Although April is almost over, I thought I would post an income report for March just to give you an idea of where things are when it comes to my business. When it comes to income reports, I’m going to try to be as transparent as possible. I want you to see just how difficult it is to make money online but also that it is possible to make a living doing it. Hopefully you can learn from my struggles and successes and use them to help your online business succeed. It is very motivating to me when I see others be successful online and it makes me want to work harder so I can be successful too.
*Note: In previous income reports, I had assigned each of my websites a number. I have forgotten which numbers were assigned to each website. From now on, if I refer to one of my websites, I will give it an initial. For example, if my niche website was named Smart Passive Income, then I’ll refer to it as SPI, Brainstorming In Motion would be BIM, Best Haircuts for Men would be BHFM and so forth.
March Overview:
- Updated the articles on all my websites by changing 2021 to 2022 in the titles and within the articles.
- At the end of March, I researched some niches so I can start designing for Merch By Amazon.
Income Sources:
Niche Websites – 30 websites – Amazon Affiliates: $129.87
Merch By Amazon – Tier 100 – ~30 designs – 2 sales – $8.19
Redbubble – ~25 designs- 0 sales – $0
Gross Total: $138.06
*I plan to add expenses starting with next month’s report.
As you can see, my earnings are pathetic. I used to make over $2k per month from my niche websites and now I make hardly anything. It is very disappointing but I have no one to blame but myself.
What I Learned
1. Even niche sites making passive income need to be updated once in a while. I haven’t added new content to my sites in a long time. The existing content is poorly written, very short – less than 500 words, aren’t SEO optimized for today’s search engines and just plain suck. I have neglected my websites for far too long and I am paying the price with abysmal traffic and little to no sales.
2. Just get started. I signed up for a Merch by Amazon account years ago but haven’t done anything with it besides upload the first 25 designs. If I had taken it seriously 4 years ago and added designs each month and grew my account, then I could easily be seeing thousands of dollars in sales each month. From now on, when I see a money making opportunity online, I am going to get started right away. For example, I saw that Amazon had a program where people can upload educational products to sell. This program is a few years old but I haven’t heard many people talk about it. I think it might be worth a shot to get started. I filled out an application and I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll get accepted into the program soon. I don’t know if this is a good opportunity or not but I’m not going to make any money if I don’t at least try it out.
3. I can’t just do the bare minimum. I’ve spent the past two years ignoring my business. I might update an article here or there but I haven’t put much time into it. If I want to make a good passive income that I can live off of, then I need to treat it like a job. I need to spend 8-10 hours a day working hard at designing t-shirts, creating books, writing articles, promoting my designs, building backlinks, doing research, etc. The only way I’ll be able to build up my passive income is if I put in the hard work.
April Goals
- Update 1 article per day on my website BVFTH. Each article will be updated to have over 1500 words, will be SEO optimized, will link out to 5 authority sites and will also link internally to 5 other articles on the site. If I update 1/day, all 95 articles will be updated within 3 months.
- Replace badly designed shirts on my Merch by Amazon account with new designs.
- Continue uploading my MBA designs to different products and in different countries.
- Upload all of my Merch designs to Redbubble.
- Upload 5 low-content books to Amazon KDP.
- Find 100 niches for MBA. I hope to get tiered up soon and I want to be prepared.
- Research the best ways to advertise and promote Merch By Amazon designs on social media.