eBiz Facts

I was paid $27,399 in affiliate commissions in May, as reported here: https://ebizfacts.com/finance-reports/may-2021/

That surpassed my previous high of $21,641 last December and up from $17,713 in April.

I started into affiliate marketing back in 2018 and this has been my progress...

As you can see, income is trending upwards in general but it's a bit unpredictable from one month to the next. This is mainly due to some affiliates paying on an irregular schedule.

Including other sources of income, my business earned $27,683 in May, which is the most it has ever earned in a single month.

Expenses were $5,106. Which leaves a profit of $22,577 for the month, also a new high 🥳

I was paid $21,641 in affiliate commissions in December, as reported here: https://ebizfacts.com/finance-reports/december-2020/

That surpassed my previous high of $18,236 back in July, and it was a big jump from the $11,386 earned in affiliate commissions in November.

Main reasons for the big jump:

– I was paid some overdue affiliate payments from November.

– Had a couple of bonus payments come through as well.

– My SEO traffic continues to grow nicely, which tends to result in more revenue down the line.

Including other sources of income, my business earned $21,979 in December, which is the most it has ever earned in a single month.

I expect my income to be down a bit in January, but hopefully I'll still hit the $15k mark.

I know that's not a lot of money for some, but it's a ton for my business.

I still made a profit, thanks to income of $11,745.

But expenses were up from only $2,499 the month before ...that's a 3.6x increase!

Two reasons for the big jump:

1. My 6-week-old MacBook Pro was stolen and I had to spend another $2k to replace it.

2. I spent $3.7k on a year of media liability insurance.

Regarding the latter, I’ve had 3 separate legal threats this year and one cease and desist letter. A key part of my business is publishing reviews of online courses. I try to be completely honest with my reviews, which some course owners don't appreciate.

I plan to continue writing honest reviews so decided I’d best get me some insurance to protect against SLAPP lawsuits.

My full finance report for the month is here: https://ebizfacts.com/finance-reports/november-2020/

Last week I published the 97th edition of my weekly newsletter. And last night I crossed over the 8000 subscriber mark.

I haven't focused much on growing the newsletter since it's not the main part of the business, but I'm adding about 100 subscribers per week organically now.

This time last year I had about 3,800 subscribers so it's doubled in 12 months and only seems to be picking up steam.

The newsletter is a weekly list of 5-10 interesting tips/ideas/examples related to online business.

You can check it out here: https://ebizfacts.com/subscribe/

I was paid $18,236 in affiliate commissions in July, as reported here: https://ebizfacts.com/finance-reports/july-2020/

That was a massive jump from the $8339 earned the previous month, a 218% increase.

Including other sources of income, my business earned $18,562 in July, which is by far the most it has ever earned in a single month.

I credit the success to a few things:

– Traffic boost since the latest Google core algorithm update

– SEO tweaks and improvements from earlier this year starting to pay off

– Newest review content starting to rank higher in Google

– More people looking for info related to making money online during the pandemic

– A lot of luck

I was paid $8339 in affiliate commissions in June, as reported here: https://ebizfacts.com/finance-reports/june-2020/

That's almost $2000 more than my previous best in February.

Feels like I've achieved escape velocity with it now. The average income for the past 6 months is over $5k, and July is shaping up to be epic.

I wrote up the story of starting eBiz Facts and growing it to more than $4199/month in revenue (six month average).

Here's the piece on Starter Story: https://www.starterstory.com/how-to-make-money-online

Key quote:

"Regarding affiliate marketing specifically, don't believe anyone who tells you it's easy. The people who do are usually trying to sell you a course."

I was paid $6484 in affiliate commissions in February, as reported here: https://ebizfacts.com/finance-reports/february-2020/

A good chunk of that income was overdue affiliate payments from December and January, so that skewed things a bit.

But it worked out that my average affiliate income for the four months of November to February was $3818, which I was quite happy with.

I earned $4015 in affiliate commissions in November, as reported here: https://ebizfacts.com/finance-reports/november-2019/

This was a nice bounce-back from the dark days of September and October. I was thinking I might have to go back to freelancing at the end of the year but these November payments pretty much assured that I could stay working on eBiz Facts full-time.

I'd been running eBiz Facts on my old ndoherty.com domain for several months, and after seeing my traffic from Google plummet at the start of September I figured it was a good a time as any to finally move the site to the ebizfacts.com domain I'd bought several months earlier.

At this time I also switched my hosting from Dreamhost to Kinsta, hoping for a speed boost.