MoneyAhoy

May and June 2019 – Blogging Income and Money Report

Derek Chamberlain — Mon, 05 Aug 2019 22:00:59 +0000

May and June 2019 Money Report

We are back with another monthly money report for you. Below is the MoneyAhoy.com May and June 2019 Monthly Blogging Income and Money Report! Feast your eyes on all the wonderful charts below, and catch up on how we are doing with our money making, saving, and investing goals for the year. I’ve been working on these for six years now, so there’s plenty of nice charts for you and me to see how my finances have been trending over the years. The idea of this is to inspire you to save, make, and invest more, and also to help keep me motivated to do the same.

I also want to convince you that it’s a great idea to launch your own LLC and start making some extra side-income money today! This report will detail how I make about $250 per hour blogging in just a couple of free hours per months. You can get start a blog just like I did with no previous business experience and start making money for yourself! Let’s jump into the report!

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 May and June 2019 to see how we did:

Actions Plans for March and April 2019

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

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

Publish 4 regular posts per month for MoneyAhoy.com
- COMPLETE – We had 9 posts overall for the two month period.
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- COMPLETE – I have been doing a lot of walking, weight lifting, and biking to keep in shape.
Make over $3,000/ month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- COMPLETE – Our total side-income for the two month period was $8,231! Thing were a bit low in May, but June more than made up for it.
Post three videos on my Youtube channel
- SOME PROGRESS – we posted just two videos in the two month period, so a bit shy of the goal :-(.

We performed pretty nicely on the goals for this period. Now let’s dive into the money details:

Notes on Making Money for May and June 2019

Our overall total household income for the two-month period of May and June was pretty average. Nothing much to write home about :-). I think it’s pretty awesome how it just continues to steadily march up .

My wife switched over from a part-time job to a full-time job (32 hours a week), so I do expect our normal monthly income to climb a bit. So that’s great :-)!

Our goal for 2019 is to make an average of $3,000 a month in side-income. We did not hit the goal for May, but we averaged over that amount in June, so the two-month average surpassed the goal. Our total two-month side income was $8,231.

This $8,231 was comprised of:

$5,276 – Dividends
$2,995 – MoneyAhoy.com income

As you can see, MoneyAhoy.com income was decent and dividends were fantastic for the period!

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 look into starting your own WordPress blog with Bluehost ? 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!

As mentioned, our 2019 monthly money making goal is to make over $3,000 each and every month of side-income money. So, it’s a miss for May, but a grand-slam for June! All combined for 2019 we have $23,915 in side-income through June, so we’re a good ways ahead of goal.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $8,231 in side-income. 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 – $5,276 (Symbols: PEP, INTC, VTI, EFA, VBK, JNK, BND)
Sponsored Posts – $1,020 (see how to get a sponsored posts on your blogfor more info)
How to start an LLC on-line– $810 (this post and video shows you how to start your own business online)
ShareASale Affiliate Marketing– $400 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
Start Your own LLC with Incfile – $100 – a new video about starting an LLC.
Amazon Affiliates– $334
Youtube– $273
Advertisements in sidebar – $75
Google Adsense– $19
Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – $1
How to Start a Website– $0
SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $0
TOTAL = $8,231

MoneyAhoy.com income is starting to fall off a bit as my “Starting an LLC” affiliate performance is starting to drop off drastically. This was making anywhere from $800 to $1,200 per month, but now I’m lucky if it is making $300. Oh well… I think that’s a perfect illustration as to why it is important to not put all of your eggs in one basket when it comes to affiliate marketing.

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!!

Do you notice the monthly dividend graph steadily increasing over time? We went from making less than $400 a year of dividends to nearly $30,000 of estimated dividends in 2019 just through continued, disciplined investing! We are investing in the stock market each and every month, and it’s compounding with great success! We are at the point now where we are averaging around $2,200 a month just in dividends! If you’d like to learn more about investing, read my FREE book: Stock Market Investing for Newbies. I spent over 6 months writing that book, and it’s FREE for you to use it and learn how to invest. That’s right, I put hundreds of hours into making a stock market investing book that is easy to understand for you, and I give it away for free just to help you guys improve your long-term finances!

Notes on Money Saving for March and April 2019

Money saving for May and June was good – expenses were kept in check for the most part. I still haven’t called Comcast yet to negotiate for lower cable rates since they raised our rate about $25/month, but I really need to!

Our travel expenses were higher than normal as we took trips to Tilamook and Seattle in May and the end of June. So, our eating out expenses were higher than normal.

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

$570 – Son’s basketball camp (overnights)
$250 – Girlscout camp
$184 – 23AndMe Mother’s Day gift
$135 – Triple A membership renewal
$46 – Dad and Daughter dance

Notes on Investing for May and June 2019

For the months of May and June, I invested in JNK. This is the SPDR Bloomberg Barclays High Yield Bond ETF (exchange traded fund). It has an annual dividend payout of 5.59% (yield). This is basically a collection of “junk” bonds. These are riskier bonds which is why it pays a higher interest rate compared to your average bond.

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. 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 July and August 2019

As you read above, we achieved many of our goals set forth for the previous two months. Here below is the plan to make the goals for July and August a little bit more difficult to push myself.

July and August 2019 Goals

Publish 5 regular posts per month for MoneyAhoy.com
Exercise at least 20 minutes every day
Make over $3,000/ month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
Post two videos on my Youtube channel

Other Points of Interest

So my wife was considering taking a full time job (at 32 hours per week), and she decided to take it. It pays~ $10 an hour less, but she is WAY more happy here than working at the nursing home. So, I think overall she’ll bring in more money per week, is happier, and has some good benefits. I think overall it is a nice win! We’ll see how that continues to go going forward.

We had 9 articles for the past two months – if you missed them then here’s your chance to check ’em out:

You Can Make Money Online Too!

