Here we are again at another income/business report, and 2015 is really flying by isn't it? It doesn't seem that long ago that I posted the August 2014 report (which was my best ever month earning more than $2k), and so much has happened in the 12 months since then.

Imagine what the August 2016 report will be like. Yeesh.

Let's get on with the present day though, and look at how last month went.

Notable Happenings In August

One thing of note was the addition of the Source Wave marketplace in early August. I got involved with this, and while I didn't quite have anywhere near as much success as some people (nice work Jon Haver!), I did manage to add an additional income stream, so that's not bad at all.

At some point I might have to think of a way of funneling this source market business into the regular HPD business, but for the time being, it's just good to have an extra few hundred bucks a month. It also allows me to re-invest in my PBN and grow out the network.

For those of you who are curious, Source Market is pretty much like Fiverr, but for SEO. Anything from backlinks to PBN domains to social signals can be bought there, at a pretty reasonable price too.

Aside from Source Market, the rest of the business was running as usual. I'm still improving systems, hiring new writers to meet demand, working with team members etc, and trying to reduce the number of hats I wear..

Keeping Up The Growth

As you may remember, last month (July) was the best ever month and first time that my net income exceeded $10,000 in a month.

I wasn't expecting to repeat that achievement this month, but I sure hoped I would. As I've said before, I don't really let myself celebrate a new income threshold until I've done it for three consecutive months, or at least consistently over a longer period (like 4 times in 6 months for example).

So while we're on that note, let's take a look at how August's income played out.

Price Increase

For the longest time our sites have been under-priced, and they still are to some extent (you get about $1,000 worth of site for less than half of that), but I addressed this by putting the price up to $399. This not only gives us more room to breathe in terms of surviving as a business, but also allows us to run promotions further down the road.

As my rule has always been “Only put the price up if you can add something too”, we are now also going to be including Easy Azon 4 with every site we sell.

Overall, the price increase didn't affect sales whatsoever, which just goes to show that people already knew what a bargain they were/are getting.

August Income

Affiliate Site Income

My Amazon income has been experiencing great growth this year too, going from something like $50 at the start of the year, to close to $1,000. I'm sure I'll pass $1,000 in the November/December months that always do well, but we'll see.

Amazon: $783

Adsense: $33

Clickbank: $53

Dragondoor: $27

These are affiliate commissions from about 2-3 niche sites.

Affiliate Sites Total: $896

HPD Income

First we'll start with the primary HPD income, which is for the services we sell. I'll show the affiliate income after that.

Bear in mind some of the amounts below were referred from affiliates. I'll deduct the affiliate income at the end.

Ready-made and custom sites: $11,756 WHAT!

Articles: $789

SEO services (including keyword packs and source wave): $1,225

HPD Services Total: $13,770

HPD Affiliate Income

This is for products I've promoted directly on the HPD site.

Bluehost: $300

Thrive: $43

RankXL: $514

AmaSuite: $148

Long Tail Pro: $15

The Hoth: $547

HPD Affiliate Total: $1,567

Total before expenses: $16,233

Please note, this isn't my “Gross total”. When I list my income above for services, it's the NET I make on those services. However, there are other expenses the business has, such as paying a keyword researcher, paying my managers, or paying affiliate commissions.

Affiliate payouts: $1638

Staff expenses: $1,920

Expenses Total: $3,558

Grand Total Profit: $12,675

Fantastic month 🙂