Blog Income Report – 2021 Quarter Two

In this blog, I am providing a breakdown of my blog income report, a breakdown of the revenue, expenses, and profit from my niche websites. This income report is for the period of quarter two 2021. For a full list of my income reports, see my blog income report archive here.

Blog Income Report – How To Read This Page

At The Entrepreneur Ride Along, I try to be as open and transparent as possible. That is why I’m sharing my revenue and expenses, the real behind the scenes numbers from my websites. These are the websites that I’ve started and scaled. I want to show you real numbers so you know what to expect (and what’s possible) when you launch your online business.

I want you to see what is possible when you start an online business, I want you to see the successes I am having (and the mistakes I am making) so that you can begin making money online. I will publish a new blog income report every quarter (after I pay my quarterly taxes) to show you my results from the previous months.

Below, and in each upcoming blog income report, I will post three tables:

• Revenue
• Expenses
• Income

I will breakdown my real revenue and expenses for each one of my websites. Below these tables, I will give you some insight behind the scene into what I am doing with each blog, what happened during the last quarter, and how I plan to continue scaling.

And if this sparks some ideas for you, or encourages you to go out and start an online business for yourself, I encourage you to start today. If you just need some ideas, go ahead and download my five website ideas (the businesses I would start if I had more time).

Enjoy!

Proof

For proof, and to show I’m not making these numbers up, I will include screenshots at the bottom of this blog from my Stripe account showing revenue generated from each business over the last quarter.

BLOG REVENUE

BLOG EXPENSES

BLOG PROFIT

Blog Income Report – Summary

This quarter, I had both my best month of the year thus far, and worst month of the year. Revenue from AssociatePI dipped below $3,000 for the first time in nearly four years. Sound the alarms! Something is going wrong with, what is typically, my best website

In total, quarter one was OKAY but I’m starting to worry about AssociatePI. Quarter two was only two months (April and May), my business generated $11,803 in revenue which resulted in $9,135 in profit. That’s an average of about $5,901 in revenue, which is slightly below my average per month. I tend to target $7,000 as a realistic monthly goal.

But most importantly, I quit my job this quarter! In April 2021, I made the leap into full-time entrepreneurship. I have been building these businesses since 2014, they generate enough profit to sustain myself financially. I’ve made the leap. I am now a full-time entrepreneur.

Expenses

First, let’s talk through the expenses I incurred in quarter one. My expenses of $2,667 came from the following:

• Virtual Assistants ($304) – I had a team of three virtual assistants working on a variety of tasks throughout quarter one. Mostly website upkeep and maintenance. This averages out to about $150 per month.
• Thinkific ($468) – I am migrating all of my online courses at AssociatePI over to Thinkific. This is an investment in a new, and much cleaner, online course platform.

In the next sections, I will provide a bit more insight into each website’s performance this quarter, and what to expect in the future.

AssociatePI

What an awful quarter for AssociatePI. My worst quarter of performance since 2017.  Only $6,151 in revenue this quarter from AssociatePI. That means I sold less than 10 courses per month.

What the heck happened?! This website used to be an automatic $5,000 per month.

Here’s what went wrong:

• New website – I implemented a new website design using Thrive Themes. You can see the current website here. My bounce rate on my blogs and home page went up 20% (not good). It went from 50% to 70% on some of my most popular pages. I am tracking this now to see why people are bouncing.
• Migration to Thinkific – I moved my courses over to Thinkific. The courses used to be hosted on my website, but with so much content on my website the speed of the site was getting bogged down. So, I made the decision to move all of my courses to Thinkific. The platform is great, and it’s super fast. But, it might be confusing people. They need to move from my WordPress website over to Thinkific to purchase and access their courses, rather than accessing their course directly on my website. I have a suspicionss that this is confusing people and hurting my conversion.
• Broken website – here’s the big reason things went wrong. I broke my website and didn’t notice for WEEKS. I was getting a 404 error on my email opt-in page. That means no one could download my lead magnet, no one was joining my email list, I was not collecting email leads. Oh no! That is how I get all of my sales. 85% of my sales come from my email list. If I wasn’t collecting new email leads, that means I was only selling to people that were already on my list (I have a list of 6,000 email leads). That severely hurt my sales. This did not get fully fixed until October of 2021. It’s a big hit that affected me for months. It took months of working with my WebHost to fix this issue.

I am going to be monitoring the performance of my insurance course sales over the next few months. Once I get the website fixed and optimized, I expect to see sales bounce back.

See below for a screenshot from Stripe, for proof of monthly revenue. Please note, this screen capture is online course sales only it does not include my affiliate revenue or sales through my partner channels.

Pomsky Owners Association

Revenue for the Pomsky Owners Association was $5,593 in quarter two. That came from a combination of membership sales (see Stripe screenshots below), book sales, and affiliate sales.

Stripe sales (from my memberships) hit $2,445 in April. My best months from memberships to date. I pushed memberships hard this month, with three marketing emails targeting a promotion to sell annual memberships. Annual memberships range from $200 – $400. I book six new annual memberships this month, which helped to push the top line this month (which was desperately needed after my AssociatePI performance).

See below for a screenshot from Stripe, for proof of monthly revenue. Please note, this screen capture is membership fees only it does not include my affiliate revenue.

The Entrepreneur Ride Along

As I stated last quarter, the Entrepreneur Ride Along would not be bringing in the same profit that it did last year. That’s because I’ve spent the last six months writing my book Step One (published in September).

Total revenue of $102 for the quarter came from a few affiliate sales and pre-sales of my book (more about pre-selling here).

See below for a screenshot from Stripe, for proof of monthly revenue. Please note, this screen capture is book pre-sales only it does not include my online course sales or affiliate revenue.

Next Quarter

My big project, which will launch next quarter, is my book Step One. That is my main focus for quarter three. Will be published in September 2021!

Need Help?

Need help starting your own online business? Want to learn about how I am generating money online, and what strategies I’m applying? Simply contact me. I love meeting new entrepreneurs and I set aside time every week to connect and help entrepreneurs. I want to help you build your business. Simply shoot me an email to start the conversation.