My Monthly Income Report – September 2012

Welcome to my September 2012 Monthly Income Report!

Each month I write a detailed report about my online businesses.

I do this not only to help me keep track of my progress, but also to show you what’s working for me, and what’s not.

In my reports I always include a detailed breakdown of the income I’ve earned online and I conclude with some of the more important things I’ve learned during the month.

I personally feel that if a person is publishing information about making money online he or she should show all sides of the equation so that the readers can make honest decisions based on honest information and common sense, not on hype and exaggeration.

If you’re just starting out online, please understand that making money via the Internet is definitely not an overnight thing, and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to pull it off.

I struggle through trial and error every single day – but as long as you have a goal and constantly work towards it you’re giving yourself a chance.

I hope you enjoy this month’s report. 

The most significant thing that happened in September, as many of you know, was that my wife gave birth to our new baby daughter!

The delivery was perfect and everyone got to go home a day later – healthy but tired – and I took a couple of weeks off from writing and other projects to focus just on family, which was real nice. Our 2-year old son is actually handling the new addition very well! He’s extremely protective of her! Go Keoni!

I forgot what it was like to sleep for longer than 2 hours at a time – but hey – that’s part of the fun!

I love being a dad, and it’s even better now with 2 children. I never knew I could love so much.

Here’s a picture of our daughter at 5 days old. Check out how much personality she has already!

Thanks for letting me share my joy with you. I could write for days about how excited I am, but let’s get into some business related stuff in this report…

Fox-News Spot

At the beginning of the month, a local Fox news correspondent emailed me and asked me if I wanted to do an interview for a small spot on the evening news!

At first, I said I wasn’t able to do it because I told myself I wouldn’t leave the house since it was within a month from the due date of our daughter (and our son was born a month early), but they offered to come over instead – so I said yes!

They filmed me in my home office answering questions for about a half an hour, plus some background roll of me doing normal home-office type stuff, so it was really interesting to see what parts they actually used in the 2 minute spot. They got a few facts wrong (like saying I was fired instead of laid off), but they put some really good stuff in there too. Here’s the video below:

(Or click here to watch on YouTube)

SPI on Mobile!

I have big news for SPI fans!

If you’re on any mobile device or tablet and visit http://www.smartpassiveincome.com, you’ll see a brand spankin’ new web application that makes it a whole lot easier to consume SPI content! It doesn’t matter if you’re on an android phone, iPhone, iPad or whatever – if you land on the homepage or go through this link, you’ll see the new web app.

This is provided by a service at Conduit.com where you can easily customize your own web application (in minutes!) AND create a comparable non-web version iPhone app, Android app and Windows Mobile app. I already had a customized iPhone application built for the blog over a year ago, but I built one for Android in about 5 minutes using this same service and it’s currently under review in Google Play and should be approved shortly for all of you android users.

Since putting this into place, the web application alone has been called up over 6000 times!

Conduit offers packages at various prices, and there’s a basic plan for FREE which gives you 500 visits to your mobile site and 25 app installs, in case you wanted to test it out.

Special thanks to Bill Campbell from Apocalypse Straw Solutions who introduced me to this option for my blog!

Create a Clickable Map

Earlier this year I created CreateAClickableMap.com to help people create a clickable U.S. map on their website, similar to the one on the homepage of SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com.

Surprisingly, CACM has been seen over 14,000 times and hundreds of people have created a clickable map for their own website, for free, which is awesome! But, having said that, after hundreds of uses and much feedback, there were a few apparent features that were missing:

Washington D.C. was not on the map.It wasn’t possible to come back and edit a map later. If people wanted to update even one single link, they would have to start over from scratch. I wanted this feature in initially but it would have cost me a few extra thousand dollars to implement.The map couldn’t be read on all devices, since it was a flash map.

For a free resource, it did what it needed to do and most people were completely happy with it, but after hearing a number of complaints and seeing just how many people used the tool, I decided to kick it up a notch this past month.

I hired a developer from Elance (a different one) who started from scratch to create a tool similar to what you see now, but it will include each of the missing items listed above.

Both the web app and the map that people generate and publish on their websites will be HTML5 so it can be read on any device and browser. Additionally (for a tiny one-time fee), people can choose to save their map so they can come back later if they want. You can still generate a map for free though – no problem!

I’m not expecting to make a ton of money from this, but it will still be a small addition to my passive income portfolio and it’s definitely something that will help people. I’m already exploring adding new regions to the service so who knows – it could turn into something much bigger than expected!

Disclosure: many of the links below are affiliate links that will earn me a commission if you purchase through them. If you do, I absolutely appreciate it and if you have any questions about any of the products or services please contact me!

Also, please note that a lot of these are figures from reports from each individual company for the previous month. It does not necessarily reflect the actual payment which, for some of the companies listed below, come 30 to 60 days later and may change because of potential refunds or corrections.

GreenExamAcademy.com Product Sales: Total: $3,687.63 Last Month: $3,037.76
Difference:+$649.87
SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com: Adsense: $1,937.08Job Board: $24.92Total: $1,962.00 Last Month: $2,156.17Difference: -$194.17Other Mini-Sites in Portfolio: Total: $395.68 Last Month: $303.51Difference: +$92.17iPhone Applications: Paid Apps: $2,028.00Free Apps: $350.28
Total: $2,378.28 Last Month: $3,394.47Difference: -$1,016.19Affiliate Earnings (includes other niche sites): Gross Total in September: $55,799.51 Last Month: $50,611.38Difference: +5,188.13September Expenses (Below is what was paid last month. It does not include pro-rated yearly fees): Web Developer Virtual Assistant: $700.00Researcher / Admin Virtual Assistant: $400.00Elance (for CreateaClickableMap.com): $1,200.00Servint Dedicated Server: $187.00Bluehost Renewal: $118.87Dropbox: $9.99Amazon Web Services: $2.81Libsyn.com (podcast file hosting): $15.00Aweber: $333.00Basecamp Project Management Software: $49.00E-Junkie Shopping Cart Fee: $5.00Paypal Website Payments Pro: $30.00Certified Public Accountant / Bookkeeping: $260.00Skype $2.99Legal Fees: $250.00Domain Registration / Renewals (GoDaddy): $164.12Affiliate Payment for GreenExamAcademy.com: $197.36Transcription Services: $57.00Site Optimization / Improvement: $33.75FB Advertising (for Title Testing for Book): $197.88Conduit Mobile Solution (Diamond Plan): $1,299.00 Total Expenses for September:  $5,512.77
Net Total in September: $50,286.74

Why do I include income from Smart Passive Income in my reports?

I’ll be the first to admit that a significant portion of my total online income comes as a result of The Smart Passive Income Blog – mostly from the products that I recommend as an affiliate, which are products I’ve used or am extremely familiar with and have helped me in one way, shape or form.

When I first started this blog back in 2008, I never intended to make any money from it. If you go back to my earlier income reports you’ll see that all of my income was coming from outside of this blog through other businesses. Over time, however, the SPI community has grown and as a byproduct of being helpful and giving everything away for free, I started earning from this site too. Because I believe in total honesty and transparency, I decided to include the income from SPI on these reports as well. It wouldn’t feel right hiding this from you.

My non-SPI related income has hovered around the $10,000/month mark for the past year, which is much more than I ever made working my 9 to 5 job in architecture, but I’m truly blessed that I have the support from an amazing community here at SPI who is willing to pay me back for all of the information I publish and the help that I try to provide for free. Some people go out of their way to make sure I get credit for an affiliate link, often emailing me to make sure I got it, which means the world to me. Thank you so much!

With this type of community comes great responsibility and I will never take it for granted. I will never promote something just for the potential income that can come from an affiliate offer, even though those opportunities are definitely there.

I’m incredibly grateful for everything and I will continue to give back with valuable content and my experience in return.

In my iPhone app business, my partner and I thought we were going to see a significant increase in earnings due to the mid-September release of the new iPhone 5. In the past, every new phone has given us a significant boost in earnings.

As you can tell, our iPhone app income did just the opposite of what we had expected – it dropped quite significantly.

Why?

Even though there were record sales of new iPhones, Apple decided to drastically change the look in the iPhone version of the App Store with the new operating system.

Before, it was super easy to scroll down through a category and you could get through the top 100 apps, easy. Then later, it was the top 200.

With the new operating system, you have to scroll sideways to view the apps – and it’s super slow! Only the top 25 or so apps really get seen before people have had enough and look for something else.

