December 2010 Earnings

Happy New Year, everyone!  It is incredibly cold over here in Portland, Oregon.  I’m writing this in my new apartment while sitting on the floor wrapped in blankets (since I don’t have any furniture).

December is over, as well as 2010.  In December, I made $1299.88.  After you take out all the money I spent on outsourcing and tools, it is probably more like $799.88.

This is quite a bit less than I’ve made over the past few months.  Traffic and all that other stuff have been more or less consistent, so my only guess is that this is a seasonal slump in earnings.  Most of my sites are in self-improvement, dating, and relationship niches.  I’m guessing that people tend to put these sorts of things on hold during the holidays.  Afterall, who wants to be the asshole that dumps his girlfriend right before Christmas?  And who has money to spend on self-improvement when you’re buying gifts for others?

In December, I spent the first week or so in Bangkok writing a few articles here and there.

When I got back to Seattle, I worked for about a week implementing some ideas that I got on my trip and from my friends in Singapore.  Then my girlfriend and I cranked out some articles for 4 new websites that will go live this month, and I started working on something exciting that will be happening here at JOMO in a few weeks.

Then I had a really crappy couple of weeks.  We had to leave Seattle and we headed to Portland.  We stayed with some friends and got an apartment out here.  I didn’t really have much time to work during all this, so I guess there really isn’t much to say.

Over the past two or three days, I’ve finally started to get back to working.  Right now, I’m putting some finishing touches on 4 new sites and the top-secret-cool-thing that I’m going to do here while my writer is writing some articles for 3 other websites (that’s a total of 7 new websites–holy smokes!).

I also gave one of my low-earning websites to my girlfriend.  She is actually interested in the subject and she would probably do more with it than I would (namely, do nothing and just let it sit there).  So, I guess I now only have 5 fully-built sites.

My girlfriend is working full-time on these websites with me these days.  She doesn’t want to go back to a 9-5 job.  I think she won’t have to either if we both bust our asses over the next couple of months.  So far working with her is a lot of fun.  Last year was pretty lonely doing all this stuff on my own, so it is nice to have someone else around to talk to about marketing.

Anyway, 2010 is over too.  This was my first full year doing internet marketing full-time.  In the whole year I made a gross earnings of $17,509.38.  I guess that’s kind of impressive, until you realize that that works out to about what I could have made at McDonalds working full-time.

Oh well.  This was a lot more fun.  Besides, I remember reading something a while ago that said:

“An entrepreneur is someone that would rather work 24 hours a day for himself than 1 hour a day for someone else.”

I got my footing in 2010 and started to make enough money to keep me hooked in this game.  I got to taste the benefits of this lifestyle by traveling to Thailand and Singapore for two and a half months.  I got to meet some really cool people this year like Chris Guthrie, Sean Morrissy, and my Singapore friends.

I’d say this was definitely worth it.  And a heck of a lot better than working at McDonalds.

Anyway, 2011 is going to be a big year.  It’s going to be the year that I finally push through and make a real middle-class income from all these websites.  I feel like I know what I’m doing now.  From here on out I’m just going to roll out a butt-load of new websites and focus on eliminating unessential elements and outsourcing and automating the rest.

Here’s my ClickBank screen shot from December.  This will be the last time I do a monthly earnings update.  I guess I just feel weird writing about how much I’m earning.  I don’t know, I might post a screen shot from time to time in the future for some reason or other, but I’m not going to do it regularly anymore.  Besides, it’s getting harder and harder to sum everything up in one screen shot anyway.  I think I’m signed up with something like 10 (?) different affiliate networks.

I hope you all had a great New Years.  I wish you the best in 2011!

PS: Thanks, everyone for all your comments on my last post.  Things have been rough, but they are starting to settle down again (thankfully).

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