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February 2016 Income Report: VA Rotation, Good Amazon Business, Building PBN

Before proceeding with the income report for the second month of 2016, I have to tell you that I will temporarily put the blog  on pause, probably for the whole March. Thus means till the next income report.

The reason is that March is the due month for the fiscal year 2015 and I have to do my taxes. It is the first time I will be doing it since I have become an entrepreneur so you can understand why I need time. I will probably hire an accountant and I still need to find him/her.

Apart from that, now I have a VA who produces stable results, so I can finally execute on my big plans for pushing my websites to the green income zone.

What Happened In February

February was a very busy month. I tried on a digital nomad hat and did not like it. I had some VA (virtual assistant) rotation happened and ended up working with the one who disappeared in January.

Now let’s look at all of this closer.

VA Rotation

Weird things have been happening with these VAs.

As you remember, in January, I hired my very first VA. Let’s call her Claire (yes, I am watching the 4th season of House Of Cards). However, the girl stayed only for 2.5 weeks in total. When Claire did not show up for the third week, I fired her. Then I hired another VA (Cecile)… who also could not keep up with the number of hours I assigned to her! Instead of doing my work, Cecile was busy working for another client. You can imagine how upset it made me. But she was a native English speaker living in the US and in addition, she was charging as much as Claire who was from Vietnam ($4.5 / h). So I did not want to lose her. We talked and she committed to giving me a half of the time I asked (7 hours / week instead of 15). I agreed.

Then, I started thinking of hiring yet another VA who would work the other half (another 7 hours a week). My plan was to have simultaneously 2 VA giving me the needed amount of hours in total. Sounded complicated but I needed my work to move.

And at this exact moment, Claire who I fired in January showed up. Turned out, she got into a motorbike accident and spent one month in the hospital. Yeah…. so I hired her back for 5 hours a week thinking she will compliment well Cecile from the US.

While going through these arrangements, I felt quite weird. At some point, my head was spinning; I have never worked with such a quickly changing team.

And then two days later Cecile quit. She realized it was not possible to meet her ends while working as a beginner VA for a small rate. She found another remote job with a pretty much normal salary.

Good thing I had Claire… I immediately gave her twice as many hours as she had been working. After all, I liked her work and my only problem was that she was not doing enough of it.

Claire was very happy to hear the news.

Soon she asked for more hours – her goal was to work full time thus 40 h / week. I refused because I did not have that much work. Now I am afraid she will find another client and dump me…

Turns out the world of freelance is not very stable - even if you are on the paying side! Click To Tweet

But I should worry about it only when it happen. Looks like Claire likes to work for me too.

Good Amazon Business

Following my plan of improving my acquired websites, I added more Amazon product links to the Elephant 🐘 website in January (see which website Elephant stands for). And indeed, in February, I saw the results: The Amazon portion of the revenue has significantly grown compared to the previous month.

However, February is a beginning of the season for the Elephant site so the growth was partially caused by that fact. But I can see which links have brought money, and I can confidently confirm that these are my efforts coming into fruition. In overall, the number of clicks has jumped by more than 100% comparing to the other months. It has been so successful that the guys who are selling the products ran out of stock. Which is a true bummer for me because it caused my profit stagnate – and I cannot find a product for replacement. Maybe it could be a good FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) business? Not a bad idea………..

Building PBN

Aww, man, is building PNB exhausting! I feel like it was the only thing I was doing in February. There are so many things to take care of. Even with a help of a VA, it is still a lot of work. I have started writing a series of posts about my PBN experiences – you can see them all tagged as pbn. You guys have contributed some awesome stuff in the comments – thanks for that!

Kickfurther

In February, Kickfuther business was not bad but it did slow down after the crazy January. I got ten payouts from eight different businesses. With this money, I backed three businesses.

Here are the businesses of my choice for February:

• Madeleine Maternity with their multi-wear pieces that can be worn during and after pregnancy
  This is the second time the business appears on Kickfurther. I like fashion but I am well over-aware of the challenges fashion companies face. That’s why I rarely invest into clothing/shoes/etc. But this one is different – I can clearly see the product niche, their audience, and their potential. Plus, their stuff is trendy.
• Grow Marketing, Inc. DBA The Water Soul, DBA Noodle Mon with their floating things
  Summer is getting closer and these guys seem to have been doing well and growing.
• Wine & Whey with their DIY Cheese Making Kits
  This project had somehow hard time raising money and I have already regretted a bit that I backed them… However, I do like the product and I would buy a cheese DIY kit for myself or for my friends as a gift.

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

 

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

Expenses

The expenses in month February 2016 were high. I spent quite a lot of money paying to my VAs. Also, I paid for the 3 months of Majestic, and it bumped up the expense amount even higher.

I continued building the PBNs and this has been no light walk even with a VA’s help. On top of that, I continued backing up businesses on Kickfurther with the money I received from payouts from other Kickfurther businesses.

Income

My February income was not bad.

For the Elephant website, February is the beginning of the season. Many people are not only looking for products from its niche but also buying this stuff. It made February the most successful month since I bought the business.

The Horse website is doing well too; though, it did less well than in January when its revenue was almost twice as much as projected. In February, the website brought in “only” 50% more than projected.

Also, KickFurther investments have paid back – as usual 🙂

Totals

Here are my totals for February 2016.

Total income $1,057.41 minus total expenses $611.87 makes a net profit of $445.54.

This is the graph that excludes all my big investments I made in October and November.

And here is the graph with the investments included. Not so pretty.

Plans For March

So, what are my plans for the next month?

Well, first of all, I have to do my taxes! I tend to wait until the last minute and submit it one or two days before the due date (which is April 1st). This time, the taxes will be much more complicated given that they include my business stuff. I need to find an accountant and I hope it is not too late. Otherwise, I will have to do it all by myself and hope that I don’t screw up 🙂

For the rest, it will be the same thing as in January… PBN, backlinking… pushing the site up to the sun and waiting for their fruits.

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!