As a results of this change, it seems that most independent developers, ones with apps that were in the middle of the charts, like ours, have seen a decrease in income. Those on the top, however, are probably making more bank than ever.

Exposure is the name of the game in the app store, and it’s now even harder to get noticed. As I mentioned in some of my past podcast episodes and articles about iPhone apps, if you’re going to get into the business, think niche and build that audience even before you have an app to serve them, if possible.

Secondly, it seems like it’s getting tougher and tougher to please Google these days. One day they say they love one thing, and then the next  they take it back and penalize you for it.

In case you haven’t heard yet, Google just came out with another search algorithm update, this time targeting low-quality exact-match domain websites.  Check out this blog post by the lovely Kim Roach for more information and the reaction of others.

In a nutshell, websites that are considered low-quality by Google’s standards and have a domain name that matches its target keyword 100% are being penalized. Some people saw a 90%+ drop off in traffic in a single day when they “flipped the switch”.

As with most Google updates, it’s done for the right reasons, however they are a lot of complaints from people who have higher-quality sites that have gotten hit by this update too, which isn’t good. I own a few exact match domains and the ones that I haven’t touched for a long time, which were started as example sites for classes and other experiments, did get hit by this update and have completely dropped off the search radar – but rightly so. It’s when the change effects the lives of those who were doing things right that leaves me feeling uneasy.

The biggest lesson here is that quality is always going to be the most important aspect of a site, which includes everything from cleanliness of code, uniqueness of content to loading time and of course, user-experience. But even then, when you get all of that right you are still at the mercy of the big G, so just be careful and look for other ways to generate traffic, and make sure to give those who are visiting your site now an easy way to subscribe and follow you no matter what happens with Google.

If you’re going to start a site, I’d still aim for an exact match domain, but no matter what just make it an extremely useful resource!

And lastly, after spending more than half of the month just hanging out with family and not really thinking too much about work, I must say that it’s nice to just step away from business for a while. When you mentally check-out of work you can check-in to other things that matter to you in your life and truly enjoy them, and when you get back to your work you come back with a pair of fresh eyes and excitement that may have disappeared for a while.

Thank you all for your support, and all the best to you!

Cheers!

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My Monthly Income Report – August 2012

Welcome to my August 2012 Monthly Income Report! This post is special because it’s the first post I’ve published on SPI since becoming a father of two!

Our baby daughter was born last week, a couple weeks early, but she and mommy are doing very well. Thank you all for the best wishes and support! I’m remembering what it’s like to sleep no longer than 2 hours at a time, but I absolutely love it. Here’s a picture of our daughter on Facebook – isn’t she gorgeous?

All right – let’s get to business.

Each month I write a detailed report about my online businesses – what I’ve been up to, what’s working, what’s not, and how much and where my income is coming from.

I create these reports for several reasons. First, they are here to help me keep track of how I’m progressing – sort of like an online journal that I can go back to in the future.

Secondly, I want to be transparent about everything I do online. I talk a lot about online business strategies that I use and this is where I summarize whether those things work or not. I share so you can learn from my wins, as well as from my losses too.

Lastly, I share the numbers in this post only because I know you’re interested and they inspire. I don’t do this to showoff or pretend like I’m better than anybody else, because I’m not. I just take action and execute, and these are my results.

I hope you enjoy this month’s report!

A lot of “prep-work” is being done in several of my businesses for the future. Here’s what I’ve been up to.

iPhone Apps

It’s been a long time since my business partner and I published a new iPhone application, but we’re working on a new one as we speak. We just hired a developer to execute an idea we’ve had for over a year that we’re finally acting on. The total cost will be a few thousand dollars and it’ll be interesting to see how it’s received by the market.

As many of you know, the iPhone app market is extremely saturated now and releasing a new application in this environment is very ‘hit or miss’ – mostly miss – but we see that as even more reason to make sure the application is unique and something noteworthy, which we believe it is.

If I had to go into the iPhone app market again from scratch, I wouldn’t choose the path that we chose , which is the “lets build an entertainment brand that builds apps that serves no specific market except those that are bored or looking for a good laugh”. I’d rather follow Mike Doonan’s model and build an application that provides a solution to a specific niche or a specific pain. Very similar to Dane Maxwell’s approach to software as a service.

We’re excited through, and we will be thinking outside of the box when marketing this application so it does serve a specific market – sort of. I’ll tell you more about it once it’s almost ready to go. It’s not an easy application to develop either, so we’re not exactly sure how long it’ll take. A couple months at most, I’m hoping. We’ll see, but it’s nice to get back on the saddle.

Security Guard Training Redesign

For the past month, I’ve been working on redesigning the niche website that has so far earned over $30,000.00 since it was born out of the Niche Site Duel. I’m working towards expanding its income sources outside of Adsense, which currently make up about 98% of the total income. It’s definitely not diversified, which isn’t smart.

I tried a couple of other income sources on the site before.

Private advertising worked (i.e. cutting out the middle-man: Google), but the few hundred I was earning per month from those direct advertisements did not make up for the several more hundred that I lost in Adsense as a result of putting those direct ads on the site, so I decided to ditch the private ads.

I also tried CPA (cost-per-acquisition) offers that I found on sites like Commission Junction, but the only relevant offers were for Criminal Justice degrees and after several thousand impressions and ZERO conversions (and hardly any clicks), it was apparent that people on my security guard training site were not looking to find criminal justice degrees, which makes complete sense.

They are there because they want information on how and where to become security guards.

I was already giving them the how with my content, but I wasn’t actually giving any information as far as the “where” to get training, so that’s what I’ve been working on these past couple of months.

One of my VAs has been conducting research for me and has compiled a nice database of about 2,500 (and growing) security guard training companies around the United States – a list that apparently has never existed before on the web. My other VA has connected this database to a Zip Code search function on my test site through MyPHPAdmin. Now, anyone can search for their zip code and find a training facility near their area.

When the new site goes live, the homepage will include a clear call to action in the header to enter a zip code. From there, the results page will show a list of posts related that that specific state (since each state has a different set of security guard training requirements) and the nearby training facilities below that.

On individual internal posts, which is what a majority of my traffic lands on first through Google, at the bottom of the post I’ll include a zip search function box/action-area as well so that when people finish reading the requirements, they’ll get the nearby facilities in their area as well.

Here’s a preview of what the new header looks like on the homepage:

And here’s the header on the internal pages. I didn’t want the zip search field to be in the header since I want people to read the content on these pages first:

I love the new logo!

So, how am I going to make money with the Zip Code search function?

My thinking is that it’s going to be very similar to the 1-800-DENTIST  business model where people come to the site, find a company close to them and give me their contact information. I can then send that information (individually or in bulk) to the particular security guard training company for a fee.

I’m not 100% sure how this is going to work yet, it’ll take some trial and error and experimentation, but all I know is that there are security guard training companies in need of leads and people who are desperately looking for security guard training companies in their area (that’s my #1 email I get) and I’m providing the solution for that.

I will probably have to hire someone part time to execute this for me and forward the leads to various companies. We’ll see what happens, and even if it doesn’t monetize it’ll be an important feature on the site that’ll definitely make it stand out and become a top resource in the niche, which can only help my Adsense income. It should up the traffic coming to the site as well.

I’m also going to be partnering with a security guard gear company to sell gear on my site too, and I’ve also noticed that security companies around the web have terrible looking websites. It might be cool to start to offering specialized design services for them as well, maybe an out of the box solution I can create that’s specific for this niche (again, a la Dane Maxwell). I could probably charge a good amount for this as well.

I still feel there is a ton of potential with this site, I just have to fool around a bit and find what works.

Smart Passive Income

In August, Smart Passive Income surpassed the 50,000 subscriber mark! It’s also saw record traffic thanks to a lot of great features:

The Forbes article was an awesome surprise and I’m deeply humbled to be listed in a post with other business leaders who I definitely look up to, such as Tony Hsieh from Zappos and Jason Fried from 37Signals. It’s also pretty cool to represent the solopreneurs and work-at-homers out there since I’m the only one of the list.

Also, if you watch the reality show Big Brother on CBS, there’s a man named Dan Gheesling who actually won Big Brother in 2008 who is back on the show this season. After he won I helped him with his business a little and I found out that he’s been name dropping me and my blog quite a bit on the live feed. Talk about Being Everywhere!

