When I started this blog over a year ago, I was giving these constant updates about my progress in growing my online income.  I have shied away from that a bit as my income has grown. I don’t want to sound like a braggart. Hell, lots of people are making lots more than me, but in the interest of continuing what I started I’ll let you know things are going well.

I’m not rich yet, but I’m on my way. My online earnings for this month are on track to be very close to $10K net. My family and I live frugally on about $2.5K monthly. I draw a monthly check from my LLC which has been accruing assets. Right now, I could live for a year with zero income if things went bad.

Having that cushion of 12 months worth of money in the bank has given me the confidence to say that I’ll never get another “job”. I have had my online earnings rug pulled out from under me twice now where my income dropped nearly to zero. Both times I was able to reinvent myself within 6 weeks and get back to earning enough to survive. One time was a close call. I actually started job seeking as a back-up-plan.  Things worked out fine though.

You might think from reading this that I’m content. Not even close buddy! I’ll never be content with my online earnings. I know enough about this business to understand that a guy can earn tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per day online. The potential is greater than most people off the street can comprehend. Although my current earnings are at a 6 figure level, they are likely to fluctuate in the future. The uncertainty of online income has me highly motivated to build a nest egg I can use to secure an offline 6 figure income by buying 1 or more businesses.

I debated at some length whether I would attend again this year. But decided I might as well. I met a few people last year that justified it. I’m really only going for the networking, but I’ll sit in on a few sessions as well. Sure, you can make friends in the industry long distance, but nothing really compares to shaking someone’s hand in person and sharing some experiences like lunch, dinner, or a drunken bender that lasts into the night.

Sorry, I haven’t been updating my blog very often, frankly it is because I’ve been too busy with my family. We just had our 5th child 10 weeks ago. Also, if I’ve been at my computer, I’ve generally been working on scaling up my stuff. I used to give updates about my income monthly and have really been remiss about that.

Here is a general update: Things have been pretty steady over the last year. Increasing a little bit every month. Last month I made about $8,600.00 net on about $16,000.00 gross. I have a goal of making $30K net in September. Cash flow has been one of the biggest factors limiting the rate I can scale things. I’ve finally reached the point where I have enough business capital to scale things as fast as I can do the work.

November money spent:
$5,179.30

November money earned:
$13,153.32
$151.76 referral income from Market Leverage
=$13,305.08 total gross profit

$8,125.78 total net profit for November

Looking forward to December my goal is to net $15,000.  My strategy to achieve it is to focus on increasing ROI….specifically I’m working on reducing my CPC and using the surplus to fund new campaigns. Also, I’m working on increasing CTR and Conversion rates.

Go back in time and see my affiliate marketing profits for July through October 2009.

2. Taxes – Several US states have no income tax. You can save some money on taxes with an LLC but to justify it for this reason alone, you probably need to be making $10K or more per month. You still need to pay federal taxes and if you live in a state with income tax you will generally still be paying taxes to your state for any salary or bonus you take.  If you are making big bucks, there can still be tax advantages but you should be talking to a tax planner to set it up right. If you don’t do things right, an LLC can be a tax liability putting you in the position of paying taxes twice. Be careful with this. But if you ARE making big bucks than it will be worth it to set yourself up properly. For example, if you are banking a $million per year, you can leave the assets in your company which may be taxed at a lower rate than you. The company can also do clever things like own your home and car or pay for your health insurance and have an “employee” retirement plan.

3. Stability – It’s a big temptation to spend your money in the good times and be broke in the bad times. Personally, I live on a fixed salary which I draw from my LLC. Anything over my salary stays in the company accounts and is building up to become a warchest I can use when it’s time to take things to the next level. My plan is to have my LLC own rental properties which will provide  hedges against inflation and loss of income.

4. Security – Got PPC accounts? CPA accounts? An Adsense account? Well if you have an LLC, it has it’s own tax id number and can have it’s own accounts separate from your own. If you lose a critical account of some sort, having an LLC in place can offer you a way to get your foot back in the door quickly. If you’re smart you’ll have backup accounts ready to go before you have a problem. Be careful here. Lots of people use this as a technique which may violate user agreements with some companies. For increased protection from loss of critical business accounts, you might want to use a registered agent service which gives you a different (forwarded) address for the business and further isolates it from you. This can give you access to credit cards with multiple addresses which you may enjoy.

5. Trust – If you live in certain countries you may find it more difficult to get approved for CPA accounts etc. If you have run into this problem and want to avoid it in the future you can set up a USA based LLC and legally it is as if the company is a US citizen. Your company lives here, pays taxes here, and can get in trouble with the law here. It can be sued or even fined for criminal offenses. The Limited Liability Company gives you a US presence. With a registered agent service, you have a USA based address which will forward all mail to you wherever you may be.

6. Estate planning – If you have kids like me and plan to be mega rich, you have to figure out how to set up your estate. My “Wyoming Close LLC” allows me to make my kids members of the company. The company can own assets like real estate. When they inherit the estate, the Wyoming Close LLC will reduce their tax liability by about 50%. It also provides a form of protection you’d never think of but which I like. Should one of my 5 kids get divorced after inheriting their membership in the company, their ex-spouse cannot touch or acquire any share of the company. It essentially functions as a bulletproof prenuptial agreement for all my kids.

THE ULTIMATE PROTECTION: If you are a big affiliate and are playing chicken with the FTC, or consider yourself at higher risk of lawsuits, you might want to consider having businesses set up overseas which in turn operate in the USA. I can’t provide any advice to this end. Remember, I’m not a lawyer. But if you have a foreign company structure like this, then if anybody wants to sue you or come after you, then they’ll have to pay for lawyers in the USA and in whatever country you’re based out of. Of course so would you but you’re rich right? Anyway, it is possible to have multiple jurisdictions like this which increase the barriers for legal actions against you. Personally, I’m not operating in a very high risk fashion at all and a USA LLC is good enough for me.

