March 2013 Income Report

Today is April Fool’s Day or the first day of the second quarter of 2013. I have spent the last hour going through all of my income statements to determine how I did for the month of March.

I want to compare how I am doing to my 3 goals that I set for myself at the start of 2013. These 3 goals are stepping stone goals in that I have to complete the first one before starting on the second goal.

My 3 financial goals for 2013 start with my least acceptable goal which is to earn $100/day for the entire month. My short-term goal is to earn more than my gross monthly income from my day job. My ultimate goal is to earn $250/day online and quit my day job. I have August 31st circled on the calendar for the time frame to complete my ultimate goal.

Since this is the end of the first quarter of 2013, this is an excellent time to measure how you have done against your goals. There are only 3 possibilities to determine where you today against your goals. You are either ahead, right on track or behind. I encourage all of you to take the time to measure your goals. If you don’t have written goals, then would NOW be a good time to create some?

Changing my Strategy with Book Royalties

I actually made some changes in one area in March and it produced some interesting results. I have two books that I have written that I sell on Amazon both in paperback and in Kindle format.

For march I changed the price of one of my books to the lowest price possible of $.99 for the Kindle version. This resulted in the typical good news – bad news scenario. The good news is that I sold a book every day last month. The bad news is that my income from the Kindle version of this one book was down dramatically.

You might ask why I would make such a drastic change in price. One of the strategies many people use in publishing books on Amazon is to use the book to build their reputation. They use it as a mechanism to get them in the door so they can they sell their products or services. I clearly don’t fall into that category because I am not out selling something or selling myself.

The main reason I changed the price was to see what impact it would have on sales. The book is about real estate investing. I am writing a second book about landlording for real estate investors. This shares everything I have learned while managing my 24 rental units. I want to use the first book about real estate investing to help drive sales to my more detailed landlording book. That is why I changed the price.

Even with the very low price of the Kindle version of my real estate investing book, the paperback version of the same book actually increased dramatically over February. This was not something that I was expecting. I expect that the paperback sales of my book will decline over time as eReaders become so prevalent throughout our lives. Since I am using book royalties as one stream of income in my online business, I am not complaining at all. I hope to finish my next real estate book in the next couple of months.

Pay What You Want Strategy

The idea of posting a monthly online income statement is one that I got from Pat Flynn at Smart Passive Income. If you do not read his blog, then I highly recommend that you check it out. Pat has a podcast and recently he interviewed two brothers. These brothers use to have a brick and mortar business but they eventually sold it because they were making 3x more online. These brothers did things differently in that they provided a wealth of information online without really charging for it. Instead they would put a PayPal button at the bottom of the great information they provided on the website and people could decide whether they wanted to pay for it.

This is how I decided to make changes to my website and start posting more actively to it each week. I made 3 posts on this blog in 2012. After listening to the podcast about the brothers I decided to make a change with the website and start posting on a more regular basis. I want my posts to provide value to my readers and not come across as some spammy marketer that is trying to always sell something to make money.

As I mentioned above I have an August 31, 2013 goal of quitting my day job. I am using this blog to share what I have done online that will allow me to reach that goal. I am honored that you are reading this post now and that you have decided to come along on the journey with me. I hope you all not only hold me accountable to reach my goal but that it provides motivation in your own lives to accomplish the same goal for yourself.

During March I put together a very extensive post showing you step by step how to use Microsoft PowerPoint to create product review videos. I included 2 PowerPoint templates, fonts and 6 videos showing you exactly what you needed to do. If you have not read it, then check it out here. At the end of the post I included a PayPal button for people to pay what they want. Even though the information was free, you have the option of paying if the post provided value. With this new strategy I made $11.50! I am ecstatic with this result because it empowers me to keep producing quality content for my readers.

Product Sales

Creating your own product and selling it online is a great way to get started with online marketing. I guarantee you that you know how to do something that somebody else is willing to pay for it. I created my first product Amazon Affiliate Bible last year. I have sold over 570 copies of this product and it has grossed over $9,400.

