My May 2011 Monthly Income Report

Editor’s Note: The content regarding eHow and Infobarrel is no longer relevant. Please visit our Getting Started page, which we keep up to date with advice for getting started with earning money online. (Updated 10/2015)

Welcome to my monthly report for May of 2011!

As many of you know, once a month I publish a report that details exactly where my online revenue comes from, along with the lessons I’ve learned and what I plan to do next.

I write these reports for a number of reasons: to help me keep track of my progress with my online businesses, to hold myself accountable for the goals that I set out to achieve, and most importantly to inspire and show you that it really can be done.

Thank you for your support, your encouragement, your constructive criticism and fervor for the SPI brand and everything I do. It means the world to me.

Important Going-Ons in May

A lot of great things happened with my security guard training niche site, a site that I recently created and revealed publicly here on the blog.

It’s still sitting at #1 in Google, and it grossed over $1,000 in residual income in May. I saw the highest grossing day ever ($90.48 on May 23rd), and although that particular day’s income was somewhat of an anomaly, all signs are telling me that the site may eventually get to a point where $90 to $100 a day could become a normal day’s passive income.

This is why I turned down a five-figure offer for the site (and a counter-offer as well), because there’s still a lot of potential that has yet to be realized.

To help me reach my potential, I finally got around to filling out the site and adding more content to it. When I got to #1 in Google in November of 2010 (73 days after starting), I had about 30 posts published on the site, which included state requirements for only 11 of the 50 U.S. states. A lot of content was missing, and because I was sitting at #1 in Google already it was hard for me to justify spending hours a day doing the research and writing the content to fill out the site.

That’s definitely not the right mindset.

Although getting to #1 in the search engines is a goal, it doesn’t mean I should stop there, especially knowing that over 55% of my search engine traffic comes from keywords other than my target keyword.

I finally took action and hired a writer on Elance to do the research and create the rest of the articles for me.

As of today, the site currently has all 50 states covered for Unarmed Security Guard Training requirements, and I re-hired the same writer to do research and write posts for “Armed” Security Guard Training, which will add another 50 articles to the site and, over time, a substantial number of long tail keywords that I could potentially rank for.

I’m currently running a backlinking campaign that targets the keyword Armed Security Guard Training that points to a secondary page on the site that will include a list of all 50 states requirements. According to Market Samurai, the keyword has comparable search numbers to my primary keyword, however it’s a bit more competitive.

Right now, I’m sitting at #5 for that keyword, and I’m shooting for the top once again.

The “write more, get found more” strategy is already working its magic. Between April 1st and April 30th, the site was found on Google by 1,728 different keywords. Between May 1st and May 31st, after the new articles had been posted for a majority of the month, the site was found with 2,366 different keywords.

And of course, as a result, my traffic is going up, and so is my income.

Once all of the new content is up, I’ll have a site that should be 100% ready for a massive private advertising and paid directory campaign. I’ll definitely keep you posted.

Going “Insane”

A lot of you have been asking me how my Insanity workouts have been going, so here’s a quick update.

I’m in my final week of the 60-day at-home fitness program, and it’s been such an awesome experience!

My wife and I together have done every single workout and we’re both feeling great, which definitely helps to keep up with our 17 month old son who runs around like crazy and needs every single ounce of our energy to keep safe and entertained. Every day—7am to 8pm at night…it’s crazy, but I love it.

Anyways, I personally feel like I’m in the best shape of my life, and I even “tested” my endurance in a 5k “ridiculous obstacle course” race a couple of weeks ago, and after the race, when I’d usually be tired and on the ground, I felt like I could have ran a marathon.

Here’s a picture of me, my wife April, and one of our teammates after crossing the finish line:

After I finish Insanity, I’ll be publishing a post about the program and the kind of changes I’ve seen, including some before and after pictures. Already I can tell the results will be better than my P90x Results post.

