This is the first income report that I have ever publicly published.
I want to constrain these reports to money made directly from this blog. Though I have been self-employed for a few years now, I won’t be including those monthly earnings into these reports.
What Went Down In November
This was really the first month that I blogged in a semi-regular manner. I didn’t set any real goals for this month except to spend 5 minutes every day thinking of things to write about and I was able to get 8 posts finished in the 4 weeks of this last month. Not bad, but not great either.
Mostly, this month has been focused on writing Kindle books (following my dreams of becoming a best selling children’s author), running my offline business (my day job), launching a brand new business (copywriting) and trying to move (a true nightmare).
Notable Content Created
I started a brand new tutorial series Simple Facebook Lead Machines showing how I was able to land clients within 24 hours for a brand new service (copywriting). I laid out a few Facebook ad methods that I have really been enjoying and shared a little bit about how you could take these same methods and turn them into about a million different businesses.
I also cheated a little bit and dusted off the cobwebs of a product that I launched privately a few months back and turned it into a super long blog post: How To Build A 6 Figure Lead Gen Business Today.
My favorite post from last month came in the form of this post: Become A Master At Anything In 4 Simple Steps I have been doing a lot of research and reading lately in my search for mastery. The older I get the less interested I become in the pursuit of money and the more interested I become in the pursuit of mastery.
Changes To The Blog
As you can see, I made big changes to the layout of the blog. I purchased this theme: Convergence 
I really like the layout and the look of the theme, reminds me a lot of the Envato Tuts sites, but I am having a hard time with a few minor changes within the site itself. Things like the spacing of the letters, certain PHP calls etc. I could fix them, but I am just feeling too lazy – though after I finish this post I probably will go ahead and change the letter spacing at least.
I also keep forgetting to have my wife design me a fancy logo – the white “Mike Shreeve” that is currently rocking the logo spot is a bit cheesy.
Other than that I haven’t really added anything new or flashy.
Some Numbers
It is time to take a look at the traffic numbers. Oh dear.
Cracking open my Google Analytics for this felt a little bit like opening up the hood of my old Ford Focus I had a few years back. You knew you had to take a look at what was going on, but you didn’t want to know how bad it really was…
Traffic Numbers
Total Page Views: 2,222 (Do I Get A Prize For Having A Number Like That?)
Average Duration: 00:04:08 (I am actually pretty happy with that)
% New Visits: 42.89% (Nice)
You will notice a nice little stretch of zero visit days. Like the genius that I am, I completely forgot to put the Google Analytics tracking code on this new theme. For about a week I was completely confused about what was going on.
It is all sorted now.
How I Got This Traffic
I honestly didn’t do anything to get this traffic except for send a few emails to a very small part of my email list. I may ramp it up here over the course of the next few days to share this stuff with my entire list, but for now I will just be sticking with a very particular segment of my list.
I didn’t build any links, network with any bloggers or become a social media whore. I just wrote and sent my emails.
My Top Traffic Sources
Right now the #1 source of traffic is (direct)/(none) or in other words: My email list.
I will show you in a second how ridiculously long tail and hilarious the organic traffic is that my blog is getting, but taking a look at this report you see that there really hasn’t been any clear or definitive traffic getting strategy here. I am certainly going to need to put together some kind of plan to fix that.
Organic Search Rankings & Keywords
It has been a while since I have been really involved with the day to day of SEO and I forgot about Google’s new thing about hiding search terms from site owners. So, I pulled this data from the Google Webmaster Tools “Search Queries” option:
Again, looking at this report is like looking at a schizophrenic’s blog. I really need to drill down what I want this blog to be about and then just hammer it for a while until I bring in a bunch of organic rankings. Right now, I am all over the place.
Show Me The Money
Income Breakdown For November:
(This Does Not Include Email List Earnings, Offline Business Earnings, Kindle Fiction Earnings, Copywriting Earnings, Consulting Earnings)
Affiliate Earnings From This Blog:
+ Facebook Group Snatcher – $130.20 (Learn How I Use This Software To Close 2 Brand New Clients Every 24 Hours)
+ Reputation Rex – $49.97
+ Traffic Recon – $41.02
+ Bob Ross M3 System – $26.34
Other Earnings:
+ Kindle Non-Fiction (The Books Promoted On This Site) – $143.19
Expenses:
+ Hostgator – $14.95
Total:
Income – $391.70
Expenses – $14.95
Profit – $376.75
Novembers Takeaway And Action Plan
I am happy that my first month of blogging has been profitable. Unfortunately, I am at a point in my career where things have to be REALLY profitable in order for them to make much sense to me to continue. It is a blessing and a curse in a way.
If we break down the total profits $367.75 and divide it by the number of posts I wrote (8) we see that each post brings in about $45.96 each. For the 8 posts that I wrote last month, I averaged about 2200 words per post which means I was making around $0.02 per word.
I haven’t made that little since I was writing Iwriter articles to keep my wife and I from ending up on the streets.
So, a few things need to happen in December and January in order for this thing to continue to pan out:
I Need More Traffic
This month I was lazy. I didn’t comment on other blogs. I didn’t spend any time on forums. I didn’t even tag my posts for minimal on site SEO.
99% of the posts that I created this month weren’t even targeted at anyone. They were just random musings of a guy in the middle of running three businesses and trying to move at the same time.
An increase in traffic would simply mean more sales on the products that are currently selling at my site. For example, if I know that with X amount of visitors I make about $0.02 per word, I can assume that an increase in visitors would result in an increase in sales. I realize that they won’t be directly correlated, but there will be statistically significant influence.
I would like to try my hand at doing some guest blogging as I really enjoyed doing that in the past and it is a great way to make some connections and increase your SEO/traffic profile quickly. I used a service called Blogger Link Up (It Is Free) a while ago and had so much success that I had to turn people away, but I will try it again to see how it is these days.
I Need Focus
All 8 posts (even the repurposed content) weren’t planned ahead. I didn’t write outlines. I didn’t ask what the purpose of the post was in an over arching scheme etc.
I don’t really even know what this blog is going to be about. I am torn between serving the people who make up the majority of my email list (offline internet marketers) and my current focus – which is writing (both copywriting and writing fiction for Kindle).
Focus would allow all of my work to stack up on itself. For example, if you want to build the tallest sand castle, you don’t go building ten different sand castles, you build one and you build it and build it and build it until it is as high as you can possibly make it. Right now my blog is just a bunch of different sand castles strewn throughout the beach. I will never win the “tallest sandcastle” award doing what I am doing right now.
I Need Passion
For now, this thing has to be labeled a passion project. At $0.02 per word there needs to be more of a motivating factor behind it than just to earn money. I am going to spend some time this evening and tomorrow coming up with a plan and making some decisions about this blog and figuring out whether or not I want to keep creating content about client getting and sales or if I just want to move completely into writing about copywriting and Kindle (which is honestly what I am probably going to be doing).
If I can find that spark of passion, then everything else will fall into place. The traffic will happen. The Focus will happen and the money will happen. I have found this to be an eternal truth of business no matter what niche, no matter what service.
Conclusion
December is going to be a fun month. You will see this blog finding a focus, you will see passion induced writing and content creation and we both will see how focus + passion = results.