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


May 2014 was quite uneventful.
Fourteenth Income Report May 2014
Well, there were some fireworks. On 9th of May my post about a rock star from UK was noticed on Twitter by one of his fans and then retweeted. I got several retweets by people with followings that numbered in thousands. I got the surge of visits on my blog… and then my website provider encountered some technical problems. The site went down.

But it’s not the end of the story. The next day I found this in my Twitter feed:

Fourteenth Income Report May 2014

That made my day too.

James had over 2 millions followers on Twitter at that time. Within 2 hours I had a surge of visitors on my site; which was more than during the whole previous month. Quite a bunch of people praised my article.

James’ tweet got 162 retweets and 310 favs.

But it didn’t do much more for me than feeling better about myself. The surge disappeared two days later and everything was back to normal.

Lesson:

I helped this random chance. My friend Naomi from Start Biz Quit Job taught me how to retweet my old blog posts using Buffer. It was a bit of a hassle to set the things up, but it did pay off big.

Don’t let your old content just sit there and do nothing. You never know what will happen if you put yourself out there.

Free promo

The adventure with Twitter was nice, but in my business it was business as usual.

I organized a free promo of “Release Your Kid’s Dormant Genius.” This book was selling pretty badly. It has never reached the level of one sale per day. I invested $20 in marketing services. I wanted to make a bigger impact, but most of all I wanted to check the websites which I paid.

I got almost 1900 downloads. Not bad at all. The sales afterwards unfortunately didn’t reflect that. I sold 24 copies in May and 28 in the following month. I should sell about 180 to get my investment back. It seems that this book is just not marketable.

Lesson:
I don’t regret writing this book. Writing makes you internalize what you know. Maybe I didn’t help many parents with their struggles, but I definitely helped my son. I transformed him from a layabout into a decent student. He finished two school years in the row with honors.

When we moved this year, he changed the school. This one is more demanding, but he is managing just fine. My supervision is now minimal; it’s not even 10 minutes a day but a couple. How much would I pay for that? Easily a thousand bucks. Sometimes you just need to write for yourself.

Countdown Deal

I also did my first Countdown Deal on “Master Your Time. “ In promoting this deal I invested $40. I paid one company to submit the info about the promo to 30 sites. The efficiency of their effort was mediocre at best. Only 5 or 6 sites published the blurb. But I broke even with this promo.

Beta Readers

I was working on my 6th book, “From Shy to Hi.” I managed to finish editing in May, create the Advance Reading Copy and share it with my subscribers. Four of them volunteered to read the book and provide their feedback.

It was first time I did it and I recommend this course of action to every author out there, especially a one who is new to the publishing world and who has little time and resources. I mean, the most important thing is a quality of your book. The feedback from actual readers is priceless for improving this quality. I don’t have time to go back to my past book and craft them into something 1% better. I’m busy writing new books.

Sharing your book with readers in advance is a shortcut to the normal process of releasing a product and waiting for the market feedback. It allows you to publish a better book upfront.

Writing, Sales and Results

I started writing another book, “Trickle Down Mindset.” I wrote over 16k words of it. Apart from this book I was writing blog posts and how-to articles for Kindle beginners.

I got the idea of publishing my income reports. I didn’t want to start from the point I was in, I received 700 euros in May. I wanted to demonstrate that hard work and consistency pays off. So I decided to publish those reports with one year delay.

As an experiment I outsourced book content writing on Elance. I finished hiring a young gal from the Philippines.

The sales were still dwindling. I sold 543 copies. I hoped that the release of “From Shy to Hi” would compensate for it.

I gave away for free over 3,500 copies that month.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income: €952.82 (about $1238.66; February royalties, plus €80 of backlog from various markets, plus €20 from March royalties from 3 smaller markets which were registered at the end of May)

Cost: $19, Aweber services.
$20, freebie sites paid submissions.
$40, Countdown Deal promotion of “Master