It’s time for last months income report: April 2012.

As a reminder, this is why we do the income reports:

1. Accountability. These will allow us to finally keep track of our total online revenue – something that I’ve been horrible at.
2. Progress. Now that we have it documented, we’ll be be able to chart our progress as our income increases (hopefully!)
3. Truth. To show people that you really can make money online
4. Transparency: We want others to see how we do it so that others can do it too.

Remember: We started blogging in July of 2008 so it’s taken us a lot of time to figure this blogging thing out. And truthfully, we still have a lot to learn. Don’t get the impression that you can start a blog today and turn a profit tomorrow. I promise you, it ain’t going to happen.

Happenings In April

On my blog, Good Financial Cents, I was able to surpass a new milestone.  I don’t think I’ve mentioned it much on this blog, but my site launched back in March of 2010.

My blog had surpassed over 120,000 unique visitors per month, which was absolutely fantastic.

Unfortunately, the following month, I got hit by Google’s Panda update, and I saw my traffic get slashed by over 70%.  🙁

You can see some of my traffic levels on the screenshot below going back to May of last year.  I finally started making some improvements to the site and in conjunction with improvements and a lot of tax related traffic around April 15, 2012; I was able to hit a new monthly milestone in traffic with 140,000 visitors.

I don’t expect to beat that anytime soon, but it looks as if my blog will be close to averaging over 100,000 visitors per month once again.  This has been over a year in the making and it’s nice to finally see the hard work pay off.

With these increased traffic numbers, you also see some higher revenue numbers in the income report below.

Lessons learned:  Traffic = Money.  More traffic = More Money.  Capisce?

I’ve also mentioned in the past I’ve been working on a niche site trying to increase traffic and conversions for it.  I haven’t publicly released the name of the niche site, but some of you may already know, as I’m not keeping it a secret.  Below are the screen shots showing the niche site that started in January of this year to where the traffic numbers are at currently.

 

As you can see, the traffic has been steadily climbing.  We’re now averaging just over 100 new visitors per day.  Eventually, I’ll share a detailed analysis of how I was able to grow the site so quickly so that others may benefit.

Okay, onto the numbers:

Income Breakdown

Good Financial Cents

• Adsense: $1,442.40
• Adspeed: $2,279.70
• Commission Junction: $114.00
• Flex Offers:$378.00
• Direct Advertising: $2,070.99
• Total: $6,285.09

Other Niche Sites

• Adsense: $183.84
• Flex Offers:  $414.00
• Direct Advertising: $110.00
• Niche Site Conversion (new): $1,251.00
• Total: $1,958.84

• Blog Her Ads: $65.03
• Total $65.03

• Equifax: $200.00
• Total: $200.00

Financial Planning

• Online Planning Fees: $400.00
• Total: $400.00

Total Revenue for April: $8,908.96

• Revenue Last Month: $3,120.93
• Difference: +$5,788.03
• Total for 2012: $22,460.06
  

What Happened in April

As you can see, all revenue numbers were up, up, up!!!  I didn’t even realize that this was our record month until I added the totals.  What-what!!

Adsense was up considerably at Good Financial Cents, (next month will be even higher to reflect April’s traffic.) as well as Ad Speed, which was almost $2,000 more than it was the previous month.

I also landed a few direct advertising deals that were able to generate some pretty nice extra income.  I don’t expect the income numbers to fully sustain for May, but I’m hopeful that it will be much higher than we’ve seen in previous months.

You also notice my first niche site conversion.  This has been three months in the making and it was nice to finally see some revenue come in.  I have another conversion that has already occurred; it just hasn’t been paid on.  It’s not nearly as much, but still nice to see some revenue coming in from all my efforts.

The best part about the niche site is that while I’m spending some time writing the articles, most of the heavy lifting is being done by my VA in the Philippines.  She’s in charge of publishing the posts, submitting them to Bookmarking sites and also helping with creating backlinks to the articles.   We’ve already cracked the top 10 for several of the keywords that we were targeting which is really impressive for the short time that we’ve been working on it.

I will say that I’m not throwing a victory party just yet.   I know with Google’s Panda and, most recent, Penguin update that search traffic is never safe.   We are making sure to offer good original content and, when I can, I’m even filming videos to go along with the content.  Essentially, anything we can do to make it a better experience for the end user.

New Opportunities

Next month you’ll see two other income resources that I’m testing out.  One is Media.net that is becoming more prevalent on many personal finance sites.  The other is a new affiliate partner that has asked me to be a beta tester.   Nothing like being a guinea pig and getting paid for it.  🙂

I literally just launched it 3 days ago and thus far I’m averaging about $8/day.   Not bad for dropping in some code on my blog and letting them do all the heavy lifting.  Now that is passive income at it’s finest!

Until next month…..