May got off to a very slow start and then crawled slowly up to $5784 in May which isn’t as good as the crazy recent months of $7000+ but it’s still amazing.
May has been really busy. I’ve been juggling a bunch of projects which have involved hiring writers. Myself and my partner have three writers working on our soon-to-be-launched living in Kampala website, I’ve brought someone in to help keep my living in Kigali site going over the summer, and I have two people writing content for a couple of new websites. So it’s been a lot of editing, adding photos, and formatting posts. I actually really enjoy the role of editor and organiser (a lot more than I like writing things myself) so it’s been fun. But busy!
Plus I moved my flight forward so I’ll be leaving Kigali on June 10th. That’s a week and a half away… yikes! Seriously. Yikes. I’m trying hard to stockpile articles for my Kigali site between myself and my writer. But, more pressing, is the new Kampala website. I’d like to have this thing launched before I leave which will be a challenge, I think.
Earnings Breakdown:
- Adsense — $335 – Kind of a crappy month.
- Affiliate sales — $222 – Affiliate earnings keep falling. I’d be much happier if this was at a steady $1000 per month as it was before. But, while there are lots of things I could be doing to improve this area, I don’t really enjoy working on affiliate stuff so it’s doomed to decline further, I think.
- Advertising — $4972 – This was a month of mostly small deals all adding up. Some renewals (and some payments still pending that will be added onto next month’s earnings) and some new deals. About 50/50 this month. I seem to do most of my deals early in the month but in May, this wasn’t the case so I was left feeling nervous up until this past week.
- Referrals – $150 – I had lots of people emailing to tell me they referred my details onto people they’d just done deals with. But nothing really came of it except in a couple of cases. It’s good to know that others seem to be doing deals and having great months, though! I had a couple of successful referrals so got two commissions.
- Ebook Sales — $105 – Fifteen sales.
Spending Breakdown:
I actually had a month with some serious spending, for once, at $1727. With the writers come costs and it was a month of pretty big spending (for me). But I look at paying for content as a good investment… one that won’t pay off for awhile but will eventually.
- Link Building Services — $147 – I’m still using Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link). No idea if this is a good idea or not.
- Article Outsourcing – $100 – Outsourced a bunch of articles to build links for the Kampala site.
- Content – $1475 – I transferred $850 to my Kampala site partner so he can pay our writers. That’s my half of things for now and it’ll get us a bunch of content so I don’t think I’ll have to pay for more Kampala content for several months. I also paid two writers for content on the new sites and $100 in cash to my Kigali writer.
- Ebook — $5 – Monthly cost to sell my ebook.
So May was a decent month. Actually, it was a great month but compared to my other crazy months recently, I guess it’s only an average month. But I’m not going to complain! June is off to an amazing start… I’ve already earned almost $2500 on day one so it could be a doozy.
I’m not really sure what June has in store for me. I’m going to be hard at work for the next ten days before I leave but I’ve also got lots of people to see in Kigali, a house to pack up, some travel plans to finalise and, basically, lots to do. Maybe I’ll find myself stressed-out for the first time in years!
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