How I Planned To Increase The Income For This Website

1. Split test Google Adsense vs Rivit Media using OIOpublisher

I didn’t end up doing this because I spoke with my account rep at Rivit Media and she was able to use my Adsense code as back fill when they don’t have enough ads from premium advertisers to use. It became quickly apparent that Rivit Media would continue to be a good source of income for the website when they have the ad space to sell (I’ll get to that in the results).

2. Test Vibrant Media in text advertising

I did get around to installing Vibrant Media in text advertising on the blog and in August so far it has out performed Adsense (see results below)!

3. Use CPC advertising in more locations

I was pretty busy in August with other projects so I didn’t get around to testing Adsense and other forms of advertising in other locations until just a few days ago when I added in a 468 x 60 banner ad just beneath the title of the blog post. I may remove this because so far it hasn’t converted very well and I sort of prefer the minimal advertising that was on the site before.

4. Contact craft supply companies for private advertising deals / joint promotion deals
5. Add Amazon affiliate links on the old blog posts that are related to physical products
6. Optimize high traffic pages with better targeted advertising
7. Start monetizing the email list

Didn’t get to these tasks. I was too busy to work on them and yes I realize that every day that goes by that I don’t complete these tasks I’m leaving money on the table.

Month 1 Income Results: $560.46

August Income Total So Far: $560.46 (With 7 days left)
Estimated August Ending Income: $672.55

Adsense $78.18 (New Income Source)

Vibrant Media $182.77 (New Income Source)

Rivit Media $299.51 (Pre-Existing Income Source)

Income Analysis:

I only did 1.5 things on my list of 7 tasks and the income for the website still went up thanks to the two new income sources from Adsense and Vibrant Media. I expect that if I finish the list of things I planned to do but never got around to the income could rise at least an extra $100 – $200 a month or maybe even break the $1,000 per month barrier. Some days Rivit Media contributes just a little bit of money because the ads aren’t running and the backfill Adsense ads are going instead, so it’d be nice if they always had advertisers promoting because the income is significantly higher on those days.

The best part about this website is that it’s basically passive income for me. I’ve spent more time writing these case study blog posts for MakeMoneyontheInternet.com than I have spent working on CopyCatCrafts.com.

Why I Love Buying And Selling Websites

I set a goal this year to buy $100k worth of websites and if I can keep finding good websites worth buying I should easily be able to meet my goal. Part of the reason why I started buying websites is because I want to grow my business faster and just like Fortune 500 companies one of the fastest ways to grow is through acquisitions. I’ve been applying this methodology to my business this year and it’s been very effective so far. I generally don’t share websites that I buy on this blog for obvious competitive reasons but I hope this shows you one way I’m making money.

You can get started buying websites at any price point too, last summer I bought a site for $500 that’s made me around $5,000.

Want To Learn More?

If you want to find out more about how to make money with websites sign up for my newsletter and you’ll be one of the first to find out when my live training course on buying and selling websites opens up. I partnered with some website brokers on both content creation and to help make sure we can provide great content on all the live webinars we’ll be doing for the members as well.

What Else Would You Like Me To Cover?

What else do you want me to cover in these case study posts on CopyCatCrafts.com? I’ll be hanging out in the comments below waiting for some responses…

p.s. Do me a favor and +1 this I’m running some tests with Google Plus right now:

How Much I Spent In Q1 2011:

I had to put together these reports because I had the “problem” of making too much money last year that my accountant advised me to start filing estimated federal income taxes on a quarterly basis. This requires me to keep track of my income and expenses every quarter. So what I’ve done is put together a couple pie graphs showing you my total expenses, fixed expenses and variable expenses (primarily one time costs):

Total Q1 2011 Expenses: $7,095.20

I’ve left out my tax expenses which were by far my largest expense of the quarter because my tax rate will vary compared to yours since my wife is working full time now as well.

