[Dumb] Passive Income Report for April 2014

Welcome to my [Dumb] Passive Income Report! This blog is all about what I am doing to create several different passive income streams. This monthly income report details my results. I work very hard and dedicate many hours each week to working on my different online endeavors in an attempt to create passive income. So why do I consider it passive income then? Because I am not trading specified amounts of time for a predetermined amount of money like I do at my day job. Most of the income you will see in this report results from work I have done in the past.

Why am I sharing my income publicly? Hopefully to gain credibility with you (the readers) and to maintain a certain degree of accountability for myself. I could blog all day long about what I am doing to create passive income online, including some of my unique strategies. But why would anybody trust me and believe that what I am doing works if I don’t prove it by sharing my results? This is what I mean by gaining credibility and this is one of the main purposes for sharing my income. I also share my failures on the blog, which holds me accountable. Knowing that I will be publishing a monthly income report will keep me motivated to keep pushing forward and plugging away on the things I need to do to create future passive income.

Happenings in April

Niche Sites

The growth of my killer Adsense niche site continues to amaze me. My total Adsense earnings in April was over $1300, with about 96% of that coming from the one site! I somewhat recently wrote about my content strategy that led to these awesome Adsense earnings. During the month of April, I put my plan to add even more content into action. The niche happens to have differences for each of the 50 states in the U.S., so I’m having my writer produce 50 separate articles for each and every single state.

One thing started happening towards the end of April that has me even more excited than I am about the phenomenal success I’m having with Adsense. My latest Amazon niche site is starting to see daily sales!! This is awesome because it means that what I am doing is actually working. The site is starting to rank for some keywords, due in large part to the powerful PBN links I am buying from Lightning Rank. At only about 50 visitors per day, I am making a couple of Amazon affiliate sales almost every day now. I’m not getting rich from it yet, but it is so much fun to log in to my Amazon Affilliates account and look at the items that people are buying. I can’t wait to see how much money this site makes once I start to rank highly for my main keywords and once I start to bring in much more long tail traffic.

Keyword Research Packages

Sales have remained steady for my done-for-you Keyword Research Packages. They actually dropped off just a little bit in April. This is the non-passive portion of my internet business and these sales figures are limited to the number of packages that I am able to get posted up for sale. My keyword research guy is doing a great job at providing me with some awesome sets of keywords. I still struggle to find the time to do what I need to do on my end to get them posted up for sale.

The good news is that the demand for these things is still there. You’ll rarely see any available packages on my sales page because they almost always sell very quickly. I have an email list of over 100 people (and growing every day) who wish to be notified as soon as I post new packages up for sale. It is not uncommon for new packages to sell less than an hour after I post them. CLICK HERE to sign up for that list if you’re interested.

Reinvesting Profits

As mentioned last month, I’ve been using the proceeds from my keyword research sales to test different link building services. I’m getting some really good results too! Listed below are the 3 services that I’ve tried and will use again.

• The HOTH
• Link Viking (not an affiliate link – mention me as referral)
• Lightning Rank

The HOTH is an easy and completely done-for-you service that builds links similar to what you could build yourself on Web 2.0 properties – except that they use a layered system that adds a bunch of extra juice to those links. I plan to use this service again as a base layer of links on future brand new sites.

Link Viking gives you access to some VERY powerful domains, if you are willing to pay the price. I’ve only used them the one time, and the link I bought for nearly $200 shot my post (for my targeted keyword) up in the rankings significantly.

Lightning Rank is my favorite of the services I’ve tried so far. I’m seeing really good results and I believe I am getting the most value for what I pay. I was able to sneak in while beta testing prices were still in effect, and I upgraded my subscription to the 5 posts per month package. I love the subscription aspect of it, because this forces me to build links every single month that I might not otherwise spend the time or money to do.

Hiring Virtual Assistants

The other way that I am re-investing some of my income is in hiring virtual assistants to help me grow my business. Much of the month of April was spent finding and training a couple of VA’s. And believe me, this is a learning process for me as well. I’ve made plenty of mistakes throughout the process. But I now have two VA’s who can competently do a number of tasks for me that will free up a bunch of my time. Most notably – editing, formatting and publishing content on my niche sites as well as my PBN sites. I was getting way behind in posting the content that my writer had already provided for me. Now I can simply hand that work off to my assistants.

I can hardly believe it myself, that I made it to this point in my internet business. I’m actually hiring overseas VA’s – just like the big guys do. The whole thing seems crazy to me, but I am really enjoying the journey and the entire learning process. Again, Chris Ducker’s book Virtual Freedom is helping me immensely. It is pretty much a bible and a step-by-step guide when it comes to hiring virtual assistants or virtual staff.

And now – let’s take a look at my numbers for April, shall we?

