I shared in the very first episode that it is very hard to explain what I do and to explain to people HOW exactly I make money.
So I wanted to clear the air and share with you EXACTLY how I make money online. I really break it down for you and talk about the figures.
In Today’s Episode
- How I actually make money
- Where the bulk of my income comes from
- Why November was such a killer month for me
- How my smaller sites make money
- What types of websites I plan to build in the near future
How exactly do I make money again? If you recalled, in the very first episode I talked about how difficult it is to explain to people what I do and how I make money. I want to go into detail and show you exactly how I make money in today’s episode.
Hey and welcome to Instructions Not Included, a startup story about me Ryan McLane and my life as I try and grow my small online business into a large and successful company. In today’s episode I’m going to be talking about exactly how my websites make money as well as some rough figures on what they make. It changes every single month so this isn’t going to be accurate, but it’s enlightening for me to actually go through this and just say how actually do I make money and where do I want to expand my business.
I’m going to start with On Property because that is my main website and that’s where I make 80 to 90% of my income. On Property is an Australian website that teaches people about investing in property in Australia and more specifically it teaches people how to find positive cash flow properties in Australia. Positive cash flow properties are properties that generate more income than you pay in expenses and thus they spin off passive income. There’re a lot of people who want to invest using a strategy but almost everyone gets stuck at the fact that positive Cash Flow properties are difficult to find. So what I do is I fill that gap and I help people find those positive cash flow properties. So how exactly do I make money? I shared in yesterday’s episode about some of the statistics for the podcasts and for the videos and so all the marketing I do for the website and we saw that if we combine my website visits with podcast downloads and YouTube views actually it impacted over 300,000 people or visitors during 2014. But while most people make money from those businesses directly from advertising, I don’t actually do that. So there’s no advertising on my website, no one’s paying me to advertise on my website and everything that I do advertise is either for my own products or for products that I am an affiliate for.
The breakdown of my income for On Property is I have a premium membership website called On Property Plus. I charge $30 a month or $300 a year for access to On Property Plus. Inside this membership site they get training on exactly how to find positive cash flow properties like I do, how to research areas, but they also get access to property listings of high rental yield or positive cash flow properties. On Property Plus generates the bulk of my monthly income. That probably ranges from about $1,500 to $3,000 per month at the moment depending on the month. December is generally the worst month of the year and so it hasn’t been awesome this month.
I also created a low level eBook called The Essential Guide To Buying Your First Property In Australia that is currently selling for $9.95. I was previously selling it for $4.95 but we get 10 to 30 sales of that per month so that’s a $100 to $300 per month. I am an affiliate for a program called Real Estate Investar which is a property search tool for advanced investors and I get about an 18% commission on that one. That sells for between $99 and $250 per month. If I get a new sign up at $99 per month that is $18 per month that I would get. I used to get lump sums as some would sign up for two years they’d pay two grand up front and then I get a big lump sum of that but they’re just on and moved to monthly payments now and there’s no more annual payment, so I won’t get any of those lump sums anymore. I’ve got a deal with a mortgage broker, well I get 20% of the commissions for everyone that I recommend to him. I haven’t actually earn anything from that yet. I also get about 20 to $40 dollars per month from recommending books. I’ve a page on my website that recommends the best property books so when people go there and if they buy a book through my link then I get a commission of that. That’s about 20 to 40 bucks a month.
I also recommend The Ultimate Guide to Renovation which is a training course by a lady called Jane Slack-Smith who is awesome at renovation. That’s only opened twice a year but it sells for two-and-a-half grand and I do get 50% percent of that whenever I recommend someone and they actually go ahead and sign up. I’ve only promoted that course once and I had four people signed up so that’s why November was such a good month for me. I also recommended a tool called Ripehouse and again I get a commission on that but I’m not sure if I’ve gotten any commissions from that as yet.
