There’s one word I can use to describe June: consistency. As you’ll see with my bottom line, it really wasn’t any better or worse than May.
In some ways, I view a month with no growth as a poor month – after all, who wants things to remain steady, especially when you’re not at a high level?
Anyway, let’s get right to the report (and you’ll see below why the header image for this income report is different than usual).
A Brief Overview of June
June was a reasonably productive month, as I put some work into my new niche site and even saw it achieve its first earnings. It’s barely 1.5 months old, so I haven’t expected much yet. I’ll discuss this site more below.
Although my social lending investments are showing steady growth, my article writing earnings are on the decline (as expected). These are two areas where I no longer invest any time, so wherever I can see some net gains or profit, I’m happy.
I still can’t help but feel like I’m a bit lost on where I’m going to find my next successful project online. I’m trying to take things slow and take a more focused approach, which I hope will pay off in the long run.
Eventually, I’d like to create a “real” business online – by real, I mean active (as opposed to passive). I think well-built “active” businesses have the potential of eventually becoming passive, once you’ve put in a ton of hard work on the front end.
And in other, personal news (that technically didn’t happen until the beginning of July): I’m engaged to be married to my girlfriend of 9+ years! It was a long time coming, but the timing is right and I couldn’t be happier.
June Income Report
Article Writing
Not a lot of movement here – I’m done writing articles for the time being, so everything from this point forward is truly passive income.
Here’s a summary of all my article-related income for June:
Squidoo
Amazon: $0.77
Revenue Sharing: $2.56
InfoBarrel
Revenue Sharing: $5.03
Total Article Writing Income: $8.36
Social Lending
Lending Club
Lending Club, as I mention each month, is one of my favorite online passive income sources, because I believe it’s my only truly passive income source. What I mean by this is, once you select your investments (which doesn’t take more than a few minutes), you can simply sit back and collect the monthly payments which include a repayment of your initial investment + interest.
If you are unfamiliar with Lending Club, however, you should read my post that explains exactly how I make money with Lending Club (including my investment strategy) that I posted a few months ago.
For the fourth straight month, my net annualized return (interest %) grew, and it continues to grow at a fast pace. As I mentioned last month, I’m mixing some riskier loans into my portfolio, which is one of the reasons my return is accelerating.
I’m now invested in 175 loans (+5 from May) and my net annualized return is 5.75% (+.17% from May).
If you’ve got some extra cash laying around that you’re willing to invest, I honestly feel that Lending Club is a great investment platform to try. It really isn’t that difficult to pick good loans (because they filter out most of the poor borrowers with their application process), and it’s an easy way to earn a decent return on cash that otherwise wouldn’t be earning you anything.
If you’re interested in trying Lending Club, you can sign up with this link and get a free account. I am an affiliate for Lending Club, so if you have any questions about it, I’d be more than happy to answer them in the comments (or feel free to contact me by e-mail).
If you’re unsure whether this type of investing is right for you, you can start with $25 and build from there. I do want to emphasize that to really benefit from this form of passive income, you need to make several $25 investments not only to earn more interest, but to diversify as well. One or two $25 investments won’t really get you anywhere.
Prosper
A couple months ago, I also began investing with Prosper.com, which is another social lending platform very similar to Lending Club.
Now that my loans are funded, I’m finally starting to receive interest payments. As of right now (and it’s still very early!), my rate of return is 8.01%.
Here’s a preview of the loans I’m invested in so far, which I posted last month too (and you can see the interest rate of each):
So far, I’m not sure if I like Prosper more than Lending Club. Their loan selection process doesn’t provide you with as much detail, but it’s obviously still possible to earn as much as (or more than) what you can earn with Lending Club. if you’re interested, you can create a Prosper account here.
Niche Sites
My new niche site is fully built, and it’s finally earning money! Unfortunately, the rankings in Google for my target keywords are still not where I’d like them to be (nowhere near page 1), but I did quite a bit of link building during June that will hopefully help.
I won’t write much about the link building I did do (hint: it was outsourced) until enough time has passed for me to fully evaluate it.
(Note: All of the earnings below are from the new niche site.)
Here’s a summary of June’s Niche site earnings:
Amazon: $8.19
Media.net: $0.00
Chitika: $0.00
InfoLinks: $0.00
Commission Junction: $0.00
Total: $8.19
Authority Sites
Authority Site #1 (Not Revealed)
This site is still inactive (in terms of me working on it), but continues to earn a little bit of money.
June Earnings:
Media.net: $1.43
Indeed.com: $0.93
Total: $2.36
Authority Site #2 (Slow Carb Diet Experiments)
This site still receives regular traffic and is continuously shared on social media sites (especially Pinterest), however the traffic just isn’t high enough to generate solid earnings.
I’ll need to step it up if I want to make any money from this site (food blogs are not easy!).
June Earnings:
Amazon: $0.00
Media.net: $0.19
Total: $0.19
Total Authority Site Earnings: $2.55
Affiliate/Other Income
Here’s the breakdown for affiliate and other income earned during June. [Note: This income comes from other sites not discussed/listed above, including affiliate sales generated through this blog.]
CashCrate: $194.59 (read my review here)
ClickBank: $21.45
Commission Junction: $179.00
PayDotCom: $40.00
Ebates: $0.00
Market Samurai: $74.50
TweetAdder: $0.00
Aweber: $11.40
Other misc.: $0.00
Total Misc. Affiliate Earnings for June: $520.94
Income Summary
Here’s a summary of June’s earnings, organized by project/challenge:
Article Writing: $8.36
Amazon & “AdSense” Niche Sites: $8.19
Authority Websites: $2.55
Misc. Affiliate Income: $520.94
Grand Total for June: $540.04 (+$22.96 from May)
Finally, after two straight months of large income declines, I saw an increase in June. I’m definitely not at a point yet where I’m comfortable predicting another increase in July, but we’ll see how it goes.
Popular Blog Posts
These were my top 5 most popular blog posts in June based on number of views:
1) 142+ Ways to Make Money Online
2) Is CashCrate Legit? Here’s My CashCrate Review
3) My Passive Income Report [May 2013]
4) How to Make $2,000 Per Month Writing for InfoBarrel
5) A Sneak Peek at My New Niche Site
How did June go for you? Leave a comment below!
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My Passive Income Report [June 2013]
Related posts:
My Passive Income Report [June 2012]
My Passive Income Report [May 2013]
My Passive Income Report [February 2013]