A big part of this blog from the beginning has been financial transparency. I’ve shifted from sharing the details of our daily spending (what we used to do), to sharing the details of the business side of the blog. It seems many of you are most interested in this one segment of our financial journey. 🙂
June was another slow month here (at least on the surface), with only one content based post the entire month! Yikes!
The progress of the second guide, Sell Your Crap, has been extremely uphill. Like Unautomate Your Finances, the scope of the project just continues to grow and grow! It’s nearly 45+ days late in coming and I’ve even considered shelving it for a while and moving onto something else!
Thanks to some helpful consolations from trusted mentors, I’m staying the course and finishing the content as we speak. It’s better launching 30-45 days later than expected than to launch a crappy product (or to not launch at all)! I know when the time comes, I’ll be proud of what is certain my most ambition business undertaking to date. 🙂
Despite sparse posting, here are the numbers for June:
Net from UYF Sales: $328.52
- Total Guides Sold (June): 24
- Income (less Paypal fees): $407.48
- Affiliate Payments: -$78.96
Additional Income: $1560.32
- Freelance Writing: $400.00
- Thesis/ScribeSEO: $126.06
- Unconventional Guides: $919.53
- Amazon: $24.73
- Fire Starter Sessions: $90.00
Direct Expenses: -$110.90
- Hosting: -$14.95
- Aweber: -$29.00
- ScribeSEO: -$27.00
- E-junkie: -$5.00
- VodBurner: -$9.95
Net (Income – Expenses): $1777.94
This brings the average of the last 4 months (since monetization from guides) to: ~$2020/month
July’s Business Plans…
June’s goal was to launch Sell Your Crap and to have that also increase Unautomate Your Finances do to store traffic and package sales. Obviously, this goal will roll over to July!
Other plans including a complete revamp of the Militia Newsletter, which will become a weekly e-mail with 3-5 free giveaways, 5-10 useful/interesting links, and recaps of current and past content on the site.
Lastly, I’ll be coordinating a 15 mega-blog guest posting tour to help support launch and create some momentum. I’ll be documenting the results, traffic, and other metrics to share down the road!
As you all know, 90% of my effort and content will remain 100% free. I’ll continue to openly share our journey to eliminate our debt, our battle to avoid accumulating clutter, and the ups and downs as we attempt to pursue our passions!
For those of you on a journey to produce online income yourself, feel free to e-mail me any specific questions you may have!
Hope everyone has a fantastic June!
Xoxoxo,
-Baker
photo by Matthew Simantov
Hi Baker,
It’s been some time since Mission Bay, so I thought I’d better check in with you! Glad to see things going well and moving up. We just released our second (and major) ebook project on June 1 … The first month was a good success but — like you — keeping it rolling over will be an interesting deal!
We’ve also started makemoneytravelblogging.com to try and document the journey. If I can make it as interesting as MVD is, I’ll be stoked 🙂
Baker, I find these updates fascinating and really useful. Thanks for continuing to be so transparent!
Congrats Adam! It can only go up from here!
Definitely best to wait and launch a quality product you’re proud of, than making it half fast.
Keep on trucking man. Hopefully you can post more than once a month here. Would be great if you had as much time on your site as you do for JD’s site.
Best,
Sam
Yakezie Lifestyle
looking forward to how you launch your new project and connect back to unautomate to resurge those sales.
Hey Baker,
Really nice to come across your blog from couplemoney 🙂
I have visited other blogs that also showed their monthly income but yours is really transparent and detailed! Very interesting.
Anyway, congrats on your earnings for this month and I look forward to your “Sell Your Crap” guide 🙂
How long have you been earning a full time income from blogging alone?
Dan
Heya Baker,
Love the transparency you’ve got goin’ on here. I hope that EVERYONE in the LD field – not just personal finance – start doing this. We need to know who’s walking the walk and who’s not 🙂
Hey Adam,
it’s soo cool the way you break your finances down. It immediately establishes trust, and it shows you got nothing to hide.
You have some nice goals concerning your momentum. I’m sure you will explode if follow through. May the force guide you !
I hope you see the light at the end of the tunnel for Sell Your Crap soon. I’m in the process of compiling my 4th fiction eBook. When I wrote the capstone story for the first one, it flowed out in about a week. The second time, it took six weeks. The third time, I had to write a much shorter story that I would have liked. The fourth time … I’m been kicking ideas around since January, and working on this specific idea for a couple of months (but have written quite a lot in the last few days and can see the light).
So it’s hardly unusual to have an uphill battle on your hands with major projects 🙂
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Hey, Baker. I’m pulling for you on completing the ebook. One thing I’m interested in is the feedback you got from mentors on completing it. Probably every blogger who reads MVD has at least started an ebook at some point, and if you want to make it any good at all you really have to devote the time to great content, design, and launch plans. Exhausting just to think about it.
So what do you do to stay motivated and finish it? UYF is such a stellar product – do you think that helps or hurts your motivation for a new product? And do you think writing the blog and updating your newsletter takes away from your creativity in developing a new ebook or works as a much-needed mental break? Just curious as to exactly why you feel this overwhelm and what you’re doing to get over the hump. You are an inspiration to the rest of us, you know!
Good luck on finishing the ebook. I can’t wait to read it.
nice report 🙂 i hope i will publish report like this soon .
That puts my $106 in the shade big time. I’m hoping to get my head together and put more time and effort into my blogs this month.
Baker, how do you decide weather to put up content here or on Get Rich Slowly? It seems like you are much more active there than here. Is it possible to reverse it and be more active here? We’d love to hear from you!
thank you so much for posting this! you are a total inspiration & what made me finally become financially transparent on my site… today…
Nice post. This is my first time reading (Recommended by the 50 Net setters Blog). But the transparency is great. You seem to have diversified your income stream, which is great. Look forward to your other posts.
I don’t like how you aren’t active here anymore.
You say that 90% of your content will remain free… However your two e-books seem to be the only content you created over the last three months.
We like hearing from you Baker!
As they say, “measure twice, cut once.” Make sure it’s done right the first time. Keep up the great work.
I’ll second Aaron’s comment above. I love your honesty and transparency. I miss your words in my daily blog reading!
Baker,
Thanks so much for these updates. It goes to show that you can make a decent living online with hard work and honesty (and a bit of vulnerability). Thanks for all three.
I am looking for your blog posts and can’t find them. I am going to check over at Get Rich Slowly but please let me know if there are archived blog posts on this site.
Best,
Nanci Murdock
ps – LOVED your interview in Question the Rules!
Man it’s been a bit since I’ve been on here. REALLY cool that you’re starting to share your finances Adam – gives me an idea for my own blog (since I always do mine the end of the month).
Hmmm…
Anywho, I hope you’re well. Since the move to Seattle, things have been interesting and STILL loving the debt free life – makes it MUCH easier to take chances on things and have a bit more room to screw. 🙂
I’m one reader who will be buying Sell Your Crap as soon as you release it. Keep at it!