Affiliate Marketing Income Report: January 2015

New Year, new opportunities. That's the general theme of everyone's January right?

Well for me, I was pretty nervous in January.

Given that things had slowed down in December, I was anxious to see what January would have in store for me.

First of all, I was going to be really busy with the six figure challenge, and secondly, would people be spending money after the Christmas period?

A year ago, January 2014, hadn't exactly been a high point, so I was definitely worried about having another low income month this time around.

Although I have to say that I wasn't really worried about this, because it's just the nature of business.

Not every month excels.

How Wrong I Was

January 2015 was far and away the best month I've ever had online. In terms of income, in terms of sales, in terms of confidence, and in terms of well…everything.

Remember my previous best income? Around $2,500 back in November 2014.

I *almost* doubled it.

How's that for New Year ambition?

Let's take a look at the month in more details.

January 2015 Income – A Closer Look

New Launches

At the start of the month I did a soft roll out of the new Keyword Packs. They weren't as successful as I'd hoped, although I did make a couple of sales from the ready-made and custom ones.

A week into the month, I also completed a test “Outreach Dossier” for Perrin and Spencer of nichepursuits, and got a glowing review from Perrin.

I've not pushed these packages much, as I've been so busy with everything else the month threw at me.

If you're interested, here's how both things work:

Keyword Packs

keyword-packs-banner

These are researched exactly the same as my custom and ready-made niche sites, the only difference is that there's no site attached to them.

You can buy a pack, and build the site out on your own. This is a much cheaper way of getting started, although it's also more time consuming.

Of course, you can always get a pack then ask me to build the site out as well.

The advantage of these packs of the ready-made sites as well, is that they're completely secret. Only the buyer knows what the niche is, and once it's bought, that's the end of that set of keywords for everyone except the buyer.

You can also request a custom pack be built for you. This means that even if you already have an idea for your niche, or even an established site, you can benefit from some top quality keyword research.

Outreach Dossiers

As Perrin himself put it, the best way to succeed with an authority site is through white-hat link building, and the best way to do THAT, is to have a list of sites to target for outreach. I came up with the idea of a niche dossier after reading Pat Flynn's post here, and decided to test the water.

There's been a bit of interest, which is great considering I've only just rolled them out.

I will also be offering the outreach aspect of it as well. So for those of you who want more than just a list, I'll also have my newly growing team handle the outreach.

Growing Team

Thanks to the experience I gained from the 6-Figure Challenge about hiring team members, I've been really scaling it this month, and it's a good thing, because the amount of work that came my way meant I had no choice.

On the 9th of January I went to Okinawa for 4 days, and made over $1,000 in sales to HPD while I was there. This kind of thing is why I love online income, and it's also why I needed to hire 2 people to help me build out the websites.

I have also hired more dedicated writers, so that each site has a single writer working on it, rather than the mixture that I had before.

I had to increase the costs of websites slightly to account for the new expenses, but turnaround times are much better now, and I will also be including Thrive Content Builder with my sites going forward, so this will more than make up for the increase.

The great thing about Thrive is that it will make WordPress 10x more easy for beginners, and a lot more powerful too. This should hopefully attract new customers, and will definitely increase the value of the sites.

You're welcome 🙂

Income Breakdown

As always, I'll start off with the affiliate sites.

If you read this post, you'll know that LuxuryShaves.com is now getting a great amount of traffic, and I'm still working on converting that into great income too. The income IS growing, which is promising, but I feel like I'm a few page one keywords off having the income the site deserves.

The main thing is that my affiliate income at this point is mostly on autopilot, and still stable. Will it grow in 2015? You betcha!

Affiliate Sites Income

Amazon: $120

Google Adsense: $74

Clickbank: $50

DragonDoor: $154

Total: $398

Definitely increasing there then, almost back up to previous levels.

HumanProofDesigns Income

For all of these, the income listed is after expenses are deducted. This includes things like paying people to write articles, web developers, buying domain names, and all other expenses associated with my services.

What you're looking at is pure profit.

Custom Niche Sites: $2723

I don't know exactly what happened, but it seems a lot of people wanted sites built in January, and thanks to hiring two guys to help me out, I managed to cope with the sudden influx of orders.

Keyword Packs: $150

Articles: $287

Bluehost: $130

Wealthy Affiliate: $616

Jaaxy: $104

Total: $4010

HPD definitely pulled its weight this month, beating my previous best month all by itself.

Other Income

Article Writing: $240

Joint Ventures: $0 (I actually earned a fair bit but had it wiped out by needing to buy a VAT plugin for the new EU rules).

“Other” Total: $240

So writing this here I still haven't totaled everything up yet to see how high I did actually get. I always keep a running score throughout the month, but it starts to drive me insane by the time I reach the final few days, plus it's such an anti-climax to be back on $0 again at the start of the next month, I try not to calculate the final amount until right here.

Curious to see how I did!

Grand Total: $4648

WOWEE BATMAN!

Gobsmacked.

The only question on my mind is, how on earth do I follow that?

Seriously though, I set my income targets for 2015 to be $5,000 a month from HPD, niche sites, and “other”, and $5,000 a month from the six-figure challenge.

The 6FC obviously needs a few more months before it starts earning, but to almost clear that target in my first month is amazing.

I'm sure that the next few months will drop and/or level out, so it still might not be until much later on in the year that I do beat my targets, but it's still really, really cool to start the year like this.

Thank you so much for the support and business that you guys have all given me recently.

Upwards on onwards! (Or is it onwards and upwards? Anyone?)

Dom

12 thoughts on “Affiliate Marketing Income Report: January 2015”

  1. Excellent figures Bryon you have really come a long way in a short time. I think its the difference in doing this for a hobby as doing it for real as a business. Your focus is so much more narrowed with the need to cover the bills.

    Just as additional information can you give figures in regard to traffic and conversion rates to give your readers an idea what to aim for when working at this themselves. Example how much traffic went through your WA link to get $616 revenue.

    Also another side of the coin can you list our monthly outgoings ie subscriptions hosting etc. Also to give an idea what to spend to make things work better.

    If you don’t want to divulge any of this info we totally understand somethings are better keep away from prying eyes. 🙂

    1. Hey Mark, you probably wouldn’t believe it but I have only had 5,400 visitors to the site in the past 30 days. I don’t get huge traffic numbers, but the people who come are very focused and engaged.

      How many people went through my WA link? It’s hard to say for sure, but I had about 6 new sales, 8 recurring, and 2 annual, from about 20 referrals. Again, pretty high conversion because they’re engaged. My WA review doesn’t get a lot of views as it’s mostly an “extra” review.

      I pay about $25 a month at Aweber, I have a VPS server hosting fee, I also pay for monthly long-tail pro ($18 a month), and a $45 fotolia subscription and $9 for a WPZoom subscription.

      That’s pretty much it.

      I also just signed up for a year of Thrive Themes agency for $199, but that’s so I can include it with my sites, not really an ongoing expense.

    1. I’m not sure if I could do it myself, because of the time involved with HPD, but I’m planning to get my niche site portfolio earning more in 2015 to show what’s possible, and I know for a fact other people have niche sites earning well in excess of $4k, so it’s definitely possible.

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