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 January
Some Personal Stuff
Like I mentioned in Decembers income report (which I didn’t publish until Jan. 25th), I didn’t do much for the first couple of weeks of January. After my wife’s dad passed away, she had quite a bit going on as far as settling his estate. Although I wasn’t directly involved with the transactions of that process very much myself, I was involved as her husband. Just being there for emotional support meant a great deal to her and of course helping out with the kids as much as possible while she dealt with stuff.
Speaking of stuff – my father-in-law had a lot of it. Lots of farm related stuff, like tractors and trucks and miscellaneous farm equipment and all kinds of tools. This has nothing to do with passive income or blogging, but it’s what has been on my mind for much of January. So I’m sharing. My wife and I co-inherited her dads farm, along with her brother and his wife. They want to honor their dad by keeping the farm going, and I’m thrilled to be along for the ride. I know next to nothing about farming. But I’m really eager to learn. So add that to the oddball list of things that describe me: full-time trucker, part-time blogger, imaginary entrepreneur and… weekend farmer?
Niche Sites
I was really happy with my January results for my niche sites. My main Adsense site brought in about $400! And my one Amazon site that I thought got killed by the Google PBN scare is making a comeback and actually earned over $200!
My niche site fire has been re-kindled and I'm ready to revive my old sites and get them ranked and make some money!Click To TweetI’ve already taken action. You’ll see in my numbers below that I spent $250 on a Hoth package. I hated spending the money. But I hate link building even more and it’s just something that has to be done if you want to rank for certain keywords. I went with the Hoth Blitz package this time and will be closely monitoring the results when they come in over the next several days.
I’ve had a stagnant site sitting for several months and ranking mostly on pages 2 and 3 of Google for some really good keywords. This is the site I purchased 5 high authority links for with the Hoth Blitz package. I took “before” screenshots of my rankings and plan to report positive results not long after they come in.
Selling Stuff on Amazon
Let’s just say that January was an investment month. As stated a few times already, we did nothing for the first half of the month. Sales were still trickling in from the items that were still left in our inventory. But the big sales days always come a day or two after one of our inventory shipments gets checked in at the Amazon warehouses. These big sales days didn’t happen for us until sometime late in the month. Because…
Note: both pictures on the right are what our shopping carts typically look like during an FBA sourcing trip.
Our sales for January were just over $3300 minus expenses of around $4700 for a January loss of $1400ish from Amazon FBA stuff. If it weren’t for this FBA adventure me and My Lady are going on – my net income for January would have been positive!
But not to worry. Another number I am tracking and monitoring is the value of the unsold inventory we have sitting in Amazon warehouses. As of Feb. 3rd, we had $9,337.87 worth of inventory at Amazon waiting to be sold. I like to think of it as if I am a store owner and I am just slowly but surely stocking the shelves. Some of the stuff sells right away and some of it takes longer to sell.
Although I never plan to be “the guy” when it comes to teaching how to sell stuff on Amazon (plenty of other people have that covered). I did put together a list of all the items that Susie and I use to run our FBA business. A few of these items are essential, and several of them just make the job way easier for us. CLICK HERE to see our FBA Seller Tools and Supplies page. The list includes helpful descriptions of each item which will come in handy to help get you started if you want to try this sure-fire money-making scheme. 🙂
Income and Expenses – January 2015
Passive Income
Selling on Amazon
- $3,356.63 – 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
- $182.45 – 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 – 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)
- $0 – 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!)
- $0 – The HOTH sales (awesome link building service – they do everything for you!)
- $0 – WPEngine sales (my results after upgrading to the fastest hosting for WordPress on this blog)
- $0 – Bluehost (why I buy separate hosting accounts for new niche sites explained within this post)
- $12.00 – Lending Club signup (I haven’t done anything with or written about my investments here in over a year)
- $3.50 – PBNCourse sales (step-by-step course on how to build your own PBN the right way)
Other Passive Income from Niche Sites, etc…
- $402.69 – Google Adsense (ad click revenue from niche sites)
- $238.96 – 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 appliancerepairgr.com)
Note: Bluehost banner above is an affiliate link
Expenses
Selling on Amazon
- $3,399.70 – Inventory Purchases (buying stuff for cheap to send to Amazon and sell for more – (how we got started detailed here)
- $1,262.07 – 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
- $15.17 – GoDaddy for domain renewals and purchases
- $13.75 – 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
- $27.00 – EasyAzon4 purchase (inexpensive upgrade to version 4 offered to version 3 owners)
- $24.00 – Social Warfare purchase (awesome sharing buttons with tons of customization options and more)
Outsourcing
- $132.00 – to my private writer for article writing for niche sites
- $48.29 – to oDesk for virtual assistant(s)
- $250.00 – to The HOTH for a link building package (comprehensive and completely done-for-you link building)
Miscellaneous
- $0- Paypal fees
- $5.00 – Google Apps for domain email
Totals and Thoughts
Total income $4,223.31 minus total expenses $5,281.83 equals a net loss of -$1,058.52 for January 2015!
