I am very pleased to say that October 2011 was yet another record month – and to be honest, it was waaay beyond my wildest expectations.
The trend in my income reports over the last few months, has probably surprised me, more than it has surprised you, my loyal reader.
As each month comes to a close (with yet another record), the very first thing on my mind, is how on earth am I going to beat that next month?
Thankfully, I seem to be able to figure out a few new ideas to put into action each month, and (so far at least) the trend of significant increases is alive and well 
Like in past income reports, in this report, I’m going to share with you the key activities that I undertook this month, what worked and what didn’t.
As always, if you think my income report is worthy news for your followers, please tweet and share on your Facebook wall by clicking on the buttons over on the left. Thanks, you rock!!
If this is your first time reading one of my income reports and you are wondering why I publish them, the reason is that I believe in being super transparent in my business – almost as though I was a public company. A public company has to share everything about their performance and it doesn’t seem to hurt them, so I doubt that it’ll hurt me either.
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Key Activities in October
Like most every month before it, October was a month full of activity – and I dare say, almost too much activity – which has got me thinking that less might be more as I go forward.
As I write this, I’m readying myself for a trip into the woods with pen and paper to see what I need to stop doing, so I can focus more on my core activities.
I’m sure some of you can relate to the feeling of just having too much going on, ya?
Webinars
Last month I wrote about how I’d tried some new fancy-schmancy webinar software that was supposed to allow me to put my webinars on auto-pilot. Alas, that initiative was a horrible failure because the software was crap.
This month saw me return to holding live webinars, or more accurately, one webinar (singular).
I’m happy to say that it was a smashing success with a record turnout and very strong sales. Suffice to say, I’ll be doing more webinars in the future as they seem very popular with you all.
If you are curious, you can watch the reply here. The coupon code, should you be inclined to take advantage of the offer, is nate.
Flippa Auction
As I have explained in the video below, I have come to believe that there is a substantial opportunity to rapidly increase your cash flow by building and then flipping some of your Adsense sites. This belief is the reason for the whole Niche Site Mass Production Project (NSMPP).
To understand the numbers that make this model work, just watch the video below.
I did hold a flippa auction of my own with 25 of my Amazon affiliate sites and will be publishing a more detailed post about the results in the days ahead. Suffice to say, it went very well
Video Tycoon Site
Back in September, I did a podcast with Nate Rivers and in that podcast, he explained his niche site strategy and how it is different than what anyone else is doing.
Nate is killing it with his strategy and ever since the podcast, I’ve been on the hunt for a writer to hire to create my first video course for me. I’m very happy to say that I’ve now found my writer(s) and have not just one, but two course in the works.
I’m paying my each writer $1500 for each course and hope to have the site(s) launched in the next 30 days. As you might guess, I’ll be blogging about my progress doing forward. I can’t wait to see the results! If it turns out anything like Nate’s sites…all I can say is cha-ching
Income Breakdown
- Adsense Income
- Total: $1,449
- Last Month: $840
- Difference: $609
- Up 73%
- Niche Site Sales on Flippa
- Total: $3,000
- Last Month: $0
- Difference: $3,000
- Affiliate Earnings
- Amazon: $68
- BlueHost: $1,260
- CTR Theme: $45
- Long Tail Pro: $595
- Niche Video Tycoon: $193
- RankTracker: $33
- SECockpit: $1,400
- SEMRush: $28
- SEOPressor: $136
- The Best Spinner: $151
- Unique Article Wizard: $108
- WPZonBuilder: $21
- Total: $4,038
- Last Month: $1,928
- Difference: $2,110
- Up 109%
- Link Building Services
- Total: $325
- Last Month: $305
- Difference: $20
- Total: $325
- Niche Site Mastery
- Total: $5,813
- Last Month: $3,809
- Difference: $2,004
- Up 53%
- Total: $5,813
- Gross Total
- Total: $14,625
- Last Month: $6,882
- Difference: $7,743
- Up 112%
- Total: $14,625
Measuring My Progress
I have a great many things that I want to accomplish in November. Before I get to that, however, I want to share with you how I did versus my October goals:
- Build at least 20 new niche sites – 12 done
- Find a worker to produce my first video course (like what Nate is doing) – achieved
- Increase total income by 20% – achieved
- Publish 2 more podcasts – achieved
- Read more books (I’m starting each day with 30 minutes of reading now) – achieved
- Record more videos for my Youtube Channel (be sure to subscribe to get them delivered right to your inbox) – achieved
Goals for November
- Build at least 30 new niche sites – all done via Jahid, my VA
- Finish my first video course (like what Nate is doing)
- Publish 2 more podcasts
- Record 5 more videos for my Youtube Channel (be sure to subscribe to get them delivered right to your inbox)
- Earn gross income of at least $10,000 for the month
Conclusion
As always, I’m extremely grateful to all of my readers for helping to make this happen. Without you, I don’t know where I’d be, so please accept my big fat THANK YOU!