Speaking of “Be Everywhere”, the biggest project I’ve been working on as of late is my book. I’m currently over halfway finished (over 25,000 words) and am already working with an editor to go over the parts of the book I’ve already drafted. I’m enjoying the process very much, as much as it is stressful and new for me. I can crank out a 3000 word blog post in just a few hours, but this book is an entirely new beast. Since I’ve started, I’ve learned to stop editing along the way and just let the words flow, and a lot of great stuff has come out of it. I can’t wait to share it with you!

If you’re not yet following my progress and the progress of several other published and soon-to-be-published authors, click here to join the private Facebook group which is now over 2,600 people strong! And it’s very active too! I’m learning new things every day.

Ok, I think it’s time for some numbers…

Disclosure: many of the links below are affiliate links that will earn me a commission if you purchase through them. If you do, I absolutely appreciate it and if you have any questions about any of the products or services please contact me!

Also, please note that a lot of these are figures from reports from each individual company for the previous month. It does not necessarily reflect the actual payment which, for some of the companies listed below, come 30 to 60 days later and may change because of potential refunds or corrections.

GreenExamAcademy.com Product Sales: Total: $3,037.76 Last Month: $2,918.27
Difference: +$119.49
SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com: Adsense: $2,128.32Job Board: $27.85Total: $2,156.17 Last Month: $1,939.32Difference: +$216.85
Purchased Website #1 (not revealed, no work done on site since purchase 6 months ago): Adsense: $99.45 Last Month: $95.57Difference: + $3.88Other Mini-Sites in Portfolio: Total: $204.06 Last Month: $186.31Difference: +$17.75iPhone Applications: Paid Apps: $2,995.37Free Apps: $399.10
Total: $3,394.47 Last Month: $4,028.65Difference: -$634.18Affiliate Earnings (includes other niche sites): Gross Total in August: $50,611.38 Last Month: $53,791.06Difference: -$3,179.68August Expenses (Below is what was paid last month. It does not include pro-rated yearly fees): Web Developer Virtual Assistant: $700Researcher / Admin Virtual Assistant: $400Servint Dedicated Server: $240.00Bluehost Renewal: $118.87Dropbox: $9.99Amazon Web Services: $2.81Libsyn.com (podcast file hosting): $12.00Aweber: $333.00Basecamp Project Management Software: $49.00E-Junkie Shopping Cart Fee: $5.00Paypal Website Payments Pro: $30.00Certified Public Accountant / Bookkeeping: $260.00Skype $2.99Legal Fees: $500.00Trademark Fees: $375.00Voice Talent: $175.00Writer for Security Guard Training Site: $220.00WordPress Theme for Client: $42.00Domain Registration (GoDaddy): $8.17Affiliate Payment for GreenExamAcademy.com: $382.34B&H Foto & Electronics: $1,199.00 (Canon Rebel T4i with 18-135mm lens) Total Expenses for August:  $5068.17
Net Total in August: $45,543.21

Another amazing month of earnings! The Bluehost earnings continue to amaze me and the conversion patterns have always been the same. If you’d like to learn more about exactly where my Bluehost links are located on this blog, and how well each of them convert, click here.

As I mention in every income report, I’ll be the first to admit that a significant portion of my total online income comes as a result of The Smart Passive Income Blog – mostly from the products that I recommend as an affiliate, which are products I’ve used or am extremely familiar with and have helped me in one way, shape or form. Because of that, I have no shame in earning this much from the blog as I know that I’m helping people, I’m just fortunate that I’m doing it in a way that pays me back too.

My non-SPI related income is over $10k per month (which I’d be completely happy with and is much more than I ever made working my 9 to 5 job in architecture) but I’m truly blessed I have the support of an amazing community here at SPI who is willing to pay me back for all of the information I publish here and the help that I try to provide. Some people go out of their way to make sure I get credit for an affiliate link, often emailing me to make sure I got it, which means the world to me. Thank you so much!

With this type of community comes great responsibility and I will never take it for granted. I will never promote something just for the potential income that can come from an affiliate offer, even though those opportunities are definitely there.

I’m incredibly grateful for everything and I will continue to give back with valuable content and my experience in return.

I’m going to keep this short because I’ve been writing for a few hours (not straight away), sometimes typing with just my right hand with a sleeping baby cradled in the other (like I’m doing right now).

There is one thing that all businesses and blogs should strive for, and it’s not more traffic, subscribers, leads, conversions or sales.

It’s this:

Thank you’s.

This is actually a picture of just a small percentage of personal thank you notes that have been sent to me, many of which are hand-written from people who have benefited from the content that I’ve produced on this blog. People who have seen results. The more thank yous that you can get, the more traffic, subscribers, leads, conversions and sales will come your way.

That’s just how it works.

Whether it’s through comments, email, social media or personal notes from people like these, or even word of mouth, getting “thank you’s” is a great way to know that you’re doing something right, because remember – it’s people who are on the other end of traffic, subscribers, leads, conversions and sales.

Thank you all for your support, and have an awesome September!

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My Monthly Income Report – July 2012

Welcome to my July 2012 monthly income report!

Each month I share an extremely detailed report about what I’ve been up to, the income I’ve earned online and the lessons I’ve learned during the past month.

I do this for several reasons:

To keep me headed in the right direction, hold me accountable and continue to try and outdo myself.I want to be honest and transparent. If anyone talks about making money online, I think that’s really the only way it should be. Wins, losses, successes and failures – the whole deal.I know it inspires a lot of people to take action.

If you’re just starting out online, please understand that making money via the Internet is definitely not an overnight thing.

Time, hard work, dedication, a lot of failures, constant learning and a passion to help other people are all things that I’ve found to be part of the recipe for success. That, and stepping out of your comfort zone every once and a while.

July started off with a bang!

Since working as director of web and social media for the independent film, Crooked Arrows, the producers asked me to help with another project titled Lucky Stiff, a broadway musical adapted movie which stars several Tony Award-Winning actors, including Jason Alexander, who we all know as George from the sitcom, Seinfield. 

I was invited to come to the set to be an extra, which I did for Crooked Arrows too (in a crowd scene), but this time I got some serious screen time.

And by serious, I mean just a few of seconds, but I played an important role – a bellhop who tries to take a bag from one of the leading characters, and she refuses and tells me off.

I’m pretty sure this role won’t land me a spot on Dancing With the Stars (unfortunately), but the experience was amazing and now I can truly check that one off the bucket list.

Here’s a picture of me preparing for a take:

And here’s one of me and Jason Alexander in between takes:

And to think, just 4 years ago I was still employed at an architecture firm in Southern California.

So many amazing things can happen in such a short period of time. Remember that.

I’m truly blessed that I had this opportunity, so a big thank you to the producers (who actually found me through my podcast on iTunes) who reached out to me.

Security Guard Training HQ

The earnings from my primary niche site, SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com, are back on the rise.

(See the Niche Site Duel posts for details about how the niche was selected and the site was built.)

The issue is, I’m still relying almost 100% on Adsense and I’ve been wanting to diversify and expand beyond pay-per-click advertising for a long time.

In July, I’ve finally started making progress on building a system that could possibly do that.

In Taking Action and Building the Ultimate Resource – Phase One, I wrote about how my Virtual Assistant had been busy collecting data about security guard training facilities around the U.S. – a list of companies that didn’t exist yet.

So far, she’s collected over 2000 different companies, and I have a developer who is currently building a “search-by-zip” function on the site. He’s already made great progress so far, as you can see on this test site below:

This is just the search and database function, but the idea here is not just to show people the companies that can train them, but to collect their information and sell those leads to that specific company too. For each listing, the user will be able to enter their details (name, email, phone number, etc.) and then I should be able to (or rather, a Virtual Assistant should be able to) forward that information to those specific companies.

I’ll probably give away a limited number of the leads to start building relationships with those companies, but if they’re smart they would know how much a lead is worth to them, and would be able to pay me for the leads that I collect.

I’ll keep you posted as things happen.

I’m also in the middle of a site redesign too, one which will include a store, the new company search function, a more prominent job board, plus a few more things.

Also, one thing I’ve recently noticed is that most of the existing security guard websites have very poor designs. I don’t think it would be too hard for me to offer website design services specifically for the security guard industry. Then, my niche site could really become the ultimate resource – not just for customers or end users, but for businesses too.

Spam Woes

Last year, I was getting up to 500+ spam comments per day. Luckily, the Wordress plugin, Akismet, was taking care of pretty much all of them.

