Income Report – June, 2018
Every month we publish our Income Reports and share exactly what we make on Wallet Squirrel. We do this to hold ourselves accountable plus we’ve gotten really comfortable being transparent about our finances.
Everything we make, we list on these income reports to analyze how we’re doing and what we can do to improve. It’s pretty cool, and fun to see what we make.
What’s New Next Month
I gave a sneak peek to our email list last week, and now want to share the exciting news with everyone here. Our goal has been 80/20 with content creation and marketing. That is hoping to market Wallet Squirrel 80% of our time and 20% on writing new content. However the last 6 months it has been the opposite of 80% of our time writing new articles and only 20% on marketing it.
We’ve thought hard how we’re going to spend more time marketing primarily because most of our web traffic comes from Google. To get 80% of our time on marketing, and grow Wallet Squirrel we need to go down to 1 article a week (these Monday articles) and spend an entire week marketing each article then the next week writing the next one.
Our goal is use this time creating more helpful articles and crush SEO. So we’ll try this for the second half of the year.
What We Did Last Month
Now that we talked about what’s coming, let’s take a moment to recap what we did accomplish last month.
Andrew Articles
- Of course, I started off the month with an Income Report for May. We (Andrew & Adam) each made $124.58 so that was exciting! And we share how we did it with you!
- It was really interesting when I did a 2 year recap review of Lending Club. I invested $300 in Lending Club 2 years ago and recieved about 9% annualized interest. That’s not bad. See how I did it!
- What I learned about life after a legit fire alarm was a memory I wanted to share that really affected my life and what’s important in a minimalistic life.
Adam Articles
- Wow, it’s been 7 years since Adam got married. That’s crazy to think about since I was the one who got ordained and married them. On this anniversary Adam shared what 7 years of marriage has taught him about personal finances.
- He also did an awesome round up of bloggers income in May.
- Adam balances a wife, baby, job, Wallet Squirre, and friends (plus we’re training to do a Tough Mudder). It’s impressive how he balances it all. So he took a stab at sharing how he does it in 5 strategies for a perfectly balanced life.
- After checking Zillow and discovering his home value is rapidly increasing in the Denver market, he asked himself to refinance his mortgage or not?
Income Report – June, 2018
It wasn’t an impressive income for June, but like I said. Hopefully, this increased attention to marketing will help us grow in the upcoming 6 months.
So to recap.
Sources of Income This Month – $74.00
$23.39 – Cashback Credit Card
$8.51 – Interest Checking/Savings Account
$8.50 – Dividends
$8.00 – Wallet Squirrel AdSense
$7.66 – Seeking Alpha Articles
$5.63 – Wallet Squirrel Affiliate Marketing
$4.66 – Robinhood App Affiliate Program
$3.50 – Lending Club
$2.38 – Epic Niche Site Affiliate Marketing
$1.78 – Stock Photography
Where does this money go?
After expenses (hosting/social media manager/etc.) Adam and I split the income each month to use that cash in different ways.
I use that extra cash to invest in my dividend portfolio. Which this last month I’ve bought 2 more shares of IRM. Those two shares will continue to produce annual income for doing nothing. That is pretty cool!
Adam uses his extra cash to help pay down his mortgage to reach a debt free life. This is a great goal and where most people agree your extra money should go each month.
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
I’m glad that you don’t look at how much money you’re making or not making in the moment. Writing quality content and promoting that content is key. I was reading part of a blog recently where it emphasized about writing more content and focusing less on promotion. If you’re going to focus more on anything, it’s writing more content. The more your site has, the more Bing, Google & YaHoO! are going to send you more traffic from search engine results pages, even if you don’t write and publish articles. I used to think the same way in terms of promoting content more vs. publishing new content on the site. If you publish once a day for 2 years consistently and write evergreen content using your smartphone while on the go, you’ll immediately improve SEO and increase back links without asking anyone to link to your blogs.
You’re on the right path by posting content 2x weekly. If you can @ least amp it up to 4x weekly, you’ll notice better results on Alexa. You should have Alexa installed on your web browser so you can monitor your daily SEO health progress and keep a tally of how low your blog drops everyday. This way, you can measure the performance if your blog on a quarterly or semi-annual basis. Hopefully I gave you something to think about and it’ll help you. 🙂
Wallet –
Congrats on the income. Curious – You guys do a TON of investing – I would have assumed that more divvy income would be coming your way, especially on a quarter end. Thoughts on that? Thanks Wallet!
-Lanny
Thanks for sharing this information. It is always interesting to read income reports and get ideas for additional sources of income. Here’s to a great July for you guys!
Way to go guys..Love that your income stream is coming from 10 different sources! Also love the color and graphics in your presentation of the data! Keep it up! Enjoy watching the progress on your personal journeys!
Best wishes and continued success! AFFJ
Stopped by to give you a Friday afternoon shoutout. Excited to see your next monthly blogging income report. Keep your head up & always believe. 🙂
Where do you see yourself in the next 2 years with your blogging side hustle?
Good morning & happy Wednesday. What’s up? 🙂
Not much, trying to launch my start up on Saturday! I’ll share my income report and a little more about my new venture on Saturday as well! I’m getting so close!