Wow you weren’t kidding-
Good job buddy- that WSO problem is so weird.
Thanks pal. Yes…very, very weird. Talk about frustrating!!
Awesome job Trent. Very inspirational post.
My wife has started using fiverr.com to sell her services. It started out as a trickle, but it is growing every week. There are alot of people who want SEO work there. It might be worth your time to check out how you could use it to get people to try a part of your service through a fiverr gig. That’s my .02.
Just a thought. I have nothing at stake, but feel your pain for losing a bit of sales. I am sure you will find another avenue to sell those. As soon as I get some cash freed up, I am planning on signing up.
Best wishes,
Clint
I think you lose a little bit of credibility when most of your income comes from telling other people how to earn money than actually earning it from what you teach. Your niche sites seem to be the smallest part of your earnings.
I’m not saying this to negate the value of niches or the value of what you’re teaching. It’s just an observation.
Hi Artur,
Let me challenge you on that comment.
How many people are making $1500 a month from Adsense, and another $3000 from selling some niche sites on Flippa? Lets go with VERY FEW. As I am making more than these people, I think that qualifies me to each them, don’t you?
Now, that fact that I also make a larger sum from my blog via affiliate commissions, also makes me something of an affiliate expert, does it not? After all, with my blog, all the traffic comes for free, my list is growing rapidly, and I have enough of a relationship with that list that they trust my recommendations. Sure sounds like my blog is an authority site, don’t you think?
And then I have a membership site where I teach people about Adsense. That means that I’m coaching people on a regular basis and I’m answering all sorts of questions. The best way to be an expert at something is to teach it, so once again, I believe that I also qualify on that front.
Have you considered that I am under no obligation to disclose my income? Have you considered that I could have made one of those bullshit sales pages with fake screenshots of my income? Obviously, I believe that by disclosing my income, and the trend in that income, that I offer my readers a level of transparency that is VERY RARE on the net.
The people that come to this blog are interested in learning how to make money online. My blog is about much more than just Adsense. If it wasn’t, I would have named it the Adsense Income Lab. So let me ask you this, if you want to earn money online, is the money earned from teaching others how to do what I do any less green than the money Google sends me?
And finally, if you were to browse the National Speakers Bureau, I have not doubt that you would find a large number of highly paid experts that make their money in much the same way as I make a portion of my income; from teaching others how to be more successful in the business endeavors. Does that make us all scammers?
I appreciate your comment, and thank you for taking a few minutes to share it with myself and the rest of the OIL community. Hopefully, some of them will share their thoughts as well.
“And then I have a membership site where I teach people about Adsense.”
I know, I purchased your course/membership and I’m making use of it.
Like I noted. My comment was not to belittle your achievement nor your sharing this information, just that your expertise is making you more in selling tools rather than you actually making money on adsense.
I certainly don’t see you as a nonsense guru with who states he makes $50,000 a week only to peddle some small amount of copies of software.
It’s just that you’re not making much on the stuff your teaching, but doing well by selling the teaching. That seems lopsided. Just my point of view and not a negative one.
Trust me, when I launched NSM, it was primarily for ME as a place for ME to store the training videos for MY VA’s. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that it would grow so fast….as yes, managing that growth has had an impact on the other things that I do; hence my taking the profits from NSM to hire yet more VAs to do even more niche sites for me
Stay tuned….more income from niche sites is materialize for me in the same time frame that I say that it will materialize for NSM members. In other words, I am my own student
Awesome and inspirational as always.
Did my first Flip last month and now getting things in order for others. Definitely learned a lot.
