4

April 2017 Income Report: Amazon Native Ads Promo, Guest Posting, Freelancers

In this blog, I write about what I am doing to create various income streams that come from online endeavors. The monthly income reports detail my results.

Why am I sharing my income publicly? I hope to gain trustworthiness with you and to keep some degree of accountability for myself.

The reports motivate me. I tend to forget my small achievements… and reports like this one won’t let me do it 🙂 Apart from that, they help me to remember how much I have already invested. It’s a motivation to push even harder!

Read on April 2017 Income Report, which is my income report #20.

What Happened In April

 Amazon Native Ads Promotion

In April, I jumped on the opportunity to make money with the fixed 12% commission on the purchases coming from Amazon native shopping ads. The promotion was relevant only for the suggestion type of the ads.

I put Amazon ad blocks instead of the ads by AdSense and Media.net that were underperforming. I did these changes on Elephant 🐘 Website and Rat 🐀 Website.

Elephant 🐘 Website has been always responding very well to Amazon. This time, it was the same. I got quite a lot of conversion coming from these links: It constituted for 15.4% of the total number of orders.

Rat 🐀 Website did not do well. In fact, only one purchase came from Amazon native ads. The other few buys came from the regular links. Thus, the Amazon native ads were responsible for 7.7% of the total number of orders.

Again, I confirmed my hypothesis that Amazon suggestion ads do not always perform well. While on the 1st website, the suggestions were very relevant and the ads converted. On the 2nd website, the suggestions were not fine tuned enough and almost nobody clicked on them. The ads showed products relevant to the general topic of the website instead of being tailored to a particular page.

Guest posting

As you know, I am building the backlinks for Elephant 🐘 Website by doing guest posting.

In April, it slowed down, even more comparing to March. I kinda got 1 of NF link but then I decided to pull it off and save the article for a do-follow link. Apart from that, I did not get any links 🙁 April was a dead month in this sense.

However, I do not give up. I slowly plow into it and outsource more and of this work to my VA.

I wonder what’s your experience with it guys? Do you see a faster turn around?

Working With Freelancers

I do not know how others manage to work with freelancers. My results are pretty frustrating and I am not sure how to improve them. Maybe I want too much for a price too little? Or maybe I expect too much commitment from them?

In April, I had to cancel yet another contract with a writer. The girl did two tasks and then simply disappeared. I had nothing else to do but terminate my work with her.

Apparently, it was frustrating not only for me but for Upwork as well.

After the contract got canceled, their support team sent me a message expressing their regrets that I seem to struggle with freelancers. They suggested I contact “a Talent Service Team who can help find a trustworthy, qualified freelancer, free of charge.”

I will definitely do that in May and then tell you about it.

Kickfurther

In April, I tried to back up one purchase order. Unfortunately, it did not go through and I got a refund.

On the payment side, I got several payouts with two co-ops paid off in full:

• Glamour Dolls Makeup with their Lisa Frank collaboration (they sell make-up)
• Silikids with a regular co-op (they sell silicone tableware)

If you do not know what Kickfurther is, you can read about it here.

Personal Life

In April, I got a bit burned out.

At the day job, we had an intense brainstorming activity that lasted 1.5 weeks.
It consisted of 4-5 hour meetings every day where a leadership group of 20 team leads had to rethink our processes and come up with improvements. Not easy!
On top of that, we (the team leads) still had to do our regular work. Obviously, I did not have much time outside of the activity so I had to work 9-10 hours a day to catch up. After the activity was finished, it took me another week to dig through the work that had piled up.

In these circumstances, I could not do much for my second job. In the evenings, I was turning into a couch potato that could only consume food and Netflix.

But in the end, I survived! Now I know I can go through almost anything when it comes to using my brain 😀

The spring is definitely here, in Montreal! April gave us quite a few gorgeous sunny days. I tried to spend a lot of sunny hours outside jogging and cycling.

A new season started for cremeries (“ice cream parlors” in French) and I started my own ice cream season as well. Last Friday night, Sam and I ate soft ice cream dipped in delicious chocolate. It was great!

 

Ok, now let’s go back to the business!

Expenses

In April, I again worked with freelance writers and a VA. I did not do anything crazy productive so my expenses were kept pretty low.

Income

High season for Elephant 🐘 Website plus the Amazon native ad promotion, it all affected my income in a very good way 🙂 Elephant 🐘 Website hit a this-year income record of $1,000 and it reminded of old good days last year when it was a norm for it…

On the downside, Horse 🐎 Website seems to hit some bumps on the road. I have a suspicion that some brand new competitor site has been outranking it. “Thanks” to that, the traffic went down. I will observe and investigate more in the next month.

Read here to find out what website nicknames mean.

Totals

Here are my totals for April 2017.

Total income $1,409.49 minus total expenses $171.25 makes a net profit of $1,227.96.

Here is the chart with my revenue vs expenses history for the last 12 months. The chart does not include a big investment I made in June 2016 when I bought some cryptocurrency.

 

May 2017 Plans

My May plans are again very simple.

First of all, keep doing guest posting for Elephant 🐘 Website. The goals here to get at least 1 do-follow link and outsource to the VA at least two more steps.

Then, I will start keeping a close eye on Horse 🐎 Website. If its traffic is indeed down because of the new competition, I will need to do something about it.

I also plan to travel in May. My chum (“boyfriend” in Quebec French) and I will go to NYC and Boston. Sam will attend programming conferences and I will tag along. I will again try on a hat of a digital nomad. Last time I tried it, I did no like it. We will see if this time will be any different.

We will take a train from Montreal to NYC (10 hours without a stable Wifi! quite a challenge) and then again another train from NYC to Boston (only 4 hours). Then, I will take a bus back to Montreal while Sam will hang out in the U.S. for a bit longer. Train and bus traveling will give us plenty of time to read books, play games on a new Nintendo Switch console, and just reflect on the life and meditate.

And of course, in May, I will try to write about my experience in the blog! Since I am not sure when I will post the next post… stay tuned by subscribing to my emails!

Don’t miss a post – subscribe to my newsletters!

Disclaimer

Some of the links in this income report are affiliate links. I will receive a small fee if you choose to buy after clicking on any of these links. Thank you if you do!