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April 2019 Income Report: How I Earned $98.91

Welcome to the April 2019 income report!

I am so excited to celebrate not just another increase in monthly earnings, but another SIGNIFICANT increase in monthly earnings.

In case you missed the March report, I earned $26.74 more than I did in February. And in April I earned $40.15 more than I did in March.

I am a BIG fan of this upward trend.

And while I did earn from three sources, you will see that one of those three really blew the other two out of the water, so to speak.

April 2019 Income Report: How I Earned My $98.91

Digital Products:
Content Explosion Workbook: $96.00 – I reported in March that I did not make any sales of my Content Explosion Workbook, but that all turned around in April. For those of you who don’t know, the full price of the ebook is $47, but you can get it on a 49% discount if you sign up for my free, 5-day email course, Content Explosion.

I made a lot of strides during the month of April to get my email course, and therefore the workbook, in front of more eyes, because the key to getting people both onto your email list and purchasing your products is to get more eyes on said opt-ins and products.

Ads:
Google Adsense: $2.87 – Not only did I have an increase in digital product sales, but my ads earnings increased in March as well. As I have spoken about quite often, the key to getting income from ads is TRAFFIC. Always traffic. But the other key is to not have too many ads on your website, because your focus MUST be your content and the value that you provide your audience.

Affiliate Earnings:
Amazon Affiliate: $0.04 – Yes, I made four whole cents from Amazon Affiliates this month. But here’s the thing: four cents is better than no cents! There have been some changes to Amazon Affiliates over the last few weeks, I’ll dive deep into how to be successful when being an Amazon affiliate below.

Swagbucks:
No action from the referral side of my Swagbucks account this month either, but I have played around the website from time to time (mostly while watching TV—it is a good multitasking website). Not only that, but when I’m shopping online (as I do 90% of the time, I’ll compare the Swagbucks cash back offerings to my Ebates cash back offerings, just to see which one gives me the better offer.

Sign up for Swagbucks through my referral link, and you’ll get a 300 SB bonus once you earn 300 SBs.

April 2019 Income Report: May Goals

Do you set goals on a monthly basis? I do, and if you don’t, you should start.

Along with setting those big goals, setting smaller goals—like monthly goals—makes it easier to reach those big goals. If you take things one piece at a time, you’re going to be less intimidated by all the things that it takes to get you to that big goal.

Goals are SO important.

My goals for the month of May include:

• Growing my email list
• Launching a free masterclass that I will ultimately repurpose into paid content (be on the lookout for that later this month)
• Growing my 1-1 client base (Want to work with me directly? Sign up for a free call here and let’s find out if we’re a good fit, because my schedule is filling fast).
• Increase traffic to my website (You know, the one you’re reading this post on).

While I do have a lot of goals adjacent to these four, these are my top priorities for the month of May. Having a small number of priorities helps you overcome any potential overwhelm. There is SO much to running a successful side hustle that you don’t want to burn yourself out by putting too much on your plate.

April 2019 Income Report: Focus On My Email List

Your email list is the life blood of your business. Full stop.

I talk all about why in 7 Reasons Why Your Email List Is Critical To Side Hustle Success, and the subject came up recently when I was asked this question, “My business would be really social media friendly, do I really need an email list?”

Yes.

You always need an email list.

Why?

Well, I have seven reasons, which you can read about in this post, my top two are these:

One:
You don’t own your social media following. If Instagram wants to pull the plug on your 10-million-follower strong account, they can. Or maybe one day YouTube decides to shut down. Or Facebook bites the big one, and all your followers are gone.

Where would you be then?

And two:
Your social media reach is a fraction of your actual following. Thanks to the algorithms Facebook and Instagram and other social media platforms use, there is no guarantee that even 10% of your audience is going to see what you have to say, the pictures that you posts, the videos you create.

So if you’re doing all this hard work, don’t you want to know that there is a more surefire way that your audience will be able to see your content?

That’s where your email list comes in.

The people on your email list WANT to see your content. That’s why they gave you their email list in the first place. There are BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of people who have email addresses (and many, like me, who have like…five), and if they give you their email address, it’s because they WANT to see what you’re all about.

No matter your niche, there is always a way to frame your content into genuine interaction with your email list, way beyond things like, “Hey, I have a new post, you should check it out.”

Want to talk email lists and side hustle growth? Book a free, 30 minute Side Hustle Clarity call, where you can pick my brain and get the answers you need to take your side hustle to the next level.

April 2019 Income Report: Let’s Talk About Amazon Affiliates

Remember how I talked about the importance of traffic when it comes to affiliate marketing?

This is why.