Are you interested in making over $250/hour by starting your own cool 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:

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 an LLC on-line in less than 10 minutes. 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 launch your WordPress blog! 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 six years ago without knowing the first thing about blogging. In that amount of time, I’ve made over $90K 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 $115K 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!

The post May and June 2019 – Blogging Income and Money Report appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

March and April 2019 – Blogging Income and Money Report

Derek Chamberlain — Sat, 01 Jun 2019 22:18:16 +0000

Article from MoneyAhoy.com

March and April 2019 Money Report

Way late, but not completely missed is the MoneyAhoy.com March and April 2019 Monthly Blogging Income and Money Report! Yes I know it’s June… I’ve been working on these for six years now, so there’s plenty of nice charts for you and me to see how my finances have been trending over the years. The idea of this is to inspire you to save, make, and invest more, and also to help keep me motivated to do the same.

I also want to convince you that it’s a great idea to start your own business and start making some extra side-income money today! This report will detail how I make over $250 per hour blogging in just a couple of free hours per months. You can get started with blogging just like I did with no previous business experience and start making money for yourself! Let’s jump in!

Actions Plans for March and April 2019

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
- COMPLETE – I had 7 posts total for the two months (3 in March and 4 in April.
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- COMPLETE – I’ve still been using my desk/couch exercise bike to good effect. It helps me get ~45 mins of exercise a day while I watch Netflix at the same time :-).
Make over $2,500/ month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- COMPLETE – We knocked this goal of out the park with a total two-month side-income of $9,526 ($3,784 for March and $5,742 for April).
Post one video on my Youtube channel
- COMPLETE – I posted one video, Best Dog Training Collar – Review. Check it out if you have a dog that needs training!

We did great with our goals for this period, so perhaps I need to raise the bar for the next two months just to challenge myself a bit more. Now let’s dive the money details for these months!

Notes on Making Money for March and April 2019

March and April were average months for overall total household income. February set an all-time high goal, and these two months paled in comparison. As you can see, the total income was a bit below the 6-month running average, but pretty standard based on the past two years.

I have not been putting in as much time blogging since I’ve been working more, so that’s stalled MoneyAhoy.com income a bit, but I plan to get a little more energized here to bring home some more bacon!

My new goal for 2019 is to make $3,000 a month in side-income. We hit the goal for both March and April with a combined total two-month side income of $9,526.

This $9,526 was comprised of:

$4,503 – Dividends
$5,023 – MoneyAhoy.com income

As you can see, MoneyAhoy.com income was great and dividends were also great for the period!

As mentioned, our 2019 monthly money making goal is to make over $3,000 each and every month of side-income money. So, it’s a hit for March and April! All combined for 2019 we have $15,683 in side-income through April, so we’re a good ways ahead of goal.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $9,526 in side-income. 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 – $4,503 (Symbols: SPY, PEP, INTC, VTI, VNQ, VBK, JNK, BND)
How to form an LLC today– $1,491 (this post and video shows you how to start your own business online)
Sponsored Posts – $320 (see how to get a sponsored posts on your blogfor more info)
ShareASale Affiliate Marketing– $800 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
Youtube– $277
Advertisements in sidebar – $75
Amazon Affiliates– $58
SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $16
Google Adsense– $12
Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – $1
How to Start a Website– $0
TOTAL = $9,526

All combined, these were two very good months for MoneyAhoy.com side-income and dividend income. These are good examples to help illustrate the variety of ways you can earn income with your own blog, business, or through disciplined investing.

Do you notice the monthly dividend graph increasing over time? We went from making less than $400 a year of dividends to nearly $30,000 of estimated dividends in 2019 just through continued disciplined investing! We are investing each and every month, and it’s compounding with great success! We are at the point now where we are averaging around $2,200 a month just in dividends! If you’d like to learn more about investing, read my FREE book: Stock Market Investing for Newbies. I spent over 6 months writing that book, and it’s FREE for you to use it and learn how to invest. That’s right, I put hundreds of hours into making a stock market investing book that is easy to understand for you, and I give it away for free just to help you guys improve your long-term finances!

Notes on Money Saving for March and April 2019

Money saving for March and April was decent – we were right at the 6-month moving average if you combine the two months. One thing that stinks is that Comcast raised our internet price from $40 a month to $67!! It’s time to call and negotiate for lower cable rates.

The other really painful thing that happened in April was we owed nearly $10K on our 2018 taxes!! That was not fun in the least, but I’d rather owe that get a refund :-). Our overall saving rate for the two month span was just 23% due to the tax payments. I’m not happy with that, but what can you do!

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

$9,900 – Federal and state taxes for 2018
$218 – mirrors for setting up an exercise area and some speaker wire stuff at Home Depot
$200 – registering the kids for spring soccer
$99 – escape room that we went to for our daughters birthday
$87 – we also took our daughter to Chuck E Cheese after the escape room
$80 – various Easter presents from Amazon
$49 – we bought the board game Catan. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a ton of family fun!

Notes on Investing for March and April 2019

For the months of March and April, I invested in VBK. This is the Vanguard Small-Cap Growth Fund ETF. This is basically a collection of smaller sized companies that we are investing in. It only pays an annual dividend of ~0.7%, but it is primarilly designed to increase in value instead paying out dividends. These small caps are higher risk and higher reward. In a good market, they will tend to increase more quickly than the broader S&P-500. In a declining market, they would be expected to fall more quickly than the broader market.

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 LYFT (down maybe 30% since its 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 :-).

Actions Plans for May and June 2019

As you read above, we did very well with our goals for March and April. So, I plan to make the goals for May and June a little bit more difficult to push myself.

May and June 2019 Goals

Publish 4 regular posts per month for MoneyAhoy.com
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
Make over $3,000/ month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
Post three videos on my Youtube channel

Other Points of Interest

My wife’s part-time job (really as needed) has been going well for her. She is considering going to part time (~32 hours a week). So, we are working through that decision and what that means for the kids. We’ll see what happens there!

