In June I feel I achieved 66% of them:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Reducing\u00a0client work<\/strong>. I’m now more selective on gigs\u00a0I\u00a0take in and I did increase\u00a0the prices of my services (well, partially since I can’t just raise prices for existing customers).<\/li>\n
- Focus on two projects<\/strong>. I spent lots of time on QuadHangar (review website about drones) and a bit less on RouterFreak (blog for IT network engineers).<\/li>\n
- Eliminate what I’m no more interested<\/strong>. I failed at this, but actually after selling two websites last month I don’t have at the moment more things to\u00a0let go.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Here is the updated list of my activities:<\/p>\n
- \n
- WordPress consultancies\n
- \n
- Working on multiple client projects;<\/li>\n
- WordPress\u00a0maintenance & support service with 7 active contracts (+2<\/span> compared to last month);<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Running my own websites\n
- \n
- AidBoard: job board on international development<\/li>\n
- Few Adsense niche blogs<\/li>\n
- An Amazon affiliate blog<\/li>\n
- WP Tube: a WordPress theme for sale<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n
Update on QuadHangar<\/h3>\n
I spent quite some time on this project last month. My main task was to find reliable writers. I’ve now a contractor\u00a0on Upwork<\/a> that is trained to provide good quality articles, and I’m using Textbroker<\/a>\u00a0that let you place detailed orders and sit back waiting for the article to be delivered – saving lot of time needed to check job applications and select the candidates (drawback: there’s very limited communication with the writer, so it’s hit or miss, but you can always refuse the article at no charge).<\/p>\n
I also got some great content running surveys among drone enthusiast. I asked them about accessories and collected hundreds of responses with priceless information. They were telling me exactly what they bought and what they’d like to buy.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The\u00a0MasterMind<\/h3>\n
“Joining a mastermind was the best decision I made for my business!” –\u00a0<\/em>I heard this sentence many times so I decided to try it myself and I joined a mastermind group two months ago.<\/p>\n
The group has been through some ups and downs: someone dropped out, someone got MIA, so we had a couple of very small sessions but still I get lots of value out of it.<\/p>\n
Very good information, ideas, and motivation to execute. I definitely recommend anyone to try a Mmind group!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Update on the passive income experiment<\/h3>\n
Back in\u00a0December I started an experiment in\u00a0passive income<\/strong>\u00a0in the Italian market, notably less crowded than the English one, with the website\u00a0ComeCostruire.info. That’s\u00a0the Italian version of my Spanish blog ComoHacer about manual works and\u00a0DIY.<\/p>\n
After five months of growth, in June the traffic stabilized so I think this page reached a\u00a0plateau<\/em> (note for S.ra Ape:\u00a0a state of little or no change following a period of activity or progress).<\/p>\n
![\"comecostruire](\"https:\/\/www.danielebesana.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/comecostruire-traffic-1024x278.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nJune\u00a0traffic was up to 3,725 visitors (+4.55%) with 5,590 page views (+0.16%), while on the profit side Adsense generated \u20ac14.90 (was \u20ac16.51 in May).<\/p>\n
Summary:<\/p>\n
Initial investment: \u20ac360
\nEarnings so far:\u00a0\u20ac58.37
\nMarketing: 0<\/p>\nOf courrrrrse I could have done things much better. I did very little keyword research for this project and I knew that is hard to monetize this\u00a0traffic, but I tested the waters and this gave me more confidence for future projects targeting the Italian market.<\/p>\n
From the next month I’ll just report briefly about this experiment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hosting mishap: Site5 VPS2<\/h3>\n
At the beginning of June Site5<\/a> told me that my account was using too many\u00a0resources, and they even called me to discuss the options. I was already thinking that was time to upgrade my sites to a VPS solution, so I gave them the OK to start the migration. In case you don’t know, VPS is Virtual Private Server, a server with resources (CPU, memory, OS) dedicated to my websites (instead of shared with other clients as before, hence Private), \u00a0that is not a real server but a virtual machine running on a big server with other VPS. Oh, if you don’t get it leave a comment \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Well, the migration wasn’t as smooth as anticipated.<\/p>\n
Switching from a shared account to a VPS does involve an IP change so I had to update the DNS settings for all my domains and also the ones of the customers I’m reselling hosting to.<\/p>\n
I had to take care of a couple of emergencies, the type of things that take priority over everything else and that I want to avoid (such as spending\u00a0hours helping a customer reconfigure\u00a0their email clients).<\/p>\n
When I thought that was over, I started having performance issues and 503 errors on the websites. I was paying 3 times the previous amount, and got problems I never had before…. I was mad! I must say that Site5 provided, as usual, an excellent customer service with 2nd level engineers replying\u00a0all<\/strong> my questions in minutes. And being a techie, I had\u00a0lots<\/strong> of questions about the VPS resource limitations.<\/p>\n
Turned out that in the VPS there are per-server limits\u00a0that are\u00a0lower<\/strong> than the the shared-hosting solution, even if the per-website limits are higher.<\/p>\n
Again I had to drop everything else and take care of this major issue, optimizing the websites and reducing the resource used.<\/p>\n
One of the changes that helped was to replace\u00a0on my website the WordPress plugin WP Super Cache<\/a> with W3 Total Cache<\/a>.