As you saw above, I earned FOUR pennies off affiliate commissions from Amazon Affiliates.

With some affiliate programs, the best way to success is to have a LOT of traffic coming to your website and to be VERY niche with what you offer. If you have a very strong niche and a passionate audience interested in the products that you link, you’re more likely to bring in more income from the Amazon Affiliate platform, even if (and often when) their commission structure changes.

And speaking of commission structure, even though Amazon Affiliates is an amazing resource for affiliate marketing because of the variety of content you can showcase, there are still other affiliate programs with higher commissions available, and most often offer the same or similar product.

As I said in last month’s income report, and in my post about how to actually make money through affiliate marketing, doing your research is key.

April 2019 Income Report: What I Posted In April

You know how I talk about quality over quantity?

That definitely applies to the blog posts I published in April. There were only four posts, but all together they add up to a behemoth series of blog posts at over 12,600 words.

That’s a LOT of words, especially in one month.

And if you include the guest post I wrote for a friend’s website (see below), that’s more than 14,600 words.

The April Posts Include

March 2019 Income Report
13 Easy Ways To Make Money Online
Affiliate Marketing Tips: 14 Ways To Actually Make Money
Pinterest Success: 16 Ways To Get Massive Traffic From Pinterest

Bonus Feature: 9 Ways To Find More Time To Work On Your Side Hustle by Kathryn at Quest for $47, featured on Rosa’s House

Need advice on how to write longer blog posts? Check out this episode of 10 Minutes Before Dinner.

Speaking of 10 Minutes Before Dinner…

April 2019 Income Report: Highlights From 10 Minutes Before Dinner

April was another awesome month for my nightly live stream series, 10 Minutes Before Dinner.

If this is your first time hearing about it, 10 Minutes Before Dinner is a live stream I do every week night on the Quest for $47 Facebook and Instagram. At around 5:10 p.m. PT/8:10 p.m. ET, I go on live from my kitchen, while my dinner cooks, and talk about a randomly decided topic related to business, life, and mindset (and sometimes all of the above).

The April 2019 highlights include:

Episode 39 (California Edition!): Why You Need To Set Your Intentions Often
Episode 40: Why Practice Really Does Make Better (Not Perfect)
Episode 47: How To Repurpose Your Content
Episode 50: A Look Back At My 5 Favorite Episodes (So Far)
Episode 53: Is There Actually Such Thing As Work/Life Balance? (Not Really)
Episode 57: Why You Shouldn’t Work For Exposure (Even When You’re Just Starting Out)

April was a monster month for me, and it feels like every week of these lives that I do, the content keeps getting better and better.

And most importantly, the more I do these lives, the more fun I have.

Have a topic you want me to cover on 10 Minutes Before Dinner? Leave a comment below and let me know!

Coming Up In Required Reading For Entrepreneurs

In March I talked about how I was going to feature No Excuses by Brian Tracy in Required Reading in April. That didn’t happen this month. Why? Mostly because I decided to focus my content on some really epic blog posts about making money online.

I am almost done with the book, so it will be featured at some point during the month of May. Not only that, but I have been given the opportunity to check out a brand new offering from Anisa Marku of My Third Culture Kid. Her book, The Art of Setting Smart Goals just launched on Amazon, and I am so excited to feature it in Required Reading as well.

Remember, goal setting is critical to success in life and business. As David Cameron Gikandi talks about in his book A Happy Pocket Full Of Money (which yes, will also be featured in Required Reading), it’s important to have goals big and small goals, and the more goals you have, the more likely you are to be successful. Those goals can be anything from having someone come clean your house twice a month to building a multi-million dollar business to traveling the world to cultivating a beautiful garden.

Check Out My Other Income Reports

Income earning is a process. Want to see where this all started? Check out the August 2018 Income Report.

August 2018 – How I Earned $11.61
September 2018 – How I Earned $18.20
October 2018 – How I Earned $13.23
November 2018 – How I Earned $24.84
February 2019 – How I Earned $32.02
March 2019 – How I Earned $58.76

Ready To Start Your Own Side Hustle?

Have a lot to talk about, but don’t have the website to guide your readers to? Now is the perfect time to get started.

Now is the perfect time to take my free email course, where I teach you how to plan a year’s worth of blog content in just one day. This training takes away all the mystery behind figuring out what you’re going to write from week to week and helps you plan the ultimate in blogging content that your audience will absolutely love.

Don’t forget to get hosting (plus a free domain) for as little as $3.95/month through Siteground. You can read why I choose Siteground to host my websites in my post, 6 Reasons I Host My Side Hustle On Siteground (And You Should Too).

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