Traffic/Audience
15,239 (+1,305 from February) page views in March
4,376 (-550) iTunes downloads
5,106 (+1,462) Youtube channel views
41,535 (+28,271) minutes watched
Aweber subscribers: 4,042 (+2,041 subscribers)
Twitter followers: 3,637 (+622 followers)
Facebook Fans: 434 (+27)
Expenses
Facebook Advertising: $31.23 (interview promotion)
Aweber: $49 – This is my list building software that allows me to email everyone when there’s a new interview
Host Gator hosting: $40 – I host all my niche sites and this site on multiple hosting accounts
Libsyn: $75 – I host my podcast with this so I can put it on iTunes
SafeSwaps.com: $29.99 – This is the membership fee I pay to be able to buy solo ads from people who have been rated by previous buyers
Hello Bar: $5
VPN: $78.66
Wishlist Membership Plugin: $97
Free Jing and ScreenCast Subscription for
easily explaining things to workers : $10
Virtual Assistants: $232.28
Solo Ads: $75 You can find out more about solo ads HERE
Total expenses: $723.16 (-$2,942.42 compared to February)
Revenue
Mini Affiliate Sites course (CLOSED): $247.25 from interview with David McGimpsey
Project X Tube (CLOSED): $107.52 from interview with Cliff Carrigan
eCommerce Mastery: $104.02 from interview with Sam England and Sean Colman
Operation Solo: $88.60 from interview with Anthony Tilley
POF Playbook (CLOSED): $80.60 from interview with Anthony Wang
Virtual Staff Finder: $75 from interview with Chris Ducker
Curation Soft : $71.01 from interview with Peter Lenkefi
58,000 Visitors (CLOSED): $69.52 from interview with Ron Rule
Hands Off Books: $68.48 from Interview with Rachel Rofe
Bonus Press: $58.79 from interview with Mark Thompson
Long Tail Pro: $57.90 from interview with Spencer Haws
WP Sharely: $45.82 from interview with Shane Melaugh
How to Create a $7 product: $44.77 from interview with Trevor Dumbleton
The Four Hour System (CLOSED): $43.32 from interview with Anton Kraly
Golden Ticket CPA 2 (CLOSED): $42.38 from interview with Eric James
$1,776 in 2 days method (CLOSED): $38.60 from interview with Joseph Rodrigues
Azon Classroom 3.0 (CLOSED): $30.65 from interview with Jeff Carson
PingFresh: $27 from interview with Sean Donahoe
Membership Marketing Machine (CLOSED): $27 from interview with Gary Clucas
Business Turnkey Exponential Xpress (CLOSED): $26.12 from interview with Sarkis Yambestian
PLR Video Smackdown: $23.90 from interview with Peter Beattie
The Outsource System: $22.20 from interview with James Carter
Lifestyle Diet Makeover PLR: $20.52 from interview with Tom Ness
Ninja Profits Blueprint (CLOSED): $20.09 from interview with Michael Baptiste
WP Speed Formula (CLOSED): $17.98 from interview with Josh Fulfer
Inner Circle Solo Ads (CLOSED): $17.30 from interview with Rob Stafford
Mass Buyer Recruitment Method (CLOSED): $17.22 from interview with Jake Corcoran and Gavin Abeyratne
Publishing For Profit: $14.50 from interview with Eric Lass
75 Minute Blueprint: $13.03 from interview with Mark Thompson
Spy Bar: $12.97 from interview with Rob Cornish
Video Profit Powerhouse (CLOSED): $10.14 from interview with Ben Sayer
Christmas Come Early Deal (CLOSED): $9.40 from interview with Chris Reck
Free The Boss (CLOSED): $8.24 from interview with Bill Guthrie
CPA Cash Vault (CLOSED): $5 from Interview with Jonathan Smith
Going Viral on Facebook: $4.66 from interview with Yoel Cohen
Total revenue from interviews: $1,571.50 (+$508.77 from February)
Revenue from Project X Tube Method (CLOSED): $5.95
Text link ads: $31.66– I make this income from an old website of mine.
SocialAdr: $25.60 – A hands-off way of getting more likes on tweets for your posts
Ezarticle link: $34 – This is reoccurring income from a video tutorial I did about Ezarticlelink HERE
Whoosh Traffic (CLOSED): $20 – A keyword tracker for monitoring multiple keyword rankings
SafeSwaps.com: $15
Adsense: $225.41
Income Igniter (CLOSED): $9.22
Total from OTHER streams of income: $366.84 (-$10.99 from February)
Total Revenue: $1,938.34 (+$497.78 from February)
Total Profit: $1,215.18 (+$3,440.20 from February)
Things are going in the right direction. I made a decent profit of $1,215.18, but I still need to cut down on my expenses. For the time being I’ve stopped providing transcripts of my interviews and I’ve gotten a total of ZERO complaints so far. I was providing transcripts for two reasons:
1. For my audience members who preferred text to audio or video.
2. It’s a lot of great content to give the search engine gods so that I can bring in some traffic from the search engines.
I spent a little over $200 on this in March, and until my income gets a bit higher I’m going to discontinue transcripts. It just seems to be more of a luxury expense right now than a necessity.
