Well on a personal note we certainly didn’t have the December that we were expecting. After a water line valve broke unexpectedly we were required to move out of our house for the past few weeks and we now back in our house trying to make the best of it. We anticipate the rebuild of our finishes and house taking another 6 weeks or so. Should be fun!
Here is an investment update since November:
We had one of the biggest months of the year and really in the history of the Dan’s Pros “empire”. Coming in at a cool 3 figures of $868.77. I know it’s not much but just thinking about the money coming in as a “passive” income is pretty cool. We put in a lot of work to get at this point but knowing that the effort is finally paying off is a great feeling! That brings this year’s “average” monthly total to $288 including the sign website income. Again, not so much when you think of a total number but our income was over double what it was last year. Pretty fun to think about. I kind of think it’s boring to think in terms of “average monthly income” but some of my sites are so seasonal that it makes a little more sense to me to average everything out.
I am feeling pretty good about myself right now, so I think it’s about time to setup some new goals, or at least some long term goals, as well as a way to get there. As I mentioned previously in November, I had been thinking pretty hard lately about how to best invest some extra money, and I really think that the “frontier” of websites is still at hand, and hopefully I am still riding the front wave of this deal. A lot people have no clue what I am talking about when I explain to them what I do (affiliate marketing) and how I actually convert readers on my blog to customers of mine (albeit indirectly and most likely unknowingly). It’s kind of crazy, and kind of exciting. So what do I want to do with this newfound small success of making over $800 in a month without doing anything? I think that for me to keep the momentum going I would first setup goals, and then setup how I would like to meet those goals.
First of all, as we like to call it in my day job, the big, hairy, audacious goal (BHAG). What is the end result. What do I need to point my sights at to feel like this little hobby is the real deal Holyfield? Here it is:
$10,000 per month on passive income.
Yep, $10,000 per month.
Why is my affiliate marketing revenue goal $10,000 per month? I kind of feel like that is when we start talking about respectable income coming in. My original goal was $500 month, and now that I (at least last month) hit that goal, it feels kind of like a cop out! Why would I set a goal that I already freaking hit?? I am already there, so meeting that goal would have just been to “maintain” what I have already done! I feel like I have a few things driving my motivation and how I am going to try and tackle the goals that I just put out here on “the internet”. Here are some things that are influencing our direction this year:
If You Aren’t Growing You’re Shrinking
The past few years have been “OK”. $127 per month a couple of years ago, and $122 per month the year before last. Some of the sites have been growing but more of them have been in decline. So it’s been pretty frustrating. I think I have learned over these last couple of years that you can’t just built it and then forget about it. The bigger the sites are getting and the more visitors that come the more “maintenance” work is needed to keep up with everything. I think I am starting to realize that now. Some of the most popular sites that rank for very popular topics take this aspect to the highest degree possible. Try looking for a really popular SEO topic and see what ranks #1 in the SERPS. Chances are the top 3 articles have been updated in the last month or so. So being mediocre sucks. It is demoralizing and just keeping steady is probably never going to work. So I need to have a growth mindset on this little side gig or it is all a waste of time.
Keep Investing in Your Assets, 80/20 Rule
Along the same lines as “keep growing”, as long as I am using my “winnings” from the previous month, then I am basically using free money to keep growing my assets. I am going to try and meet my goal of constant growth by re-investing at least half of my gross earning back into the websites. That includes building new websites from scratch, maintaining web pages that are already ranking well, and finding webpages that are “closed” but not quite reaching the first page SERP and putting a little more energy into them to get them over the top. I recognize that the search tools (mainly LongTailPro) is probably not perfect, but by analyzing the data, and figuring out where I am landing in real time, hopefully I can pick my battles and choose my time wisely in order to enhance any profit that I am getting.
Remember My Wife’s Advice – Don’t Waste Our Money
Now granted, I have taken some risks that my wife probably wouldn’t have agreed with, and I probably will again, but I feel like what she is saying is probably a good rule of thumb in this internet affiliate marketing world. There are a lot of scumbags out there cheating the system. I try and keep my strategies above board and long-lasting, but for every hardworking honest person there are probably 9 guys who are trying to cheat the system and make a quick buck. I learned the hard way by attempting to buy a site. It was too good to be true and turned out to be that way. I bought a site for $500 off of Flippa and it turned out to be a total scam. I think that everyone (including myself) just wants to make a quick buck sometime, and there are a lot of people wanting to make a quick buck off of other people. So for the time being I am hoping that I am can my earnings to put money toward domains and websites that I already own, and not trying to make the quick buck by buying other people’s websites.
Final Plan
At the end of the day, it is great to have made what I made last month. My strategies are starting to pay off, and it’s fun. I just believe that if I really want this thing to turn real it’s not worth taking the money now and spending it frivolously. I would rather spend it at the chance to increase my earnings, to learn something along the way, and ultimately find another avenue to make passive income in addition to what I make at my “day job” and what I make using the traditional methods such as investing in the stock market, etc…
Short Term Website Investing Goals
So $10,000 is going to be freaking tough. It’s hard to see myself there and how I am going to get there. So here are some interim plans to make sure I am on the right track. I doubled my income between this year and last year. I heard from the really successful guys like Spencer Hawes from www.nichepursuits.com and the guys over at authorityhacker.com that sometimes going from $500 to $1000/month on a site is easier than going from $100 to $200/month on a site. So what the heck do I have to lose? I have exactly 0 readers right now so it’s not like I have an accountability, right? So my original goal still stands for next year: average of $500/month across all my websites. What would the “biggest” month goal be? I think that $2,000 is totally attainable and totally doable. December is traditionally my best month so that will be my target to hit $2,000 by December of this year.
What does that mean for future years and when am I going to hit $10,000 per month in passive income?
Using my sketchy logic of doubling my income every year, that means that I should be averaging $1,000 month by 2022, with a max month of $4,000, $2,000/month by end of 2023 with a max month of $8,000, and the sweet holy grail of $4,000/month average by 2024 and DEFINITELY hitting a $10,000 month by end of 2024. If I am diligently spending 50% of my earnings back into the websites then I am either doing something horrible wrong with my sites or I am BOUND to hit those marks.
Please leave a comment or I am just talking to myself.
Dan