Passive Income Report – March 2013

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 Last Month and Looking Forward

Much of the month of March I spent finalizing my 7-Step Plan to Pay Off Credit Cards over on my Pay Off Credit Card site. In this previous post, I explained in detail much of the progress I’ve made on that site. I also describe and showcase exactly how I am using many of the awesome tools I’ve purchased recently to make my internet marketing life a little bit easier. I’m having so much fun playing with these tools and have complete confidence that they will all contribute to higher income reports in the future! In other words, I don’t think that I have wasted any money on what I have paid or am paying for these tools. They include:

• Aweber – to manage my e-mail lists and e-mail marketing campaigns
  
• Welcome Gate (FREE!) – to create a page like this ONLY for first time visitors to a home page
• LeadPages – to easily create beautiful pages like this landing page I recently made to promote my credit card site
• Opt-In Skin – easily create and place opt-in forms on a WordPress site, like the ones at the top and bottom of this random post on my credit card site
• Genesis framework and Generate theme – finally using a paid WordPress theme (currently on the credit card site and soon when I re-vamp this site)

Here are a couple of other tools I’ve obtained within the last few months that are helping my business immensely:

• Long Tail Pro (Platinum version) – incredible keyword research tool – here is how I use it for almost every blog post I write
• Niche Website Theme – I use this theme for all of my niche sites now – it is awesome!! I just checked the link – as of the date this post was published, you can still pick up this theme VERY inexpensively (more than 50% off the regular price)!

Reinvesting My Lending Club Principal and Interest Payments

Around the end of each month, I log into my Lending Club account and reinvest any of the cash that has accumulated over the past month from principal and interest payments. Here is what my dashboard looked like when I logged in at the end of March, 2013.

I had $41.95 available in cash to reinvest. I usually spend less than 30 minutes each month on my reinvesting efforts. It took me a little over an hour this month to browse through the available notes to find ones I was satisfied with and felt comfortable purchasing. Here is a detailed account of exactly how I research and purchase notes on the secondary note trading platform by Foliofn for Lending Club. Here are the notes I purchased this month.

As you can see, I purchased two notes at a discounted price. Both notes are current and are valued at a total price of $47.22. I picked them up for $41.78! This should help my rate of return go up a little!

Want to make your money work for you with good return rates by investing in notes like I do? Sign up for an account at Lending Club today!

Passive Income and Expenses – March 2013

Income

Affiliate Income from Dumb Passive Income

• $0.20 – Amazon Associates for sales on Amazon.com (explained in detail here)
• $0 – Carbonite Referral (explained in detail here)
• $42.93 – Long Tail Pro sales via Clickbank (why it is better than the competition)
• $0 – Lending Club leads via Commission Junction (exactly how to sign up explained here)
  
   

Affiliate Income from PayOffCreditCard.net

• $130.00 – Discover Card sales (my review and experience with Discover)

Other Income from Small Sites, etc.

• $16.25 – Google Adsense
• $0 – Yahoo! Voices for articles I wrote a long time ago

Lending Club

• $20.35 – Interest earned from Lending Club (exactly what to expect when you sign up)

Expenses

Hosting and Domains

• $9.95 – Hostgator (how to purchase a domain and set up web hosting)

Tools and Plugins

• $12.00 – Long Tail Platinum monthly fee (if you have Long Tail Pro – upgrade to Platinum here)
• $19.00  – Aweber monthly fee (first month trial only $1)

Lending Club Service Fees

• $0.44

Totals and Thoughts

Total income ($209.73) minus total expenses ($41.39) equals a net profit of $168.34 for the month of March!

I’m still not getting rich from my internet endeavors, but I am learning a great deal. The income that I am generating is finally affording me the ability to purchase many of the awesome tools I’ve heard so much about from other internet marketers. Now that most of my tool purchasing is out of the way, I can start directing some of my future income towards outsourcing and maybe a little advertising. I’m really anxious to learn how to do both of these things effectively going forward in order to leverage my time and money to create more passive income online.

Thoughts on My Pay Off Credit Card Site

My 7-Step Plan has been in place for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve even submitted one guest post to another site in an attempt to promote it. My results have been less than stellar. I’ve only had a handful of sign-ups so far. I am currently working on re-vitalizing the blog by creating regular content and linking out to other sites. As traffic starts to build to the blog, we’ll see if my efforts work to try to convince people to opt-in for the plan. I must admit, I’m a little bit worried. Maybe people aren’t interested in or aren’t looking for a complete and comprehensive plan. Maybe people just want the easy way out when it comes to paying off their credit cards. If my current efforts don’t work, I may have to scrap the whole plan and create something much simpler. I would hate to do it, because I spent so much time creating the plan. Perhaps I could turn it into an e-book, or a Kindle book. Maybe that will be one of my projects for this year!

Thank You!

Thank You for taking the time to read through my income report for last month and Thank You 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!

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

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!

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)