April Income 2008 on InvestorBlogger Dot Com
April 30, 2008 | Posted by InvestorBlogger | Read these 5 comments
This is the second time I’ve had to write this post and the second time I had to post this … Wow! I screwed up, didn’t I?
Milestones
March’s Income Report was a little late being published on this blog but April’s is going to be a little earlier! Why? Well because I reached a landmark!
$10,059 (US$)
But before that you read about this news, try out one of these two great ways to keep up with what’s happening on InvestorBlogger Dot Com:
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So how did we do in April? Well, we achieved a good deal this month reaching a little over 51% of my initial target of $1200. However, caution is required: taxes and Paypal fees were taken out of this total as well as other costs.
* Bank Interest: $28.00
* Dividend Income: $109.49
* Advertising: $245.00
* Advertising (3rd party): $181.10
* Reviews - $30.00
* Consulting = $19.50
* Total = $613.09
*there are a few other residual sources but they generally don’t generate much, like Voxant, NetAudioAds, etc. that generate only a few cents a month. In addition, some sources that generate a lot one month, but nothing the next are not included.
I haven’t worked out the proportion of active vs. passive income yet, but it accounts for a little over half of the total income. I’m a big fan of passive income, and I’m now working very hard to increase the total of passive income to something nearer 75% of the total.
In terms of running a blog, it requires quite a bit of time, as does providing consulting and hosting services (which I enjoy doing). While monthly income varies from month to month, and sometimes by quite a lot, we’ve been a keeping an eye on the actual growth and reporting on a twice yearly basis shows a dramatic increase from the first six months to the third six months. So, in UK reporting style, here are the results:
February 2007 (1st 6 months): $2,462
August 2007 (2nd 6 months): $2,563
February 2008 (3rd 6 months): $3,994
August 2008 (4th 6 months): $-,—
Anyone care to guess? I’ll give you a hint as we’re already off to strong start. It’s only when we get a perspective over a longer time that we see what’s happening. If you want to read more about my plan, you can visit the entry.
Expenses
The blog currently has a few expenses such as hosting through Dreamhost’s VPS system and it works well. Of course, Domains and I own about ten or so all need to be paid for annually and Paypal Fees. I currently don’t advertise, though I may do so soon again.
* hosting - $49.40 (est.)
* Fees - $9.53 (Paypal, Commissions, etc.)
* Content, Development, and Advertising - $27.50
* Total = $86.43*
*These figures are estimates as final figures haven’t been received for some, and other commissions are invisible having been deducted at source.
It’s been a wild ride since I started blogging in 2006 on this blog! If you’re interested in what went before, check out Obblogatory dot com.
Thanks for all your support!
Success online and offline - or how to earn an extra $10K!
April 30, 2008 | Posted by InvestorBlogger | Comments Off
Welcome, Readers!
If you’ve never visited this blog before, why not come on in! Today’s post is all about the landmark that I just reached!
$10,059 (US$)
But before that you can read about this blog, and some of the great posts here. Or you can try out one of these two great ways to keep up with what’s happening:
â€â€Ã¢â‚¬â€-
Subscribe to the feed:
For more interesting articles on running a business, making money, operating your blog, , and so on…, subscribe to the RSS feed or email newsletter. There’s a lot more in the Random Walk to Wealth on InvestorBlogger dot com.
â€â€Ã¢â‚¬â€-
Subscribe to the top 20 money making feeds:
Subscribe to the top 20 money making feeds download. Just download it and upload it to your favorite RSS reader (Google Reader, BlogLines, etc. all work!) I’ve just updated the feeds with several new blogs that are worth reading. At the very least, check it out! After all, it’s free!
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Reaching a Milestone!
As it’s just published, I was reading through the numbers again for income for InvestorBlogger and I was surprised to learn that I have already surpassed the $10,000 mark for earnings. While that mightn’t seem like a great deal for others, it is a big deal for me, even though I just squeaked past!
Much of the success of reaching this milestone lies around some ideas that I drew up in January using my own experiences, and a desire to escape from the rat race of working 50 hour weeks! These have included creating, directing and supplementing a variety of income sources to create an average of an extra US$500 per month over the last twenty months. Naturally, this is a gross income, hosting costs, pc costs, and a lot more taxes need to be deducted from this amount!