Total Q1 Variable Expenses: $5,048.26

The variable expenses I had in the first quarter of this year were for primarily one time expenses like the consulting I received for some web projects I’m working on. The software development expense was for version 1 of an in house tool I had developed to help me buy websites. The conference expenses covers my airfare and hotel costs for some conferences this year (like ASW). The equipment expenses covers some ink I had to buy for my printer (boring I know) and my $500 Herman Miller SAYL chair. Before you ask – yes I can definitely tell the difference between my old $99 Office Max chair and my new $500 Herman Miller chair. Best $500 I’ve spent in a long time. The link services covers some directory submissions to Best Of The Web and another monthly service I was testing out. I paid for some staff finding services to help hire my first full time programmer (which so far has been a great success) as well as a job board posting on Problogger.net to hire some more writers for Photography Tips. I spent some money on some one time software licenses. I also spent a little over $100 on food stuff while I was at conferences. Lastly, I forgot to include the few hundred dollars I spent on domain names in Q1.

Total Q1 Fixed Expenses: $2,046.94

The fixed expenses I had for the three month time period of the first quarter were actually pretty low at just over $2,000. Payroll covers one of my outsourced employees who does some work on the websites I build such as WordPress installs, article writing and link building. My hosting provider is Softlayer and HostGator. I have a dedicated server with Softlayer which I use to host larger websites, but if you’re just getting started out you can easily get by with the shared hosting plan from HostGator which I use for some of my smaller websites as well. Aweber is my newsletter service and I’m about to re-hit $89 per month with them for having over 10,000 newsletter subscribers. For the price I love using Aweber and only wish I would have started using them sooner. Finally I have video hosting through Amazon S3 and because all of my sales pages are video based along with most of my course material I tend to spend at least $50 a month on that hosting as well. I suppose I could include a few of the expenses I left in the variable category down here in the fixed category but they wouldn’t add that much to the fixed total.

How Much Did I Earn In Q1 2011? $41,626.52

I made a total of $41,626.52 in total revenue from Q1 2011 which came from a combination of Amazon Associates, Clickbank, Consulting, Adsense and other affiliate earnings. So based on my first three months of 2011 I’m earning over $10k per month even after expenses are factored in. I still need to step things up a few notches if I plan to hit my 2011 income goal of earning 50% more than I did in 2010.

Online Businesses Are Cheap!

Instead of showing a typical income report I wanted to show you the other side of building a successful online business by highlighting the various expenses that I incurred during a typical quarter of business. The fact that I made over $40k from January to March with only $2k in “fixed” expenses is a testament to the low cost of online businesses. If you want to learn how to build a successful online business than I suggest you subscribe to my newsletter. I’m making significant changes this week and shifting the content to providing much more focused step by step tips for people looking to build their own online businesses.

2010 Income Report Breakdown:

Note: All earnings are based on the money that actually came into my bank account during the 2010 year. *Clickbank is the exception where about half of the money I earned with them came in early Jan 2011 but was earned during 2010.

Six Figure Website Deal: Undisclosed Sum

I sold one of my larger blogs: Netbook Reviews in a deal worth six figures. I outlined specific details in my post about how to sell a website for a lot of money. I can’t disclose the money I was paid other than to say that the website sale in conjunction with the earnings from the rest of my business surpassed my 2010 income target of earning over $150,000.

Amazon Affiliate Program: $64,570.03

Amazon was the largest (disclosed) income source for me this year. Most people are generally surprised by the money I’m making with them but it’s important to keep in mind that my business is based on making money with niche and authority style websites outside the industry that this blog is focused on (web entrepreneurship). In other words, Amazon would perform terribly on this blog because my readers aren’t looking to buy stuff on Amazon, but if I run a blog about some niche product it’s a much better fit to make money with. Check out this article and sign up for my newsletter to learn more about how I make money with Amazon.