I’m getting out of the Adsense niche website business
For those of you who have been following me for a while you know that I used to make quite a bit of money developing and flipping Adsense niche websites. You’ll also know that after the Exact Match Domain Google update in September 2012 I stopped making them because I lost 95% of my revenue overnight. Of course, I moved on but it was definitely a difficult thing to deal with, and I’m just now starting to bounce back with an alternative income source with affiliate income from doing interviews. I still have a small amount of websites leftover that bring in anywhere between $100-$200 per month, but now I’m in the process of selling them off. People continue to ask me questions about my website creation method, but I am addmitedly NOT AN EXPERT anymore. Of course, for those who want to continue building up Adsense niche websites you’re welcome to buy one of my sites that is still getting traffic and making money HERE.
Some AWESOME products in the near future
I’m currently working on two products.
The first product is my interview course. The name of the course will be Interview Income Secrets, and in it I plan on revealing my whole process of doing Skype interviews from preparation, to getting guests, to recording the interviews, to editing…and so on. I’ll also teach my EXACT METHOD of monetizing the interviews so that you can get paid for your hard work. This WON’T BE a push-button system that you can just start making tons of money overnight with, but it will be a full business plan that you can apply to ANY NICHE. I’m really excited about launching it, but I want to make sure it has TONS OF VALUE before I release it. Don’t expect it to be some cheap $7 product: the price will be high, but it will be WORTH EVERY PENNY.
The second product is a Kindle book creation course that I’m working on with Thomas Strock from MobileAppTycoon.com . You may remember him from the interview we did WAY BACK. In February he made almost $2,000 from publishing books on Kindle and then in March he approached the $3,000 mark. This news caught my interest, so we have teamed up to create a course where he teaches his method and I apply it. You’ll be able to watch all this in carefully laid out videos where we reveal ALL our results. I’m super excited about it and I can’t wait to release it in the coming months.
So that’s it for March. I want to thank you all for watching/listening/reading and I appreciate each and every one of you. I’ve added a new contact button to make it easier to get in touch with me. There’s still the chat box on the bottom of the site, but with the new contact button you can request that I call you back on your phone or on Skype. I love hearing from you all so don’t hesitate to reach out and contact me.
Nicely done Mike! And I totally sympathize with the niche website decision. I had an article on the site that went from #1 to #2 on Google and I’ve lost half of my click volume from that move alone! That’s no way to live!
Mike,
Yeah, I just can’t build a business based on Google’s whims. I think I’m heading in a much smarter direction.
seems like it was good month. don’t stop adding transcripts – I LOVE THEM when they are available 😉 and from I can remember I complained about it some time ago 😉
best regards!
Siegfried,
Haha, now I remember you did ask when it was going to be up or something like that 🙂
I’m just taking a break from adding them for the time being. They’ll be back in the future.
hey mike well done for cutting costs, i see what you mean by selling your niche sites ad-sense is tough however have you read Alex Becker content hes am great seo guru and ive learned a lot about him regarding his emd updates from Google ad all the other stuff he produces. he demystifies the emd update and shows that it really isn’t much in existence and i also can contest to that because most of my simple 1 page ad-sense sites are still sitting on top place. not to mention several of his own stuff without even any content on them…..have you interviewed Alex at all he would be a great interview
Hi Mike.
I wish you all the best in your journey, that was a real bummer about the niche sites, I lost some to, but am carrying on with mine as I dont know much else.
What your earning at the moment isn’t a lot for the amount of work you must put into doing all this, so I really hope it keeps picking up.
if you haven’t done it already, I plus a few others would really like to see what products you use still that you have promoted, or what your top 10 would be.
Some thing along those lines would make a great show, and put a few affiliate links back up on the front page.
Eddy
Mike, good to see a “pop” in profit this month. I like the fact you cut expenses significantly. That’s good for business. Always try to get in the black each month.
Hi Mike- How r you?
I totally understand your decision to move away from the adsense stuff. You are getting stronger every month, keep it up. I don’t recommend affiliates to throw away the niche adsense model, just don’t make it the core business… It can continue on the side. Enjoy all the interviews done by you… Someone suggested to interview becker & I think it would be a great choice. This guy really makes it happen in the post-penguin/panda seo world.
Mike,
Thanks always for your transparency and your fine example in meticulously keeping record. It’s exciting to see your progress.
Mike I just started periodically following you a couple months ago. Love that you interview the wso’s I had forgotten all about their existence. I have been on the warriorforum for ever and I think I remember my first one bought (didn’t buy many and its been years) I think it was angelas links years ago lol.
Anyways that is brutal 95% of your adsense income. I would love to see a couple of the sites that this happened on. I actually might consider the credit card and construction site. Need to think about it. Maybe the site info in an email would help on that. -I never had that tough luck except a couple smaller sites luckily- I don’t think you should give up on them but again I don’t really know your method.
Favorite episode has got to be one of the arbitrage type ones. I think it was the kid that did the dating ads -as one of his campaigns- Didn’t get a chance to buy it.
Fyi found you on your podcast on stitcher. I know thats important to know.
Hi Rookie,
Yeah, it was tough losing most of my Adsense revenue, but I’ve continued on.
Send me an email if you’d like to see some sites.
Mike
Nice work glad to see you are back on track!
Thanks, Traci…I’m doing my best 🙂