Unfortunately, Akismet was also counting several legitimate comments as spam, including my own! I couldn’t even comment without having to fish through the spam and approve my own comments.

Extremely annoying!

I contacted Akismet about it, and they basically told me, “tough luck”.

Why there isn’t a way to whitelist certain commenters, I don’t know, but I’d had enough.

So, I switched to a plugin called Growmap Anti-Spambot Plugin, also known as G.A.S.P.

GASP adds a little checkbox to the comment section that people have to click on to prove they’re human, and for months, it worked like a charm.

I had zero spam comments coming in, since all of that spam was coming from bots.

Recently, however, human spammers have become a problem. Even with GASP in place, up to 20 or 30 spam comments were coming in each day from actual people.

As a result, every day I had to go into my comment section in WordPress and delete them. Blacklisting the I.P addresses from the spammers didn’t stop new spammers from arriving.

I was okay with deleting the spam each night, it would only take a couple of minutes, but in June and July several people complained. Not because they saw spam on my site, but because they were subscribed to the comment and were getting emails with spam comments in them.

I wouldn’t be happy either, and I don’t blame them for complaining.

The spam issue was becoming such a nuisance, I spent a good half a day trying to figure out what to do.

I found a solution that seems to be working so far. Spam comments have significantly decreased, although still not 100%.

I’m using a combination of Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress, and Akismet.

Yes – I’m back to using Akismet. My comments still don’t go through right away, but if I answer comments on the backend of WordPress, I can quickly hit an approve button and they’ll go through – not a big deal.

So what’s the purpose of the CAPTCHA plugin?

It works with Akismet in a way that if Akismet detects spam, it then asks the commenter to fill out a simple CAPTCHA, which apparently the human spammers don’t have time for, or maybe don’t understand how to use. If the comment is not detected as spam, then it just gets published.

This is the best solution I’ve found so far – the spam has drastically decreased and legitimate comments are still getting through, but apparently most people who leave a legitimate comment will still have to fill out a CAPTCHA because Akismet detects them as spam, and that’s really annoying to me.

If you know a better solution, I’d be more than happy to explore that as an option.

Publishing a Kindle Book

In July, I posted How to be EVEN MORE Everywhere, which went over my plan for publishing a book. I’d like to eventually do both a traditionally published book and an electronic book on the Amazon Kindle platform, but I’ve decided to start with Amazon because it’ll be faster and because I can help more people along the way.

I also started a Private Facebook Group and am inviting anyone who is interested in book publishing into it. It currently has over 2100 members and the community has been extremely active and has shared a ton of great advice. There’s a good mix of aspiring authors and those who can call themselves authors already, so if you’re interested just click here and click the “ask to join” button, and I’ll approve you.

The title of my book is Be Everywhere and it’s based off of my “How to Be Everywhere” presentation at Blog World Expo in 2011, which was very well received and something I’ve become an authority on since then.

The subtitle – now that’s a different story.

I have about 5 different versions of the subtitle and am creating ads on Facebook where the name of the ad is the title of the book, and the description of the ad is the subtitle. This is a strategy straight out of The 4-Hour Work Week and will help me determine, without guessing, which subtitle works the best, based on which one has the highest click-through rate.

Those clicks actually go to a specific tab on my Facebook Page where I’m also collecting email addresses to announce the launch of the book, so the experiment is doing double duty, which is awesome.

Thanks to Rick Mulready for his help with this!

I’ll be sharing the results of this experiment when I announce the final title and start promoting.

Now all I need is a book!

I’ve started writing and have made it a part of my nightly ritual. It’s a struggle, but I’m having a blast and cannot wait to share the final product with you!

In the meantime…let’s get to some numbers!

Disclosure: many of the links below are affiliate links that will earn me a commission if you purchase through them. If you do, I absolutely appreciate it and if you have any questions about any of the products or services please contact me!

Also, please note that a lot of these are figures from reports from each individual company for the previous month. It does not necessarily reflect the actual payment which, for some of the companies listed below, come 30 to 60 days later and may change because of potential refunds or corrections.

GreenExamAcademy.com Product Sales: Total: $2,918.27 Last Month: $3,300.92
Difference: -$382.65
SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com: Adsense: $1,910.06 (an increase of $383.74)Job Board: $29.26Total: $1,939.32 Last Month: $1,609.22Difference: +$330.10
Purchased Website #1 (not revealed): Adsense: $95.57 Last Month: $117.87Difference: -$22.30Other Google Adsense (includes other mini niche sites & videos): Total: $122.34 Last Month: $131.06Difference: -$8.72New Amazon Product Niche Site (not revealed): Total: $154.82 Last Month: $210.11Difference: -$55.29Affiliate Earnings (includes other niche sites): iPhone Applications: Paid Apps: $3,589.59Free Apps: $439.06
Total: $4,028.65 Last Month: $4,488.08Difference: -$459.43Gross Total in July: $53,791.06 Last Month: $48,818.51Difference: +$4,976.55Expenses: ~$3,598.09 Major expenses this month include virtual assistants (one full-time, one part-time), hosting account for SPI (dedicated server), hosting for other websites (bluehost), recurring payments for various tools, CPA (Certified Public Accountant), attorney fees, website security tool

Another amazing month of earnings! The Bluehost earnings are through the roof, and I spoke to my affiliate manager and apparently the summer months are always the highest converting. No complaints here!

As I always mention, I’ll be the first to admit that a significant portion of my total online income comes as a result of The Smart Passive Income Blog – mostly from the products that I recommend as an affiliate, which are products I’ve used or am extremely familiar with and have helped me in one way, shape or form. Because of that, I have no shame in earning this much from the blog as I know that I’m helping people, I’m just fortunate that I’m doing so in a way that pays me back too.

The support from the SPI community is amazing. Some people even go out of their way to make sure they click on my referral links, which means the world to me.

With this comes a great responsibility to the community that I know I have and will never take for granted – and as such I never promote just for the potential income that can come from an offer, even though those opportunities are definitely there.

I’m incredibly grateful for everything and I will continue to give back with valuable content and my experience in return.

I’ve been doing a lot of housework as we get things prepared in the Flynn household for the arrival of our daughter next month. As I was painting my son’s room, I was listening to Zig Ziglar’s podcast, Inspiring Words of Encouragement.

In one particular episode, Zig was talking about taking your nothing time and turning it into something time. He called it, specifically: Automobile University. That means using the time you spend in your car (which can also be at the gym, on a walk, or in a waiting room, etc.) learning something useful that will make you better.

On the way to work, he would listen to something on a cassette tape (that’s how old these recordings for the podcast are) that would make him a better worker when he arrived. On his way home, he’s listen to something that would make him a better husband at home.

It was cool to know that I was attending my own version of automobile university at that very moment, and it inspired me to stock up on podcasts and other forms of audio that I could listen to while in my nothing time.

There’s no reason NOT to do this!

Since hearing about AU, I’ve been making sure that I always have something in queue to learn about when I’m in my nothing time.

Here are some podcasts that I’ve been listening to:

In addition to podcasts, thanks to Cliff Ravenscraft of Podcast Answer Man, I learned about an amazing productivity / learning tool called Sound Gecko.

With Sound Gecko, you can take any article or blog post on the web, mp3-ize it and then listen to it later on any device that you want. You can email the article to yourself where it will be translated into an mp3 and there waiting for you on your device, or you can use the chrome extension to accomplish the same thing.

It’s amazing, and it’s free!

On my way to pick up some food the other day, I listened to 2 blog posts on the way there, and then 2 posts on the way back, and I have more than 10 posts in queue for me to listen to later.

Thanks again, Cliff, for the amazing resource, and I hope all of you will be attending AU if you aren’t enrolled already.

And the best part: no tuition.

Thanks for your support as the SPI community closes in on 50,000 subscribers!

Cheers!

Tagged as: monthly income report

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5 Ways to Unbox the Mystery and Increase Your Affiliate Income

Of all the things I covered in my recent presentation at Blog World Expo about successful affiliate marketing (replay here), the one thing that seemed to resonate with people the most was the idea of “unboxing the mystery”.

Because it’s so important and absolutely crucial to my marketing plan, I’ll go over it in more detail with you today so you can increase your affiliate income too.

This particular topic comes to mind because I recently followed up with a few people who, after listening to my presentation, told me personally that they were going to make changes based on this strategy.

It has been nearly 2 months, and none of them have followed through.