We had 7 articles for the two months – if you missed them then here’s your chance to check ’em out:

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:

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 you business now. 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 launch your WordPress blog! 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 six years ago without knowing the first thing about blogging. In that amount of time, I’ve made over $80K 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 $105K with all the research and tips this blog has helped me to implement! Starting your own blog can truly be a life changing experience!

The post March and April 2019 – Blogging Income and Money Report appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

January and February 2019 – Blogging Income and Money Report

Derek Chamberlain — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 17:00:21 +0000

Article from MoneyAhoy.com

January and February 2019 Money Report

Long overdue, but not forgotten, is the MoneyAhoy.com January and February 2019 Monthly Blogging Income and Money Report! I’ve been working on these for six years now, so there’s plenty of nice charts for you and I to see how my finances have been trending over the years. The idea of this is to inspire you to save, make, and invest more, and also to help keep me motivated to do the same.

This report will detail how I make over $250 per hour blogging in just a couple of free hours per months. This report will also show you how you can start blogging or start your own company with no previous business experience and start making money for yourself! Let’s jump in!

Actions Plans for January and February 2019

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

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

Publish 4 regular posts per month for MoneyAhoy.com
- COMPLETE – We hit the goal with 10 posts total for the two month span!
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- COMPLETE – my wife got me this cool desk/couch exercise bike, so I normally get a chance to put in close to an hour (or more) each day. So I blew this goal away!
Make over $2,000/ month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- COMPLETE – we did well here and made a combined $6,157 in side income (side hustles plus dividends) for the two month period – details below.
Post one video on my Youtube channel
- NO PROGRESS – I did not get to this one – I plan to jump-start work here in March and April.
Publish 2 new posts on YourSmallBusinessCoach.com
- NO PROGRESS – still no progress here. I am struggling a bit to get the motivation to work on this “extra” site as I’m not really finding time to put into my main site (this one).

As you can see, we did OK with our goals, but we missed a bit on the bottom two. I’m struggling a bit to hit my goals for this period. As a result of putting less work into the blog, profits are down a bit. Hopefully I can get this turned around and make 2019 another record setting year. Now let’s dive the money details for the month!

Notes on Making Money for January and February 2019

January and February were good months for overall total household income. February set a new high for total monthly income. This is great – it’s always great to see a new record! January was a bit below the 6-month moving average, but this was more than made up for in February. The biggest factor helping out here was my wife started a new, second job and bonuses. This will come in handy because I think we’re going to have a hefty 2018 tax bill due soon!

Total side income for the two-month period was below the six-month moving average, so that was a bit of a disappointment. The largest factor contributing to the downturn there is less MoneyAhoy.com income as I have been putting less time into the blog each month.

My new goal for 2019 is to make $3,000 a month in side-income. We just barely missed this for January, but made up for it in February and just crossed the line for the two-month period! The total two-month combined side income was $6,157.

This $6,157 was comprised of:

$1,896– Dividends
$4,261 – MoneyAhoy.com income

As you can see, MoneyAhoy.com income was pretty good and dividends were a bit on the weaker side of things.

As mentioned, our 2019 monthly money making goal is to make over $3,000 each and every month of side-income money. So, it’s a miss for January and a hit for February. All combined, we are still on track at this point.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $6,157 in side-income. 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 – $1,896(Symbols: SPY, PEP, JNK, BND)
How to start your own business online– $2,033
Sponsored Posts – $1,110 (see how to get a sponsored posts on your blogfor more info)
ShareASale Affiliate Marketing– $700 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
Youtube– $249
Advertisements in sidebar – $75
Amazon Affiliates– $48
SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $32
Google Adsense– $13
Stock Market Investing for Newbiesbook – $0
How to Start a Website– $0
TOTAL = $6,157

These are some really good results from both MoneyAhoy.com side-income and dividend income. This is a great example to show how easy it can be for you to start your own blog and make side-income from it.

Do you notice the monthly dividend graph increasing over time? We are investing each and every month, and it’s beginning to compound! We are at the point now where we are averaging around $2,200 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 January and February 2019

Money saving for January and February was decent overall with our total monthly expenses for each month coming in under the 6-month moving average. No new records, but definitely solid performance.

Our average savings rate for these two months was 66%, so that’s pretty good in my book.

Our non-routine expenses were a bit higher in February. However, the Jan/Feb non-routine spending average was also below the 6-month moving average.

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

$570 – registration for kid’s basketball summer camp
$163 – Amazon – mostly for Valentine’s Day and a couple odds and ends electronics
$118 – Dance outfit for our daughter’s ballet recital (yes I know this is insanely high, but try telling that to my wife!)
$92 – our daughter’s ballet lesson fee
$36 – IKEA desk for our son

Notes on Investing for January and February 2019

For the months of January and February, I once again (I know this might be getting a bit boring ) kept things simple and invested $5,000 for the month into SPY. This is the S&P-500 index fund ETF (exchange traded fund). It pays an annual 2.5% dividend and is basically the top 500 companies in the US (most are global type companies to be this large).

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 :-).

Actions Plans for March and April 2019

We are busier than ever here in Oregon, so I’m keeping the goals relatively “medium” in terms of difficulty.

March and April 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

Other Points of Interest

As mentioned, my wife started a new part-time job at the local hospital. That has helped her a lot to de-stress because she likes working at the hospital quite a bit. Not much else is new here.

We just had 10 articles for the two months – if you missed them then here’s your chance to check ’em out:

You Can Make Money Online Too!

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.
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!

The post January and February 2019 – Blogging Income and Money Report appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

December 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report

Derek Chamberlain — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 01:47:51 +0000

Article from MoneyAhoy.com

December 2018 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!

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.

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.

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:

October and November 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report

You Can Make Money Online Too!

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.
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.

The post December 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

October and November 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report

Derek Chamberlain — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 03:00:20 +0000

Article from MoneyAhoy.com

October and November 2018 Money Report

The October and November Monthly Blogging income and Money Report is Finally ready!! 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!

