It’s time for last months income report: September 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.

What went down in September

My gosh!  I’m getting worse at getting these income reports done each month.   It’s the 31st so I’m getting in under the deadline.  Don’t hate me because I’m a procrastinator like that.  🙂

September was another awesome month.  And to be honest, I can barely remember what all happened.  It’s been a blur!    What I do know is that we hit another record this month – booyah!  Part of the reason was a one time payout of $2000 we got for doing something that I love to do.  I’ll explain more below…..

Give Me Some Traffic

Thus far on the blog, we’ve shared some stats from my main blog, Good Financial Cents, some of my wife’s crazy Pinterest traffic on her blog, House of Rose (see this article on How to Grow Your Blog with Pinterest in cased you missed it), and my niche site;  but we really haven’t opened the door on Dollars and Roses.  Until now…..

Thus far I’m pretty impressed with the amount of traffic we’ve been able to get to this site.   Last month (seen below) we had 4,532 visitors to our site and 9,379 page views.   Since we only average about 2.5 posts per month (shame on us!), that’s not too shabby, IMHO.   Now if we could only post more……

Niche Site.    My niche site continues to grow.   Looking back on August numbers, we had just over 7,500 visitors to the site.  In August, I crossed 10,000 visitors for the first time.  Yeah baby!   With traffic comes more leads which just means more good things to come.  I’m in the process of doing a major site redesign on that site, because I think I can at least double, if not, triple the conversions on leads based on some research that I’ve done.   The site should be done in the next few weeks, so I can’t wait to see the results.

Now let’s look at some numbers…..

Here’s a look at the numbers for September:

Income Breakdown

Good Financial Cents

• Adsense: $1,270.00
• Adspeed: $1,185.87
• Commission Junction: $1,329.50
• Flex Offers:$1,182.00
• Direct Advertising: $671.29
• Media Net:  $115.99
• Aweber: $78.00
• Consumer Track: $126.00
• Beta Test New Affiliate: $222.13
• Clickbank: $74.76
  • Total: $6,255.54

Other Niche Sites

• Adsense: $174.16
• Flex Offers: $186.00
• Direct Advertising: $300.00
• Media Net:  $81.34
• Niche Site Conversion (new):$1,087.62
• Blogging Your Passion:  $18.50
• • Total: $1,847.62

• BlogHer Ads: $1,013.92
• Direct Advertising: $25.00
  • Total $1,038.92

• Equifax: $200.00
  • Total: $200.00

Financial Planning

• Online Planning Fees: $750.00
  • Total: $750.00

Video Production

• One time Fee:  $2000.00

Total Revenue for September: $12,092.08

• Revenue Last Month: $10,562.76
• Difference: +1,529.32
• Total for 2012: $69,772.63
  

What Happened in September

Back to back record months.  I could get used to this!

For the most part, everything was the same.   Our niche site brought in just over $1000, which is good but I know it can get better.   Affiliate conversions went well.   The one big difference that you’ll see is the $2,000 payment for video production.   Curious?   I thought so…..

You may recall I founded the Life Insurance Movement where I was able to get 160 blogs all to right about life insurance on the same day.  In orchestrating that movement, I was able to partner with LifeHappens.org which ended up being a sponsor.  I loved working with them and they were eagerly excited to work with me.

After the movement, we had a follow up phone call to discuss how everything went.  In that call they brought up the fact that I was heading to the Financial Bloggers Conference and thought it would be neat to have a video recap of the Life Insurance Movement with all the personal finance bloggers that took part.   So they paid me two grand to interview bloggers while at the conference (which I had planned to do anyway) and produce a video that they could share.  Win-win!

Here’s the video that I did and my wife edited.   She’s an awesome editor, btw.  🙂

It’s just another testament of how opportunities can randomly present themselves to you when doing business online.

See you next month!