Each month, I’ll be tracking my revenue and expenses on this blog. The purpose of this exercise is not to brag about how much I make, but rather to explain my path toward financial freedom. Writing this article is more a review for my team than anything else. It forces me to take the time to reflect about my business. I hope you will enjoy it! Oh, you read that right. It’s not a typo, I didn’t mean +12%... it’s really +127%! I told you that I worked very hard on a promotion for my membership site. Well it paid off big time! In this article, I will explore how I made over $25,000 CAD in a single month. Not bad for a guy who quit his job 3 months ago, huh? September Highlights +%127 gross revenue +574 new Convertkit subscribers +13 articles written outside my blogs + 228 … [Read More...] about September Income Report +127%
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September Income Report +127%
Each month, I’ll be tracking my revenue and expenses on this blog. The purpose of this exercise is not to brag about how much I make, but rather to explain my path toward financial freedom. Writing this article is more a review for my team than anything else. It forces me to take the time to reflect about my business. I hope you will enjoy it!
Oh, you read that right. It’s not a typo, I didn’t mean +12%… it’s really +127%! I told you that I worked very hard on a promotion for my membership site. Well it paid off big time! In this article, I will explore how I made over $25,000 CAD in a single month. Not bad for a guy who quit his job 3 months ago, huh?
September Highlights
- +%127 gross revenue
- +574 new Convertkit subscribers
- +13 articles written outside my blogs
- + 228 investing membership sales
- My first webinar done!
- I paid myself a bonus already!
This Month’s Strategy
September was all about one thing: this crazy promotion that happened on September 20th. I wanted to run our first promotion as soon as possible for an obvious reason: jumping off the career plane without a parachute is risky. I’ve spent the first two months of my entrepreneur journey upgrading my membership website. I was in survival mode. The promotion was meant to give me a small cushion so I can breathe and work with a smile instead of having a gun put towards my head. That’s what September was all about. It was a pass or crash month.
Here were my September goals:
- Write 31 articles outside my blogs
- Write 4 articles per week on my blogs (on three different ones)
- Focus on our September promotion
- Work on a new design for one of our blog
- Finish the Clean / Manage / Create funnels in Convertkit
Wins
I’ve already shared with you my biggest win of the month in my latest post: my promotion generated 228 sales. But on top of the number, I’ve learned a great deal. First, I’ve learned how to run a webinar.
My goal was to do a 30-40 minute webinar and offer my promotion at the end of my presentation. Therefore, I’ve prepared my speech and practice it a dozen times. My Core Business Guardian, V, reviewed my latest pitch and told me it wasn’t good enough. She was right; I put too much focus on selling DSR and less on the presentation itself. On my registration page, I wasn’t talking much about DSR, so why would people who signed for the webinar like to hear about my site? Fair point. Then, I got back to my drawing board, took another day to work on it and then practiced half a dozen times.
The second win was the 15-20 questions I had at the end of my webinar. To be honest, I didn’t know how this would turn out. I didn’t really expect a Q & A part to my presentation. I ended-up spending roughly 20 minutes answering all kind of questions about investing. I was happy as it proved that I did a good job and kept my audience entertained. I will definitely do more webinars in the future.
The third win was about trusting my gut. As the promotion goes by and sales were coming in, I was also getting comments and questions from new members. I was struck by a few very positive comments I received over the weekend. New subscribers who found the site very helpful were already giving feedback. The last day of the promotion was Monday, the 25th. A “last chance” email was scheduled in the morning. Sales were coming up at a fast pace. At supper time, I was more than happy about the result and I was ready to call it a night. But then, I had this feeling I should do the extra push. I decided to share with my readers 2 comments I received over the weekend. Here’s the quick email I sent on Monday at 8pm. This email alone generated 49 sales for an additional $3,773 in profit.
My fourth win was the affiliate program I’ve built with a fellow blogger.
