Why Am I Publishing This?
Why not? My goal is to create something of my own and create a passive income stream in the process. This also allows me to continue writing and more importantly, reflect back on the month to see what I did or didn’t do so well. Lastly, I have read other income reports such as SmartPassiveIncome, amongst others, and I like to see what they have tried. It is a form of motivation for me and I hope that this can be one for someone else.
About ApexThis
I’ve had ApexThis domain for a number of years now. Originally as a car forum for a group of friends until it went dormant. I have resurrected this domain this year as I found a new focus in life. Jan 28, 2015 my Welcome post went live.
The focus of this blog is about Life, Tech and Food. I share what has helped me and could help you. I share things that I do to help me be better as a person or to accomplish a task more efficiently.
ApexThis as a whole will serve as my media publishing arm for my creative writing in short stories, ebooks, music, apps, audio and video content. Some things may work and others may not, but I will give them all a try.
September 2015 Finance Report
Disclaimer: Any income reported will only be reported as “cash” in hand. If it did not deposit into my account, or if I didn’t cash a check, then it does not count as income. Additionally, income will only be reported for ApexThis business and not for personal income. I may discuss side hustles for additional side income, but only income in which I represent ApexThis will be counted.
Income Report
Google Music – $3.43
I have self promoted this recently here, but in September I released music for an old video game I attempted to create when I was in high school as well as a recent track I produced. You can read more about that here. I didn’t really push this, but I’ve garnered a small sale of a few songs. I attribute this to a possible purchase from a friend.
Expense Report
As stated, all expenses incurred since the site relaunch in Jan 2015 will be listed below and then normally going forward. That means that what you see below is the bulk of start-up costs.
Genesis Framework – $59.95
I decided to purchase this framework and over time build out my own themes to use on ApexThis and Admins of Atlassian.
Hours Worked
Time Logged – 40h
I did not do this earlier, but in September I decided to track my time. I wish I would have done this in August. I believe that I may have eclipsed this number in August considering the massive ramp up I needed to do.
Overall
- Total Income – $3.43
- Total Expense – $59.95
- Total Loss – $56.52
What Happened This Month?
Advertising
Google Adwords – I utilized a free $100 coupon that focused on my budget series and my work planning post. It was also great to learn how to use Adwords and eventually key word planning. The coupon had expired, thus I disabled adwords in September.
Bing Ads – Late August I utilized a free $100 coupon for Bing Ads. The first day I got 137 clicks. In reviewing the data, Bing had more clicks than Google. I attribute this to less competition on that platform. As with Adwords, I am continuing to learn about using these platforms for advertising. Bing Ads coupon was used up entirely in September and was disabled.
Podcast
AoA – The Admins of Atlassian podcast launched in August and completed the month with a total of 13 downloads. For September downloads increased giving a total 97 downloads for the month. I have lots of content to add to this site and to talk about. It will take some time to build this site out with what I have planned and ultimately I may change priorities in giving the podcast my primary attention.
Website
I purchased, tweaked and applied the Genesis framework to my websites. I will work updates and modifications in an agile fashion versus a big bang. Thus far, I like the changes and the framework. The site response is better and I was able to disable and remove plugins that I believe were having a performance impact. I will continue to learn this framework and test theme changes and tweaks. I already know that I must balance my time with this as it is certainly something I can get lost doing. Overall, I think this will be a good investment and something fun to do.
What’s Next?
Currently, I am working on ways to increase my natural search traffic. This entails better keyword planning, post structuring, and social media. These things have definitely slowed for me in September but I am hoping to pick things up over the next two months and have a better outline of the direction I want to take.