ClickBank: $25,536.81

Clickbank was the next highest income source and the bulk of the money I earned came from sales of my niche website training program: Niche Profit Course. We just hit the 500 member mark and overall I think it was a pretty successful product for my first try. I have two other products with Clickbank that have also been fairly successful as well contributing a few thousand dollars of that total income. In addition to my own products I’ve also promoted other Clickbank products as an affiliate which contributed to the total amount I earned with Clickbank as well.

I’m going to do more products in random niches outside of the make money online / blogging realm because I’ve found tons of opportunities there and product creation can be a lot of fun.

Google Adsense: $4,406.72

I don’t actively use Adsense and in fact I only put it on some of my niche sites as an afterthought in less optimal locations. I may start to use more Adsense in the future, but I’m not going to force it if it doesn’t make me the most money. One of the main things you need to learn is to find the right monetization method that fits your niche and sometimes it can be Adsense but it rarely is the best solution for the niches I operate in.

Misc Earnings: $1,856.94

These earnings came from anything that didn’t make me more than $500 in 2010 which includes some of the products I promoted as an affiliate in only a small capacity. i.e. WP Auctions, OIO Publisher, Woo Themes, SEO Book etc.

Private Advertising: $1,475.69

I sold some private advertising deals via some of my websites, but this was a money making method I simply didn’t put enough effort into. It’s a lot of work to find paying advertisers and it’s not something I really enjoy, I may consider using third party systems to attract advertisers automatically but that’s something I’ll figure out at a later date.

Vibrant Media: $1,128.94

Vibrant Media became my in text advertiser of choice after conducting a few experiments comparing them against the competition. Kontera came in second and Infolinks was a distant third. If you implement in text advertising be sure to monitor your other income sources to make sure they don’t dip as in text advertising could cannibalize your other money making methods. This isn’t something I found to be the case during my testing, but it’s something you should be aware of as a possibility.

eBay Partner Network: $838.65

I used ePN on only a handful of my websites and only in a skyscraper ad in the sidebar. That sidebar ad generally performed better than Adsense so I’d still recommend you consider using them on your websites. I use the PHPbay plugin to display the ads easily and it was a really good purchase that I made nearly 2 years ago and something that is constantly updated.

ReviewAzon: $819.42

ReviewAzon is a WordPress plugin that makes it incredibly easier to add and insert Amazon products and links on your WordPress powered websites. I did a webinar with the plugin creator in late December which you can watch a replay of here. He also offered a discount on the plugin which you can still take advantage of here. If you’re looking to save some time creating your niche Amazon websites this plugin helps out a ton. The $819.42 I earned was as an affiliate promoting the plugin, but I was a customer first that’s how I even heard of the plugin.

Market Samurai: $750.54

Market Samurai is keyword research software that I bought and have recommended on this blog a few times. You can download a free trial of it here to check it out. The $750.54 I earned was as an affiliate promoting the software, but just like ReviewAzon I was a customer first before I began recommending this on my blog.

Commission Junction: $599.63

I promoted a few random products and services from CJ.com via my other niche websites and earned a few hundred dollars with them. I really hate CJ.com because it’s impossible to create the links I want to quickly and overall it’s just a pain to work with so the only reason I made money with them is because some companies I wanted to work with have their affiliate program through them.

Overall Earnings Assessment:

I made just over $100k on the various income sources mentioned above without taking into consideration the six figure website deal that came through in November. I’m very pleased with the money I made because I surpassed my 2010 income target of earning $150k. This was not an easy goal to accomplish considering 2010 was my first full year in business by myself after losing my $60k per year high stress sales job.

I truly believe it’s possible to make a full time income online if you really have the drive to put in the extra hours after coming home from your full time day job. Remember, there are no push button solutions to making money online despite what you read on some hyped up sales page. Even with my Niche Profit Course where I teach people how to make money with physical product focused websites I flat out tell people that you have to work to make this successful.

My Halo Story: I’ve shared before how my passion for the video game Halo is what helped lead me to a six figure online income. Beyond that, there are plenty of odd stories of people finding their way to online success, the important thing is to just start somewhere!