Actions Plans for October and November 2018

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

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

Publish 5 regular posts per month for MoneyAhoy.com
- COMPLETE – close enough here I think, we had 9 posts total for the past two months, so I’m saying we hit the goal!
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- SOME PROGRESS – I flaked out a couple days here and have not been excercising as much as I should. I need to get more serious about this one!
Make over $2,000/ month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- COMPLETE – we knocked this one out of the part again with $8,978+ for this two month period – more on that below.
Post one video on my Youtube channel
- NO PROGRESS – I did not get to this one – I have really been slacking off on new Youtube videos for 2018 and definitely need to pick up the pace soon.
Publish 2 new posts on YourSmallBusinessCoach.com
- NO PROGRESS – I filmed a video here, but I did not take the time to create any new posts .

As you can see, I did not do that well on monthly goals for the October/November period. I definitely need to step up my game into 2019 to keep the good momentum going with the blog and business. I could have done a lot more here to get closer to completing these goals.

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

Notes on Making Money for October and November 2018

October and November were fantastic months for overall total household income. Both months were above the 6-month moving average, so that is great!

Total side income for the two month period was also very nice even though no new records were set.

Our goal for 2018 has been to hit over $2,000 a month in side-income. We were able to blow that away with a total two-month combined income of $8,978!

This $8,978 was comprised of:

$3,521– Dividends
$5,457 – MoneyAhoy.com income

As you can see, MoneyAhoy.com income was particularly strong for these two months.

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. So far we’ve been able to beat this goal each and every month. I was nervous there for a bit, but it has not been difficult in the least bit.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $8,978 in side-income for the months of October and November. 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 – $3,521 (Symbols: SPY, VTI, VBK, JNK, BND)
How to start an LLC Online – $2,219
Sponsored Posts – $935 (see how to get a sponsored posts on your website for more info)
ShareASale.com– $200 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
Youtube– $345
Amazon Affiliates– $135
Advertisements in sidebar – $75
SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $32
Google Adsense– $16
Stock Market Investing for Newbiesbook – $1
How to Start Your Own Blog– $0
TOTAL = $8,978

These are great results across the board and a testament to how easy it can be to start your own blog and generated residual income from it! As you can see, there is pretty diversified income from several different streams. This is important for stability to not put all your eggs in one basket when making money online. Some income sources can dry up without much warning, so you can understand why diversification is important.

Did you notice that monthly dividend graph slowly increasing? 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 October and November 2018

Money saving for the months of October and November was pretty good overall. We didn’t set and new records, but we were able to keep much of our spending in check. Our total spending for both months was under the 6-month moving average, so this is good . Our overall savings rate for these past two months was 77%, so that’s phenomenal!

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

$350+ – various Christmas presents
$300 – Nintendo Switch for son’s Christmas present
$210 – registration for kid’s basketball
$92 – our daughter’s ballet lesson fee

Notes on Investing for October and November 2018

For the month of October, we took a short break from investing and saved the cash money in our investing account. For November, we decided to contribute to our 2018 Health Care Spending Account (HSA) up to the maximum allowable, then take the remaining and save the cash money in our investing account. Now that we’ve had a large dip in the stock market, it seems like it was a good idea to take a quick pause from dollar cost averaging and build up our cash a little bit. We plan to get back on our normal schedule of investing for December going forward. I know this is “timing the market” a bit, but I cannot seem to help myself here when we are at historical highs in the stock market!

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 Snap Chat (down over 97% at this point since their IPO). I do think I may buy some shares of a company that I use which offer great services such as Spotify. I use this basically every day, so I think it may be a good long-term investment. 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 :-).

Actions Plans for December 2018 and January 2019

As you read, we did not do so well at achieving our goals for these past two months. So, with the holidays quickly approaching, I am going to try and keep the goals easy so that we can get a couple wins under our belt. Here are the goals I’m setting for December and January:

December 2018 and January 2019 Goals

Publish 3 regular posts per month for MoneyAhoy.com
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
Make over $2,000/ 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 need to add in more detailed pages to it (like about and contact pages), but I have a couple articles up now just to get it started. Please go ahead and check it out and be sure to send me any feedback!

I have also been a little distracted from normal posting on MoneyAhoy.com because I’ve been working on a major website overall for a client. This is sucking up a large amount of my free time. However, I do hope to soon get back to Your Small Business Coach so that I can continue to build that site out.

If you missed any of our articles for the month of October or November, you can check them out here:

You Can Make Money Online Too!

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.
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 $69K 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 $92K with all the research and tips this blog has helped me to implement! Starting your own blog can truly be a life changing experience!

The post October and November 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

August and September 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report

Derek Chamberlain — Mon, 29 Oct 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Article from MoneyAhoy.com

August and September 2018 Money Report

Welcome to the long awaited August and September Monthly Blogging Income and Money Report! We have been publishing these monthly updates for the past five years – and we are still at it for many more to come. Check out this report to learn all about our money making, money saving, and investing for the months of August and September.

In this report, I will show you how I manage to make $200 – $300+ per hour blogging in my spare time. I 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!

Actions Plans for August and September 2018

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

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

Publish 5 regular posts per month for MoneyAhoy.com
- COMPLETE – we had 12 posts total for the past two months, so we hit the goal
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- COMPLETE – I was able to hit this each day to keep my weight in check
Make over $2,000 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- COMPLETE – we knocked this one out of the part again with $7,750+ for this two month period – more on that below.
Post one video on my Youtube channel
- COMPLETE – I did get one video up on How to Save Money on Heartworm Medicine for Your Dog
Finish up new website
- COMPLETE – My new website YourSmallBusinessCoach.com is up and running now (still have a bit of cleanup, but its ready to open now)

We knocked our monthly goals out of the park for this period by completing all of them. That feels great to get them all done – I think it’s been a good while since we’ve achieved that :-).

Now, let’s get onto the money details for the month!

