March and April 2018 – Blogging Income and 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!

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 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 :-).

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 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:

1. January and February 2018 – Blogging Income and Money Report
2. Understanding the Blockchain Beyond Just Currency
3. Top 15 Tax Deductions for 2018
4. Best Life Insurance Plans – Which one should you Choose?
5. Understanding Your Net Worth and How to Increase It
6. 10 Money Saving Home Hacks You Can Do Right Now
7. Top 10 Reasons to Start a Business Today

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:

1. Start your own online business – You can start your own business online in just a matter of minutes.  Check out my guide on how to start 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.
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!