Do set a goal!
Truth is: I never set a goal or a timeframe to earn that much because when I started out in 2006, there weren’t many make money blogs. I quickly set some goals in this post for the following year. I forgot about this post for a long time, but a quick gander will tell you that I haven’t managed to reach the financial aspect or the time scale. Never mind: I did reach 42% of the amount during that time.
Never give up!
In the past twenty months since I started this, I have had some really lousy months, and some spectacular months. In fact, in January, all my chickens came home to roost and I exceeded by a fraction my monthly target (reaching a little over 104% of the target)! But success isn’t about what happened then, and failure isn’t about what happened in July (when I barely scraped by at about 24%). Success is what happens when you focus on your business and execute (even poorly). Because when you try to execute, you build up usable data on your performance, and you can tweak or revise as you need.
Building Income Takes Time
Another thing that I realized when I was doing this is that the success that I’ve been experiencing over the last few months in this drive to build a profitable set of income streams, that success was founded on what I was doing a long time ago.
When I got married, my wife and I had almost nothing. We spent most of our savings on our wedding, and we had no clear plan about how we were going to buy a house, build a life or anything. In 1995, it seemed that all we did was earn the money, then spend it.
Soon after the wedding, I realized that we were about to repeat the mistakes that my parents and many others had made: that is, living hand to mouth. So I knuckled down and we began to save our money, budget more effectively and learn about running a business.
Taking Action
The worst thing in the world must be failing to take action: when you know something is right and you fail to take action. The next worst is failing to follow through on your initial actions. And the next worst must be failing to learn from your actions and their consequences.
To be an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to take risks. Many times, these risks involve capital (or your cash!), sometimes they involve business decision (such as what products to stock or not to stock), or who to hire.
Recently, I was chatting about starting a business with a friend in the UK, and I recognised the same thinking patterns that I used to have. “Oh, to start in business, you have to have a marketing plan and a business plan, … and this plan… and that plan…”
Yet no amount of plans can replace the fact that you have to take action. Simply planning everything cannot substitute for the lack of taking concrete action. Planning, in many cases, becomes a way to avoid taking any action because you’re still “thinking about it”, “putting things together”, “researching the market”… Whatever. Perhaps you’re hindered by other concerns: a typical one is fear.
Don’t be afraid
For a few years, I was involved with a teaching journal. I remember after the first issue came out, I was all excited. It cost quite a lot to print, but the edition came back looking good! I was thrilled by the book: knowing that something I had conceived, designed and worked on bore fruit. The contributions were excellent and the journal was well received by everyone.
I set up my commerce site, and waited for the orders to flood in. And waited, and waited. I’m still waiting… Turns out that, if there was a market for my journal, I hadn’t found it! So the books are still sitting around waiting to be sold. I’m proud that I was able to pull something together that had a lot of potential; I’m thrilled to have had the opportunity to work with great people on this magazine; and I’m disappointed that I didn’t work hard enough to get sales.
Sometimes though taking a chance will incur negative feedback. In fact, someone wrote to me, when things were bad in both this business and in my offline business: “I don’t think it would be good for your future career” to continue when we faced real problems. Such words of ‘encouragement’ are sometimes hard to bear.
But you have to bear these, and move on. Remember that’s what business is about after all: taking action. You need to make that first step and that second step and that third step and so on.
Develop a thick skin
And that’s what you need… a thick skin but a good pair of ears. Why? Because if you want to be a success, you will get a lot of criticism (both positive and negative) as I have. While many business people really pour their heart into their business, sometimes the criticisms can seem unjustified as the customers or competitors or outsiders don’t appreciate all the extra time and effort you put into your products and services. But, for that you can hardly blame them: they don’t know. A thick skin and a broad smile are therefore two of your best weapons!
You’ll also need a great pair of ears: ears to hear and sift through the criticisms for things that you will get in order to find the gems that can help turn your business into a crown jewel.
I haven’t so far ‘discovered’ my other qualities that I have needed over the years, I doubtless will add them in future posts.
How do you entrepreneurs deal with constructive (and otherwise…) criticism? What do you do with the things customers tell you?
