How much does learning to earn money online cost?

I'm going to stop reporting monthly, but I wanted to show you an overview first. 

Below you can see the costs of learning to make affiliate sites and the revenue from them.

It takes time to get money

At first I used money to courses that I needed to learn online business. After the courses were over, only thing that was left was the cost to run the business, $30 per month. And before my site had enough traffic to start earning, I had used over $500 to courses and keeping the site up.

It took until July 2013 to cover all the costs of learning. But as you can see, when I got to the point where the site started earning money, it paid back the costs in just a couple of months. And now the line is heading nicely upwards!

What many people who talk about doing online business don't tell you is that it takes time to see the results of your efforts. Even if you would start a perfect business, it will still take months for people to find it. You can't get high search engine rankings overnight.

So you shouldn't quit your job thinking that you are able to replace your income fast. It's much better to start learning things while you still have a stable job and wait until you see the money really coming in.

How to get started?

A good option is e.g. to learn SEO, keyword research and marketing from SiteBuildIt course and then write your own ebook that you sell through those same pages. After you have learned how to get traffic, market & sell your products and to charge people, you can start to think about building bigger, more expensive products. Things pile up, and if you get a good start, you can grow up your business.

What am I doing next? 

The affiliate sites that I've built are still chugging on. Thanks to SiteBuildIt's SEO approach, I haven't been affected by any algorithm changes or anything. 

My main focus now is to continue to build my own products - which already earn me more than these affiliate sites. I feel that I made a good choice in learning different aspects needed to run online business slowly, one-by-one. If you want to follow up how I am doing, I'm reporting my SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) business building efforts at Happy Bootstrapper. 

July 2013 - Hustling, Hustling and Hustling

Passive Income: $124 
Costs: $30

I updated the stats from last month too. I guess I took a minor Penguin 2 hit, looking at my traffic.

I've been hustling with my non-passive online income

Last month went in a breeze while hustling to get my first product out. I did that and launched at 17th July. 

I did get a nice pile of pennies, more than I'm getting here. Unfortunately there's not enough organic traffic yet to make any passive income though. 

The income that I report here is pretty much passive. I didn't spend huge amount of work to create the SBI site and it's running on it's own. Of course it's not earning me much, but it frees my hands to do other things.

The 30x500 way of doing online business on the other hand needs continuous hustling for longer. I have my plate full of work and at the moment I see no end to that. 

I love having my own product 

All that hustling doesn't bother me. I love finally having my own product online, especially when it's one that people really need and want. 

Even if it does require more work, I think it has just as much potential and it makes me less dependent from Google or the affiliate program providers. I don't like the idea that a simple change in algorithm can ruin my business or someone can just stop offering a product and all my work is wasted. 

Launching was a great thrill too. It was one of those moments that I'll remember the rest of my life. 

Yup, things are going fine :)

May 2013 - Yet Another Record-Breaking Month

Passive Income: $233 
Costs: $30

Yay - This is f**cking awesome! You guessed right, this money is coming from SiteBuildIt (SBI). If I shop in the right places, this $200 is going to go a long way.   

Actually, I didn't rush to a thrift shop - I rushed to GoDaddy shop. I bought yet another domain and the cheapest hosting to go with it. And... I started another niche website. I used the SBI tools for the keyword research and I'm super happy with my baby site. It has a much greater potential than the old one.

Getting this sudden burst of income also motivated me to work on my SBI site again. I added a couple of articles and did some back-linking.

I'm monetizing with affiliate marketing. That means I forward my traffic to people who sell interesting things and when they buy something, I'll get a share. This month one of my affiliates made $700 on the traffic I sent, and another made $500. This motivates me to work on my own products so that I can be the one at the end of the virtual food-chain.

April 2013 - Showcase of Affiliate Business Realities

Passive Income: $65 
Costs: $30

April reminded me once again why I want to create my own products. The product I'm affiliating with decided to have a sale. They probably got more sales than normally, but I didn't.

I didn't know about the sale so I couldn't tell about it to my readers. Even if they had, I've not been actively updating the site.

PS. Sorry for neglecting you guys! I've been traveling in Italy for the last month.

Polignano a Mare in La Puglia

We had a little round-trip in La Puglia, in southern Italy. In Italy it's pretty easy to buy prepaid mobile broadband, so I had a good internet connection. But... I concentrated on advancing the Happy Bootstrapper.

I don't have problems working "on the road". In fact, sometimes a little distance from your regular environment is just what you need. However, I can't work in the active travel days. Being in a new place, trying to find a place to stay and finding my way around uses so much battery!

We often stay in one place a little longer. Renting an apartment for a week is also a good way to bring down the costs. Our apartment in Lecce cost about 20€ per day ($25) and when you have a kitchen, you can cook at home.

I had really good time and we skipped the spring street dust in Finland. Now it's late spring here and the colors outside are lovely.

