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 certain 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.

Here’s my results for January, 2020

5,885 page views  (+1,321 from December)

11,893 Youtube channel views (+1,264 from December)

814 Youtube hours watched (+36 from December)

Email subscribers: 8,558 (-296 subscribers from December)

Expenses

Webinar commissions: $2,891 – Brett’s share of a private webinar we did

Recurring Commissions: $2,506 – Brett’s share of recurring commissions

Convert Kit: $149 – This is the current autoresponder that I’m using

Brite Verify: $141.32 – I used this service to clean up a webinar list

Annual Business Filing report: $138.50 – I have to file this every year to stay compliant

Aweber: $130 – This is my backup autoresponder

VPN: $99.95 – I use this to access accounts in the US

Zapier: $75 – An amazing tool for automating your business

TinyPNG: $54.26 – I used this service to reduce the image files on my website

ZenDesk: $50 – Brett and I use this for our help desk for our launches

Internet: $50 – This is what I pay for my fiber Internet in Turkey

Gusto: $45 – This is the company I use for my SCORP payroll

SSL Certificate: $39.99 – I renewed an SSL certificate for a website

Resell Rights Weekly: $19.95 – Reoccurring membership fee for the bonuses I add from my interviews and reviews

Audible: $15.77 – 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

Schedule Once: $5 – This is what I use to schedule my coaching calls

Amazon S3: $4.94 – I use this to host images, bonuses, and videos

Sendlane: $3.99 – I pay them this to hold my leads

Total expenses: $6,444.65 (+$2,446.29 spent compared to December)

