So February was a strange month. I left for The Philippines on February 4th and spent a couple of days in transit before arriving in Cagayan De Oro, a city in the south of the country hit by flooding, to volunteer with All Hands for a month an a bit. In theory, that means that I’ve been really busy with volunteering by day and being too tired to do any online work at night. In reality that means that I’ve been busy volunteering by day and being too busy drinking beer and hanging out with my friends at night to do any work.
So I’m surprised to report that, despite spending very little time getting to the work I’ve needed to do and answering emails, I’ve managed to still earn $7008. But it was touch-and-go until the very end of the month as there were two really big deals that had been dragging on (mostly because of my lack of time to get articles up) which meant that up until a few days ago, I’d probably only actually made $4000… which is pretty low compared to recent months. Damn. It’s a pretty good gig when $4000 can be considered a bad month!
But things came together in the end at it was another good month, especially considering how little work I’ve put in. Well… I’ve been working a lot on laying bricks and shoveling mud and digging holes etc. but web work has definitely taken a back seat. I’ve actually been surprised at how hard it’s been to keep up with things here. My books are a disaster and I have a huge backlog of work but I’m trying not to worry too much about it.
Earnings Breakdown:
- Adsense — $454 – Yay to leap years! Not that it helped too much but every little bit counts and this February was a bit better than most in previous years.
- Affiliate sales — $516 – Nothing great to report here. Same as always!
- Advertising — $5975 – So my earnings are well and truly one-sided. I had one major deal of over $2000 but most of my ad sales were smaller with a lot of renewals and several more monthly subscription payments added. I love the monthly payments. Set it, forget it and I can count on the money coming in each month for work I’ve already done. No need to chase to renew.
- Ebook Sales — $63 – Nine sales.
Spending Breakdown:
I didn’t have time to spend any money on my business this month! So not much to report… I only spent $581.
- Domain Renewals — $70 – Go Daddy renewals — lots of them! I also registered three new domain names.
- Link Building Services — $206 – These are the monthly fees for two link building sites I’m using: Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) and Build My Rank.
- Article Outsourcing — $100 – Paid to have some articles outsourced with Text Broker.
- Elance — $200 — Money for an events plugin I’m having built.
- Ebook — $5 – Monthly cost to sell my ebook.
So ya… February was a surprise. I was expecting it to be a terrible month (albeit only because I hadn’t had time to wrap up some big deals that would have then gone ahead in March) but it’s turned out to be a great one. Especially considering I don’t really spend much money here.
I’m feeling a little stressed out (believe that or not!) with work falling between the cracks as I spend most of my time volunteering by day and drinking beer at night. As I’m steadily earning a very good amount each month, I’m thinking about hiring someone to do all the crappy jobs I hate doing. I’ve spoken to a friend of mine here who would do an amazing job and is keen. I just need to figure out what I’d have to her, how much it would cost, and how, logistically, we’d get it done. Does anyone out there have experience hiring PAs? What sorts of things do you use them for?
Ok that’s all from me. I’ve run away to a hotel again for the night in an effort to catch up on work. Sadly, the internet in my hotel is crap and it’s hard to find a nice cafe with a good connection. One of the small frustrations of my job, I guess!
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