Every month I publish an income report…why? Good question 🙂
1. Accountability
With all the shiny objects out there it’s easy to spend WAY more than you’re earning. Luckily I realized this early on and I’ve kept detailed records of my expenses ever since. That being said, I know that there are onvertertain expenses that are NECESSARY when running a business. As much as I don’t want to pay for them, I need to pay for my email autoresponder, website hosting, and video hosting every month. It’s just a part of doing business. There are other things that I buy as well, but I try my best to keep my expenses SIGNIFICANTLY LESS than my revenue. If I can do that then I’m ahead of the game.
2. Integrity
On my show I ask my guests a lot of personal questions. One that frequently comes up is “How much do you make?”. I feel like I need to reveal my own income if I’m going to be asking others the same question. It only seems right.
3. Perspective
There are a lot of online marketers out there who fake-it-till-they-make-it. In other words, they fudge their numbers and exaggerate their earnings in order to establish false authority in their niche. My goal is that by watching my income grow slowly over time you’ll realize that there is no get-rich-quick button.
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Here’s my results for September, 2016
28,868 website page views (-1,624 from August)
31,837 Youtube channel views (-3,495 from August)
177,211 Youtube minutes watched (-22,007 from August)
Facebook group members: Approx. 600 members (First record of this so no change)
Email subscribers: 22,609 (+2,539 subscribers from August)
Expenses
GoToWebinar: $199 – I use this for live webinars and training
Convert Kit: $179 – I’m testing out a new autoresponder as Aweber hasn’t been getting the delivery that I’m used to
Aweber: $130 – This is my list building software that allows me to email everyone when there’s a new interview or review
Paypal fees: $69.88
Fedex: $52 – I sent documents to the US to set up my business 401K investment portfolio with Vanguard
Internet: $50 – This is what I pay for my fiber Internet in Turkey
ZenDesk: $50 – Brett and I use this for our helpdesk for our launches
Jvzoo seller fees: $34.40
Monthly phone fees: $30
Food Blogger Pro: $29 – A course I purchased on setting up a food blog, something that I’m interested in
Wistia: $25 – This is how I host my sales videos and course content.
Resell Rights Weekly: $19.95 – Reoccurring membership fee for the bonuses I add from my interviews and reviews
Click Magick: $17 – This is one of my FAVORITE tools for tracking links.
Audible: $14.95 – Business books to further my education
iCloud: $9.99 – I use this to store my documents online
Skype: $9.99 for premium – I do all my interviews with Skype and Ecamm call recorder on a Mac.
Vault Press: $5 – A quick and easy tool that I use to backup my website
Amazon S3: $3.66 – I use this to host images and videos
Total expenses: $928.82 (-$11,391.85 spent compared to August)
Revenue
WP Content Machine: $3,318.79 from review and interview with Ankur Shukla
Vid Curator FX: $2,644.20 from review and interview with Ben Murray
Video Spin Blaster Pro: $2,290.06 from review and interview with Ali G
Tube Amplify Pro: $2,058.48 from review and interview with Peter Beattie and Parker Nirenstein
VSource: $1,923.06 from review and interview with Mark Bishop
Member Pal: $1,148.60 from review and interview with Dan Green
OneSoci 2.0: $1,053.78 from review and interview with Lee Pennington
Pixel Studio FX 2.0: $917 from review and interview with Jimmy Kim
WP Traffic UP: $905.09 from interview and review with Mark Hess
200 Dollars Blueprint 2.0: $631.93 from review and interview with Henry Gold
Repwarn reseller (CLOSED): $349 from review and interview with Walt Bayliss
Thrive Leads: $210 from review and interview with Shane Melaugh
Viddyoze 2.0: $205.35 from review and interview with Viddyoze team
Video Vibe Pro: $142.31 from review and interview with Joshua Zamora
EZ Video Creator: $139.24 from review and interview with Matt Bush
OctoSuite: $131 from review and interview with Luke Maguire
Video Traffic Genie: $118.50 from review and interview with Paul Venables
Drop Mock Video: $115.40 from review and interview with Lee Pennington
Azon Authority: $97.34 from review and interview with Sean Donahoe
Arbitrage Sugardaddy: $93.54 from review and interview with Tom E.
