August 2017 Money Report
The August 2017 – Blogging Income and Money Report is here for your reading enjoyment! Read on to learn about our money making, money saving, and investing for the month. I also detail how I successfully make over $250/hour blogging (in my spare time), and show you how you how to 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 August 2017 to see how we did:
Actions Plans for August 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 – MoneyAhoy had 8 posts total for the month of August.
- Create at least 2 new posts with affiliate links from ShareASale.com
- COMPLETE – I put up affiliate links for Inkhead.com and BulkSupplements.com.
- Publish 2 videos on Youtube
- COMPLETE – I put up a total of 4 videos on the Youtube channel. These were all from our trip to Ireland.
- Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- COMPLETE – I was able to do a really good job of exercising for the month.
- Get to 3,900 Pinterest followers
- COMPLETE – I got to 3,907 followers on Pinterest!
- Make over $1,200 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- COMPLETE – we made $1,731 in total side-income for the month of August.
As you can see, we hit a home run in terms of hitting our established goals for the month! I am very happy with how we did :-).
Now let’s get jump into the money details!
August 2017 – Blogging Income and Money Report
Notes on Making Money for August 2017
Our routine income for the month of August was a bit higher than normal since we were in town all month and my wife was able to put in some extra hours. This helped to boost our overall income for the month and allow us to break above the 6-month moving average for income!
Side-income for the month was fairly nice at $1,731. This is nowhere near as high as what we have been able to achieve in some months, but is still pretty good. The drop off was mainly due to a light dividend month.
The split for our side-income between MoneyAhoy.com and dividends was:
- $133 – dividends
- $1,598 – 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 August was pretty simple with the nice MoneyAhoy.com income! We reduced our holding in Junk Bonds quite a bit, so the dividends in the “off” months are going to be much lower than normal going forward.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $1,731 in side-income for the month of August. 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 – $131 (JNK)
- How to Startup an LLC on-line for Cheap – $992
- Sponsored Posts – $360 (see how to get a sponsored post for your blog for more info)
- Youtube – $100
- SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $42
- Advertisements in sidebar – $25
- Amazon Affiliates – $14
- Google Adsense – $10
- MyFinance end of post ads – $5
- ShareASale.com – $0 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
- Stock Market Investing for Newbies
book – $0
- TOTAL = $1,731
As I mentioned above, we reallocated our portfolio to reduce our holdings of junk bonds (JNK). As a result, our monthly dividends from this will be a couple hundred dollars less each month. But, since we moved this money into other stocks that pay dividend every 3 or 6 months we should see larger “pops” in the dividend payout during those months.
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 August 2017
Our routine expenses for the month of August were pretty routine at $3,101. This was well below the 6-month running average, and it would be nice if we could keep our routine expenses this low every month!
For non-routine expenses, we had a couple large expense items (including a future vacation) that bumped this up pretty high for the month.
Here’s a breakdown of the biggest charges:
- $2,246 – Cruise to the Bahamas planned for Christmas break time-period
- $150 – Girls on the Run – we enrolled our daughter in this girl’s empowerment program/charity
- $51 – Movie tickets – we visited the movies two separate times in August
- $40 – Halloween costumes. This year our family is going as a group of Overwatch characters (Overwatch is a popular PC computer game)
I feel like we are spending money like crazy on extravagant vacations in 2017. But since we are killing our savings and side-income money making goals, we pulled the trigger to register the family for a cruise around the Christmas break. It feels like we were able to snag a pretty good deal, so hopefully we will have a nice family time :-). To make the financial hit a bit less, my wife and I agreed to make this our Christmas present to each other. We may get something real small so that we can at least exchange a small gift, but this will be 90% of it.
We now have a total of $17,132 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 ~229,000 miles on it right now, and it is still going strong! In just a couple more months, we should be able to have enough set aside for a nice replacement. If we decide to continue holding out longer and continuing to save, we’ll just be able to afford one that is much nicer. Basically, it is just a question of “when to cash in the chips.”
Our overall savings rate for the month was 60%. This is pretty good for the month – not the best ever. I hope to get our savings rate even higher in the months to come now that we are out of vacation season and the kids are back in school.
Notes on Investing for August 2017
For the month of August, I purchased 15 shares of SPY for a total of ~$3,750. SPY is the SPDR S&P-500 exchange traded fund (ETF). It tracks the Standard and Poor’s 500 index. This ETF is currently paying an annual dividend yield of 1.85%.
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 Equifax 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 September 2017
I did so well with achieving the goals I set forth in August, I am going to try and stick with similar goals for September. Here is what I am targeting:
September 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 hit over 1,200 subscribers total in August, so that is really awesome! If you have not subscribed yet, go ahead and check it out!
Here are all the great MoneyAhoy.com posts for August if you happened to miss any:
- Save Money by Doing Your Own Dog Grooming
- Top 3 Ideas to Jump Start Your Business
- Thinking Of Starting A Trucking Business? 3 Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Cyclical Sales Trends – The Best Time of Year to Buy Anything
- July 2017 Money Report
- 5 Ways to Save Money on Vitamins and Health Supplements
- Avoid Debt After Divorce
- 4 Tips For Handling Finances For The Newly Disabled
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 $37K 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 $63K 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!