March 2013 - 99 Dollars

Passive Income In March 2013: $99 
Costs: $30

Nothing much to tell this month. SBI is starting to bring money home. I'm happy with that, taking into account I abandoned working on that site about 5 months ago.

Now, I've been preparing my new site, ready to take action based on what I learned in 30x500. It will probably be out in April, depending on my travels. And it definitely needs its own blog post.

Feb 2013 - I've Got Money And I've Got Business Ideas

Passive Income In February 2013: $45 
Costs: $30

Another great month is behind. My course investments are starting to pay off.

Both SBI! and 30x500 have been winner's choices for me. If you don't know these courses, there's more info in my Resources Page.

Site-Build-It!

Most of the money in February came from my SBI! site. The one I've neglected since 30x500 started.

The SBI! does say that it takes about half a year to make any money with it. Even though I've completed only 8/10 of this course, it has still kept its promises.

My site has only 16 articles and I've done no link-building for a long time.

For some reason unknown to me, I jumped up in Google ranks 2 weeks ago. I now have 1500 unique visitors per month and several of my long tail keywords rank in the first page.

The best thing is that these new visitors don't bother mailing me before they buy. So I'm concentrating on 30x500 and just watching the money flow in.

Admittedly, this stream is small and it's potential is not very big. But I'm proud of every penny I make online and SBI! was a good learning experience that prepared me for 30x500.

30x500

Business ideas are flowing in, thanks to 30x500 process. During the last couple of weeks, I've had several good business ideas. The best thing about these ideas is that there is a high probability people want these products and they are willing to pay for them.

I have not yet selected the final business idea, but I've selected my audience and my business "theme":

I'm going to help bootstrapped micro-businesses with their financial and accounting problems.

I had "forgotten" that I have BBA and several years of experience in small biz accounting. Truth to be told, I didn't think those skills would be of much use - except for taking care of my own finances. Fortunately, 30x500 dig them up and pointed out that small businesses often need help in that area.

I have to refresh my old skills so I'll not be able to start by creating a SaaS as a hoped. But I'll be happy to start by creating info-products for this awesome audience. That will also show me what the demand for extra services really is.

I'm looking forward to what happens in next month. I hope you had a good biz month too!

Jan 2013 - My First Positive Month!

Passive Income In January 2013: $30.60
Costs: $30

Time to celebrate again! SBI is finally paying for itself.

To tell the truth, AdFly and Adsense helped a little, but most of the money came from SBI. If you don't know what SBI (SiteBuildIt) is, take a look at my Resources page.

I'm laughing at the 60 cents I earned, but at the same time I'm pretty proud of it.

The best thing about this SBI income is that it shows me a hint of the site's potential. I've got just a fraction of the possible traffic, but it is enough to see that my conversion rate is better than I hoped for.

The only monetization option I'm using is affiliate marketing. I still haven't studied the days 8-10 of SBI so I don't have, for example, mailing lists in my use yet. I see potential in this site if I can get back my motivation to work on it again. The site would definitely benefit from getting more back-links, a mailing list and a couple of more articles.

I also really enjoy the fact that I've just let it be for couple of months already and it's still doing just fine and getting more traffic every month.

To Move Or Not To Move

I have been pondering if I want to move my SBI! site to external hosting. If I would move my site away from SBI!, I could save on the hosting  costs. But I have finally decided against it.

Last month I learned about the real expenses for making business online. That made me realise I'm still a cheapskate, trying to save in a wrong place. I understand the concept of needing to spend money to earn money, it's just hard to actually implement it.

If I think only about the hosting, yes, I could pinch some pennies. But hosting (with unlimited traffic!) is not the only thing SBI offers. I get free mailing lists, pretty nice statistics, forum etc. The value I get is well over $30, even if the tools are a bit outdated and clumsy. Plus, I'd need to waste time to actually move the site.

So, I got reasonable and decided to keep my SBI! site where it is. I rather try to inspire myself to work  for it again to get couple of more sales in per month in order to make it continue to pay for itself.

November 2012 Status Report

Yay! A new income stream finally opened up. 30x500 is proceeding in full speed too.


Passive income: $15

I've got the first affiliate sale from my SiteBuildIt! site.

I have been waiting this for several months already. I've had problems getting quality back-links to my site. There just doesn't seem to be quality sites about this subject and I could not come up with related sites either. I have managed to crank up at least one article that people really like and I've gotten some natural back-links to it. Now I have 3 articles that rank into first two pages in several search engines. It's a start, but I'd still need a lot more traffic.

I can see from the statistics that people are going through my Call-To-Action as I intended, but most of them are coming through direct links. They come from sites where lots of people already own the product that I recommend.

I also got some income from Adsense and AdFly.    


