Hey my wonderful friends! So I thought I’d FINALLY muster up the courage to do my first income report! I know you’ve been wanting me to do one for a while since I published this post, so here we are!

Before we get into it, I just want to clarify that I’m not here to be a pretentious gloating asshole bragging about how much money I made! #RealTalk ✊ My goal is to help you shortcut your way to the life you want to be living, and that means being as transparent and as honest about how my business is running, what’s working and what isn’t.

I know how valuable income reports are to bloggers and entrepreneurs yearning to make money and create multiple income streams. Believe it or not, it was through reading income reports that inspired and motivated me to start House of Brazen. I knew that if these everyday people from all walks of life could create new possibilities for themselves online and succeed, I could do it to.

I started House of Brazen in January 2016 and by my third month I was making money. In June I quit my job to work on my business full-time (yes, without any other financial back-up other than my savings). I quit my job before I was ready and before I was making a liveable income from my blog – scary right!? But I knew that I had to take a chance and go for it 100%, and even though there was no guarantee that I would ever make another cent again, I knew it would be okay no matter what happened. It was the idea of staying in my job and becoming one of those miserable people wondering what if they’d just taken a chance on themselves that was far more frightening than quitting!

And today? I’m making a liveable income from my blog! I’ve wanted to be able to say that for the last 5 years and now I finally can! But that’s not even the best part. The best part is the freedom you feel from knowing you don’t have to get up and go to work in the morning, the freedom of being able to watch Netflix in the middle of the day and the freedom of meeting up with a friend for a long lunch date! For me, all of that is validation that I made the right decision and it motivates me to want to be better and do better for you.

So anyway, mushy stuff aside, let’s get onto it! 😉

AUGUST INCOME:

  • Affiliate Affluence: $722.37
  • Flawless Funnels: $376.72
  • Your First Affiliate Sale Ebook: $76.71
  • Affiliate Marketing: $501.23
  • Ad Revenue: $8.89

Total Revenue: $1685.92

This post contains affiliate links.

AUGUST EXPENSES:

  • MailChimp: $15
  • BoardBooster: $5
  • SendOwl: $0 (This was a free 30 day trial – grab yours here!)
  • Deadline Funnel: $0 (This was a free 30 day trial – grab yours here!)
  • SumoMe: $20

Total Expenses: $40

NET PROFIT: $1645.92

August was my most profitable month to date! I put the increase in income down to the fact I added two new products to my arsenal. Plus, it was my birthday month and there’s always good energy around your birthday right?

HOW I DOUBLED MY INCOME

A New Tripwire Product: This month I decided to create a tripwire product called ‘Your First Affiliate Sale’ which is a short and to-the-point ebook that shows you exactly how I made my first affiliate sale on Pinterest in 24 hours. Everyone who subscribes to my list goes straight to the up-sell sales page where they have 15 minutes to purchase the ebook for $7 instead of $19, otherwise the page redirects and they don’t get the chance to purchase it again. My goal was to make at least $46 dollars to cover the costs of both SendOwl and Deadline Funnel, and finished the month at making a few cents over $76 dollars!

48-Hour Pre-Sale: I also ran a 48 hour pre-sale to my list for my brand new course for only $47 dollars because I knew a lot of my readers were wanting to learn about affiliate marketing and I wanted them to have the chance to join the course at an affordable price before the public pre-sale price went live at $67 dollars. I had 12 people sign up just from the two emails I sent.

Automated Sales Systems: I have two automated sales systems running at the moment, one is my sales funnel which is my free email course Blog Your Way to Passive Income that teaches bloggers and entrepreneurs how they can make passive income with their blogs. It also up-sells people to my Flawless Funnels course. And my second automated sales system affiliate marketing on Pinterest. After implementing a ton of new strategies in June, I’m still seeing the payoff for them here in August.

HOW I GREW MY LIST TO 1000

SumoMe: Every time someone goes to my website, the SumoMe Welcome Mat pops up and encourages my new visitor to join my free course. At the moment I get a 5% conversion which isn’t too bad. I need to split test the Welcome Mat some more to see if it makes a difference. Will let you know how that goes!

august-2016-income-report-stats

Added My Free Course To Teachable: People find my website in many different ways and through many different avenues. Some come straight to the website, others through social media platforms and some even find my Teachable school first. So to capture that traffic I decided to add my Blog Your Way to Passive Income course on Teachable and link it to my Mailchimp account so that when someone enrolls through teachable, they also join my list and the course emails get sent to them as per usual. It’s just another avenue that people can access my free course that isn’t directly on my site.

Social Media Traffic: My traffic hasn’t really budged much since June. It’s been dancing around the 5000 pageviews mark for the last three months which hasn’t bothered me since my income is still increasing steadily. The traffic I am getting is converting into subscribers nicely and the majority of my social traffic comes from Pinterest. I have noticed that I get way more engagement from people who come to my site from Facebook even with how considerably less people come to my site from there.  I’m finding that all other platforms are a bit of a waste of time at the moment due to the fact that they’re just not performing as well as Pinterest and Facebook. I’ve decided to stop investing so much time into these platforms for now while I grow my business in the areas that are working for it.

august-blog-income-report-stats

I also invested in a couple of courses, Webinars for Introverts by Allison Marshall and Trello for Business by Emylee and Abagail from Think Creative Collective. I haven’t gone too deep into the courses yet as I wanted to get the launch of Affiliate Affluence out of the way first.

And as you saw above, I also trialled SendOwl and Deadline Funnel for my tripwire product. I am massively impressed and will continue to use this software for new sales strategies I want to implement over the coming months!

NEW POSTS PUBLISHED IN AUGUST

MOST POPULAR POSTS FOR AUGUST

And there you have it! My first income report over and out. Did you learn something new? Is there anything more you would want to know? What are you taking away from this report and implementing on your blog?

Elise McDowell