33,595 page views (-5,215 from March)
19,515 Youtube channel views (+1,569 from March)
150,915 minutes watched (+25,747 from March)
Aweber subscribers: 7,078 (+461 subscribers from March)
GetResponse subscribers: 3,295 (-127 subscribers from March)
Total email list subscribers: 10,373
Expenses
Facebook ads: $505.25
Storm on Demand Liquid Web Hosting: $123.01
Aweber: $69 – This is my list building software that allows me to email everyone when there’s a new interview
RaffleCopter: $59.95
GetResponse: $45 – This is the autoresponder I use for my buyer’s list and solo ads
Retarget Engine: $37 – A plugin that let’s me retarget any affiliate link on Facebook
Resell Rights Weekly: $20.95 – Reoccurring membership fee for the bonuses I add from my interviews and reviews
JVZoo Fees: $12.95
Feedback Plugin: $12 – A plugin for taking surveys
PLR Assassin – $11.16 – Reoccurring membership fee for the bonuses I add from my interviews and reviews
Skype: $10 for premium
JVFocus Membership: $10
oDesk: $3.17
Amazon reviews: $3
Perfect Audience: $2.31
eBay: $1.70
Total expenses: $926.45 (+$412.92 compared to March)
Revenue
Rapid Mailer: $921.50 from review and interview with Sean Donahoe
CPA Quick Strike (CLOSED): $911.90 from review and interview with Damon Korte
Qilio: $587 from review and interview with Jay Venka
Social Lead Wizard (CLOSED): $585.62 from review and interview with Karthik Ramani
Tee Profit Punch (CLOSED): $565.68 from review and interview with Travis Petelle
FB Ad Class 1.0 (CLOSED): $565.54 from review and interview with Ivana Bosnjak
Tee Cash Boot Camp: $542.80 from review and interview with Andy Berard
Tee Cash Kit (CLOSED): $442.60 from review and interview with Nishant Bhardwaj
10 Days to Kindle Riches: $430.38 from review and interview with Mike Balmaceda
Simple List Building Formula (CLOSED): $411.30 from review and interview with Randy Chinn
Social Viral Videos (CLOSED): $410.29 from review and interview with Neil Napier
The Super List (CLOSED): $381.38 from review and preview
The Mother Of All Email Profits (CLOSED): $352.59 from review and interview with Tom Yevsikov
Passive List Building Blitz (CLOSED): $333.48 from review and interview with Fergal Downes
FB Fever Reloaded: $310.49 from review and interview with A.J. Montoya
WP Combo: $298.91 from review and Vas Blagodarskiy
Video Auto Profit: $259.30 from review and interview with Josh Ratta
List Building For 2014 (CLOSED): $250 from review and interview with Kevin Fahey
Youtube Hangout Profits (CLOSED): $248.99 from review and interview with James Knight
TweetPressr (CLOSED): $245.30 from review and interview with Leah Butler-Smith
Video Ranking Machine: $227.05 from review and interview with Ray Lane
Seamless SEO (CLOSED): $205.97 from review and interview with Joshua Zamora
Lasting Lead System (CLOSED): $161.96 from review and interview with Sam Bakker
Five Minute Sales Letters (CLOSED): $157.27 from review and interview with Matt Cook
Mobi Leads 911: $154.11 from review and interview with Joe Martin
Covert Context: $121.60 from review and interview with Cindy Battye
Arbitrage Underdog: $91 from interview with Tom E and review
Local Reputation Hero: $84 from review and interview with Matheww Ianotti
Operation Solo: $71.88 from interview with Anthony Tilley
News Feed Fire (CLOSED): $67.30 from review and interview with Chris Blair
IMNow Webinar (CLOSED): $62 from review and interview with Keith Lynch
Video Traffic System (CLOSED): $56.94 from review and interview with Brad Scott
Safelist Pirate (CLOSED): $51.19 from review and interview with Stefan van der Vlag
Weird Niche PLR: $50.08 from review and interview with Mark Bishop
Fiverr Untapped: $48.40 from review and interview with John Shea
Funnel Kit: $44.10 from interview with Emka
Targeted Traffic Empire (CLOSED): $40.60 from review and interview with Jeff Farley
FB List Simplified (CLOSED): $37.22 from review and interview with Gaurab Borah
Kindle Ritual 2014: $34.20 from review and interview with Brian G. Johnson
Video Curation Pro: $31.02 from interview with Peter Drew
FB Cash Ninja (CLOSED): $30.50 from review and interview with Anthony La Rocca and Bill Hugall
Steal My Business: $26.35 from review and interview with Ankur Shukla
The Paid Expert: $23.50 from my review
Easy Funnel Maker (CLOSED): $23.43 from interview with Barry Rodgers
Page One Profits: $21.27 from Interview with Rachel Rofe
Solo Ad Business Blueprint (CLOSED): $21.14 from interview with Kate Rosenberg
Simple Novice Profits (CLOSED): $19.16 from interview with Vinny Boccalino
Viral Optins (CLOSED): $18.63 from interview with Wilco de Kreij
Project X Tube (CLOSED): $17.92 from interview with Cliff Carrigan
The Money Tree (CLOSED): $17.33 from interview with Russ Ruffino
Product Creation Master Class: $14.20 from interview with Trevor Dumbleton
MemberSonic Theme: $13.50 from interview with Andrew Hunter
Kindle Marketing Magic: $12.61 from review and interview with Mike Balmaceda
Savage Siphon (CLOSED): $8.50 from interview with Brian Anderson
Launch Jacking Boss (CLOSED): $8.27 from interview with Michelle Stevens
Tube Takeover: $7.48 from interview with Joshua Zamora
Coupon Book Method (CLOSED): $5.22 from interview with Denis Kampl
Total revenue from interviews: $11,141.95 (-$256.81 from March)
Fiverr Secrets: $221– My product showing how I make about $500/month in extra income on Fiverr
Quick and Easy Cash Blueprint (CLOSED): $38 – My product showing the results I had using Vinny’s Simple Novice Profits.