Can you tell us another good reason for having an LLC or do you have experience with foreign entities? Please let us know in the comments.

July 2009
I had some good things going here, and made about $500net/day on July 4th and 5th. Then Adwords slapped all my campaigns for Resveratrol rebills and I was out of business. I took a couple weeks to rethink my strategies. I would rather not have my business at risk of being crushed at any time by Google. Therefore, this marked the end of my Adwords advertising. All of my July profit was made in the first week of the month. The next few weeks were spent inventing and beginning to implement a new strategy.

July money spent:
$2231USD

July gross profit:
$4158

Net money earned in July:
$1927.

August 2009
August represented starting over with new campaigns and traffic sources. Sorry, I’m revealing a little less about my earnings these days but I will say that YSM Yahoo Search Marketing is fairly prominent in my spending now when it wasn’t before. Late in August, we found out my wife was pregnant again.

August money spent:
$1487.

August gross profit:
$3891.

Net money earned in August
$2004.

September 2009
I shifted offers from one to the next in September and changed all my offers around entirely and by the end of the month things had become pretty stable. With my wife being pregnant I worked towards promoting more stable offers which would be less likely to be pulled down at a moments notice. No rebills for me now. I wanted to be able to take time off to take care of my family. With Janeen out of commission, I’m taking care of the babies, especially in the mornings. Also, it was a real struggle to shift away from my night owl working hours.

September money spent:
$2562.

September gross profit:
$5685.

September net profit:
$3123. +$102 Market Leverage referral income = $3225 total September net profit

October 2009
In October I pretty much just scaled up the same stuff I was doing the month before. I worked a lot less actually even though I made more. I continued to struggle to work while taking care of my kids and my wife. Her pregnancy gives her gestational diabetes which in turn causes her to faint and collapse unpredictably. I have to walk with her even just around the house and she is essentially an invalid until after she gives birth and recovers.

October money spent:
$4745.

October gross profit:
$11,693.

October net profit:
$6,948.
(Also I got $248 from Market Leverage as referral income.)
+$248
October grand total net profit - $7196.USD

I’m on track for November to be similar to October, but expect to be able to increase my earnings in December as I have a project or two in the works and am starting to build up enough capital to scale up a little.

Go back in time and see my affiliate marketing profits for June.

This represents marked growth in my campaigns’ performance. It’s very exciting and a little unnerving. I am nervous about the rug being pulled out from under me. Google represents a large majority of the traffic and conversions I’m getting.

At Affiliate Convention, I told people that I was making $3K net monthly and that “Within two months I’ll be making $10K monthly net.” It’s only been two weeks, but I’m already there. Of course it needs to hold for a month for me to brag, but I’m really quite pleased.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be secure with this affiliate marketing income. Laws are changing. If you depend on Google for SEO or PPC, they can change their algorithms at any time and hurt your income badly. My basic plan is to make as much money as possible as fast as possible and sink it into offline investments such as real estate and brick and mortar businesses.

I want to have a totally stable and secure passive income which far exceeds my needs and only grows over time. In other words, I want to be wealthy in every way. Time, money, family, health. I want every type  of wealth there is and I’m on my way. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Have any of you gone through issues when it comes to adjusting to financial wealth? I’m having to work to push past the limits of my comfort zone. Please comment about your own experiences with income growth and it’s effects on your life.

Well, I only made $2761.50 net this month. I squeaked by my competition with a slightly higher net income for the month. I enjoyed the challenge of it, but hitting $15K net was pretty much a cash flow impossibility by the 22nd or so.

Still, I’m happy to take on all comers. Eventually ALL internet traffic will pass through my servers. Mooowhaaahaaaaa! That’s what makes me ‘Dangerous’. You’ll be allowed to stay in business, but your traffic will have to flow through me.

June 2009

Money spent:

Adwords                                             $4,947.28

Yahoo Search Marking                       $448.08

MSN Adcenter                                        $84.74

Ad buy                                                   $320.00

Total money spent $5800.10

Money earned:

Hydra                                                    $8,196.00

MarketHealth                                           $5.00 (second tier)

Adsense                                                  $360.60

Gross money earned                               $8561.60

Net money earned                             $2761.50

So, it’s OK, but I’m not satisfied with my efforts or my results. At least I won’t have to get a job.

After attending Affiliate Convention this month I’m pretty pumped up and want to take my wife to Affiliate Summit East in NYC in August 2009. It’s gonna take an earnings bump to justify the expense of a big trip like that but I don’t want to miss it. I figure if I can at least double this month’s net earnings I’ll go to New York.

And what’s the deal with people in forums posting gross earnings and talking about their best day ever. Gross means nothing. It’s a silly ego number. Net means everything.

This month (July 2009)  I’ll be pushing into new areas and building out new campaigns. Things will certainly be interesting. I also am going to be coming more into compliance with my landing pages. So that might cost me some profit. I hope not.

Feel free to comment. I could use the encouragement.

My 1st month

My 2nd month

So now my goal for the month has become to net $15K. The rules are that I must make the entire $15K net profit before he does in order to win. I am currently at $724 net profit month to date. Which would only carry out to make $3620 unless I do some extra work.

Yesterday and today I have made $181 and $172 net profit (today’s not over).  So, I have a lot of work to do. I can’t be sticking around here talking to you bums, so I’m gonna go for now. You can see my micro updates if you want to follow me on Twitter.