[Dumb] Passive Income Report for February 2015

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 February

Some Personal Stuff

In the world of trucking (my day job), January and February are typically two of the slowest months each year. This year is no different. I’ve been working barely over 40 hours each week – which is a pleasant and welcome change for me. Most of my trucking career I’ve averaged closer to 50 hours weekly.

Less hours at my day job does not equate to more hours working on my side hustle stuff though. Rather, it means more family time. There have been many days lately that I’ve been getting home from work in time to eat dinner with my family at a normal time! This has been really rare for most of my trucking career. I’ve also been enjoying watching some of my boys karate practices, which start at 5:30. I could really get used to these bankers hours!

Niche Sites

A few of my niche sites continue to earn steadily, despite almost zero work from me. Passive income man! I'm loving it.Click To TweetThis is the result of what I’ve been working to try and produce for the past couple of years. A steady flow of income with little or no work from me to maintain it.

My Adsense income for February was about half what it was in January. I don’t know how to explain this because traffic was almost identical. Adsense income is great – but I’m finding out that it is very volatile and unpredictable. My performance and results with Adsense very much depend on the advertisers who are spending money in my niche – how much they are spending and what types of ads they are producing. It’s crazy that at this very time last year – I was getting insane click through rates and making butt loads of money from Adsense with almost identical traffic numbers to what I have now.

My Amazon income for February continued to pleasantly surprise me! $323 and still mostly from just one site. After that site lost some of it’s rankings last fall, I seriously considered just dumping the site and selling off the content for a few hundred dollars (somebody made me that offer). But slowly but surely, with no extra effort from me – the site has regained some of its rankings. Traffic is about half of what it was at its peak late last summer – but February was my 3rd highest earning month for the site so far!

I’ve got two other Amazon sites that are getting close to page one of Google for several different keywords. I can hardly wait til those start earning which will probably boost my Amazon income up into the 4-figures per month range.

Although I am doing hardly anything to improve these niche sites – there is work being done to keep them fresh and current. My writer is still producing two high quality articles each week based on instructions that I have pre-planned out in various spreadsheets (for each site). My VA posts those articles each week and performs a few other basic site maintenance tasks. It’s a beautiful thing!

This Blog

My biggest frustration over the last several months has been that I couldn’t find time to produce quality content for this blog. There was something like 3 or 4 months in a row that I only published income reports – with no good or informative posts in between. February saw a change for the better.

I’m trying my best to learn and implement strategies to focus and stay focused and get stuff done that matters. I would sometimes spend hours in front of my computer only to realize that I hadn’t really accomplished anything that would produce any kind of results. I’m aware of my problem and I’m doing my best to break these bad habits.

In fact, I’m currently in the middle of reading the book – The ONE Thing, by Gary Keller.  I’ve been hearing a lot about this book lately from other internet marketers. It really is helping me realize that I should be focusing on “ONE Thing.” One thing at a time anyway.

Even before I started reading this book – I knew what I should be doing. And I took action in February and published 2 really good posts, other than my January Income Report. If you haven’t seen either of them yet, here they are…

• A Profitable Online Business – Amazon FBA – my exact income and expense numbers since starting out selling on Amazon
• Link Building Packages from The Hoth – An Honest Review – my experience buying links from The Hoth – including my exact results

Hopefully I can keep this up and continue to write posts like these and deliver value for you (my readers) each and every month going forward. I have so many ideas for useful posts for this blog. I just need to stay focused and get them written and published.

Selling Stuff on Amazon

Here is a bit of irony for you. During a month when I publish a post showing exactly how profitable this Amazon FBA thing has been for us – we did almost nothing for the entire month of February towards growing our FBA business! No huge inventory sourcing trips for the entire month. We only made one shopping trip and only bought a few items.

Although it wasn’t on purpose – I guess February was a month where we tested just how passive this business model can be. We ended up with almost $2,900 in sales from inventory that we had previously sent in. This number certainly would have been higher if we had been regularly shopping and sending in more inventory.

As of the time I am writing this post, we still have $5,721.31 worth of unsold inventory sitting in Amazon warehouses waiting to be purchased.

We really need to get back on that horse and start buying more inventory to send in if we want to keep this thing going. But honestly, that is mostly up to my wife and whether she decides to spend the time to make that thing work. She does 90% of the work for all of our FBA stuff. I just help shop once in awhile. And honestly, I’m more focused on growing this blog and my niche sites right now. Hopefully my wife gets a motivational kick this month and gets out shopping and buys lots of stuff to send to Amazon.

Click Here to get my FREE Guide – How to Find Items to Sell on Amazon

Income and Expenses – February 2015

Passive Income

Selling on Amazon

• $2,899.03 – Amazon Seller monthly sales (this is NOT net profit – see Amazon Seller Inventory Expenses and Seller Fees in expense section below)

Affiliate Income from Dumb Passive Income

• $160.06 – Long Tail Pro sales via Clickbank (why it is better than the competition) (how to make LTP pay for itself)
• $20.10 – LeadPages sales for this awesome lead generation software (I EASILY created this squeeze page with LeadPages)
• $6.98 – SocialADR sales (go here to learn more and access my custom 20% off coupon code)
• $0.30 – Aweber signups ($1 for your first month)
• $0 – Ultimate Azon Theme sales via Clickbank (I have not yet reviewed this theme – but I beta tested it extensively – MUST HAVE for Amazon Affilliate sites)
• $23.50 – AmaSuite sales via JVZoo (software demonstrated in video embedded here)
• $0 – oDesk signups 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 – EasyAzon4 sales via Clickbank (I haven’t even reviewed this yet – but I would not build an Amazon site without it!)
• $15.00 – The HOTH sales (awesome link building service – read my full review with case study results)
• $0 – WPEngine sales (my results after upgrading to the fastest hosting for WordPress on this blog)
• $180.00 – Bluehost (why I buy separate hosting accounts for new niche sites explained within this post)
• $40.00 – Lending Club signup (I haven’t done anything with or written about my investments here in over a year)
• $14.00 – PBNCourse sales (step-by-step course on how to build your own PBN  the right way)
• $0 – Social Warfare sales (customizeable sharing buttons – as seen on this blog right now)

Other Passive Income from Niche Sites, etc…

• $204.73 – Google Adsense (ad click revenue from niche sites)
• $323.72 – Amazon Associates for sales on Amazon.com (explained in detail here)

Non-Passive Income

Website Services by Matthew Allen

• $0 – Website services – build simple websites for private businesses (like this one grmobilewelding.com)

Note: Bluehost banner above is an affiliate link

Expenses

Selling on Amazon

• $148.87 – Inventory Purchases (buying stuff for cheap to send to Amazon and sell for more – (how we got started detailed here)
• $1,116.61 – Amazon Seller Fees/Expenses (these include FBA selling fees, transaction fees, inventory & storage fees and service fees)

Hosting and Domains

• $29.00 – WPEngine (why I upgraded to the best and fastest hosting for WordPress)
• $0 – Bluehost – my new favorite hosting provider for niche sites – great price, ease of use, excellent service and overall experience
• $9.95 – Hostgator – my original hosting provider – still keep for some sites 
• $0 – GoDaddy for domain renewals and purchases
• $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)
• $49.00  – Aweber monthly fee for e-mail list management (first month trial only $1)
• $4.90 – ManageWP monthly fee for WordPress multiple site management program
• $65.00 – CrazyEgg yearly renewal (heat mapping service – my review and how I use it here)

Outsourcing

• $135.00 – to my private writer for article writing for niche sites
• $67.71 – to oDesk for virtual assistant(s)
• $0 – to The HOTH for a link building package (completely done-for-you link building service – my full review)

Miscellaneous

• $0- Paypal fees
• $5.00 – Google Apps for domain email

Totals and Thoughts

Total income $3,887.42 minus total expenses $1,643.04 equals a net profit of $2,244.38 for February 2015!

A new record for me! My net profit for February of $2,244.38 beats my previous record of $1,887.15 in December 2014. Very cool man. Although I don’t know where all of the money went – because that amount is not currently available in my business checking account or Paypal account. I’m kidding. I know where it went. I keep careful records of everything and keep track of all of my finances very meticulously.

I’m pleased that I’ve found a way to easily increase my internet income by selling stuff on Amazon. But I’m not satisfied. Niche site income and affiliate income are things that get me more excited. The fact that I can work on something once and have it produce income for me over and over again is way more exciting to me than selling physical items on Amazon. This is where I plan to focus most of my time and efforts going forward.

I just had a thought – so why not write it here… Since my wife does most of the work for our FBA stuff, maybe we’ll create a little contest going forward. The monthly FBA income will be her responsibility and the website income will be mine. My goal will be to produce more income from my websites each month than she produces from Amazon. Nothing like a little friendly competition to keep us both motivated!

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! Many of the links within this income report are indeed affiliate links (including the Bluehost banner below). I will receive a commission if you choose to purchase after clicking through via any of these links. Thank You if you do!

Photo Credits:

Image: “Blue Steel” by Rene Kisselbach via Flickr