March – April 2019 Income Report: Outsource All The Things 🤸🏻♀️, Kapa99 Disaster 😒, My Websites 🐘🐀 Update
Welcome to my second income report of 2019!
I decided to follow the example of two previous months and combine yet another two months into one income report (IR).
I do it for two major reasons: Saving time ⏳ and reducing the amount of identical content in my blog 💤
Rather than creating yet another boring IR, I better spend time on writing other posts that are hopefully more interesting than money reports 🤞🏻
So read my income report #43-44 to find out what happened in March-April 2019.
March-April: Things are in motion 👍🏻
Outsource all the things 🤸🏻♀️
Finally, I did that outsourcing I had been wanting to do since forever!
In March-April, I 👇🏻
👍🏻 hired a second writer
👍🏻 increased the weekly hours of my virtual assistant (VA)
👍🏻 tried to outsource graphic designs (more on this later)
👍🏻 and most importantly, hired an editor!
Hiring an editor has been on my agenda for a very long time.
When I editing and reviewing articles myself, I felt like my soul was dying 😣😫🤯 I was so miserable and unhappy – and this was a good indicator that I needed to outsource this activity 👍🏻
On one of the affiliate marketing forums I read, somebody said he was letting his great editor go because of selling his business. He highly recommended the editor so I asked for the contact info.
The editor was more than willing to accept new clients and I negotiated a good price for her work (at least, I think so at the moment 😆)
Now, my articles are now being reviewed and edited by not me 😅👍🏻
I am much happier than before! 🎉
And since I keep investing in new content for my websites, the editor (not me) has a lot of work to do!
Unlimited graphic design with Kapa99: Pure disaster
On the outsourcing wave, I finally tired out Kapa99, an unlimited graphic design service 🖼
I used their 14-day free trial.
Let’s put it short: It did not go well.
I did not like it and I even wrote a post about my experience. You can check it here.
If you read it already, you already know why.
If not, go ahead and read it to find out why I do not recommend this service 😖
🐘 websites update
As you may remember, I have two websites in the same niche and share the same 🐘 animal in their names.
1️⃣ is called Mother 🐘 Website; I bought it in 2015 and it was the first website I bought.
2️⃣ is called Baby 🐘Website; I started it on my own based on the Mother 🐘 website niche and experience.
The websites compete for the same keywords and have some fairly similar content. For that reason, I lump their revenue together into the same income bucket (and assigned them the same animal).
However, the way how I grow these websites is starting getting more and more different.
For example, I invest much more into Mother 🐘 since it’s bigger and kinda a testing ground for me. Baby 🐘 gets less love but here, I plan to reproduce the successful steps I did for the Mother 🐘.
Both websites are my primary breadwinners and I try to invest back into them as much as possible 🔀
In March-April, this is how much content I published on both websites:
| Website | # of words | # of images |
|---|---|---|
| Mother Elephant | 17,600 words | 145 images |
| Baby Elephant | 12,300 words | 53 images |
I accept guest posts on both websites. This kind of content is not primary (meaning I publish my own content more often) but it contributes a good share to the success of the websites plus generates extra revenue 🤑
I also build backlinks to the sites and it happens as a part of my daily routine.
One of the things I am doing Mother 🐘 is to do Pinterest via TailWind. That’s why the number of images I publish along with the posts is important❗ I share them all on Pinterest and sometimes, they go viral and really boost my traffic👍🏻
This is how its Pinterest traffic grew in March-April compared to January-February:
Got lost in my Elephants 🐘, Rats 🐀, and other creatures? Read here to find out what the website nicknames mean
🐀 website update
As you may already know, I am reviving my old 🐀 Website.
In March and April, I did not build any new backlinks. Instead, I focused on updating the old content and publishing some new one.
Here are the content stats:
| # of words | # of images |
|---|---|
| 8,600 words | 19 images |
Thanks to the content update, its rankings and traffic have started picking up:
I am in a rush here since it’s also a seasonal niche (similar to my 🐘 websites) and it is starting soon!
LivingOfCloud (this blog) update
In this blog, I was less active during this period.
Here are the posts I wrote:
👉🏻 2 posts of SEO & Affiliate Marketing News Roundups: March, April.
👉🏻 the Kapa99 review I mentioned above
👉🏻 how to do taxes for an affiliate business in Canada based on my experience
No word count for this one! I do not track the stats for LOC as closely as I do for the niche websites.
Also, I got mentioned on OnlineRockersHub, a blog about making money online from home. Thanks for the mention, Nirmal! 🤗
A new animal in my zoo 🦍🦏🐻
Meanwhile, I started a new project!
I cannot tell you what it is about, of course, but it’s a new niche website 😆
I don’t spend much time on it yet and it keeps being pushed down in my priority pipeline. But the domain name is already bought and now I am fighting with setting up HTTPS with a free SSL certificate from CloudFlare 😣
I also gave it a new animal name. It’s 🦄, no less! 😜
Taxes 2018
March-April was that fun time for filing taxes 🧾
This year, it was a bit stressful time for me since I had to pay taxes on my cryptocurrency gains.
I had to file it before April 31st and also pay what I owed the Canadian government.
Turned out I owed almost $8,900 ($12,000CAD) 😱😱😱
🤯😟😞😖😭😭😭😒
Oh well. This is a part of the game.