My Plans For 2011:

Buying and Selling Websites: I’ve been making good money with buying and selling websites like the one I sold in the deal worth six figures and I’m going to do more of this in 2011.
Creating More Websites From Scratch: I’m going to continue building more websites from scratch to further grow my earnings from Amazon Associates and other affiliate programs.
More Info Products: I’m going to create more information products in niches outside of the saturated make money online space. There is a lot of money to be made in these fringe niches that people lose sight on.
Grow My Blog: In 2011 I want to take this blog to the next level and truly build it up into a great resource so you can learn how to quit your day job (or at least be ok if you get fired like me ). I’d like to hit 20,000 RSS readers by the end of 2011 and I certainly think it’s possible because I started 2010 with only a few hundred RSS readers and made it to nearly 5,000.
Internet Startup: I’m launching a self funded internet startup and am currently in the process of hiring a few people to help out with it. When the project is ready for beta I’ll send out an email to everyone to try it out. I’m shooting for an April time frame to complete this. After the beta version is out I may try and raise funding, but I just don’t want to go to an investor with only an idea to try to raise money for something that I’m not willing to risk a lot of my own capital on in the first place.

I have several exciting things planned so be sure to subscribe to my newsletter to stay in touch.

How was your 2010 year?

I recently sold Netbook Reviews (one of my larger websites) in a deal worth six figures. I can’t share the specific amount for obvious reasons but needless to say based on the sale of the website and my variety of other online income sources I easily surpassed my 2010 goal to earn more than $150,000 this year. This is very exciting because in the previous year while working a full time sales job I made only $60,000 even though I surpassed my sales plan every single quarter and worked 50 hours a week (and I still managed to get fired hah hah).

The goal of this post is not to brag or anything the goal is to teach you some of the things you should know if you’re trying to build and sell a larger website property for six figures or more. First let’s cover what it takes to build a six figure website and then I’ll tell you how to sell it.

How To Build A Six Figure Website:

If you’re trying to sell a website for six figures or more you need to look at it from the perspective that you’re trying to be the best in your niche. I built Netbook Reviews from scratch back in early 2009 just months after netbooks were introduced to the market. I knew very early on that I wanted to build a true authority style website so I did what came naturally – I worked hard and hustled.

I spent countless hours contacting companies for demo equipment, seeking out news on upcoming models, flying out to industry conferences, writing about netbooks and focusing on being the best independent netbook review focused website possible. I did video based product reviews when most of my competitors would simply rewrite articles they found from CNET or other media giants. The whole time the name of the game was to be the best and to this day the website is one of the best resources to determine which netbook you should buy to meet your needs.

If you want to build something that can sell for a sizeable chunk of money you need to put in a ton of hard work and countless hours to build a website worth six figures or more. There is no push button solution and there is no right way to do it. I could talk for hours about everything I did for this website, but the path will be different for each niche. The main thing I want to get across to you is that it takes a lot of hard work to accomplish this.

How To Sell A Website For Six Figures:

During this sales process I’ve learned a lot about an industry that isn’t talked about very often and can feel very mysterious to outsiders – high end website sales. For example, if I mentioned the word “Flippa” there is a good chance you’d know what I was talking about, but if I mentioned Founders Investment Banking you probably have never heard of them.

There isn’t really a huge well known online marketplace for larger websites worth 100k+ because when you’re dealing with those valuations there’s a lot bigger picture that needs to painted besides displaying screenshots of adsense stats and google analytics data.

In my case, I used an investment banker to help sell the website and they required a ton of information before we even got started. I sent over detailed traffic logs since the inception of the site, income statements from my business records, screen shots of my earnings and an in depth excel spreadsheet outlining the income sources by month in a graphed format. I also included ideas for the new business owner on ways to improve the website’s traffic, earnings, who they could hire for writing etc. It’s also important to find a good fit if you will be working with the new owner during a transition period (which is frequent occurrence when you’re dealing with larger website sales).

