You Can Make $20,000 A Month Online – 2007 Year In Review Part 3

This is the third and final installment of my year 2007 round-up report. You should read part one and two first, before reading this. Here are links to the previous articles -

• How I Made Six Figures In One Day – 2007 Year In Review Part 1
• What Do You Do When Everything Happens At Once? – 2007 Year In Review Part 2

Forming A Routine

I moved from my dad’s place into my own place in July and in August I began settling in, slowly buying furniture and household items. It’s amazing how many things you have to do when you first move into an empty house. Ikea certainly benefited from my money during this time as I stocked up on stuff.

My working life became quite routine and although initially I had trouble keeping up with all the new tasks, I eventually found a balance.

This is what I do most days when working at home

Each week I had to produce one lesson for the students and I would usually create one additional piece of multi-media, like a video case study, or an audio interview. In between this, I would man the helpdesk, write blog articles and prepare little mini-promotions, one of which I did with Darren Rowse of Problogger and another with Anita Campbell of SmallBizTrends and one with Jason Katzenback of Portalfeeder.

Rob Kingston took over the helpdesk and Fran Kerr started assisting with other Blog Mastermind tasks, like adding materials to the members area. This freed up some time and meant I could focus my energy on producing the best content for my blog and Blog Mastermind. It felt good to practice what I preach about working less by outsourcing, focusing your energies on your core skills and of course, increasing your income at the same time.

Breaking $10,000/month in Blog Income

In September I enjoyed a record month in blog income, breaking the $10,000 a month mark for the first time since I started recording my blog income in 2007. You can read the post I made outlining how I made the money here – I Made $10,899.83 From Blogging in September.

It’s funny how things work out. I’m sure all the Law of Attraction fans would claim the principle is working well in my life. At the start of 2007 I stated my goal was to make a consistent $20,000 a month online by the end of the year, up from $10,000 the previous year. As 2007 draws to a close, I am now making at least on average $20,000 a month (highest month so far up around $35,000!) and that’s despite selling BetterEdit and losing that income stream and not including the income from the sale.

It goes to show when you focus on what you really want to do and leverage off your previous effort, you can get there. At the start of the year I was certainly not super confident of reaching my target, but with effort, though not working too hard, I managed to get there. I can only imagine what 2008 holds.

New Records in RSS and Email Subscriptions

This year I learned one really powerful lesson. Email is a far superior direct marketing tool than RSS.

In the blogosphere, we tend to look at the number of RSS subscribers as the key benchmark. I’m very happy with my RSS readership growth, breaking 5,500 readers after starting the year at around 3,000 readers, but I’m way behind the leaders in my industry.

RSS is great for social proof, it can class you as an “A-List” blogger, which I feel I became in 2007, at least in my niche in, but as I found out, it doesn’t always convert well when it comes to commerce. Many times this year I was able to equal the marketing effect of top bloggers despite having as little as one fifth of their audience – and it I did through email, not RSS.

My email list growth really skyrocketed in 2007, growing from about 3,000 subscribers in January, up to 15,000 as the year end. Of course this occurred mostly because of the release of the Blog Profits Blueprint, however it’s a lot easier to get an email subscriber than it is to get an RSS reader. Email subscribers are also worth a lot more from a business point of view, at least based on performance in my business.

You can read more about my point of view comparing email to RSS for marketing in this article – Will Blog Marketing Replace Email Marketing?

The main reason my blog income and my overall income has grown, is because of the relationships I’ve established through blogging and through email marketing, BUT, if I didn’t have the list, I suspect my income would be much lower. Email marketing remains the most powerful online tool we have as Internet entrepreneurs. Of course my list wouldn’t exist without my successful blog, but it’s the list that brings in the coin.

Presenting on Stage

Throughout 2007 I was invited to different events and a few times I even had the nerve to jump on stage and speak. As a teenager and in my university days I was deadly fearful of doing any oral presentation and I’m far from comfortable speaking in large groups still, but 2007 has really changed things for me in this area.