I know it’s not my fault, but it’s hard for me not to be frustrated when I know this will help increase their income. I won’t name any names, but I’ll let this post serve as a “gentle” reminder to them and a sign to you that I truly believe in this strategy.

Let’s get to it…

People want to know what a product is like before they pay for it.

This is why we’re allowed to test drive cars, why software products have demo & trial offers and why our favorite electronic stores all have the ‘toys’ neatly laid out for us to touch and feel and play with.

It’s all “unboxed” for us, so we can buy it and then unbox it again on our own.

As affiliates, it’s really easy to just find a product and place an affiliate link somewhere. We might take it a step further and talk about the product a little bit, or even go into detail about how it has helped us – but many fail to truly unveil the mystery of what that product is like and they don’t give their audience a chance to get a feel for what they’re about to buy.

Why?

Mostly likely because:

They don’t have enough experience with that product; and/orThey don’t feel like it’s their responsibility.

Consequently, money is being left on the table, but beyond that, people may not decide to purchase a product that could actually help them.

Not Enough Experience

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that we don’t need to spend time on product creation. Heck, most of the time we can even become an affiliate for a product without having to purchase it – and for most products that have an affiliate program, you can become an affiliate today.

It’s a trade-off, however, because the savings in time put us at a disadvantage when it comes to truly understanding a product in a way that allows us to easily show it off and unbox it for our audience.

So does this mean we should actually use a product before we promote it?

Totally.

Not My Product, Not My Responsibility

Another great advantage of affiliate marketing is that because it’s not our own product, we don’t have to worry about selling. Everything after the click on our site is not our responsibility anymore – from the sales page through delivery and customer service.

So why should we have to reveal the product if that’s already being done on the sales page?

Because people still have to click the link on our site.

Plus, your audience knows and trusts you more than the owner of a product that you didn’t create, so you should use that to your advantage and take the responsibility of showing them what they’re going to get. You’re sort of stepping in the middle and creating your own little ‘pitch’ specifically for your audience.

And if you simply illustrate what a product is like, it’s not really a pitch at all – it becomes a resource and you’re more likely to convert as a result.

Here are 5 ways to “unbox” a product on your website.

1. A Blog Post with Sequential Images

This is the easiest method and is best for products that include a step-by-step process that isn’t too complicated, one where you can “pause” and easily take a photo or screenshot.

An example from my own library includes my Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Newsletter, which includes 17 different images inside the backend of the email service provider that I use.

This post not only reveals what a product is like on the inside and how it works, but because the post is about the end goal – creating a newsletter – and not just a review about a particular product, it becomes an incredibly valuable resource that other people are more likely to link to and share, and there is little to no pitch involved.

If you have a Mac computer, simply pressing cmd+shift+4 and dragging a box around whatever you’d like to take a screenshot of is the way to go. If you want to get fancy edges around it, here’s a post where I share how to do that using Pages.

If you’re on Windows, then you can follow the directions here or use a product like SnagIt to make them look much nicer.

2. Videos

Videos are more difficult to produce, but they can definitely be worth the extra effort. Videos work best for most types of products, but they’re especially good if you’re talking about a particular product that has any sort of movement or sound that goes along with it. Even for software, if there’s any interesting and impressive animations that happen, you’ll want to include that in a video – that’s a part of the ‘feel’ of a particular product.

Also, videos are generally happening in ‘real-time’, so if you can demonstrate ease of use in real-time, that’s a huge plus too.

In this video, I talk about the principle of producing instant results and I use a vibration speaker to demonstrate that principle. If you watch the video (it’s cued up a few seconds before I demonstrate the speaker in use) you’ll see how sound and ease of use play a huge role in showing off that product.

That video wasn’t created to sell that particular product – again, it was only used for demonstration purposes – but several people emailed me after the video went live asking for an affiliate link because I unboxed it for them, and they wanted to experience it themselves too.

Again, no pitch involved – just demonstration using video.

Another example from my collection of videos is my most profitable video ever, How to Build a Blog in Less than 4 Minutes and Write Your First Blog Post.

In this video, I walk people step by step through the process of starting a blog. Yes, this could have been done with screenshots in a blog post, but then the “ease of use” aspect of it – the idea that it could really be done in less than 4 minutes – would be lost.

Knowing that technology holds a lot of people back from starting an online business or blog, I wanted to tackle that head on – which I could only do via video.

And lastly, something I referenced in my presentation, just think about how popular those unboxing videos are on YouTube, where people are literally unboxing new products. Millions and millions of views – just check out this YouTube channel here - and that’s just one channel.

3. Webinars

Webinars are videos on steroids.

Although more difficult to produce than videos, the benefit is that you get the live interaction with your audience which can only help you sell the product even more, and plus – if you record it, you’ll have a video that you can use in a replay and on YouTube.

The trick is to setup the webinar with the end goal in mind, not the particular products that you’re going to recommend in it. That way, again, the webinar becomes a valuable resource – not a pitchfest.

An example is my keyword research webinar. In this webinar, I share how keyword research works, the free methods of doing keyword research, and then how I use a particular tool to make things move a lot faster. That tool, which I include an affiliate link for in the video (and in the description on the replay page) has always been one of the top earning products in my income reports.

Another great aspect of producing webinars is that your live audience is going to ask the questions that need to be asked, that maybe you forgot to address, and if it’s on their mind, it’s likely on everyone else’s mind too, and you’ll unbox the product even more.

For tips on how to produce an amazing webinar, catch my interview with webinar expert, Lewis Howes in SPI Podcast Session #29.

4. Podcasts

If you have a podcast, even though it’s audio only, you can still use the medium to reveal aspects about a product that will work in your favor.

Sharing a step-by-step process is difficult if it’s more than 3 steps – people aren’t going to remember everything – so if you do share a particular process on a podcast make sure that you include a link to the show notes on your website where people can revisit those later.

The true power of the podcast when it comes to affiliate marketing, however, is the ability to interview the owner of a product that you’re promoting. If done correctly, your audience can come out of your podcast with a stronger relationship with the owner, in which case they will feel more comfortable making a purchase.

You haven’t really unboxed the product, but the creator of that product instead, which is important.

Now – you have to be careful here. Not all product owners are going to be good behind the mic or come across as being friendly, so before you potentially interview the owner of a product for your podcast, chat with them beforehand and see if you think it’ll work. If not, you can at least tell that person what you like about the product and you can develop a relationship with them yourself.

Also, see if they’ve done interviews elsewhere on the web to see if they have a style that would fit your brand.

If you can’t get a hold of the product owner, try finding another person who has used that product to some degree of success, and you can dive into their real life experience with it.

If you do choose to go the audio route, I’d combine this with one of the other strategies mentioned in this post.

5. In Use in it’s Final State

Not all products, but some, will give you the ability to show your potential customers the product actually in use right then and there. This is when your audience can see, touch, hear, feel and experience the product in it’s final state.

Online, not all products will have this ability, but when they do, it’s powerful.

For example, if you scroll to the bottom of this post and wait a couple of seconds, you’ll see the action-area fade into place. This is powered by Opt-in Skin and dozens of people each month ask me how they can make this happen too.

Pop-Up Domination is another infamous WordPress Plugin where people could see it in action on various websites, although personally I’m not a huge fan of pop-ups.

Remember: how much money you earn is a byproduct of how helpful you are to your audience, so be extremely helpful and show your audience exactly what they’re going to get before the get it.

Become a resource that helps them achieve an end goal, and show them everything about the products that they can use (and hopefully you’ve used yourself) to help them get there.

Do this, and you will become a successful affiliate marketer, one that your audience will appreciate at the same time.

Tagged as: affiliate marketing

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My Monthly Income Report – July 2012

Welcome to my July 2012 monthly income report!

Each month I share an extremely detailed report about what I’ve been up to, the income I’ve earned online and the lessons I’ve learned during the past month.

I do this for several reasons:

To keep me headed in the right direction, hold me accountable and continue to try and outdo myself.I want to be honest and transparent. If anyone talks about making money online, I think that’s really the only way it should be. Wins, losses, successes and failures – the whole deal.I know it inspires a lot of people to take action.

If you’re just starting out online, please understand that making money via the Internet is definitely not an overnight thing.

Time, hard work, dedication, a lot of failures, constant learning and a passion to help other people are all things that I’ve found to be part of the recipe for success. That, and stepping out of your comfort zone every once and a while.