Notes on Making Money for August and September 2018

August and September were decent months for overall total household income. They were a bit on the lower side because my wife took several weeks off for vacation with the kids and her parents which came out to Oregon to visit.

Total side income for the two months as also pretty inline with where it has been trending for the past six months. No new records, but dividends plus MoneyAhoy.com income averaged just shy of $4,000 monthly. Not too bad!!!

Our goal for 2018 has been to hit over $2,000 a month in side-income. We were able to annihilate that goal with a total two-month combined income of $7,756.

This $7,756 was comprised of:

$3,367 – Dividends
$4,389 – MoneyAhoy.com income

As you can see, both dividends and MoneyAhoy.com side income were strong for these two months.

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. So far we’ve been able to beat this goal each and every month. I was nervous there for a bit, but it has not been too difficult.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $7,756 in side-income for the months of August and 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:

Investment Dividends – $3,367 (Symbols: PEP, INTC, JNK, BND, VNQ)
How to start an LLC for Your Small Business – $2,225
Sponsored Posts – $1,330 (see how to get a sponsored posts on your website for more info)
ShareASale.com – $300 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
Youtube – $275
Amazon Affiliates – $89
Advertisements in sidebar – $75
MyFinance end of post ads – $46
SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $32
Google Adsense – $16
Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – $2
How to Start Your Own Blog – $0
TOTAL = $7,756

Very good results across the board to me. As you can see, there is pretty diversified income from several different streams. This is important for stability to not put all your eggs in one basket when making money online. Some income sources can dry up without much warning, so you can understand why diversification is important.

Did you notice that monthly dividend graph slowly increasing? That’s because we are continually investing each and every month! We are at the point now where we are averaging a bit over $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 August and September 2018

Money saving for the months of August and September was pretty good if I do say so myself. We’ve been focusing on trimming back our monthly routine expenses, and did an OK job of keeping our non-routine expenses in check (expect for one item I’ll detail below). We were able to get our routine expenses for September the lowest they’ve been in six month which is great! Our overall savings rate for these past two months averaged 59% – pretty good :-). With family visiting in August, that drove expenses up a bit with more groceries, eating out, hotels, and gas but things didn’t get too out of control.

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

$1,116 – We returned our sectional couch to WayFair as they discontinued the end chaise before we could receive that piece! We had six months of headaches waiting for our sectional and finally pulled the plug with Wayfair. Never again with that company!!! So, we bought a sectional that is locally made in Oregon. This was a bit more expensive, but it will actually fit our needs better and support the Oregon economy.
$296 – Getting license plates and registration for my wife’s van.
$120 – Birthday presents for my wife’s b-day.
$116 – Family picture (we haven’t had one done is 2-3 years).
$105 – Soccer registration for our daughter.
$78 – Beachbody 3-day Refresh for my wife to try out.

Notes on Investing for August and September 2018

For the months of August and September, I continued to keep things simple and invest all the money 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 why not right?

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 Snap Chat (down over 90% at this point since their IPO). I do think I may buy some shares of a company that I use which offer great services such as Spotify. I use this basically every day, so I think it may be a good long-term investment. 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 :-).

Actions Plans for October and November 2018

We did well completing all of the goals for August and September, so I think I will keep these goals on the easier side just to ensure I can do well to achieve them again. It’s always nice to get energized by good momentum. Here are the goals I’m setting for October and November:

October and November 2018 Goals

Publish 5 regular posts per month for MoneyAhoy.com
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
Make over $2,000 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
Post one video on my Youtube channel
Publish 2 new posts on YourSmallBusinessCoach.com

Other Points of Interest

If you missed any of our articles for the month of August or September, you can check out here:

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 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.
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 $65K 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 $88K with all the research and tips this blog has helped me to implement! Starting your own blog can truly be a life changing experience!

The post August and September 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

June and July 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report

Derek Chamberlain — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 19:01:15 +0000

Article from MoneyAhoy.com

June and July 2018 Money Report

We are way, way late with this, but the June and July Monthly Blogging Income and Money Report is finally ready for your reading pleasure! We have been publishing these monthly updates for the past five years – and we are still at it for many more to come. Check out this report to learn all about our money making, money saving, and investing for the moths of June and July.

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

Actions Plans for June and July 2018

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

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

Publish 5 regular posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- Complete – we published a bunch of articles for the months of June and July which helped us reach this goal.
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- Complete – I was able to get this in each and every day, so I kept chain unbroken
Make over $2,000 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- Complete – we knocked this one out of the park! The total combined income for the past two months is $11,333. Much more on that below.
Review the book: Wealth by Virtue by Chad Gordon
- No Progress – I did not take the time to review this book. It was great and helpful, but I fear I’e gone so long without reviewing it that I may just have to let this one go :-(.
Post two videos on my Youtube channel
- No Progress – I did not take the time to post any new videos. My plan is to make a new video on how to start your own LLC – I just need to jump in there and do it!

As you can see, we did not do that great in terms of goals for June and July. There were a couple longer terms things I wanted to take care of that I didn’t get to. You win some and you lose some I guess!

Now, let’s get onto the money details for the month!

Notes on Making Money for June and July 2018

June and July were fanstasic months for our money-making performance. June racked up the second highest total combined monthly income on record, and July wasn’t too bad either! These two months put together were well above the 6-month moving average, so I’m very pleased with that performance. Our goal for 2018 has been to hit over $2,000 a month in side-income. We were able to crush that goal with a total two-month combined income of $11,333.

This $11,333 was comprised of:

$7,351 – Dividends
$3,983 – MoneyAhoy.com income

As you can see, dividends were super-strong for these two months. That was mostly due to nearly all the stocks we own paying a dividend in June. MoneyAhoy income was also very nice for the two-month period.