\nW3 Total Cache,\u00a0when configured properly<\/strong>, is far superior and provides also GZIP compression and CSS\/JS minify features.<\/p>\nIt took a couple of\u00a0days and some hanger to get back to a stable situation, so now I’m happy again with Site5<\/a> especially because I know the quality of their support.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Income Breakdown<\/h2>\n
Let’s get down with the numbers!<\/p>\n
- \n
- Advertising<\/strong>\n
- \n
- Adsense: \u20ac520.34 (was \u20ac595.35) – this reduction was caused by the websites I sold end of May<\/li>\n
- Feedblitz: \u20ac69.6 (was \u20ac133.37) – same as above<\/span><\/li>\n
- Direct Ads: \u20ac131.23 (no change) – advertising campaigns on my websites<\/li>\n
- Sponsored posts: \u20ac226.58 (was 0) – got a well paid review<\/li>\n
- BuySellAds: \u20ac20 (no change)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Job Board Services<\/span><\/strong>\n
- \n
- Job posting & Resume: \u20ac231\u00a0(was \u20ac133.39) – few paid jobs on AidBoard!<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Affiliate Programs<\/strong>\n
- \n
- Lead generation: 0<\/li>\n
- Product affiliation: \u20ac193.6\u00a0(was \u20ac101.41) – TestKing, Pass4sure, Clickbank, SEMrush affiliate programs<\/li>\n
- Amazon program: \u20ac658 (was \u20ac218.77) – As expected, this went up as I focused more on the drone website<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Sales<\/strong>:\n
- \n
- ComoHacer ebook: \u20ac24,47 (was 0) – 3 sales<\/li>\n
- WP Tube\u00a0theme: \u20ac398 (was \u20ac313.4) –\u00a010 copies sold plus one installation service<\/li>\n
- Website sale: 0 (was \u20ac1100)\u00a0– Nothing to sell at the moment!<\/li>\n
- Product sale: \u20ac170 –\u00a0I’ve to explain this. I got a physical product to review (a drone backpack!)\u00a0and I could sell\u00a0it after<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Total Gross: \u20ac\u00a02,642.82 (last month 2,746.92)<\/span><\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
Expenses Breakdown<\/h2>\n
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<\/strong> to operate my websites.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Hosting<\/strong>\n
- \n
- Site5<\/a>:\u00a0\u20ac47.62\n
- \n
- This is the hosting I’m using and happy with. I recently switched to VPS solution. They have servers in Amsterdam too, perfect for my websites with European audience.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- HostGator<\/a>: \u20ac18\n
- \n
- 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!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Mailing List services\n
- \n
- Aweber<\/a>:\u00a0\u20ac62.5<\/li>\n
- Mailchimp<\/a>:\u00a0\u20ac45.64 –\u00a0Monthly charge for list size 2,801 to 5,000<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- FlipFilter<\/a>: \u20ac10 –\u00a0very useful service for website buyers, crunching big data from multiple marketplaces for you<\/li>\n
- Outsourcing\n
- \n
- Articles: \u20ac187,6 (was \u20ac469.6)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Memberships\n
- \n
- The Dynamite Circle<\/a>: 0\u00a0– great community of online entrepreneurs, paid three months subscription<\/li>\n
- SEMrush<\/a>: \u20ac59 – PRO membership of this excellent tool to analyze search engine results and competition<\/li>\n
- Ahrefs<\/a>: \u20ac18,68 – I’m testing the paid membership, this is a great tool for backlink analysis<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Website acquisition: 0<\/li>\n
- Domain renewal: \u20ac10,43 (was 0) – expenses related to domains registered at Godaddy<\/a><\/li>\n
- Adwords: \u20ac77.02 (was \u20ac109) – this is an experiment for a business idea I’m testing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Total\u00a0Expenses: \u20ac 536.49 (was 796.6)<\/span><\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
Net Total June\u00a02015: \u20ac 2,106.33 (last month 1,950.32)<\/strong>
\n<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
Woooooow finally above quote 2,000 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
I enjoyed focusing on less projects and I felt more productive, I definitely want to keep this time management structure.
\nAnd talking about time management, I recommend you to check out this simple tool to track how you spend time on projects: Toggl<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
What was your challenge in June?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n
- SEMrush<\/a>: \u20ac59 – PRO membership of this excellent tool to analyze search engine results and competition<\/li>\n
- The Dynamite Circle<\/a>: 0\u00a0– great community of online entrepreneurs, paid three months subscription<\/li>\n
- Mailchimp<\/a>:\u00a0\u20ac45.64 –\u00a0Monthly charge for list size 2,801 to 5,000<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Aweber<\/a>:\u00a0\u20ac62.5<\/li>\n
- Site5<\/a>:\u00a0\u20ac47.62\n
- Hosting<\/strong>\n
- Affiliate Programs<\/strong>\n
- Advertising<\/strong>\n
- Running my own websites\n
- Focus on two projects<\/strong>. I spent lots of time on QuadHangar (review website about drones) and a bit less on RouterFreak (blog for IT network engineers).<\/li>\n