Back from the wedding now, so it’s back to working on that IM income so I can “do anything to avoid a real job”
.
See you in Niche Site Mastery in a bit.
You got married? Congrats man! You can have an extra month of coaching as my wedding present
Already married for a while now. But we went out of town for the weekend, as some friends were getting married in South Carolina. Fun times.
Maybe I should get remarried and cash in on that free coaching offer
Better run that one by your wife….my offer stipulates that a new wife is needed, lol!!
Holy cow Trent! That is a HUGE increase from the last month! It’ll be interesting to see how you do next month.
I too was super intrigued with Nate’s strategy that I am also creating some Niche Tycoon sites… 3 to be exact. Since I’ll be doing it all myself, I won’t complete the sites as fast as you will (or I mean your VAs will). However, one of them is complete as far as articles and on-page videos go. I think I picked a good niche for this one because I’m getting a decent amount of views on my YouTube videos after only 1.5 weeks with no backlinking to them.
One thing that is slowing me down is the time it is taking for me to learn the ins and outs of Profits Theme. It is awesome though!
I’m very interested to see how your sites turn out when they’re done. Hopefully we can compare notes sometime. Congrats on the stellar income report!
Hi Harlan,
Thanks so much for the congrats.
I’m stoked to hear that you have some video tycoon sites on the go. That is awesome!
Trent
That’s huge growth! Incredible! Congrats
As far as decreased sales of NSM, well, some folks like me got limited budget and have to choose between building sites, buying keyword software (SECockpit is awesome but also real expensive) or buying your course. I was tempted to buy it but I have to buy SECockpit.. At least for month and start launching sites. Doing 5th already and even buying SECockpit was tough decision as I was calculating that I can have 2 sites launched for the same price! So this is what you are fighting against too
Look at other IM forums and see if they have sales threads. You may have just oversaturated the market for a bit on WSO forum.
Hi Adrian,
The thought of saturation did occur to me, and their is some logic to support it. In the two weeks leading up to the massive drop in sales was a massive uptick in sales. I guess these sales were to the last of the “fence sitters”, so to speak. So, by the time they bought, pretty much everyone else had seen my ad numerous times.
Re NSM, you can get a free membership by following the instructions here.
It also could be that you need to wait a couple of months and add fresh reviews from your NSM members WITH numbers they make. Cycle closes so to say and then you can sell to new people as new people come into WF. It would mean your sales will go in cycles.
P.S. Do an interview at AdSenseFlippers.com as Spencer did recently.That will give you sales..
Hi Adrian,
I do plan to get in touch with the lads over at AdsenseFlippers. I like their stuff.
Trent
Maybe your WSO just “burned out”? Happened to me and bumping failed to de-zombify it (which is why it’s now on ClickBank!) although it does get a *trickle* of sales.
One of my theories is that the majority of people who would’ve bought your course already bought it. Don’t know how sound that is considering the traffic numbers for Warrior Forum! :p
I’d like to hear what somebody who’s run a lot of WSOs thinks about this…
Hey Vic,
So would I. See my reply to Adrian as for the probable reason for the drop in conversions…
Hey Vic…how’s the WSO with the interview Joe did going?
Great income increase in your affiliate category…What type of affiliate sites are you creating to generate your income?
review, individual product, hybrids of adsense and affiliate product links?
Hi Art,
This blog generates all the affiliate income. I did have some Amazon sites, but I just sold them all on Flippa.
Cheers,
Trent
I’ve been listening to you for a couple of months and I’m really enjoying your podcasts, your interviews are really good.
A point about your flippa sales. Wouldn’t you view this as more of a return of capital event, an asset sale, than income?
You had time and expenses that went into those, I think I heard on 1 podcast that you spend about $100-150/site for you, and so you liquidated some assets but that’s not the same as revenue on a balance sheet, just saying. If its a business then you need to look and say ‘what was my return?’.
This is just discussion not criticism.
I don’t do niche sites I do web apps, but I’m a podcast junkie and you’ve shared some great stuff like the link wheel video, thanks for that.
Keep it up.
Hey Brecht,
Welcome to the OIL community and thanks for sharing your comments.
