Welcome to my January 2014 monthly income report. At the end of 2013, I decided to publish our first year’s income report as a means of sharing what is possible to achieve when you focus on building a sustainable online business. If you haven’t seen the 2013 report, you can do so here.
My hope is that by sharing these reports, readers of my blog will find additional insight into how to build a real online business, as well as the inspiration to follow a similar path – a path that will eventually lead you to the freedom that an online business affords.
Click to Tweet: Check out Bright Ideas January Income Report
Key Activities in January
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of January’s activities, I should probably point out that Liz and I took a week-long “baby-moon” vacation to Kaua’i (one of the Hawaiian islands). Many of our friends who have children strongly advised taking one last vacation together before our daughter arrives at the end of April.
We had a fantastic trip, to say the least! Here are just a few of the pics we took:
One of the many gorgeous beaches on Kauai
Getting ready to see Kauai from the air. Amazing scenery!
The gates to Jurassic Park
We did a little off-roading on the way to the gates to Jurassic Park
Ok, so now that you know we had only 3 weeks of productivity, let’s dive into what we did with our time and what came of it.
New Clients
Our consulting division welcomed another new client on board this month. They were referred to us by a member of my mastermind group because they wanted to get Infusionsoft implemented in their business. Our work with them consisted of helping them to get up and running on Infusionsoft, as well as to develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy, so that over time, more of their clients would find them instead of them having to search for clients.
Client attraction using digital marketing is something that I have written about extensively in my Digital Marketing Handbook. If you run a business and want to more easily attract clients, please get in touch.
Content Creation
This month I recorded 11 podcast episodes and published 3 that were previously recorded. We wrote 3 new posts and published a total of 7 (some were written in December).
I was also interviewed by 2 other podcasters this month. If you have a show and would like to have me on as a guest, please get in touch.
Information Products
In addition to doing consulting work, we also produce a variety of information products. My book and accompanying videos were the most recent product we released. In January we put more time into creating resources for affiliates that want to promote the book. We also scheduled two promotions with affiliate partners. One happened (and went quite well!), while the other was delayed until March.
If you are interested in learning how you can earn commissions for promoting my book, please visit this page and apply to become an affiliate. I review each application by hand and will be in touch with those who qualify. Thanks in advance for giving it a look!
Product Development
Our new SaaS app, called KontentFlow, is now incredibly close to being open for beta and is expected to be released later this month (Feb 2014). The process saw myself and my partner working out some bugs that we found a the last minute. I was hoping to have launched the beta program in January; however, a couple of bugs got in the way of that. If you’d like to learn more about what our app does, click here.
Partnerships
I’ve written about the value of partnerships in the past and am in the midst of talks with another entrepreneur who’s been following my work for a few years now. He’s gained quite a bit of traction in a niche that I’m quite interested in building a product for, so with a little luck, the time invested in conversations with him this month will yield some results I can write about in the near future.
For now, I will give you a hint: we plan to deliver “marketing campaigns as a service” (MCAAS). Hmmm…McAss….I might have to rethink that acronym, huh? Let’s call it Campaigns as a Service (CaaS) instead
CaaS is actually something that we talked about quite a bit in this month’s Mastermind Elite meeting, and I suspect, after hearing what I had to say, a number of the members in my group will also be pursuing it. If you aren’t getting exposed to innovative ideas to expand your agency, perhaps you should join us in the next mastermind meeting?
Affiliate Promotions
I don’t really do much in the way of affiliate promotions (except Infusionsoft), but this month I decided to make an exception and I held a webinar to promote The Media Buying Academy. As media buying is something I want to learn more about, and the course was taught by some pretty credible folks, I thought that some other people in my tribe might want to know about it, too. Turns out, I was right. Thank you very much to all who placed an order via my affiliate link.
Mastermind Meeting
I put quite a bit of time into preparing for this month’s mastermind meeting. Our guest was Andrew Dymski, one of the partners over at GuavaBox and he knocked the ball out of the park! Andrew went into detail on how his agency attracts traffic, captures leads, and then converts qualified leads into clients that pay monthly retainers of $6,000 and up. Best of all, he was kind enough to share his marketing assessment template with us.
When the members of the group saw Andrew explain how he was getting clients to pay him $1,500 to produce an assessment (which is also a proposal for retainer services), they were blown away and Andrew was kind enough to share the document with us. Thanks Andrew!
This is the kind of really cool stuff that you get when you are a member of the group.
