Getting It All Started

This is the first monthly report detailing my online business activities. As you’ll see below, the profit/loss report isn’t looking too good. I’m not worried though because I’ve only just started.

Much of January was spent just setting things up. In fact January marked a major milestone for me as I cut my work hours down to four days a week. Late last year, I arranged with my employer to take Fridays to devote to my online business. I’m working as a contractor, which makes it much easier because I only get paid the hours I work anyway. There’s no fussing about with HR organizing pay cuts and adjusting all the little details.

This gave me the extra time in January to get three web sites up and running, including this one. Not all are completed, I’ve still got to find some affiliate programs to run on some of them.

Income/Expense

January 2008 didn’t see much in the way of income, however the expenses are still there. I made a grand total of fifteen cents, and the expenses were around thirty one dollars. From a Profit/Loss perspective, January was a loss. From a learning perspective, it was a real gain.

Income

• Adsense: $0.13
• CPM Ads: $0.02
• Total: $0.15

Expenses

• Hosting: $19.92
• Domains: $12.06
• Total: $31.98

Grand Total: -$31.83

I’m using two web hosts at the moment, Site 5 for my gaming blog, and Dreamhost for the niche sites including Live Free and Blog. Hosting costs are given on a per month basis, so I’m just including the full monthly costs for the main blog on each account.

Domains on the other hand are yearly costs, and some sites have several domains. LiveFreeAndBlog uses .com, .net, and .info TLDs. So I total up each sites TLD costs and divide by 12 to give my monthly cost. That way the monthly cost is spread out over the year and gives a better idea of the true expenses.

I haven’t done any real promotion yet on the three Dreamhost sites. The game blog has been going well over a year now and is regularly promoted, but not advertised. It’s doing well with over 200 RSS subscribers, and 18000 page views a month, but I’d like it to do better. I see real potential there.

All of the income came from the last few days of January. The Adsense income came from purely organic traffic as the (so far minimal content) of that particular blog brought in some searchers.

Goals For February

Okay. Time to set some goals for February.

I still need to research and develop content for my major niche site - henceforth called Niche Site A. My goal is to have 100 articles on that site by the end of February.

The other niche site (Niche Site B) has enough content for the moment, but I need to research some affiliate programs. I’m not looking at putting Adsense on this one.

I’m also not looking at paying for any promotion in Feb. I’m expecting to dive in with paid promotion in March.

Goals

• Niche Site A - 100 Articles, 300 visitors, 600 page views.
• Niche Site B - All set up with programs
• Game Blog - 250 RSS, 30000 page views, $50 income.
• Generate total of $100 income.
• Minimize expenses.