July started off with a bang!

Since working as director of web and social media for the independent film, Crooked Arrows, the producers asked me to help with another project titled Lucky Stiff, a broadway musical adapted movie which stars several Tony Award-Winning actors, including Jason Alexander, who we all know as George from the sitcom, Seinfield. 

I was invited to come to the set to be an extra, which I did for Crooked Arrows too (in a crowd scene), but this time I got some serious screen time.

And by serious, I mean just a few of seconds, but I played an important role – a bellhop who tries to take a bag from one of the leading characters, and she refuses and tells me off.

I’m pretty sure this role won’t land me a spot on Dancing With the Stars (unfortunately), but the experience was amazing and now I can truly check that one off the bucket list.

Here’s a picture of me preparing for a take:

And here’s one of me and Jason Alexander in between takes:

And to think, just 4 years ago I was still employed at an architecture firm in Southern California.

So many amazing things can happen in such a short period of time. Remember that.

I’m truly blessed that I had this opportunity, so a big thank you to the producers (who actually found me through my podcast on iTunes) who reached out to me.

Security Guard Training HQ

The earnings from my primary niche site, SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com, are back on the rise.

(See the Niche Site Duel posts for details about how the niche was selected and the site was built.)

The issue is, I’m still relying almost 100% on Adsense and I’ve been wanting to diversify and expand beyond pay-per-click advertising for a long time.

In July, I’ve finally started making progress on building a system that could possibly do that.

In Taking Action and Building the Ultimate Resource – Phase One, I wrote about how my Virtual Assistant had been busy collecting data about security guard training facilities around the U.S. – a list of companies that didn’t exist yet.

So far, she’s collected over 2000 different companies, and I have a developer who is currently building a “search-by-zip” function on the site. He’s already made great progress so far, as you can see on this test site below:

This is just the search and database function, but the idea here is not just to show people the companies that can train them, but to collect their information and sell those leads to that specific company too. For each listing, the user will be able to enter their details (name, email, phone number, etc.) and then I should be able to (or rather, a Virtual Assistant should be able to) forward that information to those specific companies.

I’ll probably give away a limited number of the leads to start building relationships with those companies, but if they’re smart they would know how much a lead is worth to them, and would be able to pay me for the leads that I collect.

I’ll keep you posted as things happen.

I’m also in the middle of a site redesign too, one which will include a store, the new company search function, a more prominent job board, plus a few more things.

Also, one thing I’ve recently noticed is that most of the existing security guard websites have very poor designs. I don’t think it would be too hard for me to offer website design services specifically for the security guard industry. Then, my niche site could really become the ultimate resource – not just for customers or end users, but for businesses too.

Spam Woes

Last year, I was getting up to 500+ spam comments per day. Luckily, the Wordress plugin, Akismet, was taking care of pretty much all of them.

Unfortunately, Akismet was also counting several legitimate comments as spam, including my own! I couldn’t even comment without having to fish through the spam and approve my own comments.

Extremely annoying!

I contacted Akismet about it, and they basically told me, “tough luck”.

Why there isn’t a way to whitelist certain commenters, I don’t know, but I’d had enough.

So, I switched to a plugin called Growmap Anti-Spambot Plugin, also known as G.A.S.P.

GASP adds a little checkbox to the comment section that people have to click on to prove they’re human, and for months, it worked like a charm.

I had zero spam comments coming in, since all of that spam was coming from bots.

Recently, however, human spammers have become a problem. Even with GASP in place, up to 20 or 30 spam comments were coming in each day from actual people.

As a result, every day I had to go into my comment section in WordPress and delete them. Blacklisting the I.P addresses from the spammers didn’t stop new spammers from arriving.

I was okay with deleting the spam each night, it would only take a couple of minutes, but in June and July several people complained. Not because they saw spam on my site, but because they were subscribed to the comment and were getting emails with spam comments in them.

I wouldn’t be happy either, and I don’t blame them for complaining.

The spam issue was becoming such a nuisance, I spent a good half a day trying to figure out what to do.

I found a solution that seems to be working so far. Spam comments have significantly decreased, although still not 100%.

I’m using a combination of Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress, and Akismet.

Yes – I’m back to using Akismet. My comments still don’t go through right away, but if I answer comments on the backend of WordPress, I can quickly hit an approve button and they’ll go through – not a big deal.

So what’s the purpose of the CAPTCHA plugin?

It works with Akismet in a way that if Akismet detects spam, it then asks the commenter to fill out a simple CAPTCHA, which apparently the human spammers don’t have time for, or maybe don’t understand how to use. If the comment is not detected as spam, then it just gets published.

This is the best solution I’ve found so far – the spam has drastically decreased and legitimate comments are still getting through, but apparently most people who leave a legitimate comment will still have to fill out a CAPTCHA because Akismet detects them as spam, and that’s really annoying to me.

If you know a better solution, I’d be more than happy to explore that as an option.

Publishing a Kindle Book

In July, I posted How to be EVEN MORE Everywhere, which went over my plan for publishing a book. I’d like to eventually do both a traditionally published book and an electronic book on the Amazon Kindle platform, but I’ve decided to start with Amazon because it’ll be faster and because I can help more people along the way.

I also started a Private Facebook Group and am inviting anyone who is interested in book publishing into it. It currently has over 2100 members and the community has been extremely active and has shared a ton of great advice. There’s a good mix of aspiring authors and those who can call themselves authors already, so if you’re interested just click here and click the “ask to join” button, and I’ll approve you.

The title of my book is Be Everywhere and it’s based off of my “How to Be Everywhere” presentation at Blog World Expo in 2011, which was very well received and something I’ve become an authority on since then.

The subtitle – now that’s a different story.

I have about 5 different versions of the subtitle and am creating ads on Facebook where the name of the ad is the title of the book, and the description of the ad is the subtitle. This is a strategy straight out of The 4-Hour Work Week and will help me determine, without guessing, which subtitle works the best, based on which one has the highest click-through rate.

Those clicks actually go to a specific tab on my Facebook Page where I’m also collecting email addresses to announce the launch of the book, so the experiment is doing double duty, which is awesome.

Thanks to Rick Mulready for his help with this!

I’ll be sharing the results of this experiment when I announce the final title and start promoting.

Now all I need is a book!

I’ve started writing and have made it a part of my nightly ritual. It’s a struggle, but I’m having a blast and cannot wait to share the final product with you!

In the meantime…let’s get to some numbers!

Disclosure: many of the links below are affiliate links that will earn me a commission if you purchase through them. If you do, I absolutely appreciate it and if you have any questions about any of the products or services please contact me!

Also, please note that a lot of these are figures from reports from each individual company for the previous month. It does not necessarily reflect the actual payment which, for some of the companies listed below, come 30 to 60 days later and may change because of potential refunds or corrections.

GreenExamAcademy.com Product Sales: Total: $2,918.27 Last Month: $3,300.92
Difference: -$382.65
SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com: Adsense: $1,910.06 (an increase of $383.74)Job Board: $29.26Total: $1,939.32 Last Month: $1,609.22Difference: +$330.10
Purchased Website #1 (not revealed): Adsense: $95.57 Last Month: $117.87Difference: -$22.30Other Google Adsense (includes other mini niche sites & videos): Total: $122.34 Last Month: $131.06Difference: -$8.72New Amazon Product Niche Site (not revealed): Total: $154.82 Last Month: $210.11Difference: -$55.29Affiliate Earnings (includes other niche sites): iPhone Applications: Paid Apps: $3,589.59Free Apps: $439.06
Total: $4,028.65 Last Month: $4,488.08Difference: -$459.43Gross Total in July: $53,791.06 Last Month: $48,818.51Difference: +$4,976.55Expenses: ~$3,598.09 Major expenses this month include virtual assistants (one full-time, one part-time), hosting account for SPI (dedicated server), hosting for other websites (bluehost), recurring payments for various tools, CPA (Certified Public Accountant), attorney fees, website security tool

Another amazing month of earnings! The Bluehost earnings are through the roof, and I spoke to my affiliate manager and apparently the summer months are always the highest converting. No complaints here!

As I always mention, I’ll be the first to admit that a significant portion of my total online income comes as a result of The Smart Passive Income Blog – mostly from the products that I recommend as an affiliate, which are products I’ve used or am extremely familiar with and have helped me in one way, shape or form. Because of that, I have no shame in earning this much from the blog as I know that I’m helping people, I’m just fortunate that I’m doing so in a way that pays me back too.

