Are you curious about a 3-month delay? I explained it in my first income report.


Income Report January 2018The beginning of January 2018 was slow. In the first week there were three holy days, so I didn’t work much.

I anticipated it for quite a sometime, but it was nice to finally check the numbers at the beginning of January and conclude that indeed, I earned more than $1,000 from my AMS service in December. That was the first month I reached 4-figures from that source. And I started advertising the first book that wasn’t my own in May! And I was paid exclusively from the profit I made for my customers.

income report january 2018
It felt fabulous. I earned over thousand bucks, because my customers earned well over $2,000 thanks to my ads.

Coaching Services Revamp

In December I followed CoachMe’s CEO, Tony Stubblebine, with his new marketing program for coaches. At the beginning of January I was at last able to implement it. I changed my coaching profile, I deleted most of the coaching goals and left only three. As I focused more on writing, I showcased my books on the profile.

I also got lucky. Around that time a few of my coaching clients graduated and gave me good marks. For the first time since I started coaching my ratio of ‘clients who marked my coaching helpful’ rose above 85%, which is CoachMe’s measure between the best coaches and the rest of the crowd. I was featured at the main CoachMe coaching page.

Coupled together, it brought great results. Within 6 days I got 7 new coaching clients.

Well, my luck didn’t last as some of them weren’t a good fit and my metrics went down again. But it lasted long enough that for the first time I had over 20 coaching clients simultaneously.

The Flu

In the middle of the month I caught a nasty flu. I was bedridden for a week with a fever and my voice didn’t fully recover for about a month. After the first week of the flu we drove to my sister in Germany for her birthday party.

The long journey nor partying till 3 am improved my health. So, for the two weeks I was barely managing to keep up with my habits and regular business activities (checking on my coaching clients, communication with prospects, etc.). I spent the last week catching up with everything.

But my income didn’t show it at all. Again, like during the 10-day retreat in December, I worked only as much to keep afloat, but our income remained stable.

My Beloved Wife

My wife surprised me big time twice in January 2018. In the first week she agreed for my travel to the USA for my mastermind’s retreat in April! Time, security and money were all her concerns, but she let me go anyway. I tell ya’, I didn’t see that coming.

Even bigger surprise came from her on 19th of January. She agreed that I work half-time in my day job. My dream came true.

In retrospect I think a hefty sum I gave her for her birthday one day before just might’ve got to do something with her decision.

Visa Application Process

So I spent at least several hours on the visa application process. All those forms were a pure nightmare. The level of details needed -mind blowing. Including the meeting with a consul at embassy and taking a special visa photo, the whole process consumed over one workday of mine. But at the end of the month I had a new USA visa in my passport.

I also spent several hours researching for affordable flights to the USA. In the end I bought plane tickets for about $1,000 which was less than I had thought it would cost me. Unfortunately, I have three planes in each direction.

AMS Services

The whole month I was getting a steady trickle of prospects. Not much came out of it, I started cooperation with one fiction author with a couple of books. My ads elevated her ranks from around the 1-million mark to around #100-200k.

My son created over 150 new ads for my customers. We were mostly filling gaps- we missed some books earlier or just a few sets of keywords for specific books.

AMS gave me a nasty surprise at the end of the month – for 10 days in a row they didn’t update sales figures in their reports. I had no idea if the ads were profitable or not. I had to change arrangements with my customers. They agreed to calculate the profits till the point when data were still updated and extrapolate for the rest of the month. What a mess!

Book Sales

income report january 2018
January 2018 was a good month for book sales, like each January is. The standard explanation is that people who got Kindles as gifts are shopping around for books. Not exactly true, because paperback sales increased as well. I think New Year resolutions give additional humph to personal development genre in the beginning of the year.

I sold over 1,100 copies of my books. The pricing still trick worked for a few of my paperbacks, so I earned disproportionally more on paperbacks.

At the end of the month Create Space royalties for an abundant December arrived, so I had cash to pay for plane tickets and my mastermind fee for the whole quarter.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income:
Amazon royalties: €986.12 ($1222.79)
CreateSpace royalties: €2599.32 ($3223.16)
Coach.me fees: $541.48
Draft2Digital royalties: $33.98
Audiobooks royalties: $40.5
PWIW personal coaching: $191.9
AMS service remuneration: $1148.73
Affiliate commissions: $46.31

Total: $6448.85

Costs:
$29, Aweber fee
$20, InstaFreebie fee
$1752.75, Iron Sharpens Iron mastermind
$101, royalties split with co-author
$30.15, my editor’s share in profits
$1306.95, Amazon ads
$91, RAs’ (RAs = Real Assistants; my sons 😉 ) remuneration
$160, USA visa application
$57, ClockWork

Total: $3547.85

Net Result: $2901


Previous Income Report: December 2017

Fifty Eighth Income Report – January 2018 ($2,901)

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