Income or ROI is a fine line and one could say that all the income from Adsense sites, is simply a return of capital (and not income) until such time as they’ve paid me back 100% of my invested capital…but I, and others, choose to “report” this as income. With a large number of sites, all launched at different times, calculating this would be a nightmare. As I’m interested in simplicity, and am not trying to win an award for best accounting practices here on the blog, I’ll stick with: money coming in = income and money going out = expense.
I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts going forward. Oh, and if you haven’t liked the facebook page yet, you may want to as I share plenty there that doesn’t make it onto the blog.
Very impressive. I follow your site and Spencer’s – both honest and full of great info. Been lurking a while, but wanted to say congrats. I’m looking forward to more flippa information.
-Dan
Hey Dan,
Welcome into the fray, my friend! Thanks for taking the time to share a comment; I always love hearing from new people!
Cheers,
Trent
Fantastic progress, Trent! I am happy for you and inspired for myself. Thank you for sharing your journey with us. It’s priceless.
Hi Tina,
Welcome to the OIL community and thank you for taking the time to get involved and comment. I’m thrilled to know that you are finding my success motivational and hope to continue to be a source of positive reenforcement for you.
Have you liked my FB page yet? I post lots of stuff there that doesn’t make it onto OIL.
Cheers,
Trent
Trent,
Numbers look good.
Since your sales of your product are going down, maybe it’s time to put your money where your mouth is and actually make money the way you teach people to do. I do see that you made decent money with you NON MMO sites, so why not just work on those???
OR here’s another idea, since your sales are going down it’s time to do what everyone else does – BRING OUT NICHE SITE MASTERY 2.0!!!!
BOOM … Millions and Millions of dollars – plus you have real customers who have “testimonials” of how great your first product was. Now you can tell people it’s totally revamped and better than ever (of you don’t change anything), but to them it’s “new”.
Just make sure you only let 100 people in at the intro price of $1,197.97 …after that it goes up to $3,997.97 …and of course you let millions of people in at the cheaper price because how would they know how many people bought it.
There…don’t say I didn’t help you.
Hey Mikey,
Welcome to the OIL community, my friend!
Do what I teach huh? Did you read the report or just look at the numbers? Did you see the large increase in Adsense income this month over last? Did you see that I launched 12 new sites? Did you see my Niche Site Mass Production Project where I’m going to cover my success (or failure) with a batch of 10 sites? I do walk my talk, I can assure you….despite the fact that my MMO product sells so well.
NSM 2.0? Nah..how about I just keep improving 1.0 and keep giving all that to the existing members? Seems like that’d be the smarter thing to do…reward those who got on board early.
Thanks for chiming in!
Trent
Congrats Trent, you are killing it!
Don’t mean to be a party pooper but couldn’t help but notice your ‘niche/adsense’ sites don’t even account for 10% of your overall revenue. I should start creating some online courses… hahaha
Regardless you are doing way better than me so props to you mate.
Hey Kestrel,
Welcome to OIL and thanks for chiming in. Read my reply to Artur a little further up…
Cheers,
Trent
Yeh man I totally hear you. Like I said, props to ya!
Congratulations on a wonderful, record breaking month! As a recent new follower and subscriber of Onlineincomelab.com — I’ll offer a couple of items I have made note of:
1) Regarding the NSM issue you are concerned with– I would love to join. However, prior to discovering Onlineincomelab.com and NSM for that matter, I already have an established hosting account with BlueHost. While your sales offer is a wonderful opportunity for those that need hosting, it is unfortunate that those of us who already having hosting can not join NSM unless we open another hosting account.
2) In the conclusion of your income report for this month, you conclude your post with; “Goals for October.” I am assuming this is a typo and should read; “Goals for November.”
Thanks again for the amazing content you continue to provide and I wish you much continued success. I look forward to the road ahead and see what you have in store next!
Best wishes,
Alex
Hey Alex,
Welcome to the OIL community and thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. (as well as to point out my typos!).
I look forward to hearing more from you.
Trent
Trent,
Thanks for the warm welcome! I look forward to the future ahead! I hope you did not take it personal that I mentioned the typo in your post.
Cheers!
Alex
Alex I joined NSM before the hosting offer.
There’s nothing stopping you.
Hey Trent -
I think your article post meant to say “Goals For November”. Unless you are talking about past goals.
