January and February 2018 Money Report
So – I’ve been a bit busy (read why in the below)! But – the January and February Blogging Income and Money Report is ready for you to check out! Have a read to learn all about my money making, money saving, and investing for the months of January and February. In this blogging income report, I will show you how I make $250+/hour blogging in my limited spare time. I also show you how you can start blogging on your own and start making money for yourself!
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 January and February 2018 to see how we did:
Actions Plans for January 2018
Here is a quick review of how we did with our goals for the month (note – I didn’t make goals for February):
Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress
- Publish 6 regular posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- COMPLETE – I had 15 total posts for January and February, so I did very well here!
- Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- COMPLETE – I was able to find to exercise each and every day!
- Make over $2,000 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- COMPLETE – Side income was $8,665 total for January and February!!
- Read the first one-hundred pages of the book: Wealth by Virtue by Chad Gordon
- COMPLETE – I got to page ~250 in the Wealth by Virtue book. It’s great so far!
Since I am combining the January and February reports, I sorta just doubled the goals :-). Anyhow, I did very well with each of them for these months.
Now, let’s get onto the money details for the past two months!
Notes on Making Money for January and February 2018
January and February were great months overall for making money. We had a very nice side income thanks to MoneyAhoy.com, and my wife started her new job so now we have two steady incomes! We did not set any new records as we did in previous months, but I am very happy with how we did.
Side-income for was right on the 6-month moving average and was $4,497 for January and $4,168 for February. This was compromised of:
- $6,687 – MoneyAhoy.com income
- $1,778 – dividends
Dividends were on the lighter side for both months, but they should kick up here in March I believe. MoneyAhoy.com income was boosted quite a bit due to a website that I created for a client: Made4Entertainment.com – go check it out now!
For the MoneyAhoy.com income for the month, 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 income goal for 2017 was to make over $1,000 each month of side-income money. I am kicking things up a notch in 2018 with a goal 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.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $8,665 in side-income for the months of January and February. 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:
- How to Start Your Own Business Online – $2,511
- Creating the website Made4Entertainment.com – $2,250 (using WordPress with Bluehost to create the business website)
- Monthly Investment Dividends – $1,778 (JNK, PEP, SPY, BND)
- Sponsored Posts – $1,175 (see how to get sponsored posts on your blog for more info)
- ShareASale.com – $300 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
- Youtube – $242
- Ad Brokering – $150 (sharing my advertiser contact list with a fellow blogger)
- SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $61
- Amazon Affiliates – $58
- MyFinance end of post ads – $56
- Advertisements in sidebar – $50
- Google Adsense – $19
- Stock Market Investing for Newbies
book – <$1
- TOTAL = $8,665
As you can see, dividends were week for these two months, but MoneyAhoy.com came in strong with some very nice income. With the additional income of creating the client’s website, MoneyAhoy.com income actually hit a new all time high! So, now I have a new high bar I need to work to clear to set a new record down the road!
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.
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 Jan/Feb 2018
So, savings were a bit tricky to manage for January and February as we bought a home in late February! So, we had all kinds of moving expenses (again), had to buy a new fridge, paint, and all those normal new home things. This was offset by the fact that we didn’t have a home mortgage and were basically staying in housing rent free for both months!
Here are some of the larger expenses that we incurred for these past two months:
- $4,948 – the cost to move our stuff across the country using Upack. I didn’t add this into the graph since it was reimbursed by my employer.
- $2,523 – New refrigerator and new paint for each of our bedrooms (had to get two cans each :-(). We also paid to get a 5-year parts and labor warranty. We have always had VERY bad luck with fridges, and these warranties specifically for fridges always seem to put us money ahead.
- $596 – Snowboarding rentals and lessons for the family x3. Turned out my wife and I both injured ourselves pretty bad during lesson #2 :-(.
- $488 – the cost for two months to keep out stuff in climate-controlled storage while we found a house.
- $400 – Cost for a home inspection prior to closing.
- $301 – Cost for Oregon license plates, registration, driver’s license, etc.
- $170 – My wife had to renew her Physical Therapy license in Oregon.
- $170 – My wife enrolled both of our kids in Spring Track.
- $120 – New Costco membership.
- $120 – We auto-renewed the kid’s membership with the online Prodigy math game.
We now have a total of $22,131 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 ~240,000 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 49%. This is pretty good all things considering with all of the expenses we incurred.
Notes on Investing for January and February 2018
With all the craziness of arranging our finances to get ready to purchase a new home, there had been no investing in the stock market for the past ~6-months. The plan was that we would build up our cash reserves to avoid selling any stock and incurring short/long term capital gains taxes. Well, the plan worked and not we are ready to begin routine investing back into the stock market in March.
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 :-).
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 March 2018
We are going to be moving into our new home and unpacking everything. Thus. there will be very little time to devote to the blog in the month of March. So, I will keep the goals pretty light and more realistic.
March 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)
- Finish reading the book: Wealth by Virtue by Chad Gordon
Other Points of Interest
As I mentioned, in was seriously busy in Jan/Feb. Here’s a quick snapshot of all that we had happen:
- Wife and kids drove across the country
- Kids started new school
- Wife started new job
- House hunting
- Bought a home
- Moved some of out stuff into home
- Took snowboarding lessons and both my wife and I injured our coccyx. Her’s is much worse than mine, but I basically couldn’t move around without very bad pain for ~2 weeks afterwards. Her’s is still very painful after one month!
- Created a new website for a client: Made4Entertainment.com
I did manage to get in a couple blog posts for Jan/Feb which you can check out here if you happened to miss any:
- Starting a Software Business? Top 5 Reasons to Automatically Test Your Software
- Finding a Saving Method that Suits Your Needs
- Security Measures that can Help an Online Business
- 10 Cheapest US Cities to Live In
- December 2017 – Blogging Income and Money Report
- How Best To Navigate Overchoice On the Internet
- 3 of My Favorite Online Income Sources
- 3 Ways to Make Shopping Your eCommerce Store More Intuitive
- 000webhost – A Quick Review
- Looking for an Accounting or Finance Job?
- 6 Steps To Getting A Car Loan For the First Time
- Simple Ways to Maintain a Debt-Free Lifestyle Forever
- 3 Pros of Using GovDoc to Start Your Business
- Discover the Easy Way to Write a Blog
- Freight Factoring Can Help You Grow Your Trucking Enterprise
You Can Make Money Online Too!
Are you interested in making over $250/hour by running a simple blog?!? I thought you might be! I truly believe that anyone can make money online if they are willing to put in the a bit of time and effort to make it a success. There are just a couple of simple things you need to do to start on your journey toward online success:
- Start your own online business – You can start your own business online in just a matter of minutes. Check out my guide on how to start and setup your own LLC online. I show you how, in less than 6 minutes, to form your own business as an LLC! This article will teach you all the benefits of owning your own LLC for your business versus just skipping ahead to step #2.
- Start your own Blog – The next step is to start your own blog. Whether you will be blogging or running some other type of online business, you will need to setup a blog for your business. I show you step by step how to start a WordPress blog on your own with Bluehost! If you have never run a blog before or don’t fancy yourself a writer, don’t worry. It is really simple, and the learning curve is very friendly.
I started MoneyAhoy.com just over three years ago without knowing the first thing about blogging. In that amount of time, I’ve made over $50K 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 $73K 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!