In regards to my 5 key points, I’ve done the following:
- 13 articles outside my blogs
- Write 4 articles per week on my blogs (on three different ones)
- Focus on our September promotion
- Work on a new design for one of our blog
- Didn’t do anything with Convertkit
While my promotion was a big success, I realized that I had struggles handling the rest of my business in the meantime. This leads me to tell you about what went wrong:
Struggles
I got caught up into lots of work in the meantime. One thing I overestimated was my capacity of running a webinar for the first time. I purchased pro monthly membership at Webinar Ninja and thought I would be done within a few hours. The only thing I was able to do in a couple of hours was to understand how this software works (very easy) and setup my registration page (that was very easy too). This software is very well done and somebody who has never done a webinar could use it without being a techno wizard.
What I really underestimated was the time required for me to master this new type of presentation. I’ve performed in front of small groups (up to 30-40 people) and I’m no match for 1 vs 1 presentations since I did that for the past decade.
Hosting a webinar is a totally different beast. The issue wasn’t the number of people attending (200 people registered and 103 were live). The issue was with the fact I had to fix a red light for an hour and make it interesting while I discuss investing topics.
When you present in front of an audience, you get to feel their interest. You can adapt and go toward what your audience enjoys the most. When you do a webinar, you are all alone in your room with your computer. You have to imagine people following you and not being distracted by your own face when you see it on your screen.
I’ll definitely write more about the topic, but for now, let me just tell you that it took me over 20 sessions to get a good pace and make the whole presentation interesting. This process took most of my time and energy and this is why I fell so behind with my writing schedule. The problem is that my regular business is currently based on this schedule. Note to myself; next time you run a promotion make sure you have lots of stuff written in advance!
Income Report +127%
Membership Website | $17,296.00 |
Adsense | $78.00 |
Paid Advertising | $1,820.00 |
Affiliate | $256.00 |
eBooks | $166.00 |
Paid writing | $1,049.00 |
Total | $20,665.00 |
Total income of $ converted to CAD @ 1.21 = $25,004.65
In order to convert the money we made to Canadian dollar, I used the rate Paypal is giving me when I change currencies.
While I was comfortably seated in my villa in Costa Rica this January, I’ve established a list of crazy goals for the year. Instead of having reasonable goals as I always do, I decided to go one step further and write down that I wanted to make $20K in a month. At that time, my best month over the past 2 years was $13K. Well, after 3 months working on my business, I achieved it!
I know… this is a onetime deal and I have all the work to do all over again for October. However, it feels great to pull out numbers like this. The best part is that the $17K made from my membership website is done through an automatic renewal on credit cards. Therefore, I can expect to get roughly 60%+ of this money next September.
If I can run 3-4 successful promotions through the year, in 2-3 years, I’ll be making over 20K each month as a base income. But to be honest, I aim to reach this level by the end of 2018!
You will notice that my expense bill went through the roof as well.
Banking fees | $143.35 |
Accounting | $1,117.44 |
Insurance | $109.43 |
Mailing List | $226.66 |
Telecom | $525.96 |
Domains | $62.74 |
Server | $0.00 |
Tools | $741.73 |
Virtual Assistant | $1,500.51 |
Debt repayment | $3,805.00 |
Car | $545.76 |
Salary | $9,555.00 |
Total | $18,333.58 |
Net income of + $6,671.07
But in fact, I didn’t really spend 18K to run the business. As a source of motivation, my partner and I decided to split everything made over $10K USD. For example, if we make 13K USD in a month, I will add 1K (Canadian dollar) to my salary and we would pay my partner back 1K 9 (Canadian dollar). The remaining money (over 1K USD) will stay in the company for the future. Since we killed it, I was able to pay myself $9.555 instead of $6,000 and we used additional money to pay down our debts.
I also had to pay my accountant for extra fees since we did some restructuring. That’s part of the game… but we are now set for several years.
What’s coming this month
I haven’t the chance to meet with my partner yet and we will do a late October meeting instead. Therefore, I have no specific objectives determined with him. But I still do my homework and here’s my game plan:
- Write 31 articles outside my blogs
- Write 4 articles per week on my blogs (on three different ones)
- Work on a strategy to grow our two investing blogs
- Create a third investing website (more on that later)
- Finish the Clean / Manage / Create funnels in Convertkit
The month of October will be some kind of “pause” as I’m getting back on my feet. I’m late in my writing schedule and I am seriously thinking of hiring someone to help me out doing all these stock anslyses…
Just Put a Date
Do you have a project in mind? Do you have a goal?