Income Breakdown
Revenue
Sales of My Own Information Products: $4,490
Infusionsoft Affiliate Income: $1,347
Consulting Services: $5,158
Mastermind Elite: $1,246
Other Affiliate Commissions: $682
Adsense Income: $578
Total Revenue: $13,501
Expenses
Partner profit sharing: $121
Advertising: $40
Affiliate commissions paid out: $1,427
Bank charges: $149
Hosting: $109
Office Expenses: $96
Software: $980
Sub-contractors: $855
Total Expenses: $3,777
Net Profit: $9,724
Notes:
The category “information products” includes: The Best Buyer Formula and The Digital Marketing Handbook, plus some products that I have since discontinued.
Infusionsoft affiliate income and consulting services are pretty much tied together now that we are a certified consultant.
Adsense income comes from a website that I purchased back in 2012. This income is now 100% passive.
Other affiliate income comes from products listed on this page.
Lessons Learned
Every month, I make plenty of mistakes, meet new people, and learn new lessons. This month was no different. Here’s a summary of some of the things that I’ve learned and decisions that have been made a result.
More Podcasts & New Staff
For a while now I’ve been thinking about ramping up the number of podcast episodes that I produce. After seeing how well John Dumas has been doing by cranking out an episode per day, I started thinking that I should start doing the same thing. (John earned just shy of $40,000 in December from sponsorship revenue alone!)
Starting very soon, instead of one episode per week, we’ll be publishing 5. The goal of all this extra content is to attempt to get my podcast ranked near the very top of the business category. If we can do that, I would expect the volume of our monthly downloads will go up exponentially from where they are today, and IF that happens, I suspect that we’ll be approached by some sponsors. Time will tell.
At a minimum, we’ll have plenty of new content!
To help me with the increased workload, we’d added a new member to our team. His name is Cody and he’ll be helping me with podcast pre and post-production. Welcome to the team, Cody!
Golden Nuggets from This Month’s Interviews
What follows is a summary of some of the “bright ideas” that I learned when I recorded this month’s 11 podcast episodes.
Jayson Gaignard from MastermindTalks told me that he wrote a description of what his “perfect day” looks like and then uses this as a filter for which opportunities he gets involved with. As we all know, with every opportunity comes an opportunity cost, and sometimes that cost can either be too high or it’s in conflict with the life you are trying to build. Jayson’s “perfect day” idea is brilliant. Look for Jayson’s interview soon.
Adam Franklin from BlueWire Media shared with me how they developed their Web Strategy Planning Template and then showed it to David Meerman Scott. David loved it and has been very helpful to them. If you want to build a relationship with an author, he suggested that you buy their book, read it, leave a review on Amazon, write a post about why you liked the book, and then tweet to the author to tell them you left them a review and wrote a post. He said that this will get their attention almost every time. Look for Adam’s interview soon.
Dave Kerpen from Likeable Media told me about a strategy they have used to consistently increase the size of their clients. Here’s how it works: each time you get a new client, offer them a discount on the price of the project IF they promise to give you a testimonial and refer you to 3 of their suppliers. Of course, you have to have done good work for this! Assuming you did do a good job, the referral to the suppliers is golden because, most often, the suppliers are larger than your client. Theoretically, each time this happens you are getting introduced to people at larger companies. Brilliant. Look for Dave’s interview soon.
Sarah Goliger, Head of Paid Marketing at Hubspot, helped me to understand how using paid search on Twitter has been very helpful for them. There were too many details to cover here, so be sure to keep an eye out for her interview which will be published soon.
Elyse Petersen of Tealet shared with me how she used Kickstarter to raise an initial round of money for her startup, which has since become quite successful. She told me that she followed advice that she found on Tim Ferris’ blog. Look for Elyse’s interview to be published soon.
Paul Biggar from CircleCI shared with me how they ran the beta program for his SaaS startup. The key was to get people to use it for free, and then after about 3 weeks, he asked them to start paying. If they didn’t, he turned off their accounts. As soon as he did, they started paying. That is product validation! Look for my interview with Paul to be published soon.
What Do You Think?
What did you learn from this post? How do you think it will help you? I’d really like to hear your thoughts!
As well, I’d like to thank you for being a reader of my blog! Without you, my blog has no purpose. If you haven’t yet become a subscriber, why not become one today! You’ll be glad you did…plus I’m going to give you some pretty awesome free stuff!
P.S. Don't forget about our contest: the best comment on each post gets a free copy of The Digital Marketing Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Putting Client Attraction on Autopilot. (Proven digital marketing strategies you can put into action today.)
Contest ends one week after the post goes live.
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