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 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. So far we’ve been able to beat this goal each and every month. I was nervous there for a bit, but it has not been too difficult.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $11,333 in side-income for the month of June and July. 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 – $7,351 (Symbols: PEP, INTC, JNK, BND, EFA, EEM, VBKVTI, VNQ)
How to start a LLC for Cheap – $1,801
Sponsored Posts – $1,090 (see how to get sponsored posts on your blog for more info)
Youtube – $233
ShareASale.com – $200 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
Amazon Affiliates – $76
Advertisements in sidebar – $75
SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $50
MyFinance end of post ads – $50
Google Adsense – $14
Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – <$2
How to Start Your Own Blog – $0
TOTAL = $11,333

As you can see, dividends made a huge difference for the two months. The article about how to start your own LLC continues to do well as well as the article about how to save money on your dog’s heartworm medicine. YouTube income was pretty steady, and I did get a couple of affiliate commissions on my article for how to get your own 1800 number.

The plan, as always, is to 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. The power of compound interest is an awesome thing!!

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 June and July 2018

Money saving for the month of June and July was decent. We had several large expenses for the month including a new, used van for my wife. We have been saving up for the van for nearly two years, and we finally pulled the trigger. I didn’t really count this in the numbers as we paid 100% cash for it and had been saving for it all that time. So, our overall savings rate for the months of June and July was 49%. As mentioned earlier, our routine expenses are going to be higher each month going forward as we moved into a more expensive home compared to our home in Georgia. Sadly, homes in our area in Oregon run about twice as much as comparable ones in Georgia L.

For the month of June, we were able to get our expenses below the 6-month moving average which was a good sign. Now that we were solidly in Summer, daycare costs helped to spring July way high. Also, we went on vacation in July, so that led to much higher expenses in this month. We also decided to keep the old “junker” van for a while to haul our bikes and kayaks around, but we had to replace the timing belt on it. Not cheap!!

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

$773 – timing belt replacement on our old van.
$130 – Tripple A (AAA) renewel. There are tons of remote places we drive through in Oregon, and we feel it is worth the money and peace of mind to be a AAA member. We haven’t had to use AAA service yet, but it’s basically just like safety insurance.
$125 – My wife got me a new grill for Father’s Day. We had to leave our old one in Georgia because it was basically disintegrating! This one is pretty run-of-the-mill which is great! Who needs one of those crazy $500+ stainless steel grills? It just sits there collecting dust 99% of the time.
$45 – Spent about this much on the Steam Summer Sale for computer games. I got a bunch of deals, and we had a couple point-and-click adventure games for the family to play on vacation.

So, we had about $26,000 saved in our new van fund, but we only ended up spending $20,400 on the new, used van. So, we rolled a bunch of that extra money just back into our normal savings. We got a 2015 white Toyota Sienna with ~37,000 miles. That seemed like a pretty average price to pay, and we are happy with it so far. I’m writing this book while we’re driving in our old van now with 243,000 miles on it as we’re driving for a bike trip with 4 bikes on the back. So, by keeping the old van it is helping us to keep miles off of the newer van and we can beat the hell out of this older one without worrying too much about it. It costs about $16 a month to keep the old van on the insurance, so that isn’t too much damage!

Notes on Investing for June and July 2018

For the months of June and July, we kept things simple and invested all the money 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 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 crypto-currency or anything. I do think I may buy some shares of companies that I use which offer great services such as DropBox or Spotify, but just a little bit of $$$ with an idea that I would hold onto these stocks for decades. 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 :-).

Actions Plans for August and September 2018

We did sorta bad with our goals for the month of June and July, so I would like to try and keep the goals for August and Septermber a bit easier. Here are the goals I’m setting for August and September:

August and September 2018 Goals

Publish 5 regular posts per month for MoneyAhoy.com
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
Make over $2,000 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
Post one video on my Youtube channel
Finish up new website (more to come on this soon!)

Other Points of Interest

We had a chance to have my parents visit and my wife’s parents visit in July, so that was nice to see those guys.

If you’ve been following along with our couch we ordered from Wayfair in April, well we still don’t have the final piece!!! The right-hand-facing chaise was delivered, but it had 4 or 5 holes in the fabric that were the size of a thumb. Crazy! So, we are set to get a replacement at the end of September. That would mark 5 months between when we ordered the sectional and when we have the whole thing in our home. This assumes, of course, that Wayfair doesn’t screw it up again! I think this is my one and only experience in using them for anything…

If you missed any of our articles for the month of June or July, you can check out here:

You Can Make Money Online Too!

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.
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 $60K 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 $84K with all the research and tips this blog has helped me to implement! Starting your own blog can truly be a life changing experience!

The post June and July 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

May 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report

Derek Chamberlain — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 13:52:29 +0000

Article from MoneyAhoy.com

May 2018 Money Report

The May Monthly Blogging Income and Money Report is now ready for your reading enjoyment. We’ve have been publishing these monthly updates for the past five years now – and we are still at it! Check out the report to learn all about our money making, money saving, and investing adventures for the month of May.

Actions Plans for May 2018

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

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

Publish 4 regular posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- Complete – I knocked out 4 total posts for the month of May.
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- Complete – I was able to hit the exercise goal for the month. My wife and I also started walking for ~45mins most evenings to get some extra calorie burning in!
Make over $2,000 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- Complete – We made $2,318 in total side income for the month of May.
Review the book: Wealth by Virtue by Chad Gordon
- No Progress – I did not get around to reviewing this book for the monty of May. I will see if I can get this done for June.

We did OK for hitting our goals for the month of May. I’m a bit disappointed that I did not make the time to review the Wealth by Virtue book, but I hope to get to this in June.

Now, let’s get onto the money details for the month!

Notes on Making Money for May 2018

May was an OK month in the money-making department. We had decent side income and a pretty routine income from our normal day jobs. Our total income for the month was below the 6-month moving average and the lowest since January, but we were still able to hit our side income goals once we neared he end of the month!

Side-income for May was $2,318. This was comprised of:

$1,559 – MoneyAhoy.com income
$759 – dividends

Dividends were light for the month of May as you can see. But, dividends should pick up nicely in June by several thousand dollars. MoneyAhoy income was pretty much just avreage for the month with nothing really out of the ordinary.