It doesn’t matter because as long as you don’t set a date, this is just a dream, a project that simply means nothing until that date is set. Until a date is set it’s only happening in your mind. There is nothing that will remind you and push you to do it.
When I ask my friends about their goals, they answer with things like:
- I want to lose weight, become fit;
- I want to go back to school;
- I want to start my business;
- I want to travel…
We all want something from life, right? For some people it’s love or a family; for others, it’s to be recognized at work, building a business, etc. We all have goals. That was the easy question. Then, I ask them the real question, the though one:
WHEN?
I don’t know if you are like that, but when I ask “when”, most people answer by excuses:
- I can’t because I have young children;
- Not now, because I don’t have the money;
- Later… one day… for sure!
Yeah… right. The what is often easy to find. The problem is most people think about the how for a while but then they find tons of reasons to quit or even put their dream on a shelf and forget about it. But what you need to find after the what is the when. Set the date, then you will find out how you are going to make it.
Just put a Date
I know, it sounds easy, optimistic, and borderline cosmic. But if you put a date to your project, you are going to make it happen. After a good bottle of wine on my terrace during the summer of 2014, my wife and I decided we would go on a 12 months trip around North and Central America. This was the what.
Right after making this decision, we fell into the “how trap”. We rapidly drafted a list of a dozen reasons why we couldn’t leave:
- We have young children, it will be complicated;
- They can’t miss school;
- I have an important job/career, I can’t leave without jeopardizing what I have built;
- I will get fired if I talk about this project at work;
- We have a house, who will take care of it?
- We don’t speak Spanish;
- Many countries in Central America are very dangerous;
- Drinking water isn’t safe there;
- We never had an RV before;
- I know nothing about mechanics, if I have a mechanical problem, I’m done;
- I don’t have the money to leave for a year;
- I’m afraid…
But instead of focusing on those reasons and putting our dream on a shelf, I told my wife that we needed a date: June 2016. This would give us nearly 2 years to figure out how we can overcome all reasons and obstacles behind why we couldn’t leave. By having a deadline, we started working on solutions instead of focusing on problems.
On June 11th, 2016, we left for what happened to be the most amazing year of my life. We spent a whole year with the people we love the most, traveled the world, lived incredible experiences and came back as better individuals.
Why adding a date to your project make it happens?
All we needed was a date, a deadline. We started focusing on achieving little tasks to meet our deadline instead of wondering if we should do it or not. Each completed tasks brought us closer to our project. The reasons why we couldn’t leave were real at that time but it doesn’t mean they will continue to be real in the future.
Having about 20 months to go before our departure; we broke down the necessary steps and put them in order. Each month, we had a specific “to do” list to check off. We naturally arrived in June 2016 and everything was ready for us to leave as planned. I can’t really explain it, but we made everything happen on time. The power of having a deadline is incredible.
Let’s try it again
We have been home since July 2017. Three months later, we already want to do it all over again. This time, it will not be for a full year; this is not something we want to do now. Instead, this time around we would like to go for 8 to 10 weeks starting in January 2019. Our goal is to visit Thailand and possibly Bali during this period. As you can see, the project isn’t exactly determined yet. But there is one thing that is certain: we are leaving in January 2019 for a little more than 2 months.
Then again, kids are at school, I don’t have the money (yet) to leave, but I’ll make it happen. Now that we have a date, anything and everything is possible!
Sometimes, You Just Have to be Patient
I’ve been on complete mute since my latest income report two weeks ago. Since I started working full-time on my sites in July of this year, things are moving quite fast… sometimes too fast. Since the beginning of September, I worked on two major projects. The first one was my first speech at the Canadian Financial Summit. The second one was an important promotion for my membership site. For the very first time, I had a webinar prepared to launch this promotion. I’ve done tons of presentations in my life as it was part of my previous job. However, talking to a red light on top of my computer screen was a lot more intimidating! The whole thing went well and I’ll share more about webinars in the upcoming articles. But today, I wanted to share with you a piece of my entrepreneur’s life. It’s a piece about hard work, frustration and patience. This is another lesson of life that I’ve learned.
