December 2016 Income/Expense Report
Hey guys! You’re here because you’ve signed up to receive our monthly income & expenses reports.
The primary goal of these income reports is to give you an idea of how we manage our online endeavours, and to give you an indication of how much it costs to live and travel in the countries that we do. We figured they will also be a great motivator for us to keep striving towards bigger numbers in terms of income at the end of every month.
If you’re new to the blog, you’ll see that our main source of income is our content creation agency that we built-up from scratch back in late 2012. You can read more about how we make money online here.
Anyway, let’s get down to business…
The report below is a breakdown of our total income for the month of December 2016 as well as a rundown of our expenses and it also states the profit or loss figure after all is said and done.
If you’d like to see our past Income reports then head on over here to check them out!
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INCOME | |
Content Business | €27,605.1 |
Next Stop Marketing | €2,459.62 |
TOTAL INCOME | €30,064.72 |
EXPENSES | |
BUSINESS | |
Writers | €8,329.89 |
Backlinks | €834 |
Website Upkeep | €17 |
Skype | €20.50 |
TOTAL BUSINESS EXPENSES | €9,201.39 |
MONTHLY BILLS | |
Accommodation | €70 |
Phone/Internet | €45.10 |
Car rent/Insurance/Work | €250 |
Hostgator | €11.50 |
Bluehost | €8.15 |
Freshbooks Accounting subscription | €37.20 |
Netflix | €9 |
Google apps account | €20 |
Mailchimp | €14 |
Dropbox Pro | €10 |
Spotify | €10 |
SEMrush subscription | €9.90 |
Audible | €10 |
Ranktrackr | €10 |
Bananatag | €11.70 |
Press Releases | €95 |
SEO Project management software | €135 |
TOTAL MONTLY BILLS | €756.55 |
FOOD/DRINK | |
Eating Out | €218.69 |
Groceries | €221.65 |
Cafes | €90.11 |
TOTAL FOOD&DRINK EXPENSES | €530.45 |
EVERYDAY EXPENSES | |
Fuel for Car | €90 |
Entertainment | €32.20 |
Gym membership | €12 |
TOTAL EVERYDAY EXPENSES | €134.2 |
TRAVEL EXPENSES | |
Transport | €91 |
TOTAL TRAVEL EXPENSES | €91 |
MISC EXPENSES | |
Night Out | €502 |
Dental | €155 |
Personal Care | €61 |
Family Gifts | €1159.24 |
Florence | €87 |
Carlo | €95.50 |
Next Stop Marketing | €117 |
TOTAL MISC EXPENSES | €2,176.74 |
Total Income | €30,064.72 |
Total Expenses | -€12,890.33 |
PROFIT/LOSS FOR THE MONTH | +€17,174.39 |
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A very happy new year to all our subscribers. Wishing you all a great 2017.
As the title of the email stated – this will be our last monthly income/expense report that we’ll be sending out!
The reasons for doing so are below.
This report details our income and expenses having worked and lived in Budapest and back home in Boyle (Ireland) for the month of December.
INCOME
We generated a total of €30,064.72 in income for the month.
Last month we had a suspicion that December would crack our previously best month in December 2015 – and thankfully it did!
Needless to say we chunked out a lot of hours on the laptop last month in order to make sure everything went as smoothly as possible.
Thankfully, having processes and systems in place makes everything run as efficiently as possible – so we weren’t stressed about the huge volume of fulfilment that we had to produce.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – our writing team really are our saving grace. We used 27 different writers over the course of the month for bits and pieces.
Most of them read these reports, so I’d like to say on behalf of Florence and myself a massive thank you for the continued work over the duration of the previous 12 months. 🙂
From the table above, you can see we brought in €2,459.62 from “Next Stop Marketing”.
We took on our first 3 clients for our new SEO business; a dentist in Dublin, a landscaper in Vegas and a carpet cleaner in San Francisco.
Our goal for this business in 2017 is to try and take on at least 1 new client each month. It won’t be easy, but we’ve been working hard over the past 6 months to make this happen.
We’re also pretty confident that we can help local businesses make more money.
So if you know of any local business owner that would like to possibly talk to us about how we can help them, then we’d be interested in giving you a referral percentage (if we did manage to strike up a deal).
Definitely contact us if you know someone that may be interested.
EXPENSES
We spent €12,890.33 last month.
Most of that was paying our writers, but you’ll also see a new entry in the form of “backlinks”.
This is part of the work that we’re doing for our new SEO clients. No point in me explaining further about these backlinks as they’re just part of the process when trying to rank a website higher in Google.
Here’s a few notes about some of the expenses throughout the month:
- Dental work – €155
Got a couple of fillings done in Budapest before we left. Budapest is renowned for its cheap, yet high quality dental services.
- Audible – €10
Finally got around listening to audio books. The first one we listened to was Grant Cardone’s “Sell or Be Sold”.
- Press Releases – €95
Another part of the new client on-boarding process that we do.
Positive Month
We had a profit of +€17,174.39 at the end of the month.
The FINAL income report!
You may be wondering why we’re suddenly stopping these reports?
When we started producing these back in May 2015, we had a plan of creating an online course teaching people how to follow the footsteps we took in creating the same online business as we do.
We thought that this course would be finished by the summer of 2016 at the latest.
Alas, with everything else going on and our new direction with the marketing business – the chances of us putting in the time and effort needed to create such a course is basically zero.
So why kill the monthly reports then?
The reason why we opened up our financial records in the first place was to provide some sort of “social proof” that what we do is a sustainable business, and also one that can be replicated.
Without any sort of evidence about how we’ve being able to build up a little business for ourselves, or some sort of financial road map to where we’ve gotten to, then I think we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to trying to sell a course.
So, we decided to pull the plug on the monthly reporting.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Thank You
Florence and I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who subscribed to the reports and for all the emails we received each month either thanking us or asking questions.
We hope you got some sort of insight into the crazy world of running an online business along with the advantages and disadvantages that it can bring.
I’ve enjoyed putting them together over the last year and a half, as it gave me a chance to look back over each month.
We’ll still continue to use YNAB to track our income/expenses going forwards, as it’s a piece of software that has literally changed the way we manage our finances.
Happy new year folks, and thanks again!
Regards,
Carlo & Florence