April was a good month for me. Not quite as good as March, but still a great month. In fact, both March and April were so good, that the relatively quiet month I’ve had here in May has felt like a bit of an anti-climax!
I spent a week traveling in Thailand last week, and it gave me some time to reflect on where the business is at, where it needs to go (or where I want it to go), and how I might get there.
I know for a fact that my ability to go to Thailand, which was pretty much a last-minute trip on a whim, is down to all the work I’ve been doing here at HumanProofDesigns for the last year and a half. I didn’t have a boss to ask permission from, and I knew that while I was there my business would keep doing its thing.
This really is the “dream” – the ability to travel where you want, when you want, and all of that.
I write about it so that you can get inspiration and realize that the dream is very much achievable. I’m not trying to brag.
I write these income reports for that reason…but there’s also something even more important about the reports, and it’s something a lot of people overlook.
With everyone who shares their income reports, you get to see the journey.
The journey is something that often gets lost. We all see the guy who drives a Ferrari and makes 6 figures monthly. We all see the guy on stage speaking about business, and we want what he has.
The same is true for sport. We see the guys with the big contracts, and the young kids driving sports cars to training, and we think “wow, that’s awesome. I want that too.”.
But please don’t forget about the journey. The journey is the most important thing.
Don’t forget about the long hours that those sports stars put in, day after day after day until they were good enough for that contract. The same is said for the Internet Marketers who succeeded.
I often thought recently, what makes me different from others? Why is it that I’m able to make a pretty good income online (even if it is relatively small compared to the gurus), when others failed?
At school I was a massive underachiever, my teachers always berated me for not getting the top grades when I should have been. It’s the same for my websites. They do OK, but they aren’t roaring successes. My products are good and my service is a lot better than others, but it’s not the world’s best service ever. I’m not the Apple of turnkey websites.
So with this relative mediocrity, why was I able to succeed where so many others failed?
I think the only answer I can find is that I’m still here. I didn’t quit. I kept trying and trying and trying. I suffered through those mornings where I woke up and didn’t even want to turn on my laptop. I ignored those late nights where I lay in bed wondering if I was ever going to succeed.
Every day I got a little bit better at working online, and every day I grew my business a little bit more.
And for that reason, here I am.
All you have to do is keep trying, and you will get here too. Do you keep doing the same thing? Do you keep trying new things? It’s probably a mixture of the two. You have to travel your journey.
I’ll admit this isn’t how I planned on starting out this income report, but time away gave me time to think about some things, and I felt that this was a good place to talk about it.
Let’s get back on track with the report.
The Entrepreneur.com Feature
At the very start of April, this post went live on Entrepreneur.com and a ton of traffic and subscribers came my way.
HPD doesn’t usually get a whole lot of visitors, so seeing 1,200 visitors in one day was fantastic! On top of that, while I usually get 10-20 subscribers a day, I got over 100 for 2-3 days in a row.
What did all this equate to?
Well it’s hard to directly track all the tangible and intangible benefits, but I know for a fact I got close to $1,000 profit from new business that this extra traffic brought it, so that’s not a bad post at all.
There are also things like the ranking boost the link gave me, the new subscribers, the brand awareness that I got, and many other hidden benefits.
I also added a shiny new “Featured on Entrepreneur” to the footer of this site. I figured if anything, it would serve as a little reminder to me of some of my better achievements.
Call it my trophy cabinet if you will!
Let’s dive down and see how the rest of the month went. As I’ve already gone off tangent slightly, I won’t include a “team and systems” update like I did the previous two months. Not much to report there anyway.
April Income
Affiliate Income.
This is from my niche sites and doesn’t include the affiliate commissions I earn from HPD.
Amazon: $452
Google Adsense: $50
Dragondoor: $35.96
Clickbank: $35.96
Total: $573.92
I changed my Dragondoor promotion to a digital Clickbank product midway through the month, and eerily made exactly the same amount with both!
HumanProofDesigns Income
This is usually where the majority of the income comes from.
Niche Website Building: $1967
Please note this is my profit for web building, not the gross income.
Premium Article Writing: $300
SEO/Link Building: $325
Website Improvements: $97
Keyword Packs: $75
Affiliate commissions
Wealthy Affiliate: $425
Jaaxy: $32
The Hoth: $638
Thrive Themes: $258
Total: $4124
Another solid month for HPD!
Other Income
Consultation: $500
JV: 21
Total: $521
It was pretty nice to receive some offers for consultation work, most likely as a result of being featured in Entrepreneur.
April Total: $5218
I was very happy to pass the $5k mark for the second month in a row. Doing it once is easy enough but twice in a row was tough, and I’m happy that the momentum carried forward.
There are still lots of changes and improvements on my mind for the upcoming months though, no rest for the wicked.
I’ll be looking forward to sharing them all with you in the near future.