Costs: $30

The costs include just the SiteBuildIt! monthly payment. So even though I've got a sale, I'm still negative what comes to SBI.

I've been thinking whether I should move my site elsewhere to save in the costs. I'm almost done with the lessons and beyond that I'll just get hosting, statistics and tools.

I'm not too happy with the tools and the templates, they seem pretty outdated and clumsy to me. But, they provide features I would otherwise need to use several tools for. Hosting is really trouble-free and does not have any limits. Also, I like the statistics they provide. The information is in much nicer format than I can get from Google Analytics.

In any case, I feel SBI course is worth more than I've yet paid in so I'm not in a hurry with the possible move.


30x500

I can honestly say that getting into 30x500 is the best thing I've done since resigning. Not only is it teaching a process for creating predictable success, it does its best to ensure that people are really learning it.

Plus, I think it has actually already saved its price. How? By telling me that the product idea I was going to implement was targeted to a niche that I cannot reach online. Or more accurately, when they are online they are not interested in hearing about products that would ease up their (offline) business.

August 2012 Status Report (Week 16)

Hi there! I'm still on vacation, but I wanted to give you the August status anyway.

Freckle says I've spent 63 hours on my passive income project in August. That is almost as much as in previous month, even though I've worked only couple of hours during the last 2 weeks.

Passive Income In August 2012:
$25

Income is mostly coming from affiliate sales and AdFly.

This was a happy surprise to me, since my last month's income included a $10 donation. I was also expecting my vacation to show a bit, but it looks like this income really is passive.

Granted, I messed up and accidentally had my own affiliate cookie on when I bought new products for trying them out. I did report that, but they said I can just keep those pennies.

Costs In August 2012:
-$227

Costs include the monthly payment to Getting Rich With eBooks 3.0 and SiteBuildIt!

It also includes $100 worth of products that I wanted to test. As said, I messed up with the purchase. I had my own affiliate cookie on. Even though I got to keep the money, I saw that the payment for those products was much lower than the main product. I also did not check the tax limit and ended up paying some taxes, which made the products even more expensive.

I could have easily avoided this cost, but I wanted to try out those products.


Downsides

Even though my passive income grew again, I also saw the dark side of the project this month.

My SBI site have been up for over a month already and I've not yet earned a penny from it. That was expected as the monetization is not plugged in yet. I've written a handful of nice articles that I'm proud of, but I'm impatient right now. I'd like to monetize, but the next thing to do will be to start getting some backlinks to my site. I hate the tortoise speed of SBI!

I bought $100 worth of products, but I did not like them enough to recommend them. That was really sad, since the main product is excellent. Another downside is that the experience on these products varies from person to person. They were not suitable for me, but someone might still like them a lot. However, as things are, I cannot recommend them myself. So I practically just lost the money to try them out. I could get some of it back though.

I've also got some negative feedback on my project. I've got it from my friends and relatives offline and online, by getting banned. I'll be telling you more about that later. 


Conclusion

Even though I've seen some drawbacks this months, they have all been mental. I'm glad to see that my passive income is still going up.

I've have great fun with my project and I'm not going to stop just because there have been some obstacles in the road.

I'll continue enjoying my vacation about two weeks or so. But after that I'll be back in business!

450% Increase In My Passive Income! (July 2012)

This was an amazing month. I'm now proceeding full speed and really enjoying the process. I've been smiling more than ever and I'm having great fun.

This months Freckle pulse says that I spent 71 hours on my passive income project.


Passive Income In July 2012:
$22

Income is coming from AdFly, affiliate sales and a donation.


Costs In July 2012:
$138

Costs include the monthly payment to Getting Rich With eBooks 3.0 and SiteBuildIt!
They also include one new domain name, reserved for one of my Blogger blogs.


Highlights 

• Two new passive income sources opened
• I joined SiteBuildIt!
• Finding my "voice"
• My SBI! site is up
• Networking

Two New Passive Income Sources

My passive income grew from 4 dollars to 22 dollars this month. That is an increase of 450%. Percentages are just fun, aren't they. I hope to see similar over-exponential growth in the future too.

It always feels special when I get money from somewhere I have not been able to get it before. This month I opened two new sources.

I got my very first donation. It came from my other blog and it was actually given by a person whose work I admire myself. I was glowering the whole next day although I also felt a bit awkward too. It would have been easier to accept a donation from a total stranger. I wonder why?

I also got my first affiliate sales. Maybe it was you who bought SBI! though this blog? Thank you so much for reading my blog and supporting me. Getting those sales felt even better than the donation! Why? Because it is not only money. Getting an affiliate sale means that I have been able to help someone. It feels better than doing a product and just getting paid afterward, what the donation practically is about. I like helping people, it just feels good.