Mail X: $89.82 from review and interview with Han Fan
Igloo: $87 from review and interview with Josh Ratta
Snap Video Profits: $78 from review and interview with Stephen Gilbert
Zapable: $68.60 from review and interview with Chris Fox
The Commission Machine: $66 from review and interview with Michael Cheney
HydraVid: $58.82 from review and interview with Walt Bayliss
Revamply: $55.50 from review and interview with Sam Bakker
Convertri: $55.50 from review and interview with Andy Fletcher
Vidgeos: $54 from review and interview with Josh Ratta
AmaSuite 4.0: $52 from review and interview with Chris Guthrie
IntelliPlayer: $50.50 from review and interview with Bill Guthrie
Video Traffic X (CLOSED): $47 from review and interview with Walt Bayliss
iPocket Video: $38.40 from review and interview with Joey Xoto
Fresh Member: $37 from review and interview with Mark Thompson
Social Kickstart: $34 from customers being cookied from buying previous products
Ad Respark: $30 from review and interview with Devin Zander
Easy VSL 2.0: $29.50 from review and interview with Mark Thompson
Covert Shirt Store: $28.20 from review and interview with Cindy Battye
Buzzinar: $27 from review and interview with Omar Martin
FB Live Marketing Secrets 2.0: $25.05 from bonus promoting a Henry Gold offer
Instamate: $23.50 from review and interview with Luke Maguire
Chat Response: $22.44 from review and interview with Sam Bakker
Easy Links: $19.50 from review and interview with Karthik Ramani
No Cost Income Blueprint: $18.50 from review and interview with Paul Counts
Viral Video Stores: $17 from review and interview with Neil Napier
Webinar Fusion Pro: $14.80 from review and interview with Dwayne Golden
Content Curation Plugin: $13.50 from review and interview with Walt Bayliss
Youtube Ad Vantage:$13.50 from review and interview with Robert Phillips
Webinar X: $11.98 from review and interview with Neil Napier
3K Challenge: $9.21 from interview with Emka
5 Day Profits: $8.67 from review and interview with Mark Barrett
Visibily: $8.50 from review and interview with Neil Napier
Explaindio: $8.50 from review and interview with Nick LaPolla
Webinar Hero: $8.50 from review and preview video
Voice Stak: $8.50 from review and interview with Mark Thompson
IM Conversion Pro: $8.10 from review and interview with Ritoban Chakrabarti
InstaHook Video Backgrounds: $6.80 from review and interview with Brad Scott
2016 Traffic and Conversion Summit Notes: $4.96 from review and interview with Tim Castleman
Total revenue from interviews and reviews: $19,731.02 (-$893.57 from August)
Mail It Launch adjustment: $7,000 – Brett sent me money for launch expenses
Mail It: $1,204.95 – My earnings from a launch I did in August, 2016 with Brett Rutecky
Affiliate Income Secrets: $545 – My product teaching how I make money from affiliate marketing
Google Adsense: $100 – Payment for Youtube channel ads
Resell Rights Weekly: $98.49 – This is a website that has a ton of products that you can use as your own
Keyword Suggestions JV commission: $79.06 – This is my cut from a launch I did with Radu in September, 2015
Social Robot JV commission: $59.39 – This my cut from a launch I did with Joshua Zamora in early 2015
Affiliate Trax: $27.82 – This is my cut from a launch I did with Brett in May, 2016
Profit Canvas Pro: $18.36 from a product Brett Rutecky and I launched in 2015
SociSpot JV commission: $11.12 – This is my cut from a launch I did with Lee Pennington in November, 2015
Total from OTHER streams of income: $9,144.19 (-$60,088.76 from August)
Total Revenue: $28,875.21 (-$60,982.33 from August)
Total Profit: $27,946.39 (-$49,590.48 from August)
I get emails every day from people telling me that they haven’t made even one dollar online yet. Honestly…that astounds me as seriously ANYONE can make money online. There are soooooooo many ways to do it.
However.
What most people don’t have is patience.
They expect to go from $0 per day to $10,000 per month super quickly…and we all know that it’s impossible (or at least super rare).
I’ve done over 800 interviews now with successful entrepreneurs. They all have stories about how they started, struggled, and then finally made it. But they all found something that worked and kept doing it. They saw the “spark” of a little bit of income and kept fanning the flame.
For me the “spark” was when I published my first interview back in September, 2012.
From that first interview I was able to make a grand total of $88.33.
Some people might not get super excited about that…but for me it was PROOF and the “spark” that ignited my flame to keep doing daily interviews.
And affiliate marketing isn’t the only way to make money online.
Today I’m going to list 8 ways to make money online that will either make you money TODAY or within the next 30 days.
Complete tasks on sites like Mechanical Turk: You’re not going to make a million dollars, but there are a ton of little jobs that pay pennies to up to $200 to complete. Again, you’re not going to make a lot, but if making $3 to $6 per hour could help pay some bills then it might be worth checking out. Here’s a link to one person’s experience.
