Who is Mike From Maine UPDATE: I got knocked down, but I got up again…and again…and again

It’s 10:40am on Monday, April 29th, 2013.

I’m at home sprawled out on my couch in Istanbul, Turkey with a cup of coffee, a glass of apple juice, and various empty cold medicine wrappers scattered around me.

I’ve got the flu. Boo hoo.

But I’m happy because I make money doing what I love.

There I am 🙂

I wrote my original About me page back in July, 2012, but my “situation” has changed a lot since then.

For those of you who don’t know me I’ll give you a quick intro:

My name is Mike Thomas.

I’m originally from Bangor, Maine, but I’m currently living in Istanbul, Turkey.

Why Istanbul? Long story short, one of the advantages of working from a laptop is that you can travel. In 2008 I went to India for 3 months and then found myself in Turkey. Five years later I’m married to a beautiful Turkish woman and settled down.

I originally started MikeFromMaine.com as a travel blog to keep my family informed about where I was abroad. Unfortunately…or maybe fortunately…in July, 2011 ALL MY WEBSITES got hacked and I had to start over.

Without really thinking about it I started using Mike From Maine as a way to keep track of my spending while building Adsense niche sites. As most of you know, with all the shiny objects out there it can be really easy to spend thousands of dollars and have nothing to show for it.

I put up my first income report in October, 2011 showing both income AND expenses.

Over the course of 2012 I continued building Adsense niche sites and documenting my progress publicly as I built over 600 niche websites.

In June, 2012 I was able to report a profit of over $6,000 creating and flipping Adsense niche sites. It was then that I wrote my Outdated About Me page. It’s an interesting read, but keep in mind that it is indeed outdated.

Things were going well. At the end of June I was able to take a trip home to Maine to visit my family, and even go on a vacation with my girlfriend to the Turkish Mediterranean.

By July, 2012 I made a whopping $13,000 in pure profit. All the hard work I had put into building websites was really beginning to pay off. I was at the point where the over $20,000 I had invested in building websites was now fully paid for. Any income that I was making now was gravy.

I did the only logical thing and doubled down on my investment by building more Adsense niche websites.

In August,2012 I did a complete redesign of the website. I also invested heavily in site creation, and thus only turned a profit of a little over $1,000. That was fine with me because I had been doing so well and I was investing in my future.

And then it all came crashing down in late September, 2012.

I was continuing on as normal, buying hundreds of new domains and starting to build them out into websites. Then the Google Exact Match update hit.

I lost about 90% of my Adsense income overnight when most of my websites lost their rankings in Google.

That was a truly difficult blow to my business. I even hesitated about putting out an income report for September and thus waited until the end of October because I didn’t know how I was going to approach the topic with my readers.I was afraid that since I wasn’t making TONS of money anymore that my audience would abandon me or think of me as a failure. But I kept going.

I started The Mike From Maine Show, a daily interview program where I interview online entrepreneurs about how they make money online.

If I hadn’t started the show I don’t know what I would have done.

And actually my numbers in September weren’t that bad either. I made $2,603.40 in profit, but that would be the end of creating new Adsense sites.

In October, 2012 I was still able to make $2,480.55. Instead of selling websites that were making money, I repositioned myself and started selling fully-made websites that weren’t ranking. It helped to bring in some cash, but I knew that it wasn’t a long-term business plan so I didn’t put much energy into it.

The good thing is that my interview show had actually started producing an income fairly quickly. In October I brought in almost $800 in affiliate income from my guests’ products.

November, 2012 was a big shifting month for my business. Most of my revenue came in from affiliate income from doing interviews. My Adsense and website sales revenue was way down, but I was beginning to make it up with alternative revenue sources. Not all was lost.

In December, 2012 I spent over $1,300 on solo ads in an attempt to build up my audience for The Mike From Maine Show. I was able to increase my list from 800 to over 2,000 subscribers. I didn’t make any money that month, but I was able to increase my list by over 100%.

January, 2013 was the first month that I broke $1,000 in revenue directly from doing interviews. I could see that the increase in subscribers had a substantial affect on my income. Unfortunately the 1,200 subscribers were actually acquired at different times throughout January, but even so there was an almost $200 increase in monthly interview income.

In February, 2013 I spent almost $3,000 on solo ads to build my audience again for the Mike From Maine Show. I was able to add about 2,000 new subscribers to my list, so it cost a bit more this time per subscriber than in January. I wasn’t able to make a profit because of my increased spending, but I wasn’t bothered by it as I was investing in my business.

And then we come to March, 2013. My interview affiliate income increased by over $500 from February to almost $1,600. With the increased audience came increased income.

BUT MY STORY ISN’T JUST ABOUT INCOME…no, really, it isn’t 🙂

I’ve shared my financial details with you in hopes that you’ll believe me when I say that “making money online” isn’t easy. It takes time, hard work, luck…and money. No one is going to do the work for you or sell you an income. I can’t tell you how many people have emailed me saying something like “I have $200 to spend. Can I buy a website that makes $100/day?”. It doesn’t work like that. If it was easy EVERYONE would be doing it.

But that being said, it’s not impossible.

I know there ARE WAYS of making a decent living online. I’ve personally done it. I’ve talked to over 100 other Internet marketers who have done it as well. And I want to help you do it too.

What is the Mike From Maine Show?

Now that you’re read my story you’ve probably realized that there’s a connection between my interviews and my income. I don’t try and hide this. Most of my guests who come on my show have something to sell. They come on to tell us their story about how they became successful online and then we also talk about a product that they have for sale.

Let’s get something clear: this isn’t a webinar where I’m just helping my guest pitch their products. I do my best to ask my guests tough questions about their revenue or any claims that they have about the product that they’re selling. I also do my best not to bring “sleazy” Internet marketers on my show. I’ll be the first to admit that a few have slipped through the screening process, but it’s a rarity rather than the norm.

The point is that I do my best to bring you quality interviews with AMAZING online entrepreneurs who give out tons of free info and the OPTION of buying their products. It’s been a successful business model so far for my audience, me, and my guests.

And that’s the show in a nutshell. I hope you enjoy it and if you ever want to get in touch with me please feel free to contact me using the chat box below or by sending me an email at [email protected] .

I LOVE my audience and I’m super thankful to everyone for watching!

Please leave a comment below and introduce yourself…I’d love to know who is watching 🙂