Expenses
ManageWP: $115
Pingler: $5
Social Adr: $94
Ezarticle link subscription: $30
Build My Rank:$70
Free Jing and ScreenCast Subscription for
easily explaining things to workers : $10
Whoosh (CLOSED) rank tracking subscription: $50
EZarticle spin credits: $360
Copyscape: $25
AMR/UAW outsourcing: $240
Odesk writing and outsourcing: $1,512
Domains and hosting: $788
website creation outsourcing: $60
Header: $468
Total expenses: $3,827
Revenue
WPGoldmine commission: $9
Website sale: $500
Text link ads: $75
Adsense: $1800
Total Revenue: $2,384
Total Profit: $-1,443
I know I know…my expenses are really high. The reason why is that this last month I experimented with adding 4 more articles and a header to each website I have had made. This means an extra cost of about $20 per website. That’s a 100% increase in creation cost per website. Ouch! It’s too early to tell if it will be lucrative or not because these sites are only a month old. Time will tell.
I think to cut down on expenses I will go back to making one-page sites with no headers. If they rank then I will have a header added to them and add content. If not then I won’t waste the extra money. I think this will be better in the long run because I will be able to produce double the amount of sites for the same cost. Therefore I’ll have double the opportunity of discovering niche sites. I’ll also be able to be a bit looser with my niche site keyword selection process.
The good news is that I sold my first website for $500! This was a private sale to a person who had previously bought a link on the site. I offered to sell it to them, and after some deliberation they took it.
I also had my best Adsense month ever. I took in $1800 in Adsense revenue. That’s $560 more than the previous month. Not too shabby. But now I must focus on making more sites.
How much will each site cost? They will cost about $20 to $22 each. That includes keyword research, domain name, hosting, one article, domain setup, and link building. My next post will break-down my website creation cost.
Mike, despite the expenses I think you are firmly heading in the right direction, and if that adsense income continues to increase at that rate you’ll be well into profit before long
Mark,
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I owe a lot of my success to you and the WP Goldmine Forum.
well done mike
good stuff on the adsense
expenses are very high but the main thing is you are earning and can keep pushing forward
keep up the great work mike
paul 🙂
Thanks, Paul. I’m hoping that I can cut down on the earnings and make a profit in April.
Mike,
Totally agree on the idea of building one page sites until you see which one’s “stick”. Since the 80/20 rule applies strongly when it comes to new sites (8 out of 10 won’t make the anticipated money), it definitely makes more sense to minimize your expenditures until you determine which sites have legs. 🙂
-Mike
Mike,
Ok, it’s nice to hear someone agree with me 🙂 I’m gonna crank those sites out and see which ones stand out. I’ll be selling a bunch of them in the near future if anyone wants to buy some sites that are ranking and making money.
Hi Mike
Other than that I say ouch.. that much of a loss added to the February loss is scary.
I would definitely say look at your expenses. Maybe stop buying new domains and start building out what you have for a month.
Good luck whatever you do
Paul
Paul,
Thanks for the advice on xheader…I’ll check it out.
I’ve started cutting down on my expenses already so I’m looking forward on a profit month sooner or later.
Thanks for dropping by!
Mike,
It is truly inspiring seeing someone putting in the hard work (and money) and having it pay off. Though March was not a profit from the bottom line perspective, you’re building income. Based on AdsenseFlippers getting 20x earnings, you potentially could get $36000 for your whole portfolio. Not too shabby. But even better is building that up to $2K, $3K, and beyond per month.
Congrats!
Thanks, Jason. I just looked at my sites and it seems that 50 out of 200 are making most of my revenue. I’m just gonna keep building them!
Hi Mike,
Just stumbled across your blog from AdsenseFlippers twitter. Anyways, looking at your March Vs February expense reports. It looks like you spent a quite a bit more on content creation. I assume that’s what you bought from odesk anyways. I just want to point out iwriter.com or textbroker.com might give you a bit more control over those costs.
Anyways, it looks to me like you got a good model underway. Keep up the good work.
Aaron,
Thanks for stopping by. Yes, I spent quite a bit on content creation, but that is also from outsourcing website creation and keyword research. I should probably break that expense down a little more so that you guys can see what I’m spending.
I’m paying about $4.50 per 800-900 word article for the main keyword articles. I was also paying about $2.25 for 400-500 word articles for the supplementary keyword posts. I do all my content outsourcing with oDesk as I find it’s really easy to keep everything organized with them.
I’ve never used iwriter or textbroker. How much does it cost for an 800-word article there?
Hey Mike –
As long as you know you are spending too much and you adjust you should be fine. Maybe take a few months and spend a little less and let your earnings catch back up and you should be golden. However keep in mind you are investing into your business so it should help you in the long run once those sites get some traction. I’ve had this same problem as well when I built too many sites at once to start. Not a horrible problem to have once everything starts to generate revenue.
James,
Yes, I know I was spending too much. I’ve drastically reduced my price per new website down to $29 per site. Not bad.
I could spend a few months spending less, but I don’t want to fire my employees. I’m simply going to continue on at the same pace and not increase. Hopefully my income should catch up with my expenses fairly quickly.