As for your income for October. That is totally insanely crazy! I can’t believe you jumped up that much. That is impressive and just driving me to work harder on my niche sites. I am really getting excited about them and really look forward to their results.
So I was looking into UAW. I am thinking about getting it but will be doing the work myself. How much editing really needs to happen to your articles to get them submitted out to a bunch of different article directories? Also would you say this is your best link building tool you use? I am tempted to try it out for a month with 10 niche sites I built but just need to know how much work will be involved for me to get the articles submitted for all my niche sites.
Can’t afford to pay for all my outsourcing like you do
.
To use UAW, you have a few choices to arrive at the 3 versions of the same article that UAW requires to function.
1. Write three yourself. Boo!!
2. Spin one with The Best Spinner. Better…but only if your VA does the spinning.
3. Order one article + 2 re-writes from The Content Authority. Yay! Best approach!
Thanks for explaining how that software works. I was a bit confused. Good thing I didn’t buy it yet. If I want to do it the best option that you mentioned it will cost me $67/mo for UAW and then 3 re-writes of every article. That’ll cost me a bit too much money at the time to start. I’ll have to consider doing this another way for now.
Thanks for the input. Once I get the cash flowing in I’ll definitely be up for other methods of speeding up my niche sites for getting traffic.
nice month….i think the main point mentioned above is more that people buying NSM are looking to learn to create job replacement income with adsense but it not really happening for you with adsense(if you took out that cleaning site).
Personally I think this just shows how profitable creating products is and ties into that article i read on flipfilter blog that I think AdsenseFlippers posted about how much more revenue per visitor product owner sites make vs. affilite sites and adsense is the lowest rev. per user (average product owner site makes 10x adsense)
Its a gold rush right now for adsense site sellers and adsense is the most passive there is so buyer demand is good.
http://www.flipfilter.com/blog/2010/10/29/adsense-site-monetisation-problems/
I had a couple questions:
1. what do think you average cost per new site is ?
2. curious how you found a product creator for your Nate type sites.
Keep up the good work.
Definitely agree that there are better ways to monetize sites but sometimes you can’t make a product or service on a niche site you have so AdSense or Amazon is all there is.If there is a possibility one should try affiliate stuff and product sales BUT remember that with creating and selling your product comes customer service and much managing stuff to your site and if you sell multiple products on multiple sites.. imagine the amount of work… AdSense pays less but is the most passive type income. You should choose what is your goal. I’m doing Adsense sites, for some I am adding Clickbank affiliate products, on some I might sell physical products and make it ecommerce site. Still, first I need lots of passive income and then leverage time and money to build up the empire
I am liking the way you think Adrian. Building up the passive income to build the empire. That is what I am doing as well. Going crazy building sites and then with the money flowing I’ll spend the free time doing other projects and think can be successful online.
Michael,
You may also want to look at creating some info products for certain niches. In fact, you don’t even have to create them, you can simply find a product you like and then purchase the resell rights to it. There is a reason why so many IMs sell info products….
Cheers,
Trent
Thanks for that idea. I do plan on changing up some of my niche sites and trying different types of niche sites shortly. Just doing one batch of 10 right now and then I’ll do a bit of research and try a new strategy for another 10 niche sites I think and see what does best.
Yeah that’s the plan bro! I would also work on optimizing the weaker sites and finding ways to increase clicks once I have enough winners. That will decrease time for others sites to start earning too I believe.
Ultimately, I’d love to have couple of projects like Envato.com, who are just killing it in design and tutorials..at least they look like they have a great thing going!
Adrian,
I want to point out that while I love Adsense, it should not be your ONLY source of income from your entire business. Yes, it can be the only form of monetization from a given site, or group of sites, but if Adsense is ALL YOU DO, then you are completely reliant on Google to be nice to you. That is a BAD strategy.
That is why I blog and have a membership site. I also have other products/sites in the works that WILL NOT rely on Google for traffic.
The very nature of being online is to diversify!!
Yeah, Google is two fold for us here. Adsense and traffic… I’m trying to brainstorm ways on how to diversify but first things first, gotta get some passive income!
Hey Brian – if you actually watched Trent’s video you would see he spends $100 per niche site and get the everything a 100% outsourced for those sites. So he basically has to do a purchase of a domain, setup the addon domain, install wordpress and then let his VA team do the rest for him for $100 (minus the cost of the domain).
