Traffic/Audience
13,934 (-6,291 from January) MikeFromMaine.com page views in February. Decreased since I didn’t send solo ad traffic to the site.
4,926 (+417) iTunes downloads
3,644 (-82) Youtube channel views
13,264 (-29497) minutes watched (Youtube channel was deleted so I had to upload everything again)
Aweber subscribers: 2,001 (-85)
Twitter followers: 3,015 (+309)
Facebook Fans: 407 (+16)
Expenses
Facebook Advertising: $191 (interview promotion and advertising)
Aweber: $29 – 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
Warrior Forum Ads: $40 – These are fees for advertising my websites for sale in the Warrior Forum
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
Free Jing and ScreenCast Subscription for
easily explaining things to workers : $10
Lead Pages: $197
Virtual Assistants: $168.58
Solo Ads: $2,880 You can find out more about solo ads HERE
Total expenses: $3,665.58 (-$3,351.58 compared to January)
Revenue
Project X Tube (CLOSED): $304.64 from interview with Cliff Carrigan
Business Turnkey Exponential Xpress (CLOSED): $186.20 from interview with Sarkis Yambestian
Curation Soft : $102.74 from interview with Peter Lenkefi
Long Tail Pro: $102.30 from interview with Spencer Haws
Video Profit Powerhouse (CLOSED): $90.72 from interview with Ben Sayer
WP4FB 2.0 (CLOSED): $76.20 from interview with Wilco de Kreij
58,000 Visitors (CLOSED) : $34.76 from interview with Ron Rule
Youtube External Link: $34.44 from interview with Jimmy Mancini
Launch Sniping on Crack: $23.22 from interview with Lenin Govea
Mass Buyer Recruitment Method (CLOSED): $17.22 from interview with Jake Corcoran and Gavin Abeyratne
Inner Circle Solo Ads (CLOSED): $16.85 from interview with Rob Stafford
CPA Cash Vault (CLOSED): $15 from Interview with Jonathan Smith
Operation Solo: $13.50 from interview with Anthony Tilley
PingFresh: $13.50 from interview with Sean Donahoe
Page One Profits: $13.06 from Interview with Rachel Rofe
Live CPA Blueprint (CLOSED): $12.38 from interview with Paul Nagel
The Four Hour System (CLOSED): $11.92 from interview with Anton Kraly
Retro Reppin: $10.41 from Interview with Mike Shreeve
Video Marketing Debunked: $10.20 from Interview with Mark Thompson
How To Create a Squidoo Lens in Under an Hour (CLOSED): $7.91 from interview with Trevor Dumbleton
Total from interviews: $1,062.73 (-$28.53 from January)
Revenue from Project X Tube Method (CLOSED): $10.96
FB Graph Search: $14.34 from advertising on Facebook
Text link ads: $30 – I make this income from an old website of mine.
SocialAdr: $37.80 – 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: $95.73
Website sales: $120
Total from OTHER streams of income: $377.83 (-$218.57 from January)
Total Revenue: $1,440.56 (-$247.10 from January)
Total Profit: -$2,225.02 (-$3,609.68) from January)
Oh no, losses!!! It’s ok, I actually expected February to be a bad month. Instead of just accepting mediocre earnings, I decided to really double-down on bad earnings and spend spend spend. I invested almost $3,000 in buying solo ad traffic to build up my email subscriber list. I ordered these clicks towards the end of February, so none of the benefits of building up my lists were felt in February.
Interview Income Still Going Strong
My spending was much higher this month, but the good thing is that I still brought in over $1,000 from doing interviews. I published 20 interviews, so I made an average of $50 per interview. Not bad. Of course, I’d like to be making a lot more than that, but these things happen over time. If I can be making $100 per interview by September 2013 then I’ll be super pleased with my results.
I’m going to keep this income update pretty short, as I was late getting it out since I was pretty busy in March (I got married!). Stay tuned to my March Income Update in about a week. And don’t worry…my income in March is much better 🙂
This is awesome Mike, thanks for posting. This is encouraging results for a goal to shoot for when I get my own interview show going!
