This income report is special to me, because the November 2013 was the first month I could work full-time for my business. I always said that I'd need $1,000 per month to pay my bills - and I reached that goal within 2 weeks!
As you'll see, quitting my job lead to a massive boost of my income. Instead of working at night after office hours and working full-time just 2 days a week, I could pour myself totally in my business. And guess what I did.
The result of this engagemant was, that I doubled my monthly income for the second time in a row!
The resignation had a massive impact on how I handled my business. I knew that now there would be only one paycheck coming in at the end of November and that's it. I'd need to make my money on my own, which still gives me goosebumps thinking about it.
Before that I always had this elusive feeling of security. I wasn't satisfied with my job, but it paid the bills. So I wasn't relying SOLELY on my online business and that probably lead to focusing on fun things instead of focusing on profitable things. I was playing around a lot, which was good to build the knowledge foundation I have now. But still I could have made way more money right from the beginning, if I had had the pressure I felt in November.
The first weeks felt totally awkward. Knowing that I needed to make money put tons of pressure on my shoulders, yet I was confident I could handle it. It was the first time EVER in my life that I was totally relying on my very own skills. Nobody would back me up with a paycheck, I need to pay my bills with money I earned myself.
It's a scary situation, but it's the freedom that I wanted to have. I knew that I would feel pressure once I quit my job, but there's this incredible freedom on the other hand. Now I'm free to do explore all the business models I want to earn money. No job is limiting my time anymore and my family still is very supportive.
I won't lie to you, from time to time I still hear that voice in my head telling me to get back into my job. But I guess that's what 5 years of having a job cause you to think. That feeling of not being able to make it will arise from time to time, and the challenge is to get over it and make progress.
I saw a great documentation that ends with the ultimate reason why entrepreneurs are successful. We're driven by self-doubt and we want to prove ourselves that the self-doubt is wrong.
As consequence of this self-doubt, I stopped focusing on passive income only. Building passive income still is a high priority goal for me, but it takes quite a time to take passive income to the level where it pays your bills. So I decided to build active income streams.
Within 2 weeks I doubled the revenue of last month. In October I made $549.39 and by the end of November I made $1,032.47 with active income only - it's not exactly doubled, but it's close.
I always said that I'd quit my job as soon as I earn $1,000 per month. And here I am, achieving that goal within the first month working full-time (and still being officially employed until November 30th).
I made the money offering my skills as a web designer to friends who run businesses. Please bare with me when I don't showcase each project calculations, as the projects involve other business people who rely on confidentiality. But of course I'll showcase all numbers without the project relations!
At first I contacted several friends in my network who could need a web designer. Regardless whether it's great sales men, business owners with an old-fashioned website or other bloggers. I told them I would redesign their website pretty cheap and showcased websites I did in the past.
It's a simple principle that I used in this process: Being known and trusted as expert in your field.
Over the last months I built a world wide network of entrepreneurs, online marketers, and business owners. I made sure that they knew I was good at web design, even though I didn't even try to sell my services to them in the first months.
I built a few WordPress websites in the past and used 3 of them as references for my skills. Two were handcoded by me, one website was based on a template.
When I started marketing my skills, I made sure to focus on the benefit for the owner. It's not about functions! It's about benefits! The easier non-techy people can understand the benefits of a new website, the easier you'll make money.
I spoke to them in their words and told them exactly what a new website could do for their business.
Also I'm in the very lucky situation that I'm working with great people. I teamed up with a friend who's an incredible sales man and with a developer who runs his own tech-company with a team of 30+ developers, designers and other tech-specialists.
This team leverages the strengths of each person and thus is incredibly powerful once the project management processes are running smoothly.
One major benefit is, that all persons are located in different timezones. We're basically working 24/7, so we're getting lots of work done.
Here you can see the power of having a great team. I highly recommend to team up with people who have complementary skills. Working with people who have similar skills will bring your business forward too, but the real boost only comes from having complementary skills!
I'd like to state that I'm still not promoting my service as web designer officially on my website. This is, because web design is not the main goal for my business. It's a great way to make money and you'll see later why I'm going to continue doing web design occassionally - but the main income stream shall become online business coaching.
That's what I'm truly passionate about and that's work I can't not do.
So during November I built a sales page for coaching. I had a few clients who didn't pay for my coaching, which was my opportunity to gain experience in coaching. I didn't want to charge for a crappy training, but I wanted to become a good coach.
Now as I'm aware of the quality of my training, I'm charging for it - confident that it's worth the money!
As you might have noticed, I didn't write as much content in November as I used to. I'm sorry that I couldn't keep up the speed and I'll do my best to publish one post per week in the future! The reason was that I needed time to get clear about my current situations and find ways to make money fast. In other words, I was paralyzed in the first two weeks, overwhelmed with being free to do whatever I want while being forced to earn money.
Now as I'm getting used to being self-employed, I'm focusing on the more important things and thus my blog will become more active over the next weeks!
Due to publishing less content and not being actively commenting on other people's blogs, I saw a drop in traffic.
This drop in traffic also meant, that my passive income streams decreased. I made no new affiliate sale and Google Adsense revenue dropped as well. To be honest, I'm not sad about these drops as I made good money with active income streams.
I'll do my best to increase the passive income streams for the future to take pressure of my shoulders! I still believe that I'm not monetizing my blog correctly. I had 10k pagevisits in November and still just made < $150 with passive income. That's why I'm already working on a way to make more money with this blog, but that's another post for itself.
To give you a quick overview on my plans: I will include merging this blog with jkoch.me to build my personal brand. I'll kick out Google Adsense, learn more about copywriting and affiliate marketing and focus on selling my services and
I also launched a dropshipping business selling ergonomic office chairs (I'd love to have this chair for my home office one day!) in December, which will hopefully bring more money in on the passive way. I'll explain that launch in other blog posts, so that you don't miss a beat in my business.
As I said, the main income source was selling my web design services, while the passive income streams dropped due to less activity on this blog. Here you can see exactly how much I made with the different affiliate programs, with Google Adsense and of course with my web design services.
I'm proud to say that I already sold coaching calls and training programs, so you'll see some of those income streams in the upcoming income report for December 2013.
Clickbank
$ 15.32 (Long Tail Pro)
Google Adsense
$ 108.78
Amazon Associates
$ 4.40
Web Design Services
$ 1,032.47
TOTAL: $ 1,160.97
My initial goal was to earn $1,000 per month to quit my job. I exceeded this goal slightly in November and I'm on course to even further increase the revenue for December 2013. So the business is doing well and I raised that goal to make $2,000 per month by the end of March 2014.
We all have an idea for our ideal income in mind. The income that would make us as happy as we can be, not having to worry about money anymore and living the lifestyle we always wanted. For me, this number is $5,000 per month. It would allow me to rent a great appartment in my home town, drive a great car and travel to visit my friends. The main goal for 2014 is to hit this number by the end of December.
Let me know what you think about active income vs. passive income. What's the route you chose and how do you rate my success?
All the best,
Jan
