For all of those who are faithfully following my progress on this site, you know reporting my income is a tradition at Passive Income to Retire. My goal is to have enough income to more than replace my income from my day job. I want to make sure that I can sustain a steady income before I do something crazy like retire at the age of 27, so I am building up my income now to see if I can maintain it for a while before pulling the plug on the traditional job. My goal is to build up a stream of steady income that I can sustain by working less than my day job.
Those who were around last month know that I recently purchased a new blog with a partner of mine. It has paid of big time and I am starting to earn the money back. It is such a great feeling to see my investment start to come back, but more importantly, I am excited because this month showed me that it is a very real expectation to consistently make more money than my day job – all from blogging. How exciting is that?! Now, on to the interesting part (if you haven’t already scrolled down there, that is).
February 2012 Online Income
20’s Finances Advertising: $2266
Passive Income to Retire Advertising: $358.17
Third Site Advertising: $100
Site #4 (Niche Site #1): $200
Co-Owned Blogs Income (my share): $2046.84
Staff Writing: $40
Adsense: $67
Affiliate Sales: $0 (I expect some next month!)
Online Freelancing Efforts: $273.75
Total Gross Income: $5,351.76
Expenses:
Advertising 96.9
Commissions 29.96
Contract Labor 358.5
Legal/Professional Fees 137.32
Business Travel 400.6
Total Expenses $1023.28
Total Net Income (before Taxes): 4328.48
Again, while it is not all passive income, it is additional income that will go towards developing more passive income in the future. Since I don’t need the money right now, I am going to be investing into areas that will help build more income in the future (like I did to purchase my most recent site). I figured once I can build up enough income, I can pay others to run certain aspects of blogging and still keep a large profit for myself.
February was a HUGE month and I don’t expect to be able to maintain this level of income each month (yet). As you can see above, there are lots of areas that need improvement. I like the idea of diversifying my efforts so that if one site has a bad month, hopefully the others will pick up the slack. I still plan to work on affiliate income in the future as well – since this is significantly lacking.
As you can tell, I included my expenses for the month of February. I am reporting them in the categories that I will report them in when I go to do my taxes next year. I think keeping track of it as I go is much easier than doing it all at once. It is an unusually large month of expenses, but I had a few expenses that I won’t incur every month. These include my airfare to the Financial Blogger Conference, a new logo for 20’s Finances, $75 for a giveaway (advertising), and niche site development. That’s right, I started another website. Right now it is an experiment to see if I can make it as a niche site creator. Yet, if it fails, I can always develop it into a niche blog that is regularly updated with posts – whether it is me or staff writers updated it is still a question that I have yet to answer. If not already clear, I am making a conscious decision to invest some of my earnings into areas that will give me a larger potential income in the future. It hurts when you think of how I spend over $1,000 or about 20% of my earnings to expand my online presence, but when you think of the potential earnings that I have developed, it only makes sense.
Only time will tell if my income will continue to expand, so be sure to come back to check my status next month. You can also read my opinion on passive income / blogging every Monday and Thursday. To make it easier, why not subscribe to receive email updates when new material is posted.
Carnivals
Carnival of Money Pros at Money Pros
Yakezie Carnival at Not Made of Money
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie at My University Money
Festival of Frugality at Debt Free by Thirty
Canadian Finance Carnival at Canadian Finance Blog
Carnival of Retirement at Money Reasons
Financial Carnival for Young Adults at 20’s Finances