Wow! I thought I had some ridiculous looking bar graphs before. Now it’s just out of control! Total income was okay – considering I did very little. But expenses were very high (explained in Amazon section above) which resulted in a huge net loss for January. I was getting tired of always being featured in the middle of Matthew Woodward’s Income Report Roundup post every month anyway. This report should land me solidly at the very bottom of that roundup! haha 🙂
Taking a loss for another month like this doesn’t have me worried whatsoever. Selling products through Amazon FBA is still going amazingly well. This is why I had no problem at all spending all of that money to add to our inventory over there. Besides – we had to make up for lost time – the time that we weren’t spending money on Amazon stuff for several weeks in a row. I think we more than made up for it!
Besides the Amazon stuff – I’m excited about my other internet marketing ventures. Slowly but surely, my niche sites are headed in the right direction. I haven’t blogged much here on Dumb Passive Income over the last several months, but I have a whole bunch of posts planned and I intend on writing several times per month going forward. I need to get back to my roots and publish useful stuff again. Not just income reports. That’s my plan anyway.
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:
All photos featured in this post are my own. Top picture is my oldest son (Ethan) with his “Papa Farmer.” Picture was taken several years ago on the farm.
Matthew Allen
Good post Matt. If you do end up getting into farming, can you change the name of the site to “FARM Passive Income”? (Sorry that was a really, really horrible joke.)
Despite the setback with Amazon FBA, I’d be excited too with the positive news on the niche site front of your efforts.
I was somewhat curious if you’d have months where the FBA thing would result in more inventory than sales. Given that it looks like this has only happened one month since the whole time you started this initiative, I guess this is to be expected every now and again.
Matt – I just got done with the “investment” phase of my website and still haven’t turned a profit on my website, but things are beginning to trend positively. These investments that you make now surely end up paying off in the future as long as you are spending in the right areas. Loved this report, turning a profit every month isn’t always when it is a part-time thing. Anyway, thanks for the transparency. Oh, and I’ll see you at the bottom of the Income Roundup next month 😛
Congrats Matt! Excited to see you back in the niche site game.
When you’re sourcing stuff for amazon, do you just find an item, check the price on amazon, and if you can get it for a certain % less at the store (Say 30%) to cover fees & profit – do you buy it? Or do you use a different % or is this all in your guide?
Looking forward to better months ahead!
You have me totally fired up about FBA!
I’ll ignore your horrible joke MMD 😉 – besides, I doubt I’ll be blogging about farming very much. Maybe just a little mention here and there.
I hardly consider our Amazon situation a setback. Just building up inventory. It would be a lot cooler of all the stuff sold immediately. But that’s not realistic. If we wanted to, we could control our profit and loss monthly by spending less than we bring in or not (like last month). Kind of like the way I bootstrapped this entire internet marketing thing from day one. I never spent money on tools or anything else until I earned it first online. But instead we are buying ahead because we know the stuff will sell quite quickly. Sure, that one month shows as a loss. But that really means nothing for the business overall. We turn a profit on almost everything we buy and then sell. It just doesn’t always happen right away.
Eager to see you at the bottom of the roundup next month Ron. Don’t even think about trying to take my spot at the very bottom though! Lol. And you got it right – figuring out which are the right areas to spend money in order to get a return on investment.Trial and error, testing, and monitoring results.
Thanks Jeff. To think – I was seriously thinking about selling you the content from my Amazon site. Really glad I didn’t. I did nothing to that site since last fall and it made a comeback all by itself!
I didn’t create that guide for FBA yet… I created a list of tools and supplies that we use. But I never got around to creating the guide. I’m going to work on that next. Seems like much of my audience is really interested. I better give the people what they want!
But to vaguely answer your question, yes we find items and analyze them with an Amazon app and determine profitability and likeliness that it will sell. We base our purchasing decisions on a few numbers that come up in that app within seconds.
Cool man! I’ve hinted in the past about creating a guide to help people get started. And Jeff just asked about it in the comments below. I’m going to work on that next and get it out to everybody on my email list as soon as I can. No promises – but hopefully within a few days.
Do you just use the amazon seller app?
Yup. That’s it. Nothing else.
Welcome back Matt I am on fire too by this post.
Hey, good to see the BOOM number this month again! My niche site is getting back on track too. That’s really a good news for me. Well, see you next post. 🙂
Hi Matt great report I was wondering what ever happened to the niche site at night and what happened to your keyword research packages?
Thank you
I didn’t mean to set you on fire! Lol. Hopefully that Coca-Cola in your profile pic extinguishes the flames. 😉
Cool Raweewan. Yeah, see you in the next post! Thanks for stopping by again.
The Niche Site at Night got put on hold. I bit off more than I could chew at the time. Thought I could finish most of it before the end of summer – but then my family returned home and life got crazy again. Still thinking about finishing it or starting it over… All depends on my time.
I stopped selling keyword research packages. It became too much work for non-residual income. Again, time being a big factor. Money was good, but too much time was being spent working on stuff that didn’t produce future passive income streams.