The support from the SPI community is amazing. Some people even go out of their way to make sure they click on my referral links, which means the world to me.

With this comes a great responsibility to the community that I know I have and will never take for granted – and as such I never promote just for the potential income that can come from an offer, even though those opportunities are definitely there.

I’m incredibly grateful for everything and I will continue to give back with valuable content and my experience in return.

I’ve been doing a lot of housework as we get things prepared in the Flynn household for the arrival of our daughter next month. As I was painting my son’s room, I was listening to Zig Ziglar’s podcast, Inspiring Words of Encouragement.

In one particular episode, Zig was talking about taking your nothing time and turning it into something time. He called it, specifically: Automobile University. That means using the time you spend in your car (which can also be at the gym, on a walk, or in a waiting room, etc.) learning something useful that will make you better.

On the way to work, he would listen to something on a cassette tape (that’s how old these recordings for the podcast are) that would make him a better worker when he arrived. On his way home, he’s listen to something that would make him a better husband at home.

It was cool to know that I was attending my own version of automobile university at that very moment, and it inspired me to stock up on podcasts and other forms of audio that I could listen to while in my nothing time.

There’s no reason NOT to do this!

Since hearing about AU, I’ve been making sure that I always have something in queue to learn about when I’m in my nothing time.

Here are some podcasts that I’ve been listening to:

In addition to podcasts, thanks to Cliff Ravenscraft of Podcast Answer Man, I learned about an amazing productivity / learning tool called Sound Gecko.

With Sound Gecko, you can take any article or blog post on the web, mp3-ize it and then listen to it later on any device that you want. You can email the article to yourself where it will be translated into an mp3 and there waiting for you on your device, or you can use the chrome extension to accomplish the same thing.

It’s amazing, and it’s free!

On my way to pick up some food the other day, I listened to 2 blog posts on the way there, and then 2 posts on the way back, and I have more than 10 posts in queue for me to listen to later.

Thanks again, Cliff, for the amazing resource, and I hope all of you will be attending AU if you aren’t enrolled already.

And the best part: no tuition.

Thanks for your support as the SPI community closes in on 50,000 subscribers!

Cheers!

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My Monthly Income Report – July 2012

Welcome to my July 2012 monthly income report!

Each month I share an extremely detailed report about what I’ve been up to, the income I’ve earned online and the lessons I’ve learned during the past month.

I do this for several reasons:

To keep me headed in the right direction, hold me accountable and continue to try and outdo myself.I want to be honest and transparent. If anyone talks about making money online, I think that’s really the only way it should be. Wins, losses, successes and failures – the whole deal.I know it inspires a lot of people to take action.

If you’re just starting out online, please understand that making money via the Internet is definitely not an overnight thing.

Time, hard work, dedication, a lot of failures, constant learning and a passion to help other people are all things that I’ve found to be part of the recipe for success. That, and stepping out of your comfort zone every once and a while.

July started off with a bang!

Since working as director of web and social media for the independent film, Crooked Arrows, the producers asked me to help with another project titled Lucky Stiff, a broadway musical adapted movie which stars several Tony Award-Winning actors, including Jason Alexander, who we all know as George from the sitcom, Seinfield. 

I was invited to come to the set to be an extra, which I did for Crooked Arrows too (in a crowd scene), but this time I got some serious screen time.

And by serious, I mean just a few of seconds, but I played an important role – a bellhop who tries to take a bag from one of the leading characters, and she refuses and tells me off.

I’m pretty sure this role won’t land me a spot on Dancing With the Stars (unfortunately), but the experience was amazing and now I can truly check that one off the bucket list.

Here’s a picture of me preparing for a take:

And here’s one of me and Jason Alexander in between takes:

And to think, just 4 years ago I was still employed at an architecture firm in Southern California.

So many amazing things can happen in such a short period of time. Remember that.

I’m truly blessed that I had this opportunity, so a big thank you to the producers (who actually found me through my podcast on iTunes) who reached out to me.

Security Guard Training HQ

The earnings from my primary niche site, SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com, are back on the rise.

(See the Niche Site Duel posts for details about how the niche was selected and the site was built.)

The issue is, I’m still relying almost 100% on Adsense and I’ve been wanting to diversify and expand beyond pay-per-click advertising for a long time.

In July, I’ve finally started making progress on building a system that could possibly do that.

In Taking Action and Building the Ultimate Resource – Phase One, I wrote about how my Virtual Assistant had been busy collecting data about security guard training facilities around the U.S. – a list of companies that didn’t exist yet.

So far, she’s collected over 2000 different companies, and I have a developer who is currently building a “search-by-zip” function on the site. He’s already made great progress so far, as you can see on this test site below:

This is just the search and database function, but the idea here is not just to show people the companies that can train them, but to collect their information and sell those leads to that specific company too. For each listing, the user will be able to enter their details (name, email, phone number, etc.) and then I should be able to (or rather, a Virtual Assistant should be able to) forward that information to those specific companies.

I’ll probably give away a limited number of the leads to start building relationships with those companies, but if they’re smart they would know how much a lead is worth to them, and would be able to pay me for the leads that I collect.

I’ll keep you posted as things happen.

I’m also in the middle of a site redesign too, one which will include a store, the new company search function, a more prominent job board, plus a few more things.

Also, one thing I’ve recently noticed is that most of the existing security guard websites have very poor designs. I don’t think it would be too hard for me to offer website design services specifically for the security guard industry. Then, my niche site could really become the ultimate resource – not just for customers or end users, but for businesses too.

Spam Woes

Last year, I was getting up to 500+ spam comments per day. Luckily, the Wordress plugin, Akismet, was taking care of pretty much all of them.

Unfortunately, Akismet was also counting several legitimate comments as spam, including my own! I couldn’t even comment without having to fish through the spam and approve my own comments.

Extremely annoying!

I contacted Akismet about it, and they basically told me, “tough luck”.

Why there isn’t a way to whitelist certain commenters, I don’t know, but I’d had enough.

So, I switched to a plugin called Growmap Anti-Spambot Plugin, also known as G.A.S.P.

GASP adds a little checkbox to the comment section that people have to click on to prove they’re human, and for months, it worked like a charm.

I had zero spam comments coming in, since all of that spam was coming from bots.

Recently, however, human spammers have become a problem. Even with GASP in place, up to 20 or 30 spam comments were coming in each day from actual people.

As a result, every day I had to go into my comment section in WordPress and delete them. Blacklisting the I.P addresses from the spammers didn’t stop new spammers from arriving.

I was okay with deleting the spam each night, it would only take a couple of minutes, but in June and July several people complained. Not because they saw spam on my site, but because they were subscribed to the comment and were getting emails with spam comments in them.

I wouldn’t be happy either, and I don’t blame them for complaining.

The spam issue was becoming such a nuisance, I spent a good half a day trying to figure out what to do.

I found a solution that seems to be working so far. Spam comments have significantly decreased, although still not 100%.

I’m using a combination of Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress, and Akismet.

Yes – I’m back to using Akismet. My comments still don’t go through right away, but if I answer comments on the backend of WordPress, I can quickly hit an approve button and they’ll go through – not a big deal.

So what’s the purpose of the CAPTCHA plugin?

It works with Akismet in a way that if Akismet detects spam, it then asks the commenter to fill out a simple CAPTCHA, which apparently the human spammers don’t have time for, or maybe don’t understand how to use. If the comment is not detected as spam, then it just gets published.

This is the best solution I’ve found so far – the spam has drastically decreased and legitimate comments are still getting through, but apparently most people who leave a legitimate comment will still have to fill out a CAPTCHA because Akismet detects them as spam, and that’s really annoying to me.

If you know a better solution, I’d be more than happy to explore that as an option.

Publishing a Kindle Book

In July, I posted How to be EVEN MORE Everywhere, which went over my plan for publishing a book. I’d like to eventually do both a traditionally published book and an electronic book on the Amazon Kindle platform, but I’ve decided to start with Amazon because it’ll be faster and because I can help more people along the way.

I also started a Private Facebook Group and am inviting anyone who is interested in book publishing into it. It currently has over 2100 members and the community has been extremely active and has shared a ton of great advice. There’s a good mix of aspiring authors and those who can call themselves authors already, so if you’re interested just click here and click the “ask to join” button, and I’ll approve you.

