December 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report

I’m here with the December 2018 Monthly Blogging income and Money Report.  Yes, this is ridiculously late (by about two months), but better late than ever as they say!  We’ve been going strong with these for over five years – so there’s plenty of data for you to see how things have been going.  Check out the details of this report to learn about our money making, money saving, and investing.  The idea is that you can use this as motivation to help improve your personal finance situation!

In this report, I will show you how I manage to make $250+ per hour blogging in my free time.  This report will also show you how you can start blogging or start your own business with no previous experience and start making money today.  So what are you waiting for?  Jump in and check it out now!

This report is chock full of tips and tricks to start your own business and start making extra side-income for yourself.  If you would like to check out any previous monthly money reports, go here: monthly money reports.  Let’s start with a review of our goals for December 2018 to see how we did:

 Actions Plans for December 2018

Here is a quick review of how we did with our goals for the months:

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

• Publish 3 regular posts per month for MoneyAhoy.com
  • Some Progress – I only had one post for the month of December, so this was a pretty big fail.
• Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
  • COMPLETE – This one went well – I was able to get exercise in every day.
• Make over $2,000/ month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
  • COMPLETE – We made over $7,600 for the month, so we definitely achieved this one!
• Post one video on my Youtube channel
  • No Progress – I did not get any Youtube videos posted for the moneh :-(.
• Publish 1 new posts on YourSmallBusinessCoach.com
  • No Progress – I did not posts any new articles on the new site.

I didn’t do well with goals for the month of December.  I was really busy with work, and didn’t really have the motivation to hit some of the goals I set.  The goals were kept pretty simple, and I still didn’t make it.  Well, there’s always next month!

Enough beating myself up, now let’s dive the money details for the month!

Notes on Making Money for December 2018

December was a very nice month for total household income.  We were way above the 6-month moving average and had one of our highest months so far!  Total side-income was also nearly a record setter.  It came in at the second highest ever at $7,622!

This $7,622 was comprised of:

• $6,148 – Dividends
• $1,473 – MoneyAhoy.com income

As you can see, MoneyAhoy.com income was a bit lower for the month, but still decent.

For the MoneyAhoy.com income for the two months, all this money was made in both months with just a couple of hours of total work spent on the blog.  That means I am earning well over $250/hour on the average by running my own blog!!  If that sounds awesome to you, maybe you should start a WordPress blog with Bluehost yourself?  Check out my article linked there to get started on your money making journey all for a cost to you of less than $4 a month!

Our 2018 monthly money making goal is to make over $2,000 each and every month of side-income money.  At the beginning of the year, it seemed like this would make for a great stretch goal.  Now that we are at the end of 2018, I can say that we hit this stretch goal each and every month of the year!  I was nervous there for a bit, but it has not been difficult in the least bit.  It sounds like I will need to come up with a more difficult goal for 2019.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $7,622 in side-income for the month of December.  I have included links as much as I can to help you learn and see how I am incorporating affiliate programs into this blog to generate side-income:

• Investment Dividends – $6,148 (Symbols: INTC, EFA, EEM, VBK, VTI, VNQ, JNK, BND)
• How to start an online business – $1,198
• Youtube– $109
• ShareASale.com– $100 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
• Amazon Affiliates– $41
• Advertisements in sidebar – $25
• SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $16
• Google Adsense– $9
• Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – $1
• How to Start Your Own Blog– $0
• Sponsored Posts – $0 (see how to get a sponsored posts on your website for more info)
• TOTAL = $1,473

Even though I basically took the month of December off, I still managed to make nearly $1,500 with the blog.  This is a great example of residual (or passive) income.  You can get paid even when you’re not “working.”  As you can see, there is pretty diversified income from several different streams.  The main disappointing thing for the month was that there was $0 in sponsored posts.  Not really sure why that dropped off, but hopefully it is just an anomaly and not a regular thing going forward.

My plan has continued to be to reinvest all the dividends and MoneyAhoy earnings (after expenses) we make now so we’ll have more money down the road.  That’s right – we take all of the stock market investment dividends and reinvest them to put the power of compounding interest to good work.  I also use the money made here with the MoneyAhoy.com blog and reinvest it back into the blog (see How to Pay Yourself from your LLC) or invest the profits into the stock market.  The power of compound interest is an awesome thing!!