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 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. It is a large stretch, but I think with enough hard work we can hit it more often than we miss it. For the month of May, we were able to hit the goal. I was nervous there for a bit, but we have now hit the goal each and every month for 2018 so far!

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $2,318 in side-income for the month of May. 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:

Steps to quickly start your own business online for cheap – $908
Monthly Investment Dividends – $759 (JNK, BND)
Sponsored Posts – $339 (see how to get sponsored posts on your blog for more info)
Youtube – $134
Amazon Affiliates – $111
SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $34
MyFinance end of post ads – $25
Google Adsense – $9
ShareASale.com – $0 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
Advertisements in sidebar – $25
How to Start Your Own Blog – $0
Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – <$1
TOTAL = $1,559

As mentioned, dividends were weak for the month – this was expected. The article on how to start your own business did well for the month. Youtube income and Amazon Affiliate income also saw a very nice jump. No new monthly records, but a very nice amount none the less!

The plan as always is to 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.

Notes on Money Saving for May 2018

Money saving for the month of May was not so good. We had several large expenses for the month, but we still managed to squeak out a total 59% savings for the month. Our routine expenses are going to be higher each month going forward as we moved into a more expensive home compared to our home in Georgia. Sadly, homes in our area in Oregon run about twice as much as comparable ones in Georgia L.

As you can see, routine expenses are higher than they have been for a very long time. Expenses are also running higher because the kids getting out of school and having to foot the bill for daycare and summer camps. I may also have mentioned this last month, but our health insurance monthly costs are also going up by 47%!!! Not fun!

Routine expenses were also pretty high as we need to purchase several items for our new home. Hopefully we’ll get most of that completely taken care of in the next month and that will level out. I counted smaller items for the home as routine expenses and categorized some of the really large expenses as non-routine just to better track them.

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

$2,232 – new couch sectional from Wayfair. We replaced our two couches that have lasted us about ~13 years. We were questioning if we should even move the couches to Oregon with us, because they were in pretty bad shape from general wear and tear and dogs chewing some holes in them (yes to read that right).
$315, $200, $150 – basketball camps for the kids and wrestling camp for our son.
$270 – ping pong table plus the delivery fee. We had ordered one through Walmart and went to pick it up, but it was damaged. So we ordered another one to have it delivered, but that one was also damaged! On the third try, we actually got one delivered that wasn’t messed up.
$100 – Stuff from Amazon for our new home.

We now have a total of $25,131 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 two years now, and we are really close to getting a new van for my wife. Her van has ~242,000 miles on it right now, and it is still going strong! Now that we have a home and have settled in, we are starting to search seriously for one. I’m actually typing this article up now while we are on the way to check one out. We’ll see if we can get lucky and find a good deal.

Notes on Investing for May 2018

For the month of May we invested in the Real Estate exchange traded fund (ETF) VNQ. VNQ is the Vanguard Fund Real Estate Fund ETF and pays an annual 4.6% dividend. It is basically like investing in commercial real estate with much of the appreciation coming from lease payments that roll into dividends and capital appreciation.

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 crypto-currency or anything (which are continuing to take a huge hit by the way). 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 :-).

Actions Plans for June 2018

We did so-so with our goals for the month of May, and I would like to try and improve a bit for June. Here are the goals I’m setting for June:

June 2018 Goals

Publish 5 regular posts for MoneyAhoy.com
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
Make over $2,000 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
Review the book: Wealth by Virtue by Chad Gordon
Post two videos on my Youtube channel

Other Points of Interest

We had a very normal month without anything really out of the ordinary to write home about.

I mentioned up above that we paid quite a bit for a new couch sectional from Wayfair. Well so far, that has been a complete disaster!! We ordered the sectional on April 16^th, and we are still waiting for it to arrive correctly. They lost 3 of the 5 pieces, and the chaise they delivered does not match the couch side piece! Then when correcting the order, they ordered the wrong thing again. So, hopefully we will have everything correct and to us by mid-July – three months after our initial order!

If you missed any of our articles for the month of May, you can check out here:

You Can Make Money Online Too!

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.
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 $58K 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 $80K with all the research and tips this blog has helped me to implement! Starting your own blog can truly be a life changing experience!

The post May 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

The Best Ways for Online Companies to Attract New Customers

Derek Chamberlain — Wed, 23 May 2018 13:44:57 +0000

Article from MoneyAhoy.com

The Best Ways for Online Companies to Attract New Customers

Are you looking to start a new online company, or even just improve a pre-existing one? This article will help you to maximize your success in doing so. There are plenty of simple things you can do to increase your reach and bring customers and clients flooding in. Here are just a few examples:

Social Media Marketing

It seems obvious, but social media is clearly a potent tool for making your brand more visible. The sheer number of people who have become Instagram influencers is evidence enough of the availability of many diverse audiences all looking for something to follow.

However, overnight social media success is not guaranteed. It requires time and persistence to make an impression and build a following – you need to be able to communicate often and well, whilst never allowing your message to become stale or repetitive.

Promotional Offers

People always love what they can get for free. If you can convince people that any free product they’re getting is worth getting again, then you have created a means of entering them into your sales funnel and thus giving you more profit. A strong example of this is the way that Oddschecker lists a wide range of free spins with no deposit to new customers for companies like William Hill or 888casino. Once your new customers are persuaded by the strength of your products, they’ll be more amenable to spending more on better products you offer.

Strong Looks

Customers won’t stay in a store if they can’t stand the way it looks. Just as a shop’s layout plays a key role in its appeal, so too does an online company’s website matter in terms of keeping people interested. There are plenty of online companies out there, so this is an important factor: you need to combine form and function – in other words, you need to make sure your site is easy to use but nice to visit at the same time.

