September 2017 Money Report
The September 2017 Blogging Income and Money Report is hot off the press! Check it out to learn all about my money making, money saving, and investing for the month. In this blogging income report I show you how I make over $250/hour blogging in my spare time. I also show you how you get get started with blogging and do the same! This money report is full of tips and tricks to teach you how to start your own business and starting making extra side-income in your free time. Let’s jump right in, but first if you’d like to view any previous monthly money reports go here: monthly money reports. Let’s start with a review of our goals for September 2017 to see how we did:
Actions Plans for September 2017
Here is a quick review of how we did with our goals for the month:
Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress
- Publish 6 regular posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- COMPLETE – I had 6 posts for the month, so I just hit the goal!
- Create at least 2 new posts with affiliate links from ShareASale.com
- SOME PROGRESS – I was able to create one post with affiliate links from ShareASale.com; this was my post on 8 Best Tips to Save on Wine and Alcohol
- Publish 2 videos on Youtube
- COMPLETE – I created 4 videos using footage of our trip to Ireland.
- Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- COMPLETE – I did well with this one for the month. I have started incorporating pull-ups into my routine. That is helping me feel quite a bit stronger :-).
- Make over $1,200 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- COMPLETE – This one was knocked out of the park as you’ll see when we get into talking details. Our total side-income for the month was $2,699!
I was able to hit 4 out of 5 goals for the month, so that was pretty good. I am happy with what we achieved – now let’s have a look at the money details!
September 2017 – Blogging Income and Money Report
Notes on Making Money for September 2017
For the month of September, our routine income came in pretty, well… routine. Nothing else much to write about there.
Side-income for the month was VERY nice at $2,699! This hit pretty smack-dab on the 6-month moving average for side-income.
The split for our side-income between MoneyAhoy.com and dividends was:
- $1,651 – dividends
- $1,048 – MoneyAhoy.com income
For the MoneyAhoy.com income for the month, all this money was made in the month 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 less than $4 a month!
Our new income goal for 2017 is to make over $1,000 each and every month of side-income cash (MoneyAhoy.com blog income plus dividends). You can see that we are averaging more than this if we can continue our money-making momentum, but I’d like to try and make $1,000 each and every month (even in the light dividend months) just to prove I can do it. Hitting this monthly goal for September was automatic since dividends were over this amount! We did manage to bring in MoneyAhoy.com income above the $1,000 goal as well, so either way we were covered :-).
Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $1,299 in side-income for the month of September. 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:
- Monthly Investment Dividends – $1,651 (JNK, PEP, INTC, VBK, VTI, VNQ)
- How to Start Your Own LLC – $620
- Sponsored Posts – $125 (see how to get a sponsored post for your blog for more info)
- Youtube – $121
- ShareASale.com – $100 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
- SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $42
- Advertisements in sidebar – $25
- MyFinance end of post ads – $16
- Amazon Affiliates – $15
- Google Adsense – $8
- Stock Market Investing for Newbies
book – $0
- TOTAL = $2,699
Our dividends are going to be a bit lower going forward since we reduced our holding of junk bonds (JNK). However, since this was the end of the quarter, we saw a big splurge of dividends payed out by most of our index fund ETF stocks.
We are choosing to reinvest all the dividends and MoneyAhoy earnings 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.
Did you notice that monthly dividend graph slowly increasing? That’s because we are continually investing each and every month! If you’d like to learn more about investing, read my FREE book: Stock Market Investing for Newbies.
Notes on Money Saving for September 2017
We had a fantastic month for money saving this time around. Our total expenses for the month were the lowest they have been in nearly TWO YEARS! This was helped in part by lower grocery bills, and not having any major non-routine purchases. As a result, our total expenses for the month were well below the 6-month running average coming in at only $3,254.
We only had a couple large non-routine expenses. These were:
- $506 – New tires for my wife’s van. The tread was beginning to separate from two of the tires, so we probably pushed these a little too far from a safety perspective.
- $47 – Presents for my wife’s birthday.
We now have a total of $18,132 in our new van fund. We continue to put $1,000 a month away plus any extra that my wife is able to work with her second job. We have been saving for a bit over a year now, so we are getting close. Her van has ~230,000 miles on it right now, and it is still going strong! Now for the bad news when it comes to a new van. We are likely to be moving soon, and we need to come up with some cash to cover expenses. So, we may have to dip into this “new van fund” to fund our move. If we do this, we will quickly work to catch this back up to where it should be. We are trying to avoid selling any stock to raise cash, so this seemed like the best way.
Our overall savings rate for the month was 60%. This was a great month, and I am happy with this level.
Notes on Investing for September 2017
As I mentioned earlier, we are likely going to move in the next couple of months! As a result, we will need to raise quite a bit of cash to cover the moving expenses, down payment for buying a house, potential new furniture, etc. In lieu of selling stock, we are deciding to take our savings each month and hold it in cash. We will hopefully be able to save up enough so that we do not need to sell any stock and incur short/long term capital gains taxes.
I feel really bad about making this decision to put our stock market investing on hold, but I feel like it would be pretty dumb to buy a bunch of stock to turn around and sell it two or three months later to raise some cash. Anyhow, this is just a short-term decision for us because we are likely to move. The right thing for most readers will be to save and invest like we have been doing over the past 4 years :-).
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 single stocks like Whirlpool or anything. 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 October 2017
I did very well for the month of September in achieving the goals set-forth. I believe I will have a pretty challenging month time-wise in October, so I am going to try and keep the goals the same. It will be hard to complete all of them, so I can tell a couple are going to be stretch goals already :-).
October 2017 Goals
- Publish 6 regular posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- Create at least 2 new posts with affiliate links from ShareASale.com
- Publish 2 videos on Youtube
- Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- Make over $1,200 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
Other Points of Interest
My YouTube channel has not hit over 1,400 subscribers total in September! That’s over 200 new subscribers over the past month! If you have not subscribed yet, go ahead and check it out!
Here are all the great MoneyAhoy.com posts for September if you happened to miss any:
- Beginner’s Guide to Finding the Right Financial Guide
- How to Keep Your Expenses Down While Heating and Cooling Your Home in the Fall
- August 2017 – Blogging Income and Money Report
- What to Do Immediately Following a Car Accident
- 8 Best Tips to Save on Wine and Alcohol
- 3 Things Debt Free People Do That You Don’t
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 the 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:
- 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 and setup your own LLC 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.
- 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 on your own 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 $39K 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 $65K 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!