Why I Used An Investment Banker To Sell My Website:

Investment bankers have access to people and businesses with money – lots of it. I don’t have access to these people and business because I don’t have enough money to play at their level (yet). So if I have to give a small percentage of the final sale price to someone who provides me access to these buyers that see the value of my website then I think it’s more than worth it. The investment bankers can also provide very good insight into how to structure a deal and take care of negotiating with the buyer. Although I’ve bought and sold plenty of websites in the past having their expertise for my first six figure sale was well worth it.

I don’t have anything against Flippa and have even used them in the past, but they’re not the best place to sell a website worth six figures. I believe they cater more toward website sales under $100k, just look at the high end section of Flippa to see what I mean. Over half the websites are scams/fake with most selling for less than $50k. Simply put, if you want to maximize the value for your website sale you need to find the right buyer that is a good fit for both parties and in my experience investment bankers do a great job of doing that when you’re selling a website for six figures or more.

What To Do With The Money Once You’ve Sold:

Once you’ve sold the website it’s easy (especially if you’re an American) to think you need to go out and spend all of the money on something to reward yourself for doing a good job. Now as much as I’d like to go buy the 2011 Subaru WRX STI in cash and sell my “old” 2008 WRX it would be the dumbest thing I could do.

Instead I plan to reinvest the funds into my business and other projects that I had set aside because of lack of capital. Now that I have some money to work with I will push forward with them in 2011. The goal that I’ve been made fun of for sharing is to buy the Guthrie Castle in 20 years and to improve my odds of doing that I need to take the funds I’ve made here and reinvest them into new projects. The side benefit of reinvesting now is to help limit my massive tax bill. In my case, the sale went through near the end of the year so I’ve been scrambling around looking for deductions and trying to find new websites to buy because as it stands right now I’m going to owe a lot to the government.

The point I’m trying to get across is that if you think about your website sale like the next step in your business and less like a windfall inheritance from a rich uncle you’ll do much better moving into the future.

Need More Specific Advice?

Ever since I sold the website I’ve been doing considerably more consulting and if you need in depth detailed website business advice you should check out my consulting page. As always, if you’re just looking for some quick advice I’m more than happy to answer any emails I receive as well. I should also mention that if you’re looking to sell your website and it’s worth less than $100,000 I might buy it. Fill out the details here: Get Rid Of Your Website

Questions? See you in the comments below.

Note: I found my investment banker via an introduction from someone I met at Elite Retreat. I am 100% certain that without that introduction they wouldn’t have agreed to help sell the website for me. Needless to say it just goes to show again how powerful in person networking events are (even those that cost $5,000 to attend).

I’ll be writing a follow up blog post to describe how and why I used investment bankers to sell this website, but I would first like to publicly thank Shoemoney and specifically the reputation that surrounds his Elite Retreat event for even getting my foot in the door. I’d also like to thank some other great friends for the advice I received prior to entering any discussions as well as some advice during the sales process including Shane Pike and David Adams from Escalate Media. Last but not least I’d like to also thank Zane, Brad, Frank, Stephanie and the rest of the team at Founders Investment Banking.

Founders is behind a bunch of other big sales like the notable $14.9 Million sale of Bankaholic.com and if they needed another person to vouch for their awesomeness I’m happy to toss my opinion out there as well.

What’s Next?

This is the first of the two cool announcements I alluded to last week. Today’s announcement is more about me but the next announcement will be more for all of you, my readers. I am shooting for a December 1st launch date of the new project but the one thing I will say is that if you’re not earning at least $1,000 a month online this will be great for you and the best part of all is that it will be completely free . If you want in be sure to sign up for my newsletter list here.

I’m in Hawaii right now (yes again) to take a little break from work and I don’t want to do any big projects until I’m back at my computer full time. But I am so excited about these two announcements that I had to share them with you all .

