Passive My Income Report for October 2015

Welcome to PMI Income Reports! 

Every month I create and share these reports which is a detailed account of my online earnings which helps me keep track of my progress, the trials and errors and also to give readers the ability to join me on my journey and hopefully take something out of it that you can use for yourself!

October was a very special month for me for several reasons. For one, it's been a month since my son was born so instead of spending most of my time online, I was spending it with the family as we are settling in with the new little one! This brings me to my second reason I love October. The holidays are closing in which are the times I really enjoy because I get to spend it with my family as a whole. It's great to be around parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and other family and friends and fortunately it's the time when most people schedules are clear and not as hectic as it is earlier in the year so most people can spend the holidays enjoying the festivities. 

Reading

Lately, I have been reading a lot of books on various topics which has been changing the way I think about money, life and my future. Now, I am not a fast reader nor do I read everyday but one habit that I am working on is reading a few chapters right after my morning workout (more on my workout below). As part of my challenge to myself to learn and open up my mind to new things, my goal is to purchase and read at least one book per month in which I will be able to use some of the information I've learned to improve my life overall whether it is financial related, personal and business relationships, my health or any other areas of my life I may not have mentioned.

This month, I took the time to go back and read one of my favorite personal finance books, The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach, which was given to me back in 2010 when my interest was growing in investing with little money. At the time, I did not have thousands of dollars to invest in anything so I started searching online, books and talking to people about methods to invest small amounts of money. This book is a personal favorite of the many personal finance books I have. 

The one thing that stuck with me while reading this book was learning about the "Latte Factor" and how much money people including myself waste everyday buying small unnecessary things. 

It's like this, think about how much money you will be spending if you bought a cup of coffee or you ate out every day. 

How much will you have at the end of the year if you saved that money instead of spending it? Now instead of saving it, how much do you think you will have if you invested that money? These are some of the things that was covered in this book along with other great and useful information. 

Check out this Months Must Read: The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach

Exercising

As part of my personal growth, I have also been exercising 4-5 days out of the week in the mornings and I can honestly say it is one of the best decisions I have made. As I am learning that working in front of a computer screen all day and not maintaining a healthy lifestyle can really mess with your health so I came up with a simple workout plan that is very easy to stick to but very beneficial for my body. 

Here is the small plan I've put together:

• Run - 1.4 miles 

• Push-ups - 2 sets of 25

• Sit-ups - 2 sets of 25

For the month of October, I ran a total 18.23mi which is about an average of 1.5mi per day for 3 days out of every week in October. The reason I only ran 3 days out of the week was because of my schedule for the month. I have been a little bit more occupied now that we have a little in the house, but for the most part, I'm still able to get a little exercising in throughout the day.  

Online Learning

Another part of my personal growth journey that I am really enjoying is keeping up with the #AskGaryVeeShow on Gary Vaynerchuk YouTube Channel. On top of keeping up with Pat Flynn on Smart Passive Income and Matthew Allen on Dumb Passive Income, I'm also listening to Glendon Cameron on his YouTube channel just about everyday which is how I found out about Gary Vaynerchuk. The techniques and lessons I am learning from these guys are all great and I have been applying them online, offline, and in my daily life with some successes so far. Another reason I enjoy listening to them is because they both have the years of knowledge and authenticity of creating and running real businesses.
 
Social Following

This month social media following shows a slight increase in Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram with the number of Facebook page likes remains the same but the truth is, there was not much promotion going on this month due to my schedule lately. Within the months to come, I am going to put together a plan for social media promotion that will allow me to efficiently promote content across all social media platforms for all my sites. In Novembers Income Report, I will explain the current difficulties I am having promoting content on Instagram which is one platform that I will really like to utilize more often.

Niche Sites

During the month of October, I started working on some new projects for my existing sites and continued the process of organizing my portfolio of sites. In the process, I decided to shut down a few sites as I saw no real value or future with them.

Although I did not want to take on any new projects, there was something that caught my attention while I was reading a few articles online about emerging technologies. One thing about niche site building is that if there is a new niche that is not crowded, you can potentially position yourself early on as a leading authority in that niche. So instead of starting right away, I have started researching the niche. 

This months amazon affiliate report has been the best month so far since I have been using this affiliate program. It is only $6 which is very funny, but considering the fact that it has been less than a year using the program and I am not using any link building tools, I can attribute the little success to the work that I am currently putting into developing the sites and creating good content for the readers. 

As you can see, I continued seeing an increase in my amazon affiliate earnings compared to Septembers Income Report, and although the number of clicks are down, my conversion rate has increased a little. The major mistake I was doing in many of the content on my sites were over saturating articles with links which is something I am now correcting making it less about going to another page or product and more about content. Another mistake I was doing was publishing content with information that was already out on the internet. I was barely getting any views because there wasn't anything new or unique about the content I was publishing which is major when it comes to SEO, something I was not really interested at first in learning much about, but now I see the real need for it. One major habit I have been picking up lately is to do in depth research about the subject or product I was writing about. 

While this was something I should have been doing from the beginning, like I mentioned in earlier income reports that I am now starting to take my online businesses more seriously and another reason I have been on a cleaning, organizing and changing things lately. If you missed it, here is one of the simple strategies I am using with some of my older content to build back up the sites with new, fresh and unique content:

First - Identify and record all the articles and other content that had little to no page views or activity on the site and on my promotional platforms.

Second - Scan those articles for any grammar and subject errors, broken links and anything that seems incomplete or has little to no value.

Third - Do a little more research on the product or tool to find any information that I missed or any new information that can add value to the article. Then find ways to incorporate the new content into the existing article.

Forth - Create new content around related subjects in the articles and build links to the old article. 

This simple process is something I started doing when I realized that many of the articles and content I have written contained small errors and could have contained more useful information. With this, I started to see small spikes in my views, clicks and followers to my social media platforms. 

Income Report - October 2015

Income

Affiliate Earnings

• $6.00 - Amazon Associates for sales on Amazon.com

Adsense

•  $0.22  - Niche Sites

Android Applications 

• $0.00 - Mobile Advertising

Net Total for October 2015 - $6.22 

Expenses

•  $0.00 - Since most of my sites and apps have been up before I started this challenge, I did not include the expenses I paid earlier in the year for the domain names, fee, etc. I'm pretty sure it will not stay like this for too long once things start to pick up! 

If you are curious and would like to know my initial expenses for my online businesses at the beginning of the year, here is the breakdown:

• $10.33 - Domain Names
• $25.00 - Google Play Developer Fee 
• $40.00 - Development of Mobile Apps

Year To Date Total Expenses - $75.33

Short Recap

Looking back on the month of October, I can see things are heading in the right direction with the sites. While there is still a lot of work to be done with current and new projects, October has shown that the work I am currently putting into the sites was not only necessary but a great move. With little to no promotion at all especially in the month of October, my sites has been gaining a lot of natural and organic page views which I can attribute to the changes I have mention earlier.

In the coming months, there will be some small changes here on PMI, which mainly includes the deletion of certain sections in the monthly income reports which will be replaced with more in depth content on my SEO and promotional strategies, page views, and other details about the building quality websites and blogs. A few other sections will be added to the site itself, but I will slowly introduce them as we go along on the journey. 

Thank You for being apart of my monthly income report. I am look forward to your comments and any suggestions as I am always looking forward to improving and learning new things that will help me grow and build my online business.