Did you notice that monthly dividend graph slowly increasing?  December dividend income was actually higher than my monthly take home pay!  Now if I could just see that each and every month…  That’s because we are continually investing each and every month!  We are at the point now where we are averaging around $2,000 a month just in dividends!  If you’d like to learn more about investing, read my FREE book: Stock Market Investing for Newbies.  I put hundreds of hours into making a stock market investing book that is easy to understand, and I give it away for free just to help you guys improve your long-term finances!

Notes on Money Saving for December 2018

Money saving for the month of December was great overall.  We set a four-month low, and this is a great thing considering it was the month of Christmas.  Our total spending for the month was well below the 6-month moving average – awesome!  Our overall savings rate for the month was 76%, so that’s fantastic!

Here are some of the larger non-routine expenses that we had for the past two months:

• $800 – Sum total of all the Christmas presents for the family.  My wife and I went pretty cheap for ourselves I think.
• $575 – We had a trip planned for early January, so these were pre-paid expenses for someone to watch the dogs and a shuttle to the airport.
• $93 – My wife and I tried Juice + (it is some sort of vitamin thing).  We didn’t really notice any health difference, so we ended up canceling it.  Oh well…
• $46 – our daughter’s ballet lesson fee.

Notes on Investing for December 2018

For the month of December, I continued to keep things simple and invest all the money ($5,000 for the month) into SPY – this is the S&P-500 index fund and pays an annual 2.5% annual dividend.  This is basically like investing in the top 500 companies in the US (usually these are global companies).  I think this is Warren Buffet’s recommendation for 98% of Americans that want to invest, so I continue to follow that advice.

I really believe in long-term investing over time to increase wealth.  You won’t find me engaging in any crazy day trading or investing in the latest new-fangled startup like Blue Apron (down some ridiculous amount at this point since their IPO).  Investing for the long-term is pretty boring overall, but that’s what long-term investing is supposed to be!  If it is too exciting, then you are probably doing it wrong :-).

If you truly want to gain financial independence, then you need to learn more about investing to build your long-term wealth!  Investing in the stock market is one way to build up your passive income stream.  Check out my FREE stock market investing Ebook to get started on your own stock market investing journey now!

Actions Plans for January and February 2019

As you may have read, we have not been doing so well with our goals over the past couple of months.  Maybe we’re in a bit of a temporary burn-out?  So, with the holidays now over, I am going to try to keep the goals easy so that we can get a couple wins under our belt.  Here are the goals I’m setting for January:

January 2019 Goals

• Publish 3 regular posts per month for MoneyAhoy.com
• Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
• Make over $2,500/ month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
• Post one video on my Youtube channel
• Publish 1 new posts on YourSmallBusinessCoach.com

Other Points of Interest

I started a new website devoted to helping people start, run, and improve their small businesses.  You can find it here: Your Small Business Coach.  I still needs a lot of work, but go check it out!

We just had one article for the month, but it you missed it then here’s your chance to check it out:

1. October and November 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report

You Can Make Money Online Too!

Are you interested in making over $250/hour by running a simple blog?!?  I thought you might be!  I truly believe that anyone can make money online if they are willing to put in a bit of time and effort to make it a success.  There are just a couple of simple things you need to do to start on your journey toward online success:

1. Start your own online business– You can start your own business online in just a matter of minutes.  Check out my guide on how to start own business online.  I show you how, in less than 6 minutes, to form your own business as an LLC!  This article will teach you all the benefits of owning your own LLC for your business versus just skipping ahead to step #2.
2. Start your own Blog– The next step is to start your own blog.  Whether you will be blogging or running some other type of online business, you will need to setup a blog for your business.  I show you step by step how to start a WordPress blog with Bluehost!  If you have never run a blog before or don’t fancy yourself a writer, don’t worry.  It is really simple, and the learning curve is very friendly.

I started MoneyAhoy.com just over three years ago without knowing the first thing about blogging.  In that amount of time, I’ve made over $71K and my monthly blog income continues to grow and grow – just check out the blue portion of the income chart above!  I have also saved over $95K with all the research and tips this blog has helped me to implement!  Starting your own blog can truly be a life changing experience!

If you have ever thought about starting your own business or blog, then now is the time to get started!  Don’t wait until you have everything figured out, or you will never start :-).  You can get started with your online business or blog with just a few hours a week and build it up from there.  The sky is really the limit with your business and/or blog income.  With a little bit of elbow grease, you’ll be on your way to making thousands of dollars a month in no time!  Click here to form your own LLC and click here to start your own blog and get started making money today!