Are your posts being eaten by Wordpress?
April 30, 2008 | Posted by InvestorBlogger | Read these 2 comments
Image by Chesi - Fotos CC via Flickr
Is the latest version of WordPress eating posts or not?
This is the second time I’ve had to write this post. I posted a stub just a little while ago, and it’s gone. Since this is the second time I had a problem with a post in the last week, I’m beginning to think there’s a serious bug in WordPress 2.5 that eats posts that are just published.
I recently posted a long article on WordPress that I had reason to edit after the posting. When I went to find the article (I had seen it on the front page), I hit ‘Save’ only to find the article gone when I came to view the front page. I then received an error message when I tried to edit the post again. Luckily, the post was already archived on BlogLines so I was able to paste the entire contents in, bar a few minor edits, though it did not show up in Reader.
So for the meantime, I’ll be writing posts on other media then uploading them or pasting them. Have you had any experience of this? Could it be my fervent imagination? Let me know.
Photo: Reflecting yourselves
April 29, 2008 | Posted by InvestorBlogger | Comments Off
This is a picture post from a Sunday afternoon trip to Tamsui and Sanchih!
And that’s it for Sunday’s Picture Post. Albeit one day late!
In-print vs. On-line: What are you reading these days?
April 28, 2008 | Posted by InvestorBlogger | Read these 2 comments
Image via Wikipedia
To my readers, I have to apologize for a delay in this weekend’s posting. I spent yesterday evening and this afternoon fixing a blog that was hacked, for a friend. It was unfortunate, it does happen, and it isn’t the end of the world. Really.
Has anyone noticed…? Magazines are getting smaller and MORE expensive at the same time! I was in the local bookstore and they don’t stock many English language magazines. I happened to see a copy of Fortune which I used to enjoy many years ago. I picked it up. It was well over $7 a copy and had less than 80 pages. Yikes! I could buy a book for that price!
It seems to affect only US magazines, and yet I still enjoy the websites of Fortune, Forbes and other magazines. However, TIME is one magazine I will RARELY (if ever) buy. Newsweek is not much better. They’re both hideously expensive here, quite dull a lot of the time (as their focus is primarily the US) and are about as thin as toilet paper.
While I agree that magazine quality isn’t dependent on the AMOUNT of pages, I do have to question the direction these magazines are going in. Has anyone read the Economist lately? That’s hardly a doorstop, but at least it tops out at a reasonable size and makes you want to open it a second or third time!
Perhaps it’s being a Brit, but one of the things that I hate about many modern (and US-based) magazines (including PC magazines, news and biz magazines) is the prevalent use of titles that put me to sleep or shout “hyperbole”! You know the titles - “Ten Top PCs”, “Seven ways to Make More Money”… Most of these types of articles are brain-candy, to attract readers only.
My Reading List
So in this edition, I’ll list my favorite magazines and newspapers.
#1 The Financial Times - I always try to buy the local edition on Saturday to get the weekend news, including Arts, Property, etc. It’s always a good read. At NT$110 it is certainly BETTER value than the other magazines.
#2 The Economist - A great magazine with lots of varied news. While a lot of articles aren’t in depth, they’re usually pretty good summaries. It is certainly a decent read and can keep me busy for several subway journeys.
#3 BusinessWeek - Despite suffering Anorexia in recent months, this journal is still pretty good, if you skip the numerous “Best of…”, “Top ***”, and such like editions. I don’t need puerile Top of the Poop Charts, really. I’m a big boy.
#4 BBC News - I usually visit the BBC News website, primarily for info about Europe, the UK and Asia. Typically stories are well-researched but often lack a specificity for Asian stories.
#5 New York Times - While not offline, I do spend time looking for stories on this resource. The articles are well-written, well-informed and interesting. The tech articles are sometimes wanting, and some of the columnists seem to be writing a personal blog, rather than newspaper reporting, but otherwise a good
Sites I seldom or never visit anymore: CNN dot com (too parochial, gossip-focused), NewsWeek (never bothered), Time Magazine (over-rated by everyone), … and quite a few others…
What are you reading these days? Do you prefer online or offline news reading?
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