Reminder – Buy Coupon Code Plugin for $27:

In the mean time be sure to buy the Coupon Code plugin for $27 before we raise the price as more features are added. As I said before I’m donating all of the proceeds from the sale of this plugin for the first 30 days to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. My goal is to donate at least $1,000 so help make it happen and get a sweet WordPress plugin that helps you make more money. (In case you forgot, here’s why I wanted the plugin built and how it makes you money [see the coupon code plugin overview])

Check out Coupon Code Plugin Here

Income Graph:

Income Analysis:

In the spirit of brevity I’ve decided to change up the way I run my income reports and instead of going through every single source and writing about it I will just explain the income as a whole in a single section here:

My biggest earner of the month was the Amazon Associates program with $3,730.26 which took up 84% of my total income. I’m down about $1,000 from last month’s Amazon earnings, but I’m not too concerned as July is the traditionally the worst month in the website industry because it’s the heart of Summer. Companies rarely release new products during July and there isn’t as much to talk about. August is always better as near the end of the month back to school shopping is in full swing and I’m prepared to earn money during those sales. I have numerous people email me every day asking for more details on how I earn money with Amazon’s Associates program and because of the requests I am releasing a free eBook in just a few days which outlines a lot of information that you can use to make money with Amazon. The only way to get the eBook is to (subscribe to my free newsletter). You can also get a few tips by reading these articles: Top 7 tips and 5 Worst Ways.

All other income sources are down along with Amazon this month due to the summer slow down, but things will really start going great as we move into the fall.

Plans for Next Month:

In addition to the free eBook sharing how to make money with Amazon.com I’m releasing a paid course that dives into much greater detail on how I make money with Amazon.com. The price is not announced yet, but I will be using ClickBank as the way to sell it. That means, if you’re interested in being an affiliate simply sign up for Clickbank (if you don’t already have an account) and then I’ve set up an affiliates newsletter which will include the details as to when you can start promoting it and other details etc.

I believe the course I’m putting together will be very good and should sell very well based off the initial feedback I’ve had on my the free eBook I’ve been putting together. I also think that fact that I actually make legit money from Amazon.com differentiates me from the other people selling similar products / make money online products in general. I’ll show a live video of me logging into my Amazon affiliate account just to prove to the naysayers that I’m legit as well.

Stick Around:

My iPhone application should be finished before the end of the month and I’ll be documenting that process and how well it sells which should make for an interesting case study this month. As I mentioned before I’m also releasing my free eBook on how to make money with Amazon.com.

You can conveniently sign up for my newsletter below and in doing so you’ll receive my first free eBook on my top ways to make money online along with 3 free WordPress themes just for joining:

My Professional Goals for 2010:

1. Earn over $150,000 across my network of websites

This is a goal I’m currently not on target to hit if I replicate the same numbers from the first half of 2010. After the first six months of 2010 I’ve earned $34,361.11 based on my monthly income reports. So if I replicated the first half of the year I’d end at $68,722.22. Fortunately, I know that the second half of the year will be better than the first because of the power of the holiday shopping season and several other things I’ve been working on with my business that should at least put me into the six figure range if not help me hit my goal.

The other thing to consider is that I’m not earning a paycheck here. Yes I’m paying myself for living expenses etc. but the $34k I’ve earned in 2010 so far has been from creating income generating assets. So if I ever decided to sell my entire network of websites yes I’d be technically “out of a job” but unlike the last time I got fired and received a measly 3 weeks of severance in this case I’d probably get about $200k+ for selling everything.

This is the difference between working for someone else and working for yourself. You’re either building a business for yourself or building a business for someone else.

Note: When it comes to the accounting practices for my business I actually don’t count the money I’ve made until it deposits into my bank account so I have actually earned more like $50k in 2010 (based on deposits from November / December earnings). For the income reports it’s easier to display information based on what the last month has done though.

2. Spend at least $50,000 on quality domain names to be developed

I’ve spent about $8k on domain names so far this year with the bulk of that amount being in after market high quality domain names. I believe the right domain name can be the difference between moderate success and big success. I still need to earn significantly more this year to spend more on domain names but I am currently looking at buying several names right now in the five figure range for a new niche I’m working on.

