March Income Report — Maple Leafs

Another month of skipping work for pleasure.

My travels have finally ended — for now.

March was not the most productive month on the business side of things.

It sure was busy, though.

In this income report, I’ll be cover six things:

March Traffic Stats
My New Business Creations
New Business Model
The Income Digits
Other Future Plans

An Insider’s Look at the Traffic Numbers — Flatline

A slight increase.

Overall, pretty much steady.

The traffic results were expected. When you build a passive traffic source, it continues to grow despite any significant attention to it.

In March, I spent the majority of the month travelling South East Asia.

Can’t complain about maintaining a $8,000-$10,000 per month business while exploring the world.

Here’s the YouTube Stats:

Couple nice spikes there.

You can probably guess why.

Yep, I created a couple videos this month on my YouTube channel.

I’ll be sharing those in the next section.

Surprised my traffic on YouTube wasn’t actually a bit higher. We’ll have to wait to see if I gain any long term traction from my new creations.

Let’s Take a Look at the Blog Stats:

Slight increase in sessions.

Although, March is a longer month.

So I’d take this month as a draw against February.

The “average session duration” is over two minutes. A large part of Google’s algorithm is user engagement. So I expect these good user metrics to eventually pay off in the search engines.

Ahhh… One day Google show me some love.

Until that day comes, I will keep plugging away with the lengthy blog posts.

March featured my longest post ever.

It was on how to make money with a blog.

Even though my blog accounts for a very small amount of my profit margin, I keep getting questions daily about how to build a blog for money.

My guess is that followers get intimidated by list building, and are looking for a much more simple solution.

What people don’t realize is that email marketing can actually be a lot easier.

Sure, the idea sounds more complicated.

But you really only have to build a few things.

A landing page
An instant offer
An Email Series

With a blog, you need to create the pages and design the site.

But then you have to go through the trouble of finding traffic. That can mean guest posting, outsourcing, link building, interviews, social media, etc.

Not saying a blog is a bad idea.

In fact, it may be a great way to start. I tell people every day. I’ve never met a single person that’s successful online that doesn’t have a website.

If that includes you, then learn how to start one here.

But… I digress…

I also wrote a post about the benefits of making money online.

It’s all stuff I’m sure you’ve heard before. Sometimes I just like to remind myself how lucky I am to have found this gig. And how great of an opportunity we all truly have.

Sorry to throw a bunch of cliches at you. But seriously, online marketing can be the greatest investment of your time. While some will say “money doesn’t buy happiness, my response is that “poverty can buy a whole lot of misery.”

I’ve been poor and I’ve been successful.

Having enough to pay the bills and take vacations is much better.

What’s New This Month?

In Thailand, I met up with my friend Dalton Scott.

Here’s a picture of us:

Dalton teaches people how to make money with Kindle publishing.

The dude makes about $15,000 per month with it.

Of course, he’s put in the work and has a Kindle bookshelf filled with at least four hundred books.

Our meeting story is rather hilarious.

Dalton actually paid for a coaching session with me. But instead of the usual request to… you know? learn how to make money online, he just wanted to hear about my travel stories.

The guy actually paid me money, to hear about travelling.

Easily one of my favourite coaching sessions ever.

Since then me and Dalton have become good friends. I convinced him to join us in Thailand for April and March. We shared beers, and talked business.

Take a look at Dalton’s channel here.

If you want to learn about Kindle Publishing, Dalton is the guy to learn from.

I would know because I graduated from his coaching program.

We both decided to expand our income streams and knowledge, so we traded coaching back-to-back.

Which means I have now added Kindle to my business, and Dalton is adding list building.

My Progress So Far with Kindle Publishing

I created four books this month.

How to Make Money Blogging:

Please don’t buy any of those books. I’m in the process of making them all free on Amazon.

Two of them are already free. The other two are on the way.

Which means that you can probably download them free now. Depending on when you’re reading this post.

Why Free — What’s the Point?

Most people publish on Kindle to make money from Amazon directly.

My strategy with this is to get free traffic back to my email list.

I’m already getting a handful of free subscribers per day.

Eventually, I’ll be able to grow a nice little side income stream from my Kindle books.

I love doing side projects like this.

I would never recommend that you spend the majority of your time on new businesses. In general, you’re better off focusing on one thing in particular.