I did the webinar on Wednesday September 20th. The promotion kicked-off during the webinar where 103 people attended (a maximum of 200 participant registered, but only 103 made it on time). I didn’t generate the amount of sales I thought I would at first. In fact, the first thought that crossed my mind after my morning run on Thursday was: man I suck at this. I want to share what I wrote my team on Friday afternoon after the dust settled. Here we go:
First off, I have to tell you, I was a bit upset after the webinar. It went well, but well isn’t enough. I think I was good, but good isn’t enough. I’m used to being the alpha dog. This time, I was just as good as any other member of the pack. Still, no major bad lucks, I got 15 questions for a 25 minute talk after my presentation. This was very good. Still, 4-5 sales after the webinar weren’t incredible either.
I woke-up the next morning, seeing a few sales. I smiled at first and then realised there were all affiliates. Then, I went for my morning run. When I check my phone afterward: nothing (maybe I should have run more than 6 km?). Then, the morning passes and we get 4 sales by noon. FOUR. During that time, our affiliate sales were running fast. Then I was really upset.
I spent about 2 weeks working on the webinar between creating content, writing down emails for our newsletter and our affiliates, learning how Webinar Ninja works, creating the subscription page, doing 101 tests, building my webinar, modifying many things and practicing. During that time, I couldn’t work on writing for other sites or our own blogs.
Then, as yesterday went by, we started making more and more sales. As I’m writing this (Friday 3pm), we have 6 sales coming from the Financial Summit, 30 sales coming from other affiliates and 24 sales from us for a total of roughly $3,234 in sales.
Out of our 24 sales, 12 (so, half) are coming from people who attended the live webinar or the replay. I had a total of 103 attendees + 84 for the replay (187 total). That’s a 6.4% conversion rate. I wanted to have 10 sales coming out of the webinar in order to be “happy”. Well it finally happened; I just had to be more patient! (not my first or second quality, I admit!)
A few months ago, when I was on the beach and wrote my “game plan” for my return, I expected to make a big sale in September. The plan back then was to sell the 1 year at $50. I expected to make $4,000 out of the campaign (60 new DSR members from us and 50 affiliate sales (@$20 each)). Instead, we ran a different plan, but after the first email, I showed 55% of my sales objective (60 on 110) and 80% of my cash objective. I already know that tomorrow, while I’m picking up grapes (helping in a vineyard, what a perfect day!) I will reach my goals in term of $.
My takes from this campaign:
– People love webinars, I need to find a way to streamline the process and do it once a month
– Q&A’s are highly appreciated by attendees, and this is something I really enjoy doing
– I need to write more articles that are selling softly DSR
– DSR growth will pass by our blogs’ growth. More focus needs to be put on those two
– Be patient, sales are not coming instantly!
Then the weekend passed, 2 more emails were scheduled before the campaign ends on Monday at midnight. By the end of this campaign, I’ve done a lot more than any of my expectations. In fact, the campaign brought in 228 sales total (affiliate + our sales). I thought I was going to make about $4,000 out of this promotion and I will end-up making over $14,000. September will be the best month I ever had in my online history. I just had to be more patient and let my plan works its way.
I’m Strong like a Wave
I’m Passionate like a Wildfire
I’m Fast like a Cyclone
But I gotta stay down to earth!
August Income Report +9%
Each month, I’ll be tracking my revenue and expenses on this blog. The purpose of this exercise is not to brag about how much I make, but rather to explain my path toward financial freedom. Writing this article is more a review for my team than anything else. It forces me to take the time to reflect about my business. I hope you will enjoy it!
On August 23rd, I met with my partner for our monthly company meeting where we plan the month ahead. But first we had to review the results we had so far in August. After such as strong month of July, expectations were quite high coming into August. However, the business went almost dead for 10 days after a fast start. Therefore, after three weeks of operation, we were quite behind… and disappointed!
But the wind changed rapidly and we ended-up beating our previous record! Here are how the month went…
August Highlights
- +%9 gross revenue
- +373 new Convertkit subscribers
- +22 articles written outside my blogs
- + 11 investing membership sales
- Launch of a new product with 26 sales!