Yes, this blog is full of affiliate links. I put them where-ever I can. World is full of affiliate programs, so I don't have to do any compromises in my writing - I can just write what I want and stick the affiliate links in. For example, the AdFly link in the beginning of this post is an affiliate link. I would have mentioned it anyway, now I'll just get pennies if someone joins through that links and earns with it. You win - I win. I love this game.


I Joined SiteBuildIt!

How did I get the affiliate sales? You do know I have had affiliate links up for some time already. I think I got those sales thanks to SiteBuildIt!

The course contains a book that taught me how to write articles, call-to-actions and copy-writing. While I don't polish articles in this blog much, I practice the concepts from that book. I think my writing has improved much - and so others are more prone to listen to me. Writing is now easier too.

I now also know how to implement the call-to-action pattern and if needed, link several pages to create it.

I used to think that a good product or service sells itself. So I was a bit reluctant to learn marketing and all that jazz. I don't think so anymore - a good product can just sit there somewhere on a corner of the wide wide web and no-one finds it. Suddenly reading about marketing is fun - the information is really useful and SiteBuildIt! presents it in a way that I can see the benefits and apply it to practice immediately.


Finding My "Voice"

I did not realize before that I should try to pour some "me" into my writing. SBI! helped with that too. Now I'm slowly learning to write in my own personal style. I must admit that I enjoy writing more now.

Enjoying writing is a good thing, since I'm going to write a whole bunch or articles to my new site. That is what I am going to do next.


My SiteBuildIt! Site Is Up

Yes, I have my own site online already. It has been up about a week now and attracted over 100 visits.

I'm not going to tell you the exact URL or what the site concept keywords are, not yet.

It concentrates on selling an affiliate product. It is a product I love and have been using for years. I just never thought I could make any money writing about that subject. I used to think I need to have a superb new idea or make something "commercially useful". But now it seems I will be able to make money just by writing about a topic I feel passionate about.


Networking

This month I've communicated with a lot of really nice and super interesting people, both online and offline.

I got some invaluable help and advice from Rebecca, who originally gave me inspiration for my SBI! Site Concept. I wrote to the creator of my affiliated product and got back the most genuinely friendly customer support response I've ever had. It will be a joy to sell her product. In addition, I discussed with several inspiring entrepreneurs, including a person from a company that recently was judged to be the start-up of the year. Also, I've mailed with successful SBIers.

I'm starting to see a pattern here. Are most successful people smart, flexible, helpful, friendly and happy? Now, I've really enjoyed meeting these people. Before I used to meet this kind of persons maybe once in two years. Now they are everywhere!


The Challenge

The challenge right now is the time. SiteBuildIt! is a tortoise. I know I can make money with my topic. I just don't know if I'm fast enough to achieve my goal. I still have high hopes. Reaching my goal with my SiteBuildIt! site does require that I get traffic faster than average SBI site. But I'm good at getting traffic. We will see.

Week 7 - June 2012 Status Report

Passive Income In June 2012: 
 $4 

The income is coming from AdFly and AdSense. This was the first full month when I had also affiliate links online and they had some clicks too, but no buys yet. I removed some of the AdSense ads to make room for affiliate links. Unless I do something different/new on next month the passive income is probably not getting up. In other words, I gotta get to the business!

Costs in June 2012: 
 $97 

The costs are from Getting Rich With eBooks course. When I get through the materials of this month, I'll write a new review.
I did buy some books also, including my first Kindle book. As they are not directly related to passive income I'm not including them here.

Theme of the June 2012

Vacation and skill building.

I created my first video tutorial this month - that was huge learning opportunity.
I also read a whopping amount of books - mostly on web programming, but also some books on marketing and successful thinking. I have been waiting for ages to have time to read some of those books. The marketing book was recommended to me by the WebServerGuru.

Overall, I think I've learned this month more than I have learned in all previous 12 months! I have updated my 15-year old skills on HTML and learned CSS and JavaScript.

I feel good about last month and I am ready for some action now.

Week 3 - May 2012 Status Report

Passive Income In May 2012:   

$4

The income is coming from AdFly and AdSense, both of which I am trying out in my current blogs. They have an income limit so that I cannot really cash as small an amount as $4, but as it was earned this month I wanted to report it.

Costs in May 2012:               

$26

The costs are from a hastily bought GoDaddy domain that I will probably never need and the Get Rich With eBooks 3.0 Course 10 day trial. 

I also registered for the free Ultimate You Mindfest course that starts on June 18th. I am afraid that I may miss part of it due to my vacation, but hopefully I am able to attend at least part of the sessions.

Theme of the May 2012

Preparations and skill building.

I committed to my goal. I arranged time for the project and I started my skill building. I have assessed my strengths/weaknesses and made a rough budget for the project.

I have also done some searching for potential ideas and customers, and I have a worksheet where I collect that information.

I learned some web programming and search engine optimization. I learned how to find new ideas and how to evaluate their commercial potential.