Welcome to the Online Income Lab’s February 2012 monthly income report!
Like in past income reports, in this report, I’m going to share with you the key activities that I undertook this month, what worked and what didn’t.
If this is your first time reading one of my income reports and you are wondering why I publish them, the reason is that I believe in being super transparent in my business so that you are (hopefully) inspired to go out and take action in your own business.
I’ve never professed to be an internet marketing guru. Instead, I’m just a guy who blogs about everything he’s trying online. Sometimes I hit a home run. Sometimes I totally strike out. Regardless, it’s all here for you to see. (given my background in running an outsourcing business, one could make a case that I’m something of a guru when it comes to outsourcing)
My hope is that by sharing what I’m doing with you, I might save you from making some of the dumb mistakes that I’ve already made, as well as to inspire you to take some massive action of your own.
When you are first starting out, learning how to make money online, either from Adsense, affiliate income, or sales of your own product, can be incredibly difficult – however, if you’ve followed my blog for a while, you will see that success can be yours if you are willing to follow a plan, stay focused, and work your ass off. So, with that said, lets dive in!
Key Activities in February
Disclosure: many of the links below are affiliate links that will earn me a commission if you click them and then buy the product. If you do, I really appreciate it and am very happy to answer any questions about how to use these products.
Much of February was spent getting ready for the Master Ninja product launch (see below) and then dealing with all the orders that came in. Then, the last week of the month saw me heading to Washington DC for Yanik Silver’s Underground 8 Internet Marketing conference.
Underground 8
Underground 8 (UG8) was totally awesome and I’ve created a video that summarized my experience. You can watch it here.
While at UG8, I decided to join Yanik’s mastermind group called Maverick Megamind. Currently, there are 12 people in the group and the cost is $20,000 for the first year and then $15,000 a year thereafter. While this may seem like a large amount of money, having masterminded with other CEO’s in my past, I can assure that the higher the price you pay, the higher the caliber of the people you are going to be masterminding with.
In my past industry, masterminding was limited to sharing ideas and financial metrics. The fantastic thing about masterminding in the online marketing business is the power of the joint venture. Quite simply, there is no faster way to grow your business than to create high quality products, and then enter into joint ventures with others to promote them. With that said, if you were to go into a mastermind with JV as your sole goal, you’d probably be taking the wrong approach as it is only part of the many benefits.
Niche Sites
Given that I launched 30 authority sites about a month ago, I didn’t launch any new sites this month. In fact, my authority sites aren’t even done yet because I got pushed to the back of the line with my VA team! The reason for this was that they were extremely busy building some 130 sites for Niche Site Mastery customers.
In the month ahead, I plan to launch more sites to target existing keywords. In other words, I’m going to go into competition with myself for all the keywords where I already have a first page ranking. As was pointed out to me by James Shramko, why stop with just one site when you already know what it takes to get to page one. Duh! Sometimes, the best advice is the simplest!
Video Tycoon Niche Site
In December’s report, I wrote all about my first video training site. The site is currently ranked #2 for its keyword and has 120 subscribers on the mailing list. About a week ago, I discovered a bug in my sales funnel and shortly after fixing that, we made our first sale for $47. Hopefully, more sales are coming soon 
Niche Site Mastery’s NEW Master Ninja Program
The launch of the Master Ninja program was a huge success and NSM welcomed approximately 60 new Master Ninja’s to our community. My VA team then built about 130 sites for them.
In case you are new to my blog, and don’t yet know that this is all about, let me explain…
Up to now, Niche Site Mastery has been a membership site where members can get access to all my training videos, a private discussion forum, and personalized one-on-one coaching with yours truly.
Because my background is in outsourcing (I’m an ex CEO), right from day one a huge part of NSM’s lessons have been about how to effectively outsource niche site production and link building. Without a good outsourcing system, making any meaningful money with niche sites would be extremely time consuming for you, the business owner.
After doing as many coaching calls as I have done, I came to realize that many of my customers wanted more than training on how to outsource. Instead, they just wanted to hand over the work to a team of pre-trained workers; thereby allowing them to focus on finding the best niches they could.
To satisfy this demand – both for my customers, as well as myself – I partnered up with a guy by the name of Adam Dicker. If you don’t know who Adam is, you can find out more about him in this podcast.
The short version of Adam’s bio is that he is one of the top domainers in the world. He owns DNForum, the world’s largets domaining forum, he’s been in the domainers hall of fame for quite a few years, he’s shared the stage with Donald Trump, and he owns north of 40,000 domains. As if that wasn’t enough, he’s also a very nice guy who’s very humble and quite enjoyable to work with.
In terms of a partner, I really couldn’t have asked for anything more. Thanks Adam!
Given the volume of Adam’s business, when he and I met (via the podcast), he already had a huge team of VA’s in place and so it was pretty easy to just plug into his team once he and I worked our way through the logistics of taking orders from customers (hence the beta program).
If you’d like to see an example of a site built by his team, just head over to www.gouta.ca. Not only does the site look very nice, the articles are killer. Another two examples are www.salads.ca and www.3dflatscreens.ca. Hopefully, you’ll agree that these are pretty awesome looking websites.