- I’m already making profit!!!
This Month’s Strategy
August was all about preparing September and the following months. You may or may not know but the financial industry goes in slow motion during summer time. It feels like even important news on the stock market have less impact during this period. People are on vacation, they tend to think more about the beach than work and this reflects greatly on our business. Therefore, we wanted to focus on building solid momentum with our blogs and getting ready for a major promotion that will happen toward the end of September.
Here were my August goals:
- Write 35 articles outside my blogs
- Write 4 articles per week on my blogs (on three different ones)
- Build a promotion calendar (we have a DSR promo coming in September)
- Start Seeking Alpha marketplace product
- Optimize my top pages on my blogs
- Build a webinar (for my promotion)
- Clean / Manage / Create funnels in Convertkit
Wins
The biggest win of the month is obviously the unexpected launch of our service on Seeking Alpha. I used the word “unexpected” as I first wanted to pitch our idea to the editor team and see what happened next. There are two things I greatly appreciate about Seeking Alpha: their professionalism and strong editing process. You simply can’t publish half-done work. I then expected to go through many discussions and modifications before launching our service in September. Well, the process was pretty straight forward and we ended-up launching during August.
In regards to my 7 key points, I’ve done the following:
- 24 articles outside my blogs
- Maintained 4 articles per week on my blogs
- Our Promotion calendar is completed
- My marketplace product launched on August 23rd
- The Dividend Guy Blog pages have been optimized
- I’ve setup the webinar for my promotion
- I started working on the email funnels through Convertkit
I wasn’t able to keep up with 35 articles written outside of my blogs, but this is mainly because I worked additional hours on our new service. I had to write more content for the marketing and the actual newsletter. Overall, I was happy to complete 24 other articles on top of it.
Another big win was the meeting I had with my Core Business Guardian, V. I spent a day with her to go over some of her tasks to find ways to improve her efficiency. She was coming back from vacation with a brand new computer; it was a perfect timing to chat on how things were going on here side and how we can make her life easier. She helped me a great deal with the promotion calendar along with social media strategies. We should see continuous impact of this meeting in the months to come!
Finally, I had the chance to participate as a speaker for an online conference. On September 16th, I’ll be discussing how to make the decision between keeping your pension plan and taking the lump sum once you quit your job. This conference is part of the Canadian Financial Summit, an online financial conference regrouping over 25 speakers and over 10,000 attendants. You can register for free here if you want to learn more about finance!
Struggles
As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, we entered a major slump in the middle of the month. For about 10 days, everything was dead. Membership sales were nowhere, traffic was down and even the paid advertising business was slow!
This is probably the hardest reality when you start a business; your whole world is shifting from right to left from one week to another. As much as I look for them, there is no “trend” going into any direction at the beginning. What went well one week barely has any impact the following one. Most of the time, good things (or bad ones) happen for barely any reasons. During August 23rd and 24th, we made close to $2,000 within 48 hours. One would think it was our new service launch generating profits. But this wasn’t the most prolific part of our business; Dividend Stocks Rock was… However, we didn’t do any promotions or sent any newsletter during those 2 days. This remains inexplicable.
I also went into a personal rut for a few days. It is difficult to work almost every day when you come back from a year traveling the world. I decided to take 2 days off and spend them with my family. This was the best decision ever. I came back for the last stretch of the month energized and motivated. This is how we finished on a strong note!
Income Report +9%
Membership Website | $5,754.00 |
Adsense | $212.00 |
Paid Advertising | $1,383.00 |
Affiliate | $227.00 |
eBooks | $192.00 |
Paid writing | $1,326.00 |
Total | $9,094.00 |
Total income of $9,094 converted to CAD @ 1.21 = $11,003.74
In order to convert the money we made in Canadian dollar, I use the rate Paypal is giving me when I change currencies. While I’m very excited about how much we made this month, there is a big “if” right now. The new service we launched offers a 2 weeks free trial. Therefore, the money we think we made from it could meltdown in the upcoming week. As many economists say in their closing statement, we are cautiously optimistic about our month.
