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March 2016 Income Report: First Blog Income, Gift From Hoth, Taxes

So my March pause has ended, and here I am with a new income report! This is my report #7.

What Happened In March

March was a good month with a couple of pleasant surprises. In this month, I had high expenses but I also had a high revenue. March is so far the most profitable month for my business, and even high expenses did not overshadow the great revenue.

Let’s look at all of this closer.

First Blog Income

I am very happy to share with you that I got my first income from the LivingOffCloud blog! Somebody read my review of HPD service and bought of Dom’s websites through my affiliate link.

While I have not thought that my blog would generate any revenue in the foreseen future, I surely hoped for that. And it happened! Exciting 🙂

Gift From Hoth

In March, I got a nice gift from Hoth. I became their client at the end of 2015 when I bought two packages for Rat 🐀 Website(see what the Rat nickname and other ones stand for). In the beginning of this year, they decided to make a gift to their customers and sent them a box full of goodies 🙂

The box is made of a thick black cardboard with a bright logo printed on the cover.

Here what was inside the box:

• a black 100% cotton t-shirt with the Hoth logo; In February, the Hoth people asked me in my profile what size I wear and I told them so the t-shirt is my size;
• a white mug with the logo;
• a thick (~1.5 mm) thank-you card in a white envelope;
• a HOTH EVERYTHING pen;
• a soft ball with the logo – to release stress;
• a Hoth sticker;
• two business cards of account managers.

And all this was wrapped in a fine black paper. Stylish =)

Taxes: How To Pay Them If You Have a Kickfurther Account

Attention to the Kickfurther backers! If you got full paybacks in 2015, you have to include this amount into your tax income report. Even if you did not withdraw money from your Kickfurther account, it is still considered to be realized capital gains that are taxable. It does not matter what country you are in – profit is a taxable entity anywhere.

In addition to that, as I have learned while writing this post, you still need to pay taxes on the payments from the offers that are not fully paid back yet. It is related to the fact that goods got sold and the profit was partially earned. These payments are not only hard to understand but also hard to calculate (I sooo not doing it for the year 2015). That said, Kickfurther will soon have a feature that will calculate it for you. For more details, read this Reddit thread where the CEO of Kickfurther explains it all.

As of my taxes, it turned out that the tax deadline in Canada is not March 31st but rather April 30 🙂 So I still have almost a whole month!

I have already found an accountant and have given her all my papers. The service will cost me around $170 ($220CAD). This is one of the cheapest services I could find but I still find it a bit too expensive (I am cheap, yes!). I think I could have easily done my taxes myself if I had more time to investigate how to write off my investments I did in October and November 2015.

Great Amazon Business

The high revenue is March happened thanks to my Elephant 🐘 website. As you remember, it has two revenue streams: Adsense and Amazon affiliate. Amazon affiliate sales happen mostly during the high niche season, and March is in this season. I have added more Amazon links, and all this resulted in a pretty good revenue number.

Comparing to February, the sheer Amazon revenue amount grew by more than 100% (the number of purchases grew by 18%). Comparing to the average numbers I used to calculate the website price before buying it, the Amazon revenue is up by 550%. Not bad 🙂

Kickfurther

In March, Kickfuther business was good. I got  total payouts from 4 different businesses. With this money, I backed 3 offers.

Here are the businesses of my choice for March:

• FEWDM Fitness with their OmniBall for Everyone; I liked the offer conditions and I lo-o-oved the product.
• Inbalance Health Corp. with their special nutrition bar; again, the product looked great (I am not into nutri-bars but I would eat these ones occasionally) and the offer conditions were quite attractive.
• Tuggo Dog Toys with their dog toys. It’s their 3d campaign and I backed the 2nd one that ended with great results and a very early payout! It’s one of my favorite companies so far.

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

Building Backlinks

My goal is to push Rat 🐀 Website up, so in March, I concentrated on building backlinks for it.

First of all, I bought 5 Bolt Package from Lightening Rank. John seems to have a solid service that survived even the PBN massacre in September 2014.

Also, I did some extensive blog commenting. While these backlinks are mostly no-follow, they help to balance the backlink profile and make it more natural.

 

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

Expenses

The expenses in month March 2016 were higher than usual. I spent quite a lot of money paying to my VA. Also, I paid for a Lightening Rank package for Rat 🐀 Website and it was quite expensive.

Income

My March income was pretty awesome 🙂

For Elephant 🐘 Website, March is in the high season. Many people are not only looking at the products from its niche but also buying this stuff. I have added more Amazon affiliate links to the posts and it did a very positive impact on the revenue. All this made March the most successful month since I bought the business.

Horse 🐎 website is doing fine. It did significantly less well than in February when its revenue was almost 50% as much as projected. In March, the website brought in only (or should I write “only”? hehe) 36% more than anticipated.

Also, KickFurther investments have paid back – as usual 🙂

Totals

Here are my totals for March 2016.

Total income $1,591.38 minus total expenses $846.86 makes a net profit of $744.52. The revenue (and the profit!) makes March 2016 the best month since I started the business!

Here is the graph of my revenue vs expenses that excludes all my big investments I made in October 2015 when I bought Elephant Website and November 2015 when I bought Horse Website.

And here is the graph with the investments included. Much less pretty!

Plans For April

So, what are my plans for the next month?

It’s simple: Keep pushing the websites up closer to the sun and waiting for them to come to fruition. I am so looking forward to my homegrown websites to start making money…

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!