Posted by Max Davis as Earn Money, Internet Marketing, Make Money Online
It’s that time of the month again for the income report of this blog (and the spinoff business created by leveraging this blog)
If you read the April income report, you’ll notice that in one short month, I’ve transformed this blog from a modest $1500 per month profit to just under $5,000 per month. This was largely due to the new product I created on buying and selling websites, where I used the traffic of this website to launch that business.
My “goal” for May was to hit $6,000 in profit for the month between this blog and the new spinoff business. Did I reach the goal? You’ll have to read below to find out what happened (like the annoying commercial breaks in American Idol..)
The sales of the premium wordpress themes slowed down a bit this month, but the other income streams improved, so it was a pretty interesting month to say the least.
Here’s a look at May’s income. I’ve included the figures from April in the parentheses for easy comparison.
Private Advertising: $0 ($0)
Sponsored Reviews: $0 ($0)
Affiliate Sales: $1,643 ($871)
Theme Sales: $450 ($750)
Buy & Sell Websites Training Class: $10,058 ($3,400)
________________________
Total: $12,151 ($5,021)
I did put up a couple ads for the training class and had some sales from affiliates, so let’s look at my costs…
Advertising: $850 ($0)
Affiliate Payments: $680 ($25)
Contest Payments: $25 ($25)
________________________
Total: $1,555 ($50)
So, when all is said and done, I had profit of $10,596 this month which is $5,625 more than April’s income.
Well, it didn’t take nearly as long as I originally thought to turn this website into a $10,000 per month+ full blown business. The nice thing is, this “investment” we made in blogging experiment has COMPLETELY PAID FOR ITSELF in just 3 short months. Every drop of income this website makes from now on will now be pure profit, which is good.
Hopefully you’ve learned a lot from what I’ve been teaching on this blog and can use my real life case study to do the same thing in your niche market. This project was no different for me from any of the other websites we’ve bought and sold over the last 5 years. I just applied the same business model (buy site, fix it up & add revenue streams, make it ultra profitable, enjoy the profits and/or sell the site).
This is the exact same strategy I teach in the full blown course at Buying And Selling Websites if you want to learn more about how I do it. You can join the current class for $200 off by using coupon code 1D28
This will likely be my last income report that I publish on Blogging Experiment. You’ve already witnessed a huge transformation of this blog in just a couple months. In the future, I’ll keep ramping up these businesses, and I’m not sure I want to be publicly sharing how much the sites are making when I reach my next income goals for these projects…
Am I going to be selling BloggingExperiment? No, at least not for a while. If you’ve taken my training class, then you know it’s a dumb idea to sell a site you’ve only owned for a couple months. So, you’ll be stuck with me for quite a while yet, at least another 10-11 months.
During this time, I’m still going to be providing as much valuable content to you as possible. Ben also has another 15 or so posts to turn in, so you’ll be hearing more from him shortly as well.
I’m not sure what the focus of the blog will be since I’ve pretty much met all the goals for this project already, so it will likely just be a continuation of what I’ve been writing about for the most part.
So, have you learned anything from me whatsoever in the last couple months? I’d be interested to hear your feedback and takeaways in the comments below…
(image source: sehgal asad)
21 Responses
Tim
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:26 pm
1Max,
To me this is a bit misleading as the course that you have gained most of your income from, was not somehting that was born of this site, so to speak.
If I were to take this into account as I was learning how to turn blog ex into a 10K a month site I would think of it as this:
Tim
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:28 pm
2Whoops! didn’t mean to post yet…
anyway, it looks like you are saying that to take the blog ex up to a 10K a month site, you tweak it a bit, and oh ad sales for a great product that was already developed to the site, presto chango… done!
Know what I mean? The avereage Joe, couldn’t have done this… not like you did… so I’m not sure that I find a whole lot of value in it.
No doubt any number of people will be wowed by it. But I think they are misleading.
Respectfully,
Tim
Max
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:40 pm
3Tim - The product was not already developed, it was created AFTER we purchased BloggingExperiment. The training program was promoted solely using the traffic from this website, so I’ll have to disagree with you on this one. Without buying this site, the new spinoff business would still be floundering right now, if it even existed whatsoever.
As those who have taken my class can attest, taking a blog above $10,000 per month is virtually impossible (with the 4-5 rare exemptions such as chow, shoemoney, etc). The main purpose of blogs is to generate traffic to your other revenue generating businesses. Blogs are exceptionally difficult to monetize compared to regular websites, but they do have a purpose.
This is something ANYONE can do. I AM an “average Joe” by any definition of the term. I was a cable man 6 years ago for crying out loud
The difference between me & the naysayers is I put in the effort, learned the knowledge needed to make it happen and kept working at it.