Banking fees | $215.76 |
Accounting | $229.95 |
Insurance | $109.43 |
Mailing List | $230.51 |
Telecom | $537.80 |
Domains | $51.97 |
Server | $0.00 |
Tools | $452.44 |
Virtual Assistant | $1,352.50 |
Debt repayment | $250.00 |
Car | $545.76 |
Salary | $6,000.00 |
Total | $9,760.36 |
Net income of + $1,243.38
Our expenses decreased by $1,000 this month mainly because we are now up-to-date with all our payments. An accounting bug increased what we paid in virtual assistants in July. Things are now back to normal. I was very happy to see that we made money on our second month in operation! We didn’t expect it to happen before December or January. It’s a big win for us!
What’s coming this month
I’ve met with my partner and we highlighted the key points to be done in September. Here’s what it looks like:
- Write 31 articles outside my blogs
- Write 4 articles per week on my blogs (on three different ones)
- Focus on our September promotion (more on that later)
- Work on a new design for one of our blog
- Finish the Clean / Manage / Create funnels in Convertkit
My partner and I hope the best for September. We are completing several modifications to our services and hope that our promotion will be the beginning of a new era for our business.
The hard choice between making money today or tomorrow
Starting your own business comes with a lot of dilemmas. Among them, I’d say the most challenging one is making the choice between making money now or tomorrow. If you are like me and decided to quit everything to build your own dream, this is probably because you were quite good at what you were doing in the first place. This talent comes with a counterpart; the temptation of reproducing what you were good at. After a few weeks, I start feeling the pressure of making money again. At first, I told myself; “oh, it’s along adventure, I have plenty of time in front of me”. But that the honeymoon fades away, the reality (like having to pay bills with my line of credit!) hits me harder. So far, I can’t complaint about the success I’m having with my online business. However, I’m already thinking about what I am currently doing vs what should I do.
Making Money Now
One thing I’m good at is writing. I could easily write over 4,000 words each day for 5-6 days in a row. For the record, as I am writing this line, it’s noon and I’ve already wrote my 4,000th word of the day. The other thing I’m good at is financial analysis. I love the stock market and I enjoy sharing my passion for it with others. This is probably why I was also good in the financial industry as a private banker; my clients felt that passion and trusted me.
As per my original plan, my goal is to write 35 articles per month outside of my blogs. Most of them are paid articles where I can make anything between $50 and $100 per post. This is not an incredibly high ticker, but it helps me building my audience and testing my ideas at the same time. Therefore, if I write 30 articles in month, I should make around $1,600-$1,700. This would represent about 20% of my last month income. Between sponsored articles, my membership website and this side gig, I can almost break even each month.
But writing 1 paid article per day is a lot of work. Those kinds of articles are not always “fun” to write. I mean, they are when you write one or two a week, but when you have to pull out your brain and analyze a different company each day, this becomes more like a job than a business project. This is what happens when you focus on the “make money now” part of the business.
Making Money Later
While the short-term standings of my business looks good so far, I’m well aware I’m burning a lot of energy in making money now instead of making money later. The beauty of a business is how it grows and snowballs into something bigger and bigger. At one point, it just goes by itself and minimum efforts result into maximum outcomes.
But in order to reach this point, one must work to make money later. I also call this part my job; “working in the soft”. For example, when I worked a whole week on the new design and features of my membership websites; I didn’t generate any immediate sales. However, while I was making “nothing”, I also created a much better investment service:
This new design enables me to convert more visitors into members and I will be making a lot more money in the future. However, doing these kinds of upgrades requires time and energy and while you are at it, you are not making money now. Still… I’m convinced this is the way to go.
Finding a balance
I’m half-way in the month of August and I’m currently meeting my article writing pace objective so far. However, I intend to find a better balance and liberate more time this week to work on “making money later”. After some thought over the past weekend, I realized that working on larger projects motivates me to the highest point possible. Last night, I worked until 10pm, woke up this morning at 5am and ran my 10th best 6K (out of 150 activities). All this because yesterday night, I was studying components for one of my bigger project. This morning, I’m all about writing stuff and working in the “NOW”. But in the next few days, I’ll concentrate my week on the “LATER” part. This way, I should be able to almost break-even for a few months in a row and then, I should break a lot more then “even” if you know what I mean ;-).