However, if you’re already seeing some success online, it’s really not a bad idea to test the waters in other markets.

I will let you know in future income reports how Kindle Publishing is going for my business.

What about YouTube?

I created two new videos this month.

The Wolf of Wall Street inspired my video on “how to sell anything”

You’ll notice in the video that I don’t claim to sell “anyone.”

Anybody that claims you can sell to any person, doesn’t understand marketing.

I don’t care how good you are at selling, I’m not going to buy a Lil Wayne CD.

No disrespect intended — just not my thing.

Part of the selling process is finding the right people to buy your product.

It’s actually disadvantageous to try and sell to “anyone.”

The video I created before that was a Make Money Online Experiment.

I filmed this video in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

I’ve never seen so many people in my life.

Being a small town guy, it was crazy to adapt to the city life.

Sure, Medellin, Colombia also had millions of people.

But the culture there is a lot more laid back.

It took me a few tries to get used to crossing the street. There’s no real crosswalks or particular time to venture to the other side. You simply had to walk into the street and let vehicles swerve around you on both sides.

Caitlyn handled it just fine. Not for the faint of heart.

… travel talk strikes again.

The video itself was one of my favourites.

I shared with people a little experiment that I conducted behind the scenes. In my opinion, there’s very little more valuable than testing out a business, and letting others observe.

One of the main reasons people don’t take action is because they’re worried of failing.

I could care less about failing. I’ve done it in the past, and I’ll do it again.

The important thing is to know that you’re only going to fail small, but you’re giving yourself a chance to win big.

If I test a bit of traffic and it doesn’t convert. I lose a little bit of money.

If it converts for me, I can scale my traffic up and make much more than I would have lost.

Testing and then buying accordingly is a no brainer.

The Income Numbers — What You Really Want to See

Here goes…

The dollars and cents 🙂

The #’s

– JvZoo = $1,040.65
– WarriorPlus = $507.18
– ClickBank = $282.41
– HostGator Affiliate = $200
– ListSpark Earnings = $34
– Aweber = $98.10
– BuzzBundle Sales = $0
– 7 Steps to Passive Income = $126
– Adsense = $1100 approx. (not allowed to give specific numbers)
– Solo Ad Earnings = $820
– ClickMagick Earnings = $159
– Amazon Earnings = $413.45
– Coaching Sessions = $2,925

Total Gross Earnings = $7,705.79

Expenses:
– Aweber = $180
– ListSparkPro = $18
– Traffic Planet Hosting = $50
– Solo Ads = $884

Total Expenses = $1,132

Let’s take a look at the bottomline

$7,705.79 – $1,132

Grand Total = $6573.79

Honestly, I would prefer for my income to be higher.

My guess is that rings true for most of us.

The reality is that I spent most of march either in Cambodia or Vietnam.

Making good money while vacationing is not likely.

That being said, when you build up a passive income, you can afford to vacation and still make a profit.

So far, the April numbers are on pace to double march.

I’m back home and ready to hustle hard.

The rest of the year should be filled with much fatter commissions.

Future Plans + Adventures

Typically this is where I brag about upcoming vacation destinations.

Not this month…

I’ve returned home and plan to be here for awhile.

That does not mean that it’s not an adventure.

Been travelling for the last nine months or so, and I really don’t remember finding home so beautiful.

It certainly is true that the more you travel, the more you appreciate your home town.

What does this mean for my business?

I’ll finally be able to grow it even further.

No excuses this month.

I expect April to be one of my best months yet. Make sure to check back, and you’ll see how it goes in my next month’s income report.

That means:

YouTube videos
Kindle Books
Blog Posts
Coaching Sessions

I am back, Baby!!

Ready to make a big splash and see what happens.

Before I go, check out Angkor Wat:

Caitlyn and I woke up at four o’clock in the morning for that.

Travelling truly has been the best decision of my life.

Wrapping Up — Back to the Grind

For the first time in months, I’m excited to grow my business.

That means I’ll be hyper responsive this month.

If you want to take advantage of my newfound enthusiasm, join my coaching program here.

I’ve never heard of more success stories at such a reasonable price.

Not promising to keep my coaching rates this low. When my time becomes more limited, I will certainly be raising them in the future.

Now is the best time to join.

As always, thanks for reading this post.

Toss me a comment below, and let me know your thoughts!

About Brendan Mace