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August 2016 Income Report: PBN Revision, Blog Updates, Becoming an Analytics Freak

Happy Labor Day for all North-Americans! Today is a holiday in USA and Canada and here in Montreal, Quebec, we enjoy a nice summer-hot day. But despite the holiday, it’s time for me to publish my income report for August 2016.

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 my income report #12 to find out what happened in August 2016.

What Happened In August

This month, I finally resumed my entrepreneurial activity and my expenses went up.

Let’s take a closer look.

PBN Revision

In the end of August, I went through my PBN blogs, the ones I host on $1-dollar hostings. The results I got made me pretty upset.

I lost one blog due to the fact I forgot to pay for hosting 🙁 I did not pay in time because the auto-renewal was off (as recommended by PBN experts) and I missed the renewal email. Thanks my niche gods, I had all the content saved locally; I did it when I received the content from the writer to check the quality.

I was thinking of getting rid of the blog anyway so it was not a big loss.

In addition, I had another blog being offline for at least a week. This time, I did not pay some stupid late fee in time and again did not check emails for a while 🙁 This blog was much more valuable than the previous one and its downtime certainly hurt the rating of Honeybee 🐝 Website it was supposed to strengthen.

It is SOOOO much easier to work with Easy Blog Networks! The blogs hosted with EBN were perfectly fine and even their email inboxes did no have any spam. The inboxes of $1 hosting blogs were full of spam coming from the hosting companies.

On top of that, EBN keeps the WP software up to date. This also saved me quite some time and money (that would overwise be spent on a VA) on updating everything manually.

Want to know more about EBN? Read my exhaustive review!

Blog Updates

In August, my Adsense post got featured on shashankgupta.net, a blog by Shashank Gupta. I risk to sound naive but I like how the community of bloggers making money online support each other.  Of course, it’s only happening because they look for backlinks as well as to promote services to the others – but still. I compare it with how the community of fashion bloggers functions; it’s very different! Fashion bloggers do not care about others and are tremendously egocentric and obsessed with their own personas. The online money making guys understand the value of a community and try to increase it.

In August, I sent my first sell email to my blog subscribers. It was about the EBN price increase in September. I felt super nervous while preparing and sending it thinking about how many subscribers I will loose after! Turns out, the number was zero 🙂 Thank you guys for not churning out! I do not plan to send such emails often but when a good deal comes, I cannot NOT to share it with you. Good deals that deserve to be passed around do not pop up very often.

Also in August, I came across three products I want to review. You will see these posts in September, hopefully.

Improvements + Becoming an Analytics Freak

I have started tracking my efforts of improving my niche websites very carefully.

I want to become an analytic freak who measures everything. Knowing how easily I slip into obsessions, I am sure it won’t be a problem 🙂

For Elephant 🐘 Website, I started a Google content experiment for one page to see which layout converts the best.

I also discovered a copycat that emerged on the 1st page just a few lines below my website. I started implementing a secret plan to fight this competition.

Apart from that, I added some new content and did a few general improvements I learned from my competition. If life gives you lemons, make a lemonade!

For Rat 🐀 Website, I am running a few A/B testing experiments in order to reduce the bounce rate. It is already working – the bounce rate slowly goes down – and I will add more analytics to crack it down further.

I also bought two more packages from the HOTH: Blitz 5 and links from Edu/Gov sites. They had a sale and I had $50 hanging on my account from the last purchase.

Kickfurther

In August, I backed only one business on Kickfurther. I missed a few good deals that got closed too fast even before I realized they got available.

Here is the business I backed:

• Beard Balm LLC with their Beard Balm Display Packs.
  I like beards and my boyfriend wears a beard. So the product would come in handy if the co-op opportunity does not work out!

If you want to try it out yourself, sign up with my referral to get $5 credit to start backing Kickfurther businesses.

Personal Bits

On the personal side of my life, August was a relaxing month.

I took a couple of mini vacations and spent them cycling, jogging, swimming, and working on my business (of course 🙂 ).

Also in August, the company where I work had a summer party. We always have a party every summer when the company shuts down for a half of a day and everybody goes to some fun place to chat and eat.

This time, we rented a big boat (two decks) and went to a private island where we had a dinner.

View from the top deck

Sam and I enjoying sun on a wooden thing on a private island

August was quite relaxing.

 

So, that’s what I was busy with in August. Now, let’s look at the numbers!

Expenses

The expenses in August 2016 were higher than in July – and I am really happy about it!

My business activity finally resumed and it means I am doing more improvements and actions that will result in a revenue increase (eventually hehe).

Income

My August income was not bad though lower than in July.

Both Elephant 🐘 Website and Horse 🐎 Website had an expected level of revenue given the season and the traffic.

Rat 🐀 Website went up even more than before.

(Read here to find out what website nicknames mean.)

On top of that, KickFurther investments have paid back a bit – as usual 🙂

Totals

Here are my totals for August 2016.

Total income $1,555.09 minus total expenses $371.21 makes a net profit of $1,183.88

Not bad for a slow month though I got less comparing to July.

Here is the graph of my revenue vs expenses (excluding all my big investments I made in October 2015 when I bought Elephant Website, November 2015 when I bought Horse Website, and in June when I bought some cryptocurrency).

Plans For September

So, what are my plans for the next month?

I have many of them!

I plan to continue working on increasing conversion on Rat 🐀 Website. I need to put its good traffic to work! Also, it needs to get more backlinks.

I plan to resume working on Honeybee 🐝 Website. This includes improving the PBN and adding some fresh content.

I have some plans for Elephant 🐘 Website and Horse 🐎 Website, mostly adding new content.

I feel my freelancers will be very busy in September!

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!