Income and Expenses – April 2014

Passive Income

Affiliate Income from Dumb Passive Income

• $357.98 – Long Tail Pro sales via Clickbank (why it is better than the competition)
• $20.10 – LeadPages sales for this awesome lead generation software (I EASILY created this squeeze page with LeadPages)
• $6.99 – SocialADR sales (go here to learn more and access my custom 20% off coupon code)
• $5.70- Aweber signups ($1 for your first month)
• $17.97 – Niche Website Theme sales via JVZoo (reviewed in detail here)
• $0 – Lending Club leads via Commission Junction (exactly how to sign up explained here)
• $0 – ManageWP signups (easily manage multiple WordPress sites from one dashboard)
• $67.00 – AmaSuite sales via JVZoo (software demonstrated in video embedded here)
• $0 – PulseHover sales via JVZoo (plugin explained within this post)
• $0 – oDesk sales via Commission Junction (how to outsource content for cheap explained here)
• $0 – Genesis framework and themes by Studiopress via ShareaSale (eleven40 Pro theme as seen on this site now)
• $0 – EasyAzon3 sales via Clickbank (I haven’t even reviewed this yet – but I would not build an Amazon site without it!)
• $0 – Long Tail Classroom via JVZoo (I don’t even promote this! Must be an upsell for something else in JVZoo)
• $10.00 – Crazy Egg sales (detailed review with screenshots here)
• $62.50 – The HOTH sales (awesome link building service – they do everything for you!)
• $0 – Lightning Rank sales (powerful PBN links – 100% done for you)

Other Passive Income from Niche Sites, etc…

• $1330.43 – Google Adsense (ad click revenue from niche sites)
• $3.24 – Yahoo! Voices for articles I wrote a long time ago
• $6.05 – Amazon Associates for sales on Amazon.com (explained in detail here)

Non-Passive Income

Services by Matthew Allen

• $769 – Keyword Research Packages for Sale (why I started offering this service – explained here)
• $0 – Website services – build simple websites for private businesses (like this one grmobilewelding.com)

Expenses

Hosting and Domains

• $4.00 – WPEngine (used coupon code for $4 for first 3 months) (why I upgraded to the best and fastest hosting for WordPress)
• $9.95 – Hostgator (how to purchase a domain and set up web hosting)
• $0 – GoDaddy for domain renewals and purchases
• $0 – IXWebHosting – (up to 15 separate IP’s on one hosting account!)
• $0 – NameCheap – domain purchases (expired domains)

Tools, Plugins and Themes

• $12.00 – Long Tail Platinum monthly fee (if you have Long Tail Pro – upgrade to Platinum here)
• $29.00  – Aweber monthly fee for e-mail list management (first month trial only $1)
• $4.90 – ManageWP monthly fee for WordPress multiple site management program
• $38.00 – SocialADR monthly fee for social bookmarking for my niche sites (proven results within this post!)

Outsourcing

• $161 – to my private writer for article writing for niche sites
• $105.49 – to oDesk for virtual assistant(s)
• $513 – to a virtual contractor who is helping me find keywords for my keyword research service
• $0 – to The HOTH for a link building package (planning to use again)
• $0 – to Link Viking for a link building package (not an affiliate link – mention Dumb Passive Income as your referral source at checkout)
• $250 – to LightningRank for a monthly link building package (upgraded to 5 posts package while I could still get beta test pricing)

Miscellaneous

• $32.13 – Paypal fees

Totals and Thoughts

Total income $2656.96 minus total expenses $1155.47 equals a net profit of $1501.49 for April 2014!

I’m still loving the trajectory I’m seeing on my income chart. I don’t even care about the “net income” as much as I do the “total income” figures – which is why I display the graph the way that I do. Because passive income is my overall goal, I know that my expenses are mostly leading to more future total income. My expenses will continue to rise as I spend money to build out more niche sites. But I fully expect that my total income will greatly outpace my rise in expenses – which in turn will lead to higher net income figures.

Thank You! Thank You for taking the time to read through my latest income report and Thank You for contributing  if you have previously purchased something through one of my affiliate links! If you wish to support this site, but don’t have a need for any of my affiliate products, you could simply do your regular Amazon shopping through any of the links on this site that lead to Amazon.com. You won’t pay any extra and I will receive a small commission. Thanks so much if you do so!

Many of the links within this income report are indeed affiliate links. I will receive a commission if you choose to purchase after clicking through via any of these links. Thank You if you do! To your success and mine – may we all be profitable online. Good Day!

Remember that there are several dumb ways to create passive income online, but only one site that is blogging about it! Dumb Passive Income… dot com.

-Matt

Photo Credits:

JD Hancock via Flickr

Matthew Allen

Matthew Allen is a full-time trucker, part-time blogger, and imaginary entrepreneur. He's probably not the only trucker who calls himself a dumbass. But, he is the only known trucker who is blogging about passive income."Might be crazy, but I ain't dumb!" ~ Crazy Cooter (also Matt's CB handle) 

Matthew Allen

Matthew Allen is a full-time trucker, part-time blogger, and imaginary entrepreneur. He's probably not the only trucker who calls himself a dumbass. But, he is the only known trucker who is blogging about passive income."Might be crazy, but I ain't dumb!" ~ Crazy Cooter (also Matt's CB handle)