September 2016 Online Income Report – $6,682.24
It’s time to review my online income report from last month. This report only includes income I received from the month of September. If I haven’t received the money, then I don’t put it in this income report. This is the best way for me to track how much money I am making on a monthly basis.
This was a transitional month for me. To be blunt, I didn’t really work. I took some unexpected time off for about three weeks in September. I worked maybe 15-20 hours in all of September. This produced some interesting results for my online income, which I’ll get to below.
Second, I completed the final phase of cutting down on freelance work. My freelance work used to make up around 90% of my blog income every month; now it’s around 10% of my income. While I will be decreasing this source of income, I am growing other areas of online income.
Third, I’m struggling with writing online income reports. I like writing them because I like being able to track my progress. At the same time, I go through phases where I don’t like talking about money. Ironic, as I started as a personal finance blogger, right?!
I’ve had this blog for almost two years and have been able to maintain a lot of privacy. I keep my real life separate from my blog life. To this day, only a few people know I even have a blog. I have this fear of friends or family finding my blog and then reading about my income, regardless if I’m making $0 or $100,000 (I can dream, ha!) For now I’m going to keep doing income reports, but I’m getting more uncomfortable with it all 🙂
Here are some previous online income reports:
- April 2015 online income report (my very first online income report) $61.83
- June 2015 online income report $66.10
- July 2015 online income report $515
- September 2015 online income report $1530.94
- October 2015 online income report $3634.28
- December 2015 online income report $4238.99
- April 2016 online income report $5920.52
- May 2016 online income report $7,268.68
- June 2016 online income report $9,700.11
- July 2016 online income report $9,566.15
Breakdown of my September online income report:
September was my eleventh month freelancing full time. A year ago I was still at my day job and blogging part time. Starting this blog has changed my life and I can’t imagine doing anything else!
- $924.74 Ad revenue
- $0 Partnerships/Sponsorships
- $3,580.50 Affiliate Income
- $1,377 Courses + products
- $800 Freelancing
GRAND TOTAL: $6,682.24
Ok, so first thoughts are I am down around $3,000 from August. Here’s why:
- I accepted a couple of new sponsorships in September, but haven’t been paid yet. This seems like the first time in a long time I haven’t received income from partnerships/sponsorships.
- I wasn’t able to promote my courses as much as I normally do since I took some time off. Instead, I relied on my email funnel sales.
- Reduced freelance income, as mentioned above.
Online income breakdown
This income amount is the grand total before I deduct taxes. Right now I am putting away 30% of each paycheck I receive. If I break this down into sections of income, it looks like this:
- 12% freelance income
- 88% in ad income, products, affiliate income
If you want to keep track of your online income (which I highly recommend) check out Freshbooks! It’s what I’ve used to track business income, expenses, invoice clients, and more. Click here to learn more about Freshbooks.
Courses and products
Because I am not in launch mode, I expected my sales from my online courses to decrease over time. In September I relied on sales funnels to earn money from my two online courses.
It is awesome that I was able to make money from my courses without doing anything thanks to email funnels or direct traffic, but it also shows me that I need to keep up with promoting if I want to make more income from this source of revenue.
Both courses will be getting a makeover in the coming months. I’m also debating whether I want my courses to be evergreen or switch to an open/closed enrollment period. Either way, these projects will be keeping me busy!
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- In my Pinterest Presence course, I share exactly how I went from 1K page views to 160K+ page views a month in less than a year, as well as how Pinterest drives in 90% of my traffic each month. If you have yet to utilize Pinterest and also need to get more traffic to your website, you can check out the course here.
- My Pinterest Pin templates have been such a fun and unexpected product that I created! I receive a lot of emails from readers who struggle with making pins for Pinterest. So I created a dozen Pinterest pin templates that are fully customizable that everyone can use! You can learn more about the Pinterest pin templates here.
Monthly Expenses
These are my September expenses:
- $5 Google Apps
- $113 VA work
- $9.95 FreshBooks – I stopped using PayPal and did the 30 day trial with Freshbooks. I pay 50 cents per transaction (regardless of the invoice amount) as opposed to 3-4%of the invoice amount in PayPal fees. That’s crazy!
- $99 Teachable
- $110 Affiliates
- $79 ConvertKit. I use ConvertKit and LeadPages together. I’ve created some really great newsletters, funnels, sign up forms and even hosted webinars with both of these companies. I don’t include LeadPages in every income report as an expense because I pay it quarterly.