Revenue

Meetvio: $1,895 from review and interview with Neil Napier

10XDrive: $801.54 from review and interview with Ankit Mehta

Coach Zippy: $745.50 from review and interview with Madhav Dutta

VidSnatcher: $628.33 from review and interview with Todd Gross

AMZNG: $387.29 from review and interview with Dan Ashendorf

Funnel Xpress: $364.28 from review and interview with Mark Bishop

Video Catalyst: $307.50 from review and interview with Mo Miah

7 Minute System: $234.99 from review and interview with Frankie Pellegrino

DFY Lead Pages: $193.01 from review and interview with Ankur Shukla

Recurring Profit Machine: $155.52 from review and interview with Glynn Kosky

DFY Suite: $118.88 from review and interview with Joshua Zamora

Lead App: $117.50 from review and interview with Chad Nicely

Clipman AI: $116.96 from review and interview with Brad Stephens

Mapify 360: $99.53 from review and interview with Adrian Isfan

Tv Boss Fire: $84.98 from review and interview with Craig Crawford

Instant Commission Site: $76.22 from review and interview with Ankur Shukla

Viddyoze 3.0: $70.30 from review and interview with Joey Xoto

Fusion by Dropmock: $60.80 from review and interview with Jamie Ohler

Equinox: $46.28 from review and interview with Jono Armstrong

Storymate: $37.60 from review and interview with Luke Maguire

Easy VSL 2.0: $35 from review and interview with Mark Thompson

Ascend Pages (CLOSED): $33 from review and interview with Andrew Darius

VideoSeeder Pro: $31.78 from review and interview with Cyril Gupta

Convertri 2017: $29.10 from review and interview with Andy Fletcher

Recastly (CLOSED): $29.10 from review and interview with Sam Bakker

eCover Authority: $23.50 from review and interview with Chad Eljisir

Madsense Revamped: $23.50 from review and interview with Abdullah Ashraf

AdReel: $22.20 from review and interview with Ryan Phillips

Stream Livve: $21.50 from review and interview with Jonathan Oshevire

Fresh Member: $18.50 from review and interview with Mark Thompson

eCom Pages: $16.45 from review and interview with Mo Aguel

Vidgeos: $13.50 from review and interview with Josh Ratta

Press Play 2.0: $13.50 from review and interview with Mark Thompson

CPA Pirate: $13.28 from review and interview with Pallab Ghosal

Arvo: $13.25 from review and interview with Mark Bishop

Tube Sync: $12.95 from review and interview with Abhi Dwivedi

MobiFirst: $11.65 from review and interview with Scotty Carter

Proximity: $11.30 from review and interview with Anthony Mancuso

Jvzoo Academy: $11.10 from review and interview with Sam Bakker

HydraVid (CLOSED): $9.98 from review and interview with Walt Bayliss

Social Kickstart: $8.50 from review and interview with Mark Thompson

Software Commission Magic: $7.40 from review and interview with Mario Brown

Creative Post: $7 from review and interview with Guillermo Mata

Shopabot: $5.99 from review and interview with Cindy Donovan

Total revenue from interviews and reviews: $6,965.04 (+$4,043.92 from December)

Private webinar: $5,782 – Sales from a webinar Brett and I did before paying him

Recurring income with Brett: $5,012 – This is my recurring commissions before paying Brett half

Google Adsense: $119.36 – Earnings from Youtube

Resell Rights Weekly: $56.58 – This is a website that has a ton of products that you can use as your own

Social Robot JV commission: $23.01 – This my cut from a launch I did with Joshua Zamora in early 2015

Total from OTHER streams of income: $10,992.95 (+$3,612.35 from December) 

Total Revenue:  $17,957.99 (+$7,656.27 from December)

Here are the final stats for 2019:

Total Revenue: $356,367.54

Total Expenses: $102,140.25

Total Profit (before taxes):

$254,227.29

So it looks like I made about $138,000 LESS in 2019 than I made in 2018. I 100% expected this as I definitely worked a lot less in 2019 with my daughter in my life. For me it was a year of putting family in front of work…and I have zero regrets.

That being said, I saw a decrease in monthly income that was expected. I also essentially was on vacation for August and December.

What happened in 2019?

This year FLEW by. I only had time to do a couple proper income reports, which is something that I regret as I really do enjoy documenting my journey, and it’s one of the things that my subscribers have always praised me for.

Let’s take a look at what happened in 2019 month by month.

January: This was a preparation month for what would be our biggest launch of the year, Vidyz. We also had a new group of coaching students which helped bring in some extra income for the month. This month started out fairly strong with a total profit of $24,397.

February: This was my most profitably month of the year by far. We launched Vidyz and had a coaching backend webinar that both did quite well. After paying out prizes, I was able to make around $45,000 from the Vidyz launch, which was our biggest launch of the year. We did about $214,000 in sales in a 5-day launch. I ended up with a total profit of $65,675.

March: This was a strong affiliate promo month with $17,000 in commissions. If I could keep that I’d but be very happy with those results. Plus on top of that we went on a trip to Venice for a five days…which was absolutely amazing. We stayed at a little hotel called San Marco Palace right near Piazza San Marco (the tourist center) for about $130 per night. We had our own little suite which included a crib for our baby and breakfast.

Of course while we were in Venice we at amazing Italian food. We had been to Italy before so were had experienced a lot of restaurants, but Venice was a bit more expensive than Rome or Portofino.

I ended up with a total profit of $22,885.

April: This was a bit of a slow month, and the first time I made less than $20,000 since January, 2016. I had some issues with my autoresponder which caused a lot of my emails to go to the spam box. This drastically affected my income and goes to show you just how important an email list really is when it comes to running a business. I ended up with a profit of $15,291.

May: This month we launched a product called CTA Bots. Unfortunately it was our worst product launch to date with under $23,000 in sales in three days. This was a big failure for us and was very discouraging.

At the end of the month we took a trip to Olimpos, Turkey to see some friends. I was able to run my business as usual and even do some webinars while being there. One of the amazing things about doing affiliate marketing is that you can run your business from anywhere with decent Internet.

I ended up with a profit of $21,130.