Kindle earnings: $42.94
Whoosh Traffic (CLOSED): $17.90 – A keyword tracker for monitoring multiple keyword rankings
Long Tail Pro: $7.66 from interview with Spencer Haws
PLR Assassin: $26.20 – This is a website that has a ton of products that you can use as your own
Total from OTHER streams of income: $353.70 (-$168.32 from March)
Total Revenue: $11,495.65 (-$425.16 from March)
Total Profit: $10,569.20 (+$838.05 from March)
Expenses a bit out of control:
After my excellent month in March, I got a bit freaked out. Yeah, it’s weird, but whenever things start going right for my business I always prepare myself for the worst. Why? It’s because I’ve had a couple bad experiences in my past.
1. In 2007 I woke up one morning to receive an email that informed me that I would be losing an advertising account that was meant to pay me $20,000 in profits that month. Instead of making $20,000 I lost the $10,000 I had invested in it instead, along with the monthly income that would come with it.
2. On September 28th, 2012 I lost almost 95% of the income coming from over 750 Adsense niche sites. I lost between $40,000-$60,000 in potential income overnight.
Now I should be completely clear. In the first case I was buying cheap clicks from Yahoo ads and sending it to parked website advertising pages that paid higher for the clicks (this is called arbitrage). For every $.01 that I paid in traffic I’d make $.02 back…thus $.01 in profit. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but when you scale the crap out of it then you’re dealing with a good amount of income. But, it was a bit “black hat” and, as you can see, didn’t last forever.
In the second example with my 750 Adsense niche sites, I can honestly say that they didn’t provide the best value. I was simply outsourcing cheap articles and slapping the sites together as quickly as possible. The goal was to have a “factory” of workers creating the sites so that I could just sit back and watch them work their magic. Yes, it worked well for a while, but eventually I was building a business based on the whims of a heartless giant (Google) and in the end I lost. The funny thing is that I think I always knew it would happen…and because of that I prepared for the worst.
A Burning Desire to Build on my Success
Now that I’ve been having consistent success with my show, my plan now it to keep the momentum going by doing TWO things:
1. I’m putting together an affordable product to teach the fundamentals of what I’ve learned while bringing my business from zero to $10,000/month. I know that I have a ton of value to share with those getting started that could help them get through the BS that surrounds the niche of Internet marketing. I’m hoping that my transparency, consistency, and solid business practices can provide some clarity in a world of crazy income claims.
In my product I’ll cover the main aspects of my business with optional training in how to do reviews and interviews. I’ll also have a high-end product that will train anyone to go from zero to a successful product launcher/affiliate marketer. My goal is to make that my PILLAR product that will help others have the same success that I have had without making the mistakes I’ve made along the way.
2. I’m jumping back into solo ads. I’ll be using them as a way to test out my product AND as a way to build my email list. My plan is to spend $5,000-$10,000 on solo ads and add between 10,000-15,000 new subscribers to my email subscribers list. This will be an exciting journey that I’ll be sharing with you all.
That’s it for this month. I’m determined not to rest on my laurels and bring my business to the next level by helping more and more people achieve the success that I’ve been able to a attain. I hope you’re as excited as I am 🙂
Here are some pictures from April:
Awesome month Mike. Looks like it’s really becoming stable now 🙂 I pulled in just under $7.5k myself last month, but income isn’t quite stable yet. It will get there soon.