Referral Guarantee

This step is all about garnering word of mouth through your customers, which means that they organically market your company to their friends and family by having a positive experience from it. There are two main ways to do this. One is to give new customers a unique code which they can pass on to someone they think would like the product. This code guarantees the new customer a discount on their first purchase. You can also offer larger discounts to influencers to promote your product, as they will have larger followings beyond immediate friends and family.

Great Customer Service

If customers have a strong customer service experience, particularly one that starts from a complaint, they are likely to recommend the company, because it has shown its willingness to provide a good service to a customer, even though that customer may not have been entirely convinced by the product when they first looked for support.

There are many more ways that you can promote your company to the best of your ability, but these are as good a place as any to make a start.

The post The Best Ways for Online Companies to Attract New Customers appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

March and April 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report

Derek Chamberlain — Fri, 11 May 2018 21:00:48 +0000

Article from MoneyAhoy.com

March and April 2018 Money Report

We are back again for the March and April monthly Blogging Income and Money Report. We’ve been publishing these for the past five years now – and we are still going strong! Check it out to learn all about our money making, money saving, and investing for the months of March and April.

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

This report is 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 March and April 2018 to see how we did:

Actions Plans for March and April 2018

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

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

Publish 4 regular posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- Some Progress – I had 3 posts for the month of March and 4 posts for the month of April. So, just one post short
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- Complete – I was able to get my exercise in pretty well over the past two months. No concern here!
Make over $2,000 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- Complete – I was able to make a combined $8,284 over the past two months in side-income (blog + dividends)
Finish reading the book: Wealth by Virtue by Chad Gordon
- Complete – this was an awesome wealth building book, and I plan to do a review on it soon. If you are new to personal finance, I highly recommend you check it out.

Overall we did very well hitting our goals for the past two months. We ran pretty short of time, so that’s the main reason why we didn’t get the post count quite as high as we would have liked. Other than that – we did great!

Now, let’s get onto the money details for the past two months!

Notes on Making Money for March and April 2018

March and April were pretty good months overall in the making-money department. We had some very nice side-income comprised of a healthy amount of MoneyAhoy income and dividends. We did not set any new records for side-income as we had been over some of the previous recent months, but I am very happy with our results.

Side-income for March was $5,223 and for April was $3,062. This was comprised of:

$4,094 – MoneyAhoy.com income
$4,190 – dividends

I love the end of quarters when many of the stock dividends all stack up and we get a nice juicy monthly dividend bump! MoneyAhoy income was pretty average for the two months other than one nice affiliate bonus.

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 less than $4 a month!

Our 2018 monthly money making goal is to hit over $2,000 each and every month of side-income money. It is a large stretch, but I think with enough hard work we can hit it more often than we miss it. For March and April we were able to clear the bar. So, four months down and just eight to go!

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $8,284 in side-income for the months of March and April. 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 – $4,190 (JNK, INTC, PEP, SPY, BND, VBK, VTI, VNQ)
How to Start a Business Online in Less than 10 Minutes – $2,927
Sponsored Posts – $420 (see how to get sponsored posts on your blog for more info)
Youtube – $269
ShareASale.com – $100 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
Amazon Affiliates – $84
Advertisements in sidebar – $75
SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $68
MyFinance end of post ads – $68
How to Start Your Own Blog – $65
Google Adsense – $18
Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – <$1
TOTAL = $8,284

Dividends were a slam dunk for the past two months, and I also earned an affiliate bonus with LegalZoom. Sponsored posts were a bit on the weak side and seem to be trailing off at the moment. No new monthly records, but a very nice amount none the less!

Notes on Money Saving for March and April 2018

Savings are back to reality! We had our first home payment due in April, and it is much higher than our old home. Such is the reality of living in the area of Oregon that we’re in. Homes are almost three times as expensive! This caused our routine expenses to shoot up to what will likely be the new normal. Another routine cost that will be increasing is our health insurance. We found out that it is going up 47%!

Routine expenses were also pretty high as we need to purchase several items for our new home. Hopefully we’ll get most of that completely taken care of in the next month or two and that will level out.

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

$402 – shelves for garage (6 of them)
$240 – took a trip to Portland and stayed in an AirBnb
$181 – final payment for our storage unit
$150 – car battery – got the surprise one morning that my car wouldn’t start!
$142 – our daughter’s birthday present and Easter presents
$124 – new electric lawnmower. Our old mower would NOT fit on the moving truck when we left Georgia
$110 – dentist for my wife and me
$60 – renewed our PO box

We now have a total of $24,131 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 ~241,000 miles on it right now, and it is still going strong! Now that we have a home and are beginning to get settled in, it is getting about time to pick out a replacement van. We’ll see if we can get lucky and find a good deal.

Our overall savings rate for the two months was an average of 47%. This is decent, but not great. Hopefully we can improve this a bit going forward.

Notes on Investing for March and April 2018

We finally got back on track with investing after a 6-month hiatus. We stopped investing for several months to build up our cash reserves for a down payment on our new home in Oregon. Now that this is fully squared away, we can get back to our normal routine of investing each and every month.

For the months of March and April we invested in the High Yield Junk Bond JNK and The Real Estate ETF VNQ. JNK is the Barclays Capital High Yield Bond ETF and pays an annual 5.58% dividend. VNQ is the Vanguard Fund Real Estate Fund ETF and pays an annual 4.6% dividend.

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 crypto-currency or anything (which are taking a huge hit here recently by the way). 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 :-).

Actions Plans for May 2018

We did pretty well with our goals for March and April, and I would like to try and keep the momentum going. Here are the goals I’m setting for May:

May 2018 Goals

Publish 4 regular posts for MoneyAhoy.com
Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
Make over $2,000 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
Review the book: Wealth by Virtue by Chad Gordon

Other Points of Interest

We had a pretty normal March and April, and we were quite busy unpacking in our new home.

We did have a couple of pretty good articles for the March and Aprils months – you can check out here if you happened to miss any:

You Can Make Money Online Too!

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 $54K 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 $76K 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!

The post March and April 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com