Most of you reading this blog are here because you purchased my Amazon Affiliate Bible. It was over 100 pages in length  and included many templates and bonuses. Compared to other WSOs that you purchase on the Warrior Forum, I  feel that my product provided much more valuable and detailed information. Since I provided such great value in my first WSO, many people have remained on my email list and come to my blog every time I post something new. I want to thank you all for being here and you will be seeing the same outstanding level of quality of information being delivered here on my website.

Even though I do not actively promote my Amazon Affiliate Bible I still made $334.50 in sales.

Affiliate Marketing

This is the heart of my online income. I actively promote several different affiliate programs. I talked about my 7 step strategy for promoting affiliate products in my previous blog post which you can read here. Though I am getting the overwhelming majority of my income from just one affiliate program. It is the program that I have promoted for the past 13 months and I have not written over 100 articles about their products.

I did see my first sales from two new affiliate programs that I recently joined. I used the cross promotion strategy that I talk about in my 7 steps post. I took the articles that I had written for my current affiliate program and started putting links to complimentary products at the bottom of every article. Just by doing this one little step I was about to get sales without having written my first articles promoting the products. Cross promotion works and you are just leaving money on the table if you are not applying this strategy in your affiliate marketing efforts.

Another big surprise happened in March as the result of a product review article that I had written promoting TRX. If you didn’t know, I now outsource all of my content writing for my affiliate marketing websites. My biggest website is currently seeing almost 300 visitors a day. Evidently the people at TRX must have a Google alert when something shows up about their product. They picked up my article and then provided a link to it from their website and then they tweeted about it too. In one day my daily visitors to my website tripled! I think several of these people are now coming back and reading my website since my daily visitors has increased since this time.

You never know if somebody is going to pick up one of your articles and share it. I encourage you to always write quality material when promoting products. Your article can be positive or negative. Regardless of the stance that you take you need to make sure what you write is quality material. I am sure that is the reason TRX picked up the article and shared it on their website and Twitter.

For the month of March I made $2,720.65 with affiliate marketing.

Final Breakdown

At the beginning of this post I shared that my goal was to earn $100/day for the first 3 months of 2013. I accomplished this goal in January and February. Would I be able to do the same in March and make it 3 months in a row? Well the chart below shows what I earned in March 2013.

Amount	Source
$76.96	Book royalties
$334.50	Product sales
$11.50	Pay What You Want
$2,720.65	Affiliate Marketing
$3,143.61

There were 31 days in March 2013 and I needed to earn at least $3,100 to meet my goal of earning $100/day. I definitely accomplished my minimum acceptable goal. So I have taken the fattest Sharpie pen I own and marked a big fat line through this goal. Next up is my short-term goal of earning more than my gross monthly income from my day job. If you want to know exact numbers then it is $4,500/month.

Starting Friday I am going to dive head first into the solo ads marketplace. I have been closely watching several people who were able to go from nothing to earning $100/day with solo ads in 30 to 45 days. When I reach the point of earning $100/day with solo ads then I will be able to combine it with my current $100/day with affiliate marketing and be able to put a big fat line through my short-term goal. Plus it will put me just a stones throw away from reaching my ultimate goal.

What is Next For Me

My goal is to reach the $100/day with solo ads in 60 days. Then over the next 30 days I will increase it to $150/day. This will put me on track to reaching my ultimate goal around the July 2013 time frame. That gives me two months to confirm that I can sustain earning at that level before quiting my day job August 31st.

I will be making regular posts detailing exactly how much I am spending on solo ads, how my list is growing and how much I am earning. If you are doing solo ads, please reach out and contact me. I would love to get your insight and direction plus buy some solo ads from you.

In my next blog post I will be sharing the unorthodox method of goal planning that my personal coach taught me

Sharing is Sexy

Ok, that was my attempt to create an attention grabbing headline! Thank you for reading my blog post. I would love it if you would leave a comment below. I read all comments and respond to them.