really provide any useful data because right now my business consists of so many different parts (websites I’m running, websites I buy, websites I may sell, software products, Kindle book stuff etc) so I have some software recurring stuff but my websites could also in a way be somewhat recurring as well because they make money month in and month out like for example the website I sold in November was making me $1,500 per month on avg.
Haven’t decided if I’ll do a full year report of my revenue, expenses, profit etc but I’ll be publishing a November income report at least. Frankly I should probably connect with you and or just take action on more of the things you’re doing with your money that you share on your blog hah.
Chris
I couldn’t find a way to reply to my previous comment, but I just wanted to know about how much of your income comes from amazon affiliates? For example, do you still build new sites to promote amazon products? If so, how many per month? 1, 5, 10, 100? What do you use to link to those sites? Most people are using the whole PBN thing, myself included — however, I find the PBN thing to require massive logistics. It’s hard enough keeping track of 20-50 ‘money’ sites, then adding another 50-100 for a PBN, which must all have seperate servers ect, and shit starts getting crazy!
For someone just starting out, would you recommend building a bunch of quality amazon reviews sites in today’s Search environment, assuming this person doesn’t have more than maybe $1,000 to start. It seems like Search has become alot like the real world — you need money to make money. It’s almost impossible to setup a bunch of squidoo lenses and bank on them these days. For the person starting out, if you don’t recommend making review sites, what would you recommend to create an online income.
One last question — I know I should be paying you if you take the time to answer all of these questions — maybe I’ll send a donation to Charity Water for you, lol — but what would you say the lion-share of your time spent ‘working’ is on. For example, for someone starting out with a low budget it might be writing review articles — that would be the ‘most-important’ thing that has the greatest impact on their business’s bottom line. What activity would this be for you? Thanks, and once again, keep on doing what you do, bud!
Even to this day, your older articles that give advice for Amazon affiliates is extremely helpful. I look forward to your reply!
Hey Julian, I haven’t outlined my income split on a month by month basis because in doing that it sort of also then I’d need to share that for example this software product a contributes this much per month and I just haven’t really wanted to share that info.
I believe the most important thing for impacting a businesses bottom line is to find which activities drive you the most revenue and concentrate your day around doing those as much as possible. Even now over 4 years after I’ve been doing this full time it’s still a struggle to strip away all other activities or at the very least to stay focused on those revenue drivers but the more I do that the more I’ve been able to earn.
Sorry for the basically non answer regarding my income split etc but I do have a full on public case study planned where I’ll outline absolutely everything that I do for the website and how I make the money for that specific site.
That should be even more helpful than these income reports,
Chris
Thanks for sharing the income details; it basically helps newbies to get about the online career income and guide them to build such a career for them.
I’m inspired to see your income report, hope to publish such stories of mine someday! 🙂