It’s the first of month… that’s usually the time I go back and look at my alternative income from the previous month. As a refresher my definition alternative income encompasses some kind of passive component to it. It may be completely passive, like earnings from interest and dividends. Or it may be very active, but potentially passive, like blogging income. For instance, if I stopped writing tomorrow, I’d still be making some residual income from the previous days of blogging.
It was very much a banner month in alternative income. If I look at the blogging side for a minute. I managed to have over 97,000 page views between this site and Lazy Man and Health. That’s more than 30% higher than my previous record high. That amazes me because Internet traffic in the summer time is usually quite low with people enjoying the weather and going on vacations. Thinking how much traffic it might translate to in November gives me a bit of a head rush.
In the end it translated to an after-tax revenue of $2,246.60. I am still amortizing some expenses from previous month (the current logo design as well a theme I had developed a year ago that I no longer use). I’m looking forward to getting some of these one-time costs off the books. After those costs, I still end with $1,839.94 in gains for the month.
When I look at the $1839.94 number it really seems low. Sure compared to some, it’s probably quite good. However, as of now, this is very much my full-time job. Even if I look at the before tax numbers with no expenses, it’s $36,000 a year. According to Salary.com this would put me below the 25% percentile for the average teacher in the United States. On the plus side, I have much more control over the hours I spend. I also love what I’m doing.
I have started thinking of my alternative income goals in terms of dollars a day. Right now my family needs about $73 a day to maintain our current standard of living (rent, food, insurance, gas, etc.). We aren’t anywhere near that but recently we have seen some significant improvements (like at 295% increase, but still below $50 for the month :) ) so I am getting pretty hopeful that things will get better over the next couple of months.
Either by the day or the month, it’s the same concept, just different numbers. I really like tracking it because it keeps me responsible.
Congrats on the traffic and $$!
I thought you were doing some part-time consulting? Or was that just for a particular amount of time?
Mike
Yeah, I the consulting gig had a number of issues that lead to me parting ways with the company.
Congrats on your alternative income. Sorry about the stupid question, but If is the current Adsense present on your sites, optimized for maximum performance?
That’s like asking if someone’s portfolio is optimized for maximum performance… talk to ten different people and there will be ten different solutions. I believe I have a great balance of performance and site readability. Others may disagree with that statement.
I just thought that adding a little more adsense would increase your income. But of course I am sure you’ve probably tried it all.
Good luck next month!
Congrats on bringing it in though! Everyone’s def. on their own level (i, myself, only bring in $13/mo! haha…) but you’re right in that it depends on how you look at it. For m, $2k is a hefty income! but i only write during my free time – i could totally see how different it is if you’re blogging full time.
Thx for sharing all the info though, it helps out a lot of us bloggers out there :)
Wonderful to hear about your success. Great to see you making it as a full-time blogger.