Hey Brian,
I see Michael beat me to the punch on the cost per site. As for where I found my writer, I put up a posting on oDesk, appointed my VA as hiring manager (I also hired him on oDesk) and he then shortlisted the applicants and requested a trial article from the short list. He then suggested his pick to me, and I ok’d it. Thus far, she has been freakin amazing!!
Whaddup Trent, as always man your posts make me put my head back down and get back to work. I’m actually really focused on getting some aff sites up right now and target the low hangin fruit ala nates method a get a lot of traffic in aggregate, then dependn on how they do I will get into product creation. I’m also working building my best Adsense site up ala Spencer’s post creating authority sites. Don’t worry I’m not stretchn myself ou farther than that
anyways, wherever your income is coming from, you are a huge motivator in making a success of yourself online and appreciate your insight on any of it. Great work!
Thanks Aaron. It means a great deal to me to hear that my work is motivating you (and others) to stay focused and moving forward. Yay!
Fantastic work Trent, I truly hope I can emulate your achievements in the future
Thanks Tony!
Holy cow! Way to kill it Trent! This is definitely motivating and inspiring, and I thank you again for sharing it. I’m about to start my third niche site thanks to you, and your reports always get me psyched up!
Hey Neil,
Yeah, I was pretty surprised, to say the least. My last batch of 10 sites is now live, and I just gave me VA the go ahead on the next batch of 10
Hi Trent
Wow! As usual a great post and your increase on earnings has been fantastic.
Being English, after watching the “$1000 to launch a real business video”, I do have one point I’d like to make and that is that the word “niche” is pronounced as “neeesh” and not as “nitch”.
Just Sayin’
Hey David,
Welcome to the OIL community and thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. Back when I lived in Canada, I pronounced it neesh….but now that I live here in the US, I had to switch to nitch (busta-rhyme!) because no one knew what the heck I was talking about
Hi Trent,
Hey thanks man for being so transparent! Keep that rarity up because most authority blogs don’t do that. That gives real value!
Here is a suggestion that would help perhaps newbies like me, who are trying to make enough passive income on adsense alone, is tell us how many adsense sites you have running to make X amount of income. And how many are duds to ones that are hitting your target range. I know Spencer Haws has about 200 and making I think was 10k/mth but not sure if that included other income.
BTW, a little side note, what WordPress theme do you recommend? ctrthemes, clickbump, heatmap etc? Trying to figure it out…
Thanks and always look forward to reading your blog…
Hey Dean,
I launched my Adsense business by buying an established site that was highly trafficked, but poorly optimized. Within a month, I’d doubled the income of that site and it was about 2/3s of last months income. The next thing I did was start to build my own…but I took my time initially because I was documenting every step of the way (so that I could outsource it all).
Two weeks or so ago, I had my new VA launch 10 sites for me and they, due to his getting really sick, took a full two weeks to complete. He’s now healthy again and is launching another 10 starting today. The goal is to have him launch 10 per week. Excluding this week’s batch, I think I have only about 15 or so as I sold some to a friend a while back because he wanted to be forced to learn about Adsense and owning some was going to be the best way for him to do that.
If you’d like to keep tabs on the 10 that I’ve just completed, you can do so at AdsenseLifestyle.com. I will be keeping a log of the group from start to finish.
Congrats once again Trent on yet another big gain. You just keep pulling that rabbit out of the hat and now you have really hit “significant income” levels, for sure.
Question, do you use SenukeX at all?
Hey Matthew,
Thanks so much. I think repeating such a strong month back to back is going to be a challenge, for sure. Regardless, I’m filled with gratitude to have had it happen, just the same.
I tried SENuke once. It was a buggy POS, IMHO.
Im so SICK of hearing about outsourcing cuz it reminds me of what I should be doing and im not doing it.
Im gonna set a monthly budget and finally hire a VA next week for backlinking. I dont have much to start with moneywise for this so I figure I better use it efficiently. Whats funny is that my first 2 sites ever are doing the best right now, with several keywords sitting in the top 10 and 20. So I think I’m going to stick with the mini authority site route since its less of a headache to manage for me for now and build up 10 big sites and let the VA go to work.
Got off on a bit of shiny object sydrome for a bit there and wasted a month and half but Im back to my roots now.