- $0 Tailwind. I pay for this annually. Tailwind is the scheduler I use when I do all my pinning on Pinterest. It’s my favorite scheduler I use for my clients and myself.
- $0 Bluehost. I pay tor this annually as well. This is the company I used when I first started my blog and still use today! Here’s a tutorial on how to get started blogging.
TOTAL EXPENSES: $415.95
This month my expenses were around 6% of my budget. I try to take care of a lot of things on my own so I don’t have to outsource.
I think it’s crazy that I worked under 20 hours in September and made over $6,000. This tells me that my hard work for creating passive income is working. After stepping away for a few weeks, nothing fell apart, ha!
However, when I don’t work, my income decreases. I didn’t have time to work with brands to line up more sponsorships/partnerships nor have time to focus on promoting my courses.
Either way, I never made $6,000 working only 20 hours at my day job, so I’ll take it 😉
Bright Bloggers + Business
I’ve teamed up with Allison (AllisonLindstrom.com) to create an amazing Facebook group called Bright Bloggers + Business. This is a safe, encouraging environment for all you bloggers, entrepreneurs and online business owners. Click here to join our private group!
Kristin, I love reading your income reports! Your transition from freelancing to other income sources has been fascinating and so educational!
I totally get the family/privacy thing, but I’m glad you’re still doing the reports for now. 😉
Hi Kristin! This is super inspiring! Do you have a blog post on the specific of your affiliate income strategies?
Wow Kristen,
That’s still awesome! I hope you still share your income reports but I totally understand your privacy. My in-laws have no clue either that I’m blogger or a freelancer! And they visit us every day! Maybe next year I’ll tell them 🙂
Congrats on fading out your services to do more product marketing. I’m trying to switch my business model for my freelance writing and this is exactly what I want to do, but not sure if I can create as many products as you have in a year’s time! Power woman!
Thanks so much for sharing your reports!
Thanks Elna! It’s definitely scary sharing the income reports the longer I do this, but for now they are staying 🙂
Wow it’s amazing to see how far you’ve come looking at your income reports!
I’ll be keeping an eye on your blog from now on, very inspirational for fellow bloggers like myself!
Keep up the good work!
May I ask – what do your friends and family think you do for a living since they don’t know about your blog?
Ha! I’ve always worked online and from home from my old day job, so this isn’t much different! I still do consulting for my career niche, which I don’t really blog about, so it’s not too big of a stretch 🙂
Most of my income from online is through freelancing and it’s exhausting! Trying to keep up with a full-time job and freelancing can eventually wear you thin and I’ve been contemplating a quit date a lot lately. Right now I just want to diversify my income because I don’t want to rely on freelancing alone. Thanks for another month of inspiration, Kristin!
Being able to make over six thousand dollars while working less than a day is totally awesome! I can’t wait to see what next month brings.
P.S I’ve been lurking around your blog for ages and I finally got the courage to start my own blog thanks to your inspiration.
Happy to see you still killed it even while working less hours throughout the month! I keep saying it but I’m trying to freelance less too. I only work on client work 4 days a week now so I’m trying to set up passive income streams on the side. I really need to talk to you about getting my webinar game up 🙂
Thanks girl! There’s so much less stress since cutting down on freelancing 🙂 Yesss, let’s do it!
Noooooo! The streak! Kristen, you had a steller eight months, and I suspect that will stay as one of the best, if not the best, continuous performances on my income index for a long time to come. Sorry it’s gone down this month, but sometimes it’s important to take time just for you, even if it has a temporary impact on income.
I understand your discomfort about income reporting. I’ve had a couple of family find mine, and while I don’t mind them seeing the reports, it’s led to some interesting arguments about whether it’s a good idea or not reporting income for my sites.
Ha!! Oh well, I’ll let someone else take over my spot haha. The income reports are tough, right?!
Lovely! My income right now comes mainly from freelancing. Although I like freelancing, I would love to see my passive income increase as well.
Awesome Aliyyah!
It’s amazing to see you make so much after taking most of the month off! I have got to work on my residual income more. You talked about using email sales funnels to help you sale when you were not working. Is there a resource or course you recommend that talks more about how to do this successfully? Email marketing is probably the weakest part of my business!
Thanks Kecia! I love Mariah Coz’s – she has great courses and also has a podcast out now!
Hey Kristen! I find it really inspiring that you were able to take some time off in September and still make money. It just goes to show that if you put in the work upfront, passive income really does work!