April was another great month although not as crazy as those $9000 ones! I earned $7323 which is a nice start to my new tax year. I haven’t earned under $4000 for a whole year and my average earnings are creeping up. I’d like to try to average $7000 a month this year, so it’s a great start!
Having caught up on work that I neglected during my time in The Philippines in May, I’ve really put a huge push on new projects this month. Nothing that will pay off anytime soon, I don’t think, but I’ve been really busy organising writers for three new sites. It’s been a lot of fun working with other people on a regular basis, for once. I love the idea of being able to give other people a mobile income… even if it is just small amounts.
I’ve been busier this past month, I think, than any other month I can remember and it looks like May will be more of the same as we try to get our living in Kampala site up and running. It’s been a really fun project so far and I’m excited to see how Kampala’s expat community like it.
Earnings Breakdown:
- Adsense — $411 – Floating around the same spot as always.
- Affiliate sales — $309 – This is definitely on the decline. World Nomads is starting to suck a lot and I had a couple people cancel their Linkvana subscriptions which isn’t surprising given the rumours of their sites being deindexed (was this ever confirmed?) Affiliate sales is how I wish I made my money. I see it as a lot more secure and reliable than ad sales but it also takes a lot of work to get it set up well and probably a lot of monitoring and tweaking to keep things going. It’s never been something I’ve been that interested in but I do see it as a great way to earn online. Maybe one of these days I’ll start to give affiliate programs the attention they deserve.
- Advertising — $6519 – My eggs are all truly in this one basket but, thankfully, it’s still chugging along nicely.
- Ebook Sales — $84 – Twelve sales.
Spending Breakdown:
April was another low-spending month at only $313. May should be a big one as I’m trying to get a lot of content written. I guess it depends on how quickly my writers (both on the London and Kampala sites) are able to get their articles done and bill me for them. I could have spent a lot more on content last month but the Kampala writers have been slow to get me their Paypal details. So this month could be scary for spending but, given that I’ve spent so little in the past few months, it’s ok.
- Link Building Services — $147 – I ditched Build My Rank because their sites were deindexed but I’m still using Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link). I’m not sure what the status is on their sites. I guess I should look into that. I didn’t actually outsource any articles this month.
- Content – $161 – I paid GBP100 to a writer for five articles for my new London tourism website.
- Ebook — $5 – Monthly cost to sell my ebook.
April was the productive month I’d hoped it would be. My partner and writers and I made some great progress on the living in Kampala website and it was fun going up to Kampala to meet them all. It’s really nice having people to work with who are as excited about the project as I am, if not more so. I didn’t look into the personal assistant or tax things that I wanted to but I might leave those for awhile.
In May I’m going to continue to focus on these new sites. I’ll leave the Scotland site for awhile and instead focus on the London site. Six articles are completed and there are another 35 queued up so, when all of that is done, I’ll have a good base of content to be able to launch the site. From there I’d like to keep a couple of articles per week coming in.
The content for the Kampala site has been coming in a little slower than I would have liked, but I’m still waiting on the miniBB guy to finish his forum update and also for custom events plugin that’s taking ridiculously long. So, until those things are ready to go, the content won’t actually matter. Hopefully everything will come together at the same time by the end of the month.
So, another great month and lots of exciting things on the horizon! I really love having other people write content for me and taking on the role of the editor. It’s nice to work with people on a regular basis rather than just getting stuff through content provider websites. I’m liking this new role and looking forward to what sorts of content I end up with for my London site.
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