June: I spent most of my time working on sales material for a done for you system that we released this month. The webinar actually did quite well to our own email lists, but unfortunately in the coming months it didn’t perform well with affiliates. Affiliate marketing income was decent, but high expenses made my resulting profit not as great as I would have expected.

I made a profit of $15,420.

July: This was actually a really good month, however I had high expenses with a $4,000 renewal payment for a dedicated server. We launched the Textly software where we gave away 100% of the profits to affiliates. We ended up doing $47,000 in sales, and then making most of our money on our backend webinar.

We took a trip to a place called Bozcaada on the western coast of Turkey. It was nice to get away for a bit.

I made a total profit of $22,369.

August: I pretty much took this month off. We rented a 3-bedroom beach house in Bodrum, Turkey so that my dad could come visit along with my wife’s parents and sisters. It was a beautiful luxury house with an amazing view. And yes, it was expensive. However it was worth it as we wanted a nice place to celebrate my daughter’s first birthday.

I was able to fit in a little bit of work, but I gave myself permission to enjoy family time. My dad came over from the States and stayed with us for a couple of weeks, which was nice as I don’t get to see him very often.

Even on vacation I was able to make a profit of $9,436.

September: It was a bit slow getting started this month after coming off of a month long vacation, but I did ok. We launched a software called InstaViral, but it was our second worst launch ever (after CTA Bots in May) with only $36,500 in sales. It was a bit frustrating having two of our worst launches ever back-to-back.

I was also having email deliverability issues again so that made it even more difficult to do affiliate promotions.

I ended up with a profit of $13,537.

October: It was a bit of a strange month with less affiliate promos than I’m used to. It might be because we went on a 5-day trip to Colmar, France at the beginning of the month.  I was able to get my work done in advance so that I could relax on this mini-vacation.

Colmar is a small town near the border of Germany with all kinds of small villages around it. We got to eat some interesting food, and even rented a car for a day-trip to Germany.

I was able make a profit of $15,284.

November: We launched a software called Webbymate this month. It was a new version of an older product, Autonars, that we originally launched in June, 2017. The launch wasn’t a blockbuster, but it was decent for a product that didn’t require a lot of new sales material. We ended up doing almost $50k in sales.

On top of that, I had some extra income through our backend webinar and another webinar.

The end of the month was a bit hectic as we flew back to the States for Thanksgiving and to stay until the end to the year in Maine with my family.

I ended up making a total profit of $22,495.

December: This is typically a slow month for me as launches slow down toward the middle of the month. Therefore I decided that I’d essentially take the whole month off and spend time with my family in Maine.

I was able to do a few interviews and promote a few products, but I had so much going on with family that I really didn’t have much time.

What WERE my goals for 2019?

Business/monetary goals

1. Have a total net worth of $1,000,000 NOT ACHIEVED

I’m writing this from April, 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. My stock portfolio took a hit during this. time and unfortunately I’m no longer a millionaire.

2. Have an investment portfolio over $500,000 NOT ACHIEVED

I’m currently sitting right around the $400,000 mark. The Coronavirus has been making the market fluctuate up and down lately, so we’ll see what happens in the coming months.

3. Launch at least 5 products ACHIEVED

In 2019 we launched exactly 5 products. They weren’t all big successes, but we had a big one with Vidyz being our 3rd most successful launch ever at $214,000 in sales.

4. Build my email list to 15,000 active subscribers NOT ACHIEVED

I actually ended up around 8,800 subscribers because I cleaned out people who weren’t opening my emails.

5. Read or listen to 2 business books per month NOT ACHIEVED

I have this goal every year, and I’m yet to achieve it.

What are my goals for 2020?

It’s a bit hard to write this now as April is almost over as I’m writing this.

I think I just have one major goal.

I’m currently in the process of rethinking what “The Mike From Maine Show” actually is. I’m going to be changing the way I promote products this year so we’ll see what happens there.

As for goals…I’m not going to set any this year. Let’s see how that works out 🙂