3. Work at least 5 hours a day for a minimum of 25 hours per week

I shared this goal because at the time I wrote it I had struggled with playing way too much Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. I love FPS shooters (if you’ve read my full story than you’ll know about how I was a professional Halo player for a while), but for some reason Call of Duty was unusually addicting for me. I have since stopped playing the game but not before racking up close to 10 days worth of playtime. To help solve the issue now I don’t play any video game unless it’s after 5:00 PM and I have been doing a much better job of avoiding addicting games as well. Every now and then I read this article which quite literally changed my life and outlook on whether I had a hobby or was building a business. If you’re addicted to anything that sucks up your time (i.e. TV, video games, etc.) I highly suggest you read it – Do you really want to make money online?

On average I’ve been working well over 25 hours per week and will continue to do so for the remainder of the year.

4. Hire at least one full time writer

This is the first professional goal I can already call a success. I hired my first full time writer / assistant in mid June and she has worked for about 3 weeks for far. She’s doing excellent work and the only regret I have is that I didn’t hire someone sooner. It’s difficult to build a six figure business without any help and in fact I will probably shoot for having 3 – 4 full time employees by the end of the year.

My Personal Goals for 2010:

1. Buy a house (No longer pursuing)

My wife and I haven’t purchased a house yet and this is primarily due to several reasons:

a. I’m the only one working right now
b. I don’t think the housing crash is over (see this)
c. There isn’t enough history with my business to get a loan

We may buy next year but probably will wait until the Summer. I don’t want to buy something just so that I can say I’m a home owner. I think that’s stupid. Instead, I’d prefer to wait and buy a house I’d truly love to stay at for 10+ years. The ideal house for me is sized around 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a big basement so I can build out a private movie theater i.e. this guy and I know this ideal house would be a big first time home purchase so I want to make sure I buy when prices hit the bottom.

2. Donate at least $10,000 to charity

Sadly this goal is sort of tied to my goal for $150k this year. It will be difficult for me to pull off donating $10k unless I have $10k to give. (More on this later though)

3. Cook an entirely brand new healthy meal once per month

I’ve done this once so far; however, I made it 3 times (lol). I need to make some more meals to meet this goal so we’ll see if I can still make it happen.

4. Work out at least 2 times per week

Haven’t done this, but as all lazy people say – “I really should.” I was actually thinking of trying out P90x. I know it sounds ridiculous but I’ve heard some good things from a couple friends. Anyone try P90x out? Share below.

5. Re-Learn Spanish well enough to carry on a conversation with a native speaker

Haven’t started this. I need to set aside time to do this because so far I haven’t made any progress at all.

6. Go to Disneyworld with my wife

We ended up going to Hawaii instead and it was awesome! Turns out surfing is pretty easy if you’ve been snowboarding for over 15 years.

7. Read the Bible at least 30 minutes a day (I love me some Jesus)

This is the most disappointing goal update of the list for me. I haven’t been reading my bible as much as I’d like to, but my wife and I did finally find a church we like attending (Mars Hill Church in Ballard). I need to come up with a schedule to fit things into the day that I sometimes forget. So I have a feeling that this (along with working out) is something I should do in the morning before I start the day, so I’m going to try that this week.

Overall Summary

I still believe it is possible for me to meet all of my goals for 2010. I know that I should at least hit 100k for the year and I still can meet my goal of $150k (especially if I end up selling some of my websites as well). I believe it’s very important to set specific and measurable goals and to keep track of them regularly so that you can ensure you meet them. If you haven’t set any goals for the year I suggest you do so now and take steps towards achieving them.

Upcoming – As I say almost every month I have more exciting stories to share so be sure to stick around, but every time I really do mean it! I’ll be releasing my free Amazon eBook later this month based on your feedback and it will only be available to newsletter subscribers and Facebook Fans. You should also follow me on Twitter though.