That’s kind of a breakdown of On Property and exactly how I make money. The bulk of my money comes from On Property Plus which is my own membership site and my Essential Guide To Buying Your First Property. And then I also have sporadic income like the Ultimate Guide To Renovation and some smaller income from commissions of affiliate programs.
I’ve got another web site called inspiringaudiobooks.com and for this one I am and an affiliate with audible.com, which is an online audio book store. If you want to sign up through my affiliate link if you guys love audio books then go to www.inspiringaudiobooks.com/free and you can get your first book absolutely free. Basically I review audio books on that website and then I recommend that they get them through Audible and provide links for them. Depending on how much traffic I’m getting on that it ranges from anywhere from $10 to maybe $100 or $200 per month. I think I had one good month where I earned $200, but at the moment my stats have really dropped and I’m only making about 20 bucks a month from that website. I’ve got another website called tiredandsleepy.com which is about fatigue and that makes between $15 to a $100 per month when it’s really ticking along and I’ve had a few good months where I’ve earned over $100 a month in AdSense income and that’s been really good but at the moment that site is taint as well and so it only earns about 15 or 30 bucks a month, if that. So it’s not significant.
I’ve got a site called publicspeakingpower.com which I used to have AdSense on there and it made about 20 bucks a month and then I took the AdSense off and I was going to sell my own product and I didn’t end up selling it and then at the moment it’s got nothing on there and it’s earning me nothing. That’s something I really need to address in 2015 is getting something on that even if it’s just getting AdSense back on there so it earns 20 bucks a month. At least then it’s paying for itself, it’s paying for the hosting and it’s paying for the domain name. At the moment it’s getting 400 to 500 visitors a day and it’s making zero income. And then I’ve got ryanmclane.net or basically helping out friends and I do make some money through recommending hosting to friends and so I can get an affiliate commission through that or recommending people to AWeber and getting a commission for them signing up for AWeber.
That’s kind of the breakdown of how exactly I make money online at the moment.
I love this email from Seth Godin which I got the other day. And it says where to start and he says start your first business this way: Begin with the smallest possible project in which someone will pay you money to solve a problem they know they have. Charge less than it’s worth and more than it cost you and repeat. You don’t have to wait for a perfect or large or avid or amazing, you can start. This is something that I really want to take into 2015. I need to start businesses with the smallest possible project in which someone’s going to pay me money for a problem that they know they need fixed. So rather than the website like Tired And Sleepy where I can just make money through ad clicks I want to pursue a website that’s similar to On Property where I created my own solution which was in this case a membership site where people are willing to pay me money. But whatever niche I go into I want to go in and be able to create my own product, create an offering that doesn’t exist in the market and something that’s different and something that I can charge money for, potentially recurring income or maybe I just create it once and then sell it over and over again. So that’s really what I want to achieve in 2015.
I hope that you found this breakdown informative of how exactly I make money and if you guys have any ideas of products that you think I should create or how I can make more money for my websites, especially at publicspeakingpower.com, shoot me an email at Ryan@onproperty.com.au. I would love to hear from you guys.
Before I go, here is a snippet from tomorrow’s episode: “So I got a new idea and I’m pretty excited about it. I’m not sure whether it’s good or bad but I want you to follow me on the journey from the inception of this idea all the way through to the creation of a business around this idea. We’re going to see whether it succeeds or whether it fails and the whole process from start up to finish.”
If you want to make sure you don’t miss that episode or you want to get access to the backlog of episodes then go into iTunes if you’re on an iPhone or Stitcher Radio if you’re on an Android device and search for instructions not included or go to instructionsnotincluded.tv to see the full list of episodes there.
I just want to say thank you so much for listening. I’ve really enjoyed sharing my journey and I’m going to continue doing it every single week day as long as I can handle it and so I just want to thank you so much for your attention because without listeners like you it wouldn’t actually be worth doing this. I hope that you’re enjoying it. I hope that this is something that’s worth sharing and I hope that you following my journey is going to help you achieve your dreams as well.
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