For people that chose to become a Master Ninja member on Feb 16th, here’s what the membership included:
All NSM’s training videos
Access to the private discussion forum
Access to me for one-on-one coaching on keyword research (or anything you need help with)
Access to the VA team for website production and link building
Sites are sold for $99 and include a 1000 word article for the primary keyword, plus another two articles of 700 words each for the related keywords. Adam normally sells these sites via his web development company for $995 each, so this is huge discount for NSM Master Ninja members.
You’ll also be able to order more articles and links from us after the site is launched. We’re just working on the processes and order forms for that now.
What this really boils down to is this: if you are really serious about making money online, as a Master Ninja member you are going to be able to focus on finding keywords, registering a domain, and then handing everything else off to the VA team. Killer!
And here’s one other idea for you…have the VA team build you a site and then immediately put it on Flippa. Here’s one example of a site that sold for $145 with no traffic and no income. I’m not trying to say that this will happen every time; instead, I’m only trying to open your eyes to other methods for near term profit for those of you that need more immediate cash flow.
Podcasts
February was a quiet month for podcasts with only one episode being produced. If you’re into Adsense, then this is one you will want to listen to.
Thanks to the networking that took place at the Underground conference in DC, I have some pretty interesting guests coming onto the show very soon.
Blog Posts
In February, I published another 9 posts.
Of them, several stood out in terms of getting a lot of comments. The 3 most popular posts were:
How to Become an Outsourcing Ninja
Top 5 Reasons Why New Marketers Fail
How to Shoot Video on a White Background
Income Breakdown
HowToCleanAnything.com (Adsense)
Total: $699
Last Month: $594
Difference: $105
Change up 18%
Other Adsense Sites (Asset Value of approximately $13,400)
Total $672
Last month: $464
Difference: $208
Up 45%
Affiliate Earnings
Backlink Battleplan: $10
Bluehost: $720
BuildMyRank: $118
Microniche Espionage: $44
Hostgator: $1,375
Long Tail Pro: $132
Misc: $216
Niche Video Tycoon: $76
SocialAdr: $21
SECockpit: $1,520
SimplyPLR: $123
SEMRush: $29
SEOPressor: $62
Unique Article Wizard: $241
Total: $4,688
Last Month: $4,802
Difference: -$114
Down 2%
Niche Site Mastery
Memberships: $8,435
Last Month: $5,325
Difference: $3,110
Up 58%
Website Development: $13,167
Last Month: $0
Difference: $13,167
Up infinite%
Gross Total in February
Total: $27,661
Last Month: $11,184
Difference: $16,477
Up 147%
Expenses: $17,847
Website Development: $9,215
Office, Staff, and Admin: $4,379
Travel & Education: $4,253 (obviously, I don’t expect to incur this every month because I don’t attend 2 events every month)
Net Income (before taxes): $9,814
As I pointed out in this post, teaching others how to make money online has made a significant contribution to my income and I am extremely grateful for the support that you all give me when you purchase a product through one of my affiliate links or decide to become a member of Niche Site Mastery.
As I have always said from the start, I’m not an internet marketing guru; I have just chosen to share with the world what I’m up to, the mistakes that I make, and the lessons that I’m learning.
Any of you could do the same if you really wanted to.
Lessons Learned in February
Having spent my last week of the month at the UG8 conference, I can assure you that my “lessons learned” cup overfloweth! So, rather than try to dump the summary here, please be sure to keep an eye on my blog over the next month as I plan to publish my lessons in future posts, podcasts, and videos.
Measuring My Progress
I have a great many things that I want to accomplish in March. Before I get to that, however, I want to share with you how I did versus my February goals.
February Results
Launch the Master Ninja program and sign up 50 customers – achieved
Write at least 10 posts – published 9
Finish my first video course – done
Publish 2 more podcasts – published 1
Increase Adsense income from new sites by at least 30% – achieved
Earn gross revenue of at least $40,000 for the month (I expect much of this to come from Master Ninja website sales) – not achieved
Launch a new WSO on the Warrior Forum (details to come) – not achieved
Goals for March
Get my 30 authority sites finished (my order went to the back of the line behind my customers)
Write at least 8 posts
Publish 2 podcasts
Increase Adsense income at least 20%
Launch my next WSO
Implement Infusionsoft (going to be very time consuming!)
Improve Facebook lead generation
Conclusion
There is so much that I’m thankful for!
First and foremost, I am filled with gratitude that all of you actually take the time to read and comment on my blog. I love getting your comments, so don’t be shy!
Next, I’d like to thank all the new NSM members who signed up for the Master Ninja product. Based upon your feedback, I feel as though Adam and I have put together a service that will continue to be extremely well received.
I’d also like to give a huge shout out to all the wonderful people that I met at UG8. The knowledge that I’ve already gained from my conversations with you have been nothing short of spectacular! I’d also like to give another shout out to Courtney for taking so much off my plate that I could spend a week away and still have the ship running smoothly while I was gone.
And finally, I’m thankful that this business that I’m so blessed to have is just so much fun to do. Getting to see my own Adsense income go up this month was extremely gratifying, and knowing that I’m helping other people to do the same really fires me up!
If you liked this post, please share it today! Thanks, you Rock!
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