I attended three different Andrew and Daryl Grant workshops this year. The one in Sydney had 500 people in attendance, and although I wasn’t on stage for long, I did get up there and talk. In November Andrew invited me to do a full 30 minute presentation to 100 people to talk about using blogs to promote membership sites online. I made a presentation, talked my way through my nerves and felt that I did a good job, especially for my first time.

I can ramble on about topics I know about and present well enough. I’ve done it in podcasts and online interviews plenty of times, but something about getting on stage is a whole different ball game. I’m still not looking to become a speaker and go on the road as so many Internet marketers do, but at least now I’m not adverse to talking to crowds.

A fun speaking event of this year was the Australian bloggers conference held in Brisbane in October. I found out last minute that I would co-head a session at the event with Des Walsh. The format was an “unconference”, a tutorial like environment where you lead a small room of people, but you don’t present – it’s more interactive and thus very ad-hoc. I found the experience quite enjoyable and hope to attend the event again next year.

PageRank Makes Headlines

In October Google went out and hit sites with penalties if they were deemed as selling links without using the “nofollow” tag and thus breaking Google’s rules. My blog was zapped with a penalty and like so many other bloggers, I joined in on the conversation and wrote about it – several times in fact. This led to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, featuring interview quotes from myself and Darren Rowse.

Although I didn’t think much of this article, thanks to the tiny bit of press coverage, people outside of my usual online sphere of influence started to notice me and on several instances people who know me as just Yaro, not Yaro the blogger, started asking what the article was about. It goes to show that despite how many people know you and what you do, there are way more people who don’t, so you always have untapped market potential.

The Laptop Holiday

Late October I took a holiday to Byron Bay, a popular beach area in northern New South Wales, Australia. Whenever I travel I always “work” – writing is what I would choose to do on a holiday anyway, so my laptop is ever present. During this holiday I had many lovely meals at cafes, followed by writing blog articles and lessons for Blog Mastermind – a great holiday formula in my book – although some people would probably prefer to leave the laptop behind.

Although I can’t stay away from net access for too long, your blogging life can be kept quite simple if you so choose. I’ve gone and complicated things by launching products, so I have a full on business with a need for customer support, but if I was just writing blog articles for my living then it would be very easy to become a roving writer and travel the world while making a good living. This is definitely one of the best things about the Internet business lifestyle.

You can read more about what a blogger does on his holiday in this post – What Does A Blogger Do On His Holiday?

Blog Mastermind Closes To New Members

Just a few weeks ago in December I shut the doors on Blog Mastermind and conducted a promotion in the lead-up to the closing deadline. I released a free sample lesson from the training course, a video blog case study and several other behind the scenes details and testimonials to encourage people to join before the closing date.

The result was fantastic, bringing in over 150 new students in under ten days. Once again the principles from Product Launch Formula worked well and although I don’t strictly follow an outline, I know the product launch process well and I love to “sell” with great content, so this promotion was easy for me. The result however was better than expected and has slightly changed my plans for 2008.

Looking Ahead

Next year is a big year. I’ve got new products coming to the market, I’m planning to return to Canada and attend more conferences in the USA and of course, I want to continue to blog and write about Internet business. I may even run a workshop of my own later in the year.

In 2007 I worked hard, probably a bit harder than I like. Now that Blog Mastermind is almost complete I won’t have the pressure of a weekly lesson to produce, but I still want to work closely with the students. The first half of the year is looking quite busy, but I hope by mid-2008 I can settle into a more relaxed status quo life, where I blog for fun and don’t have to push hard to produce much more and can tweak what I have already published.

I see 2008 as a big year for blogging in general, in particular I expect the rise of authority blogging to continue. Rich Schefren made a statement in his Attention Age Doctrine that I entirely agree with – you need authority to succeed in online business and I believe a blog is THE best tool we presently have to establish this. I plan to push this fact in everything I do in 2008 because I’m living proof of the concept – I wouldn’t be where I am today without blogging.

That’s it from me everyone, happy new year!

Here’s to a big 2008 and I’ll see you in the blogosphere…

Yaro Starak
Blogging For Business