Online Income Report – November 2015

working in November

Greetings from dark Amsterdam, where I arrived back a couple of weeks ago. I say dark, because it is dark. The lack of sunlight is the most shocking thing after coming back from SE Asia. The second most shocking thing is the temperature, but to be honest isn’t too bad this year.

Business wise the lack of light is favorable, because sometimes I feel that working at home and don’t look out of the window is the best thing I can do these days!

Let’s check what happened in November.

 

What’s Going On

Holidays!

In November, for the first time in more than three years of self-employment, I gave myself two weeks off and focused on traveling across Indonesia.

I setup this out-of-office auto reply:

I’m currently on vacation until November 18th.

For urgent requests or if you have a WordPress support contract please contact:
Thanks!

The support email was connected to HelpScout, a popular helpdesk solution that I’m testing out. A collaborator/friend provided the first point of contact for the (few) requests that came in.

Of course I kept checking my email and doing small things online, but not being in the front line and be able to tell customers “I’ll be on holidays for two weeks” felt really good!

After holidays I picked up work in Ubud, Bali – a place that I really enjoyed for the mix of new-age tourism & Balinese traditions.

 

WP-OK

This is my WordPress maintenance & support service for the Italian market. Even if earnings are still low, I got some interesting contacts in November and I think things will grow in coming months.

This report excludes my earnings from WordPress client work, but WP-OK is a productized services that completely runs remotely.
I’m considering adding to this report also the earnings coming from my freelance customers that I turned into a subscription service, because at the end of the day I also work with them online.

If anyone reading this has a suggestion, please drop a comment 😉

 

Another Sponsored Review

One of the projects I’m focusing on is RouterFreak, a blog for network engineers. I’ve been a network engineers for many years so I can (still) understand the audience and the very technical subjects.

Last month I got yet another request for a sponsored review from a tech company!

I offered them different advertising options, increasing the price compared to the previous offer I did to a similar company.

They accepted the most expensive option, that was a product review written by us: $1600 USD!

That’s the highest sponsorship I ever got. I’m very happy about it, and prove that this model is working and companies have money to invest in this niche. It also prove that I’ve to keep raising the prices!

Anyway, this will be paid next month so is not included in this report.

 

Where I’ve been

I know that this is an income report, but I think is fun to share where I’ve been last month considering that I met so many other digital nomads that are constantly or very often on the move.

So this is where I’ve been in November:

  • 1: Jakarta, Indonesia
  • 2-8: Backpacking around Java, Indonesia
  • 9-10: Bali, Indonesia
  • 11-13: Gili island, Indonesia
  • 13-16: Labuan Bajo, Indonesia
  • 17-24: Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
  • 25-26: Albiate, Italy
  • 27-30: Amsterdam, Netherlands

 

 

The Numbers

Income Breakdown

Let’s get down with the numbers!

  • Advertising
    • Adsense: €491.40 (was €425.29)
    • Feedblitz: €4.75 (was €10.57 – the ‘trick’ I use to monetize newsletters is almost over!
    • Direct Ads: €111.75 (was €111.75) – directly negotiated advertising campaigns
    • Sponsored posts: 0 (was 0) – working on a new review that will be out in December
    • BuySellAds: €4.62 (was €11.12)
  • Job Board Services
    • Job posting: 0 (was €36.62) – Premium job posting on AidBoard
  • Affiliate Programs
    • Lead generation: 0
    • Product affiliation: €192.53 (was €161.85) – Clickbank, SEMrush, DPD and others affiliate programs
    • Amazon program: €570.37 (was €604.59) – the Amazon affiliate site in the drone niche keeps providing
  • Sales:
    • ComoHacer ebook: €33.08 (was €16.90) – slowly but steady, this eBook is contributing as passive income
    • RouterFreak eBook: €43.64 (was €228.20) – after the launch of last month we raised the price
    • WP Tube theme: €107.50 (was €146.50) – my WordPress theme, running on auto-pilot
    • Website sale: 0 – Nothing to sell at the moment!
    • WP-OK services: €217 (was €493) – my WordPress management service for Italian market

Total Gross: € 1,776.64 (previous month 2,246.39)

 

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!
  • Mailing List services
    • Aweber: €60.65
    • Mailchimp: €45.55 – Monthly charge for list size 2,801 to 5,000
  • Outsourcing
    • Articles: €36.99 (was €37.56)
    • Partnerships: €189,20 (was €787,41) – sharing of profits when I operate with a partner
  • Memberships
    • The Dynamite Circle: 0 – great community of online entrepreneurs, already paid this quarter
    • SEMrush: €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: 0
  • Domain renewal: 0 (was €40,35) – expenses related to domains registered at Godaddy
  • Advertising
    • Adwords: €18.85 (was €11.96)
    • Facebook Ads: 0

Total Expenses: € 586.98 (was 1,366.27)

 

Net Total November 2015: €1,189.66 (last month € 880.12)

 

Conclusion

November could not be worse than October, but was still far from the €2000/month net profit that I registered in August.

Anyway, I planted the seeds for some good things and I’m sure I’ll reap the benefits in December! 😉
(It’s pretty easy to conclude like this, when publishing the report on December 17th, isn’t it?)

 

As usual, I hope to read a comment or two to keep me sharing.

5/5 - (2 votes)

Di Daniele

Hi, I’m Daniele! A human being from planet earth. I founded WP-OK.it and I like dancing Salsa, running, and living a location independent lifestyle.

2 commenti

  1. Hi Daniele,

    I would say that your core business is online business, divided into WordPress services and the other part, buying and selling websites — or how you would like to call it — is there any specific name for it? 🙂

    No different from dividing marketing services into strategy, SEO, etc.

    Everything you do (online) outside a client’s office and with a freelance contract I would consider as online services.

    To have everything in line I suggest your business website refers to the specific services other than WP, and your Chamber of Commerce registration, too. As far as you didn’t do it already 😉

    Me myself probably going to have different labels because people will be confused if 1 company offers, let’s say, IT and yoga:p But in your case there’s no need to, I would say.

    All the best for 2016!

    1. Hey Ape,
      Happy new 2016 to you!

      The buying & selling thingy is called website flipping 🙂

      When I registered to the Chamber of Commerce I described my business as ‘IT consulting’, does it actually matter to the Dutch authorities?
      As long as I pay my taxes I should be fine, I guess…

      How is your project proceeding?
      Fancy sharing a public update?

      Ciao

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