Provide a service on Fiverr: At the end of 2014 I was looking for an extra income stream. So I decided to put up a gig on Fiverr offering to write a 400-word unique article for $5. I also offered a service to rewrite any article up to 600-words for $5. These gigs ended up being quite popular and I was consistently able to make an extra $500/month for a few months. I even made a product teaching exactly how I did this HERE.
Complete incentivized offers on Treasure Trooper: This is one of the easiest ways I know to make a little extra money online…and it’s fun too. All you have to do is complete free trial offers and you get rewarded with cash. You also get paid for filling out surveys and watching videos. Since 2005 it’s members have earned over $7,000,000 in rewards.- Create an authority blog: Ok, you might not make money today, but if you consistently work on it you can create a REAL income. This blogger makes $5,000 per month and it’s just his 8th month of blogging. If he can do it, why can’t you?
Interview 10 people and sell it as a product: Oh wait, that sounds familiar. Why? Because this is EXACTLY how I created my first product. I interviewed 10 product creators about how to launch a product. I only made about $700 in profit…but it led to a lot of other opportunities. And you can have FREE access to that course HERE.
Do odd jobs on Task Rabbit: It’s not technically “online”, but I personally know someone who makes a full-time living doing jobs for clients he finds on Task Rabbit. There are tons of people looking for YOU to do their errands and off jobs for cash.
Start a food blog: My wife and I are currently in the process of setting up our own food blog. Our biggest inspiration is Pinch of Yum, that makes anywhere from $20k to $40k per month from taking pictures and videos of food that they make in their kitchen.- Teach how to do pretty much ANYTHING on Skillshare: My friend John Shea is currently making $500 to $2,000 per month teaching little video courses on Skillshare. His girlfriend made a video on how to make an apple crisp, made over $100, and now makes about $10/month in passive income from just putting in a little bit of work. We released a course about this called Video Course Cash Kit that you can check out HERE.
So now you have 8 proven ways of making money online. They all 100% work, but they might take a little time to get started with.
I 100% believe that ANYONE can make money online. You just need to take action today and be willing to put in a little bit of work.
Do you know any other ways to make money online that have worked for you or people you know? Please post them below in the comments.
Thanks so much for the tips for extra money online! I have a small list that I distribute to and speak in the Dallas area and one of the PDF giveaways is how to make a few extra ducks..Didn’t know about task rabbit! Thanks again!!
Tim,
Nice, would you mind sharing here how you’re making extra money, how much, et cetera? Go ahead and write a comment here as I’m sure it would be helpful to others.
Can I send you a PM? I wrote a lot..lol…and you can decide to run my method..trust me, it’s not snakey..just a lot…
My partner and I stumbled over here by a different web address and thought I might check things out. I like what I see so now i am following you. Look forward to looking over your web page again.
Mike…
Since I found your site sometime ago.. The many interviews I have heard and learned something from… and your willingness to talk to me after my loss (wife)… in spite of no money in it for you.. I have nothing but respect.
Your “transparency” is sooooo refreshing and greatly encouraging.
Again… With only respect and gratitude..
Don
Thank you for the kind words, Don. Sometimes I think about discontinuing these income reports, but it’s comments like yours that make me continue on. Thanks!
Mike, why are you still using Aweber and Convertkit whenever you have your own email plug-in with mail it? Why aren’t you simply importing all of your contacts from those services over into your own email plug-in and using that instead?
Great question!
I prefer having multiple options. I use all 3.
Great update, Mike, especially the list of ways of making money online, which I found inspirational.
One thing that always fascinates me with your earnings updates is how much variation there is the income you generate from your reviews and interviews, from thousands of dollars to under 10. But I guess this is partly down to the fact that in many cases they continue to generate an income for months after the initial posting.
Nick,
Those low ones are from previous promotions that I did. In general, the least I’ll make from a promo is $300.
That’s a very interesting list you got there in terms of sources of income that you utilize and generate income from. Wish every so-called guru out there is transparent like you. Any other sources of income that you have that helps you generate $$ ? From what I heard, you are one of the top IM’s out there generating 6 figs. a year.
Alvin,
Those are all my sources of income at this point. I’m currently working on a food blog with my wife that we’ll be slowly developing over the next year.
Mike, are you still filing taxes as an S-Corp for your LLC? I’m curious about how that has worked out for you. Thanks for your transparency.
Hi Mary, nice to hear from you.
Yes, I’m still filing as and S-Corp. It seems to have worked out fine so far 🙂
Thanks, Mike! Where the Like button I want to click? 🙂
This is a very inspirational income report. Thank you Mike, I guess all newbie affiliate marketers should look up to you.