Personal life 👩🏻
On the personal side, life was pretty calm. It was cold outside during these two months so I stayed mostly inside 👩🏻💻
Except for the time when we had a sugar shack festival 🎪🤹🏻♀️ right next to our place! Sam and I went there every day and tried almost every kind of food and drink that was offered there 🙃
Spring appeared once in a while
Making my hair lit with 🔥
Meanwhile, my 🐈🐈 decided to organize a rock band and even shot a photo for their first album cover. It went quite viral on Reddit. Not sure their (meowing) songs will ever do, though😆
Spotify was giving away GoogleHome Mini for free to their Premium subscribers and I got one 💚⚪
At the end of April, our local park still had ❄❄❄ ⛄🙀🙀🙀
…so I trained mostly at home🏋🏻♂️🧘🏻♀️
Meanwhile, my work days often pass like this, full of kitties:
Ok, now let’s go back to the business!
Expenses➖
In March-April, the expenses were pretty high since I decided to continue investing in the website content.
As you could see above, the total number of words I paid for was almost 38,000! It’s like writing a 150-page book where each page has 250 words. Such 📔 would be about 3 cm (1 1/4 inch) thick 🙀
All these words were also needed to be uploaded and formatted on the websites. That’s why I asked my VA to work more hours and also increased her hourly rate from $6 to $7.
Let’s look at the details.
| Expense | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Outsourced writing | $960.00 | Ordered new articles |
| Outsourced editing | $227.65 | Reviewing and editing articles |
| Outsourced labor | $452.65 | Paid a VA for doing some stuff |
| Outsourced images | 0.00 | Made all the images myself and with Kapa99 |
| E-marketing tools | $35.87 | Paid for a cheap access to AhRef tool and email list cleaning |
| PBN domain registration | $0.00 | Amount paid for PBN domain renewals |
| PBN hosting | $85.80 | Paid for Easy Blog Networks (read my review) and Bulk Buy Hosting (here's my review) |
| Domain registration | $24.22 | Amount paid for regular domain renewals and new domains |
| Guest posting | $0.00 | Amount paid for guest posting |
| Total | $1,786.18 |
Income➕
The income in March-April was very good since the high season for my 🐘 websites has started.
I also started getting more money from this blog thanks to writing more articles with affiliate links in them as well as updating some old content.
Got lost in my Elephants 🐘, Rats 🐀, and other creatures? Read here to find out what the website nicknames mean
Let’s look at the income numbers in the details.
| Income | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| AdSense by Elephant Websites | $1,101.11 | Revenue from the 1st websites I bought + another one in the same niche |
| VigLink by Elephant Websites | 184.93 | VigLink revenue from the 1st websites I bought + another one in the same niche |
| Amazon by Elephant Websites | $1,957.47 | Revenue from the 1st website I bought + another one in the same niche |
| Amazon by Rat Website | $16.86 | Revenue from the website built by Human Proof Designs; check their website to see if you can get a ready-made niche website for yourself |
| Ads by Rat Website | $0.00 | I monetize Rat Website through media.net |
| Amazon by Honeybee Website | $0.83 | Revenue from the website I am building myself with a PBN |
| AdSense by other websites | $7.96 | Revenue from the rest of my websites |
| Paid guest posts | $180.50 | Revenue received for paid guest posting |
| Easy Blog Networks | $65.18 | Recurring and new affiliate sales for Easy Blog Networks, a solution for PBN hosting |
| Bulk BuyHosting | $32.37 | Recurring and new affiliate sales for Buy Bulk Hosting, another solution for PBN hosting |
| OFX | $236.26 | Revenue from OFX affiliate commissions |
| PlanetExpress | $236.26 | Revenue from PlanetExpress affiliate commissions |
| AppSumo | $10.00 | Got AppSumo credit |
| Kickfurther | 3.07 | Online investments paid back; read more in my post about Kickfurther |
| Interest | $5.61 | Interest earned on a saving account |
| Total | $3,793.28 |
Totals 💵
Here are my totals for March-April 2019.
Total income $3,793.28 minus total expenses $1,786.18 makes a net profit of $2,007.10. This profit should be divided by two since it’s for both March and April.
Here is the chart with my revenue vs expenses history for the last 14 months. I used the 14-month timeline instead of the 12-month one in order to show you how these months performed compared to the last year.
Meanwhile, April 2019 was the 3d best month ever in terms of income.
Two months that were better than it was in December 2018 when I sold my 🐎 website and May 2016 when Mother 🐘 website was in its earning peak (right after I bought it).
May – June 2019 Plans 📅
I really liked writing such a joined income report that covers two months and I am thinking of continuing doing it this way. That’s why I write my plans here for both May and June.
So, in May and June 2019, I plan to do the following things:
👉🏻 keep grinding and preparing for high season for Rat 🐀 Website
👉🏻 keep churning out more content for Elephant 🐘 Websites
👉🏻 investigate new money-making opportunities for Elephant 🐘 Websites since they are starting to have good traffic
👉🏻 keep publishing new content on my LOC blog as well as re-writing old articles ✍🏻
👉🏻 continue working on the new project, which seems to be pushed back all the time 😒
Since I am not sure about my posting schedule… you should stay tuned by subscribing to my emails!
Don’t miss a post – subscribe to my newsletters!
Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post 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! 🤗