The title of my book is Be Everywhere and it’s based off of my “How to Be Everywhere” presentation at Blog World Expo in 2011, which was very well received and something I’ve become an authority on since then.

The subtitle – now that’s a different story.

I have about 5 different versions of the subtitle and am creating ads on Facebook where the name of the ad is the title of the book, and the description of the ad is the subtitle. This is a strategy straight out of The 4-Hour Work Week and will help me determine, without guessing, which subtitle works the best, based on which one has the highest click-through rate.

Those clicks actually go to a specific tab on my Facebook Page where I’m also collecting email addresses to announce the launch of the book, so the experiment is doing double duty, which is awesome.

Thanks to Rick Mulready for his help with this!

I’ll be sharing the results of this experiment when I announce the final title and start promoting.

Now all I need is a book!

I’ve started writing and have made it a part of my nightly ritual. It’s a struggle, but I’m having a blast and cannot wait to share the final product with you!

In the meantime…let’s get to some numbers!

Disclosure: many of the links below are affiliate links that will earn me a commission if you purchase through them. If you do, I absolutely appreciate it and if you have any questions about any of the products or services please contact me!

Also, please note that a lot of these are figures from reports from each individual company for the previous month. It does not necessarily reflect the actual payment which, for some of the companies listed below, come 30 to 60 days later and may change because of potential refunds or corrections.

GreenExamAcademy.com Product Sales: Total: $2,918.27 Last Month: $3,300.92
Difference: -$382.65
SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com: Adsense: $1,910.06 (an increase of $383.74)Job Board: $29.26Total: $1,939.32 Last Month: $1,609.22Difference: +$330.10
Purchased Website #1 (not revealed): Adsense: $95.57 Last Month: $117.87Difference: -$22.30Other Google Adsense (includes other mini niche sites & videos): Total: $122.34 Last Month: $131.06Difference: -$8.72New Amazon Product Niche Site (not revealed): Total: $154.82 Last Month: $210.11Difference: -$55.29Affiliate Earnings (includes other niche sites): iPhone Applications: Paid Apps: $3,589.59Free Apps: $439.06
Total: $4,028.65 Last Month: $4,488.08Difference: -$459.43Gross Total in July: $53,791.06 Last Month: $48,818.51Difference: +$4,976.55Expenses: ~$3,598.09 Major expenses this month include virtual assistants (one full-time, one part-time), hosting account for SPI (dedicated server), hosting for other websites (bluehost), recurring payments for various tools, CPA (Certified Public Accountant), attorney fees, website security tool

Another amazing month of earnings! The Bluehost earnings are through the roof, and I spoke to my affiliate manager and apparently the summer months are always the highest converting. No complaints here!

As I always mention, I’ll be the first to admit that a significant portion of my total online income comes as a result of The Smart Passive Income Blog – mostly from the products that I recommend as an affiliate, which are products I’ve used or am extremely familiar with and have helped me in one way, shape or form. Because of that, I have no shame in earning this much from the blog as I know that I’m helping people, I’m just fortunate that I’m doing so in a way that pays me back too.

The support from the SPI community is amazing. Some people even go out of their way to make sure they click on my referral links, which means the world to me.

With this comes a great responsibility to the community that I know I have and will never take for granted – and as such I never promote just for the potential income that can come from an offer, even though those opportunities are definitely there.

I’m incredibly grateful for everything and I will continue to give back with valuable content and my experience in return.

I’ve been doing a lot of housework as we get things prepared in the Flynn household for the arrival of our daughter next month. As I was painting my son’s room, I was listening to Zig Ziglar’s podcast, Inspiring Words of Encouragement.

In one particular episode, Zig was talking about taking your nothing time and turning it into something time. He called it, specifically: Automobile University. That means using the time you spend in your car (which can also be at the gym, on a walk, or in a waiting room, etc.) learning something useful that will make you better.

On the way to work, he would listen to something on a cassette tape (that’s how old these recordings for the podcast are) that would make him a better worker when he arrived. On his way home, he’s listen to something that would make him a better husband at home.

It was cool to know that I was attending my own version of automobile university at that very moment, and it inspired me to stock up on podcasts and other forms of audio that I could listen to while in my nothing time.

There’s no reason NOT to do this!

Since hearing about AU, I’ve been making sure that I always have something in queue to learn about when I’m in my nothing time.

Here are some podcasts that I’ve been listening to:

In addition to podcasts, thanks to Cliff Ravenscraft of Podcast Answer Man, I learned about an amazing productivity / learning tool called Sound Gecko.

With Sound Gecko, you can take any article or blog post on the web, mp3-ize it and then listen to it later on any device that you want. You can email the article to yourself where it will be translated into an mp3 and there waiting for you on your device, or you can use the chrome extension to accomplish the same thing.

It’s amazing, and it’s free!

On my way to pick up some food the other day, I listened to 2 blog posts on the way there, and then 2 posts on the way back, and I have more than 10 posts in queue for me to listen to later.

Thanks again, Cliff, for the amazing resource, and I hope all of you will be attending AU if you aren’t enrolled already.

And the best part: no tuition.

Thanks for your support as the SPI community closes in on 50,000 subscribers!

Cheers!

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Ask the Readers: Income? Or Negative Savings?

I’ve been fielding reader questions at Get Rich Slowly for almost six years now. In that time, we (you and I) have answered 202 questions, most of which have been about the Big Picture, about things that apply to everyone. Sometimes, though, it can be interesting to get a bit more specific.

For instance, Julie wrote recently with a question that, by her own admission, is technical and fussy. Well, let’s be technical and fussy for one day, shall we? Here’s what she writes:

I currently have several different targeted savings accounts that I fund with either direct deposits from our paychecks or automatic withdrawals from our checking accounts. I use an Excel spreadsheet as a budgeting tool, partly because I didn’t want to spend on software, partly because I was familiar with Excel, and partly because it’s simple to download my transactions from my credit union. I can create categories within the online tool to compare to my spreadsheet based on what I want to track.

As I currently do things, the money that goes to the targeted savings accounts is coded as “Savings”. When I spend anything on something from those accounts — for example, the escrow account for our property taxes and insurance — I code the withdrawal as a negative expense in Savings to correspond to the expense in the Insurance or Taxes category. At the end of the month, it comes out a wash, but at the end of the year it looks like I have a negative balance in savings when in fact we saved aggressively.

Another time this is an issue is when we dip into the emergency fund (hello, new furnace!). At the end of the month, it’s a wash but at the end of the year we show a negative balance on the spreadsheet.

So, I guess the question is: When you withdraw from Savings, is that income? Or is it negative Savings?

I receive quite a few questions like this: People have developed their own tracking systems, and they want to know what I think. What I think is that each of us does this differently. There’s no one right way to track your finances. The important things are to:

It’s also helpful if your system plays well with others, but that’s not an absolute requirement. I’ve customized my Quicken installation enough that I can’t just download info from the bank; I have to enter it by hand. I’m okay with that, though. Just be aware that the more you customize, the more you’re tying yourself to your customized way of tracking things.

As for Julie’s specific case, it sounds to me as if she may be tracking cash flow — the ongoing movement from one account to another. This can be useful in some cases, but when I am looking at bank accounts, what I really care about is the balance, not how much is flowing in and out. (Well, sure I care about the cash flow, but for budgeting and reporting, it’s the balance I want.)

For instance, my targeted savings accounts are:

Emergency FundMini Cooper Replacement FundTravel Fund

Sometimes I have more accounts, but those are the three I have right now.

When I route money from my checking account to a savings account, my savings account balance increases. But when I take money out — to travel to Peru, for example — my savings account balance declines. At the same time, that money gets spent somewhere else. (In this case, I code it as Vacation.)

So, to answer Julie’s question, I’d view this not as income but as negative savings. To me, it’s income when it enters my possession. Once it’s in my possession, it can’t be income again, can it?

In some ways, saving is just delayed spending. I’ll build my savings for a car over the course of years. When I pull the money out of savings to buy the car, that money isn’t income. I’ve already earned it. It was money that was in savings, but now is being spent elsewhere.

Is all of this as clear as mud? How would you handle Julie’s dilemma? How do you decided what is income, what is savings, and what is spending? When you take money out of savings, is that income? Something else? I know many GRS readers have created customized spreadsheets to make things easier. Is that you? Can you describe your system for us?

This week, let’s help Julie be fussy. Next week, we’ll return to questions about the Big Picture.

This article is about Ask the Readers, Budgeting, Savings  

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