Hey Aaron,
Good to hear you are focused again. Bravo!
Aaron, outsourcing is so good.
It allows you to be productive even when you are busy.
I have worked maybe 30-60 minutes this week on my business but have launched 3 websites.
By the way Trent I had my first $50 day a couple of days ago. Woot woot.
Things are really kicking off
$50 day? Wow, that is fantastic! We might have to get you on the podcast. PM me if you are interested.
Hi Trent
Given how much influence you have had in this I am more than happy to help. Not sure how to PM you through your blog but will Skype you
Terrific, thanks!
Trent, great results, but I’ve been reading adsense threads where an unusually high number of complaints about October reporting – the est. earnings vs. finalized earnings, some of the differences have been north of 50%. Is your variance in this area consistent compared to prior months? Any insight on this?
Here’s the thread http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=4592e3b3e917ae98&hl=en
Regards
Hey Ric,
I don’t usually pay any attention to estimated earnings. I don’t see the point.
Nice work, Trent. You made it back onto my Blogger Leaderboard (and moved up a few spots to boot!). Congrats!
@Trent – Thanks for sharing the financial details of your business. I continue to follow your journey because of your openness and transparency.
@ Artur – I could not disagree with your viewpoint more. ALL experts get paid more to teach what they know. This is exactly the case with every author who writes a book. If Trent is teaching tens, hundreds or even thousands of folks the information that he compiled and tested he should make more than actually doing the task. As he points out, how many people are making $1500/ mo with adsense and telling you exactly how they are doing it?
What if just 25 people go on to make $1500/mo with adsense? $37,500 per month for as long as they continue to work the business? I would say that Trent is creating value – people should get paid for creating value regardless of the effort required on their part. Inother words, yes he should make more money for telling you how to do it. Just saying? I hope you share what you are learning with others one day and I hope you are well compensated for it! Life is not a zero sum game, there is enough for everyone.
Keep up the good work Trent.
Steve M.
Hey Steve,
You made a better point than I did. Want to handle my PR? lol!!
Hey Trent. Where do you find someone to produce your first video course? I’ve been searching for someone to do the same. Did you go to oDesk or did you find them by some other means?
Feel free to answer privately. I’ve got the plans and even the source material for some courses, but not enough time (or patience for that matter) to put them all together myself. If you could point me in the right direction I would gladly spend my money on paying a professional to put together a good video course.
Hey Paul,
Thanks for writing. I found them on oDesk. I have an aff link on my resource page if you’re so inclined
All I did was post a job for a US writer. I then had each candidate submit a short article as their “interview” and then I hired one to write a batch of articles for one of my niche sites. After seeing what a kick-ass job she did, I skyped with her to outline the project I had in mind and asked her to buy a few books on the topic (I paid her for the cost of the books) so that she could develop a syllabus for the course I wanted created.
Once she had the syllabus done, I asked her to come up with a fixed price estimate for the job and when she did, we agreed on a price and I set her loose to create it it all as she thought fit. I have been VERY hands off for the entire thing.
I do plan to build the first site myself, however, I will be videoing it all and will then up my price to her next time and ask her to deliver to me a completely finished product so that the ONLY thing I need to do is pick the niche, register the URL and pay her to do all the work.
Hopefully, that helps to guide you in the right direction
Trent
Hey Trent,
Thanks for that. It really helps. I’ve actually been on oDesk for years. Otherwise, I would gladly use your affiliate link.
It was only a few months ago that it occurred to me that I could find US-based talent for reasonable prices. For example, I have one lady on my team who works part-time for less than $7 per hour and she’s awesome at what she does. So, it’s good to see that you found some American talent on oDesk for these video courses. I need to search the North American pool much more than I have been.
I think you’re gonna help me save some money here. When it comes to my first video course, I found a really good copywriter that I’ve been talking with about this project. My initial plan was to have her create an ebook for me and then I would record the video series from the ebook for about the same price you’re paying your writer.
All that’s about to change, though. Your process sounds much more efficient. Perhaps the copywriter I’m plan to work with will be willing to do the video course in lieu of an ebook for about the same price? I sure hope so. I’ll have to see. If all goes according to plan, I’ll report back on my success…if I can remember to do so.