Just watch what I do, learn from it, and put it into action rather than make up excuses why the “average Joe” can’t do it…
Scott Fillmer
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
4Looks good, thanks for posting the report
Arun
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:17 pm
5Where did the affiliate sales come from? Is that from that little hostgator icon on the top right? Or from the BANS, etc program(s) from the actual blog posts?
Nicely done.
Vlad from FreshRevision
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:19 pm
6Those are some impressive results Max. I totally i agree that leveraging your blog to promote your own product is a much faster way to build up income, rather then simply selling advertising and doing affiliate stuff. But i disagree that it’s virtually impossible. (much harder, but nowhere close to impossible)
Eric P. Martin
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:32 pm
7Congraduations Max!!!
With 31 days left, you have achieved your goal. You are a real testiment to making things happen from an idea. Out of thin air, you’ve manifested your thought into reality.
Eric
Terry Tay
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:58 pm
8Great results Max!
I think the results may not totally be a result of this blog, but it doesn’t really matter where the money comes from as long as it’s coming.
You say: I did put up a couple ads for the training class…
Which those ads sent the people to the Training Class website I assume right? Therefore, those sales didn’t come through this blog.
But, as long as the money is coming in…
Max
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:11 pm
9Arun - It was a mix of bans referrals, hostgator and the seo products I recommended.
Terry - The two ads I bought were a complete flop unfortunately. I’m getting about 15 visitors per day from these ads, on sites that “claimed” they get 10,000+ per day. They won’t be renewed, but I had to at least test them. Lesson learned I guess…
Mike Huang
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:30 am
10Congrats Max. I have most definitely seen a huge change in this blog since you started taking over. Not to mention, Ben has popped out with a few valuable posts himself
I know you have already met your goals, but I would love it if you would continue to teach us
-Mike
cuzzy
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:07 am
11can’t believe you did so well getting people to sign up for Host Gator, they are pretty much the worst experience I have ever had with web hosting.
good numbers max, keep rolling.
Melvin
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:53 am
12Nice income… I just wonder, are you not putting much emphasis on getting direct ad sales here on your blog?
Max
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:56 am
13cuzzy - I think hostgator is one of the best in the biz. That’s who I use for this site, and all of our other sites (including some that make well over $70k per month). Customer service is amazingly fast and the servers are always online. Maybe you just got on a bad server or something?
Melvin - I focus ZERO effort on direct ad sales. The real money is in creating your own products and services, not selling some $30 per month banner ad.
Luke
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:55 pm
14hi Max,
I must have to read a bit more about this stuff. I am attempting much the same over at my blog (granted visits are fairly low 5-10k). What I would like to know from a business perspective is how much advertising did you use (i.e. google) OR did you just target traffic from the blog to grow your training business.
From what I have read above it seems as though you have got traffic from the blog only… just wondering as I am stuck on this strategy. I have not seen similar results so I am guessing it’s the advertising route?
Also thanks for sharing. This post was helpful in clarify the business model side of things for me.
Luke
Terry Tay
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:49 pm
15@ 9 Max -
Well, whatever you’re doing it’s working
@ 13 Max -
The real money is in whatever the people put their effort into. I think you can make a lot of money selling ad space if you can bring in tons of visitors to your site and you can also make a lot of money doing what you’re doing.
I think Shoemoney made $40,000 in direct ad sales last month and John Chow made $16,000+ in direct ad sales last month.
I think it depends on the person and how much effort they put into something.
~Terry
Andy - Mr MultiVar
June 4th, 2008 at 5:09 am
16Congrats on the results Max.
I think the idea of selling a teaching class related to making money is great. Uber affiliate just started doing this too.
I have developed some products so I want to launch them soon. What holds me back is that people have low perceived value of software products. They take weeks/months to develop and then you sell them for naff all.
I am tempted towards affiliate marketing since it seems to involve less effort for greater reward. The Bans post got me back into this frame of mind.
As regards the blog, do you see it as a good tool to drive traffic to new project sites? That is what I plan for my blogs because it seems to be hard to get other sites to link to small commercial sites.
trexpenn
June 4th, 2008 at 5:37 am
17Congrats on the earning. I do hope you continue blogging her as I just discovered this site.
Jake Dylan
June 4th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
18Nice job on your income this month. What is the format for your class? Is it in writing like an ebook or is it like an actual class where we can communicate w/ each other?
Max
June 4th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
19Jake - The class is video, audio and written lessons. I also just added a mastermind group free for the members so we can all discuss dominating in the buying & selling websites niche market.
Jared Stenzel
June 8th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
20Nice work using your blogs status to launch another business. I’ve yet to read about a blogger willing to share this sort of information with you. Usually they won’t tell you about anything other than that they have “many blogs”.
It looks like your goals are always achieved early and by a large sum over your actual goal. Good luck on your next goal!
Neo
July 18th, 2008 at 3:47 am
21You mentioned that you didn’t know what the focus of the blog will be since you met all your goals but does it have to change? It seems to have a great focus and great info.
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