Thanks, Josh. $7.5K in a month is fantastic. Is your method repeatable?
With a lot of effort it is repeatable. I’m looking to change things up a bit, because it’s hard to scale it/outsource it. I’m likely going to stick back with SEO. Doing that will take a little more time, but I’m a lot better at it then I was in 2012 🙂
Great going Mike. I’ve been following you for sometime now. Frankly, I’m quite impressed with the way you deal with the whole stuff. Its quite refreshing. I’m sure I’ll keep visiting your site to make few purchases and learn along. I aspire to make a career online……..I’ll get there hopefully!
I hope you come up with your product pretty soon so that people like me can take advantage of it and have a clear road map to scale upward. Good Luck pal!
Ajay,
I’m planning on releasing my product as soon as I can. I don’t want to rush it, but I also don’t want to be a perfectionist. I’ll try to have it out within a month.
That’s great Mike. Will stayed tuned for the release. I would be happy if you could provide a clear cut road map to online success, focusing more on the traffic generation part and the complete sales funnel. Good Luck bro.
havent checked your stuff for a while.
Sort of giving it a miss for a while, though I do like to whats happening.
last time I checked your income reports you were barely making $1500-$2000 a month.
So glad to see your hardwork is paying off.
Eddy
Eddy,
I’m happy to have surprised you 🙂
Mike,
Great month! Very inspiring…..Thank You for the interview on my blog this past month it should be going up soon.
I think if you scale again going forward you will learn from your past and this time it will stick—-NO DOUBT!
Massman in Boston
Scott,
Let me know when you publish the interview so I can share it around.
Here is a link to the interview Mike, Thanks Again! Massman in Beantown
http://nicheaddictions.com/interview-mike-maine/
Liked, shared, tweeted 😉
Hey bro! Love the journey thus far. Keep these reports coming!
Stefan,
Thanks, buddy. The journey is just beginning…
Hi Mike, Excellent work again.
Are you going to spend 5 to 10K on solo ads in one month or spread out over some months?
Joseph,
My plan is to finish up my product and then test it with solo ads. I’ll probably spend $5 to 10K on them in June testing out different price points and funnel positioning. If done right, I should have a finely tuned product to release to the public.
Mike From Maine University?
Shhhhh 😉
Thanks for sharing your journey with your subscribers, it very refreshing to see the real truth about income/expence. I had a similar situation to your early enterprises with google/adsense etc but luckily I still had a full time income to rely on. after that experience I more or less gave up chasing the “dream” and concentrated on SEO and Internet marketing management for a couple of clients which gives me some stability. However reading your article above has inspired me to “give it another go” and complete a product I started to develop a couple of years ago but left on the back burner. So thanks for “waking me up”.
Geoff,
It was a smart move to focus on whatever gives you stability. It’s important to know that you’ll have enough to pay your bills every month, but once you get past that point it’s important to use your capital to test other things as well. It’s the only way to move forward.
Glad that you’ve woken up!
AWESOME results
Thanks, Andreas.
You are wonderful in creating an example of how providing reviews and interviews could bring a handsome Avenue if income without sounding too desperate.
I wonder what can you teach me in the forex niche?
Regards
David,
Unfortunately I don’t know anything about the Forex niche. However, you could do a similar model of interviewing and reviewing in ANY niche.
It is good to see that more and more bloggers are working their Income Reports month after month. It gives more transparency and is good for the business.
I am also one of these bloggers and I started my Reports from day 1!
In my opinion there is a lots of benefits to do them. I can tell the first 4 I like most:
– The report keeps you accountable how you spend your time and the things you managed to do for a month period;
– you see the revenues and expenditure during the month and compare profitability;
– To compare the measures – visits, unique traffic, popular content, top referral traffic, social shares, and other components, which will help you fix what needs to be fixed;
– and forth, people enjoy reading Income Reports.
I will be reading yours and compare with you on products I do promote too. Wish you a great next month.
Congrats Mike on the earnings! Do you still have and use adsense? Do you think it still a way to go for some to build adsense sights to make a stable income?
Thanks
Thanks, Teddy.
I no longer have any Adsense websites. Do I think it’s a stable income? Well, if you are creating quality websites, yes. If you are trying to game the system…no way.
Your income reports really motivate me to work harder and harder. I can’t wait to earn as much as you are. 🙂
Keep up the videos they are amazing. I do enjoy watching them
Thanks
Huw
Huw,
Glad they motivate you 🙂 I sometimes like to browse back through them and check out my own journey…it took time and a lot of hard work to get where I am today.
Keep up the hard work!
I most certainly will. 🙂