End of Month 3: Revenue Check
By The Tim on May 1, 2008 in Finances
Three months down, halfway through my stated 6-month plan. So let’s have a look at the revenue charts.
First up, a look at the total revenue versus my goals:
Nice! Total revenue nearly doubled from March to April. The money made last month was just over 20% of what I was making monthly at the previous job, and almost enough to pay the bills (shaded blue area). As you can see, I’m still a good amount ahead of the minimum goals.
Here’s the breakdown of where the money came from:
Now that’s more like it. The purple slice for “Direct Ads” that disappeared last month came back with a vengeance. This is great news, especially since I feel like I’ve still only barely scratched the surface of the potential in direct ads. I’ll be working hard this month to grow that revenue stream even more.
I achieved April goal of bringing in at least 15% of revenue from Direct Ads, but failed to expand into the realm of subscriptions and direct sales. That goal carries on into this month, along with the goal of growing the Direct Ads by at least 25%.
How does direct sales work?
Adam | May 1, 2008 | Reply
good for you! congratulations!!!! you should throw yourself a 3 month anniversary party with ice cream and cake and those funny looking party hats
ok, maybe I’m just really wanting cake right now but hey, my idea is still valid 
rebukey | May 2, 2008 | Reply
I’d read a blog that broke down exactly what each of these revenue sources are, and maybe how you go about getting them.
Adam | May 5, 2008 | Reply
I’m a bit confused with your mixed terminology. Your graph plots revenue from this business measured against income from your previous job. This seems a bit odd as I would imagine you have expenses that must be deducted from revenue to get to some for of income. So, if you’re benchmark is 22% of previous max income in order to pay bills then wouldn’t revenue from your business have to be greater then this amount such that when you deduct expenses you arrive at the same income figure? if you’re monthly take home pay from your job was X dollars just making X dollars in revenue from the business will not give you the same purchasing power.
HandyMan | May 8, 2008 | Reply
Hello Tim,
I followed the link here from your Seattle real estate blog, which I’ve been enjoying following.
I really love the layouts of your blogs, and hope to do something as clean and organized when I get around to hiring someone to re-do mine.
That said, you could really turn Adsense into a cash cow by optimizing your sites a bit more for it. It’s very easy to… ignore currently.
(Especially on the real estate site where it could be a big earner.)
Anyhoo, just thought I’d throw that out. You may put design above money, which I understand (as mentioned, I much prefer your designs to mine, hah), but you may be surprised at how much of an earnings increase you could see with some tweaks. I’m self-employed, too, and made five-figures with Adsense last month, and I only work on my sites a few hours a week. I’m a Google ho though and have no shame in throwing those ads out there.
I will have to look into direct ads more in the future as I can see you are doing well with them.
Ok, best wishes, and congrats on all your success so far!
Lindsay | May 26, 2008 | Reply