John,
Yeah, the numbers look worse than the month actually was. I just shot myself in the foot with my spending 🙂
You got the interviews done and got married too. Way to go!!! I look forward to your interviews you are helping a lot of people and I know you are helping me.
Mike, I’m glad to hear that I’m helping you. Thanks for all the support and tweets.
Hey Mike- I think your spending will pay off down the road. I know a lot of people who don’t spend much after earning quite a bit. U r a true businessman who knows the importance of re-investing your profits back into the biz…
Also want to thank you for providing great content as always.
Hope you triple your income soon.
Cheers,
Chetan
Chetan,
I think that if you want to build a real business then you have to spend money. Of course you don’t want to do it irresponsibly, but the only way to really take your business to the next level is to invest in it.
Thanks for watching!
I agree that this will likely pay off in the medium or long run. I have some other thoughts on who you select to do interviews with, but that’s feedback best offered up in a different venue!
I’m watching this with fascination though for sure! Your pace is frenetic!
Thanks for the support, Mike. Who would you like to see on the show?
Mike, it appears you took the affiliate ads off your main page – did they not earn you any money at all? It astonishes me how much similar ads tend to earn so much for Pat!
FX-Trader,
I’m experimenting with that right now. I’ll be putting some type of ad up there in the near future.
sometimes you need to invest a bit to get more back later on 😉
best regards
Siegfried,
That’s definitely true, but at the same time I’m going to try and cut down on expenses in the coming months. I need to focus on bringing in more income and be a little more stingy.
Mike-
Do you have any way of tracking the ROI on the $2,880 expense of the solo ads?
SS,
As of now, not directly, unfortunately. The only way of measuring that would be to take into account that I was able to expand my list by about 2,000 subscribers. If I can achieve the goal of making $1 per subscriber per month then the ROI would be huge. Right now I’m making about $.50 per subscriber per month, so there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Do solo ads really work? You have spent a huge amount on them. You also say that your March earnings are good. Will wait for your next report 🙂
Pritam,
I said my March earnings were “good”, not “great” 🙂
Solo ads definitely “work” but I would also say that I’m not doing them right yet. If you want to learn from someone who is a solo ad master then check out my interview with Rob Stafford. He’s fantastic at monetizing his solo ads so that they cost him little to no money.
I really need to learn Internet marketing and also getting traffic to websites.
You’ve come to the right place. Feel free to ask questions in the comments and I’ll help the best I can. What specifically would you like to learn?
As a blogger, I am not a great success. My blog SpeckyGeek.com used to be 40K on Alexa. Now, its at 150K or even bad. I don’t really keep up with Google. Good to see that you have changed your business strategy with Google unleashing all those animals in the wild 🙂 Any ideas for LAZY MAN’S GUIDE to traffic would be of great use for me.
Pritam,
The first thing I would say is don’t be concerned with what your Alexa score is. You should be more concerned with what your website is earning on a consistent basis. Too often I hear people talking about Google page rank, bounce rates, and page views, but the only numbers you should be concerned with is how much money your site is making per month.
A lazy man’s guide to traffic? You either need to use your TIME to get traffic, or use MONEY. Which would you rather use?
I guess I will have to invest more time then. That’s the only thing that I can afford. Also need to update it frequently. My blog doesn’t earn much now; it’s as good as zero. At some point, it earned $200 a month. I do manage to make some money as a web designer/developer.
All seems to be going in the right direction Mike.
Bummer about the YT channel getting the boot. Any explanation given for this?
Paul,
Thanks for the words of support.
I didn’t get an explanation for my Youtube ban, but it’s not a problem since I’ve uploaded most of my videos into a new account.
Hi Mike,
Just a quick question.
About your expenses for host gator:
“Host Gator hosting: $40 – I host all my niche sites and this site on multiple hosting accounts”
Why do you have to host your niche sites in multiple hosting accounts?