Greetings from Ubud where I’m writing this report from with a spectacular delay: it’s the last day of February, and luckily 2016 is a leap year!
I’ll be the whole month here in Bali, Indonesia, before moving north to Malaysia and possibly Vietnam… such is the life of a location independent entrepreneur!
But this report is about January, a month I spent in Amsterdam, with the exception of a week in Ireland.
What’s Going On
Focus and Execute: 2016 edition
Last year in May I took the decision to focus on less projects and activities.
I clearly indicated three big changes:
- Reducing client work. WordPress consultancies are quite rewarding but I’m just selling my time to other people projects and aren’t adding value to my entrepreneurial journey. I’ve been working for customers all my life and I know I can be good servicing them. This means I’m increasing my consultancy rates and only take on board the best opportunities.
- Focus on two projects. I decided to focus on two websites I believe can grow in the next months: QuadHangar (review website about drones) and RouterFreak (blog for IT network engineers).
- Eliminate what I’m no more interested. This means maybe sacrificing some little income to free my time and mental space.
As often happens, things turned out a bit different than expected 🙂
In fact, right after this decision I launched my WordPress maintenance & support service WP-OK and it’s now taking 50% of my time.
This is drastically reducing the time and energy I can spend working on my websites. In other words, it’s lack of focus all over again.
It’s time to re-evaluate what I’m busy with and re-focus my efforts.
As an exercise, in the table below I analyze the websites/projects I run:
| PROJECT | TIME REQUIRED? | AVG. REVENUE | $ PER HOUR | IDEAL REVENUE | SELLABLE? | OUTSOURCEABLE? |
| RouterFreak | 20 hours/month | $1000 | $50 | $2000 | Yes | Yes |
| ComoHacer | 1 hour/month | $250 | $250 | = | Yes | Not needed |
| ComeCostruire | 1 hour/month | $50 | $50 | $100 | Yes | Not needed |
| VivereAmsterdam | 1 hour/month | $100 | $100 | = | No | Yes |
| AidBoard | 4 hours/month | 0 | 0 | ? | Yes | No, need a biz model |
| FreeWPtube | 8 hour/month | $200 | $25 | $500 | Yes | Yes |
| WP-OK | 30 hours/month | $1200 | $40 | $3000 | No | Yes |
| QuadHangar | 4 hours/month | $400 | $100 | $1200 | Yes | Yes |
Notes:
- Average revenue is an indication based on the last months. Revenue doesn’t take into consideration expenses.
- Ideal revenue is an estimation based on potential, past results or forecast. To get there there’s work required.
- Outsourceable indicates if I can get more help on it, being outsourcing some tasks or bringing in a partner.
The table above, even if the numbers are not 100% accurate, is veeeeery interesting and eyes opening!
Basically the most rewarding projects I have are the ones I run passively 🙂
Based on what I’m seeing, I’m seriously considering getting rid of AidBoard. It has been a lovely ride, and in the good days it provided $250-300/month between paid listings and advertising, but I haven’t received an order in months.
The problem is that it’s hard to sell a website that doesn’t generate a penny (actually, the balance is negative because I’m paying hosting and mailing list services).
Thinking on what to do…
WP-OK: the ‘emerging’ customers!
After some considerations and the definitive comments from Sra Ape and Bella Vita, I decided to include in this report also the earnings coming from my freelance customers (clients I did some WordPress related consultancy) that subscribed to the maintenance & support service.
It’s 100% remote work, so should be part of the online income!
The Numbers
Income Breakdown
Let’s get down with the numbers!
- Advertising
- Adsense: €475 (was €425.98)
- Feedblitz: €2.75 (was €3.35) – the ‘trick’ I use to monetize newsletters is almost over!
- Direct Ads: €326.92 (was €108.04) – directly negotiated advertising campaigns
- Sponsored posts: 0 (was €1465)
- BuySellAds: €36.82 (was 0)
- Job Board Services
- Job posting: 0 (was 0) – Premium job posting on AidBoard
- Affiliate Programs
- Lead generation: 0
- Product affiliation: €143 (was €113.42) – Clickbank, SEMrush, DPD and others affiliate programs
- Amazon program: €273.87 (was €1181.36) – X-mas is only once a year…
- Sales:
- ComoHacer ebook: €47.97 (was €32.96) – slowly but steady, this eBook is contributing as passive income
- RouterFreak eBook: €47.97 (was €83.32)
- WP Tube theme: €147.47 (was €214.26) – my WordPress theme, running on auto-pilot
- Website sale: 0 – Nothing to sell at the moment!
- WP-OK services: €1291.4 (was €311) – my WordPress management service for Italian market, from this month including the international customers!
Total Gross: € 2.793.17 (previous month € 3,938.69)
Expenses Breakdown
Note: some links to products and services may have affiliation. This means that if you’ll buy I’ll get a commission. Never the less, I’m only mentioning services that I use myself to operate my websites.
- Hosting
- Site5: €126.59
- This is the hosting I’m using and happy with. I recently switched to a VPS4 solution. They have servers in Amsterdam too, perfect for my websites with European audience.
- HostGator: €18
- This is a popular cheap hosting provider with servers in US. I still use it for some websites with majority of traffic from Americas, but their support is getting worse and worse!
- Site5: €126.59
- Mailing List services
- Outsourcing
- Articles: €35.54 (was €36.99)
- Partnerships: €169.8 (was €153.97) – sharing of profits when I operate with a partner
- Memberships
- The Dynamite Circle: €130.59 – great community of online entrepreneurs, quarterly paid
- SEMrush: €29.5 (was €59) – PRO membership of this excellent tool to analyze search engine results and competition
- Ahrefs: €18.68 – This is a great tool for backlink analysis
- Boomerang for Gmail: €13.47 – Excellent tool for email management
- Website acquisition: €130 – got my hands on the great domain wpok.it!
- Domain renewal: 0 (was €27.26) – expenses related to domains registered at Godaddy
- Advertising
- Adwords: 0
- Facebook Ads: 0 (was €183.67)
Total Expenses: € 779.36 (was € 680.57)
Net Total January 2016: € 2,013.81 (last month € 3,258.12)
As usual, I hope to read a comment or two here below!
Shame on Besa! I expect today the Feburary Report!!! Are you sure about Time Required row? On that projects you work 70 hours/month….What do you do in the other time? 😐
Shame on me, I’ll do better for Feb report!
The Time Required is an estimation, keep in mind that I’m not including WordPress one-time freelance work in this report (that was ~30 hours in January), working on proposals, checking Facebook, studying new things, working on processes…
I rather not log *everything* I do, it’s kind of stressful. Every time I start Toggl (the tool I use to track time) I automatically feel in a rush.
Anyway Cere, any input to improve the report is welcome!