Thanks a bunch, Trent. This really, really helped.
-Paul
Hi trent
You should not knock people observing that less than 10% of your income came from what your telling us to do. I.e. create passive income streams..
No the affiliate incomes are not passive your doing a ton of promotions to drive traffic.
The WSO just ran its course would be a reasonable assumption. There are a lot of folks who get caught up inWSO frensy never to use the products but just buy the next one.
Pat Flyn is doing the same process as you so hey whynot. Adsenseflippers the filpping thing and Spencer the mass buildthing.
I do wih people would achknoweldge where they find out about great tools like mangewp from though.
I believe you will do better this month and if not it means you have done better by doing other things which are yet to bring money. It’s good to outsource and i do it in my little way that i can do here too.
Hi Sheyi,
Thanks so much. I agree and and am, in fact, making some changes to my pricing model that will likely drop my revenue in the near term, however, I’m quite sure that it will boost it in the future.
Thanks for writing!
Trent
Aight man. Just know someone (Sheyi) is looking up to you as a role model and you should keep doing the good works. I appreciate your effort and infact, you are driving me go crazy (to make more money). I’m starting a challenge on my blog as well and i will be doing most of what you did (and follow most of your blog posts) to get what i want as well.
It is well!
Sheyi
Hey Sheyi,
Awesome!
Trent
Hi Trent,
I think you have lost some credibility with WSO because you aren’t really doing what you preach. Okay you are making $1500 with adsense, but most of it is with a site that you bought.
One thing is to make money with an established site, but another thing is to make money with new niche sites. You have made some revenue with it but not much.
My advice to you is to build up your own niche sites and then you can go more into teaching people.
Hey Mike,
I appreciate your take on things.
Lets examine your comment in further detail: You said that I need to practice what I preach and that in essence, I’ve “cheated” by purchasing an Adsense site that had existing revenue.
Within Niche Site Mastery, I teach people how to find profitable keywords. I have employed this exact tactic with the site that I bought and identified a very large list of long tail keywords that I am now targeting.
I also teach people how to get content written for them and that is exactly what I’ve done with the cleaning site. I’ve hired writers to create content that is relevant to the new keywords we are pursuing.
The net result of these first two steps has been a 40% increase in traffic.
Within NSM, I also teach people how to build an attractive site. If you have been following the progress on my cleaning site, you will also have noticed that I have substantially cleaned up the site and this has contributed to a lower bounce rate and a longer average time on site.
Within NSM, I also teach people how to get traffic and then how to monetize with Adsense. When I purchased this site, the traffic and CTR was MUCH lower than it is today, so I guess one might say that the evidence supports that I’m practicing what I preach.
But lets not stop there…lets assume that I am totally full of crap…and it is with that in mind that I challenge YOU to a niche site duel.
Here’s how it will work. I will build ten sites and I was disclose the URLs for every site. I will then have my outsourcing team build them for me while I’m off doing other things.
You will do the same. You will build ten sites (presumably you will build them yourself) and then you will disclose all the URLs.
We’ll both then disclose ALL OF OUR PROGRESS over the next 90 days here on my blog.
I guess then we’ll know which one of us can walk the walk, and which one of us just wants to throw stones.
If you are up for it, please reply and we’ll set it up. I can’t wait!
Trent
PS. I’ve emailed Mike about this so as to be sure he knows that I’ve replied to his post.
Trent,
How did you find your website creator? Odesk? Or is that already in Niche Mastery?
Yes, that is already explained in NSM in the Outsourcing Module.
Hi Trent:
I’m learning so much from you … I should send you, at least, an apple. No … not that Apple but one of those little red things that crunch when you take a bite.
Would love to know what books you’re reading …
Grazie,
Brenda
Hi Brenda,
I don’t really read books much; instead, I continually force myself to learn by doing, talking to others about what they are doing, and reading online.
Nice to hear you are enjoying my blog
Trent
Trent, I am impressed with the NSM membership income and business model. I heard about this on Yaro’s blog. Definitely, it’s a great one and has a lot of values. I hope I could spend more time over the Christmas Off.
How was your Nov? Are you going to blog about your progress? I heard that Adsense traffic, click, and income are peak in Nov/Dec. Did you experience that too?
Looking forward to your Nov report if you plan to have one. Thanks!