The Smart Passive Income Blog

I feel like I’m a broken record when I say this, but the SPI blog saw record numbers once again, on several different levels:

Visitors: 138,742
Average Time Spent on Site: 7 minutes 10 seconds!
Bounce Rate: 25%
New Subscribers: 2,205

(Stats from Clicky)

The time spent on site is what really blows me away. 7 minutes is out of this world and it makes me so happy to know that I can provide content that invites people to spend that much time with me here on my blog. It means a lot, and I’ll always do my best to make sure you get something out of your time spent reading, watching or listening to my content.

My most viewed pages and posts were:

How to Create a Facebook Landing Page (12,335 pageviews)
- 53% of visits from Google Search
- 27% of visits from YouTube (from the link shown in the description of this video)
My Income Reports (11,692 pageviews)
The Niche Site Duel Hubpage (11,421 pageviews)
My April 2011 Monthly Income Report (9,454 pageviews)
The Backlinking Strategy That Works (9,234 pageviews) [Editor’s Note: Here is an updated version of this post.]
Passive Income 101 (8,301 pageviews)
I Was Just Offered 5 Figures for my Niche Site (6,766 pageviews)
Resources (6,420 pageviews)

My top 10 search terms were:

smart passive income (7,011)
passive income (4,626)
smartpassiveincome (2,484)
pat flynn (2,206)
passive income ideas (1,010)
niche site duel (781)
facebook landing page (630)
facebook html (470)
passive income blog (378)
smart passive income blog (349)

My top 20 traffic sources were:

A couple of interesting things to note about my traffic sources:

First, notice Yahoo (#10) and Bing (#12). Yes—people actually use those search engines, so don’t discount them all together. Where are you in Yahoo and Bing’s search engine?

Secondly, people who visit my blog as a result of a recommendation from another blogger spend a lot more time on my site than any other kind of traffic source, by far.

Thirdly, Facebook (#4) and YouTube (#5) are right up there, and still there are those who are afraid to branch out and utilize those traffic sources. You’re missing out!

I think it’s time for the income breakdown.

Full Disclosure: Some of the items in the list below are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase through that link, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that I have experience with all of these companies, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel you need them or that they will help you achieve your goals.

Note: Items with an empty difference percentage were not present on the previous month’s income report.

Last month’s report included two large chunks of income (over $16k) from a coaching course and a consultation gig, which is why this month’s total is significantly less than the previous, however if you take that into account my online income is still on the rise.

Now, if you’ve been following my income reports for a while, you’ll notice that a part of my income report may be “missing”.

eHow.com, a site I had once written articles for back in 2008 and have since been earning a consistent $200 to $300 a month from, has decided they no longer want to pay royalties to those who participated in their Writer’s Compensation Program. They offered to buy the rights to everyone’s articles for a lump sum, and if authors decide not to accept the offer, the articles will get taken down.

This is very interesting stuff that I’m sure we could talk about for days, but I’ll save it for a later post. Just wanted to share why eHow will no longer show up on my income report.

This just shows you how important diversification is in the make money online world, because you never know one income stream that seemed reliable one day, might be gone the next.

Things I Learned in May

My good friend Chris Ducker from VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com, who was our guest on SPI Podcast Session #20, said something in his interview that I believe I had heard before, but I don’t know—maybe it was his British Accent or something—it just really resonated with me this time.

Chris said, “Money can be made. Time however, once you’ve spent your time it’s gone forever.”

It might also be because I get to see exactly how fast my son is growing up. I can actually measure his height and feel how much heavier he is, and it really scares me. Not that I don’t want him to grow up, I just don’t want to miss any part of it, and the more I can become more efficient in my businesses, the more passive my passive income can be, the more I can spend time with him here at home.

I printed out Chris’s quote and have it tacked on the wall next to my computer because it’s perfect. If I get distracted—a quick glance and I’m back where I need to be.

Another thing I learned is how effective “teasers” are. Think about movie trailers—the best ones leave you hanging and wanting more, and that’s what brings in the business later on.

Online, one person quickly comes to mind when it comes to utilizing the “teaser”—Glen Allsop from Viperchill.com.

If you follow Glen on Twitter, he loves to post teasers, typically to content or products that he has coming out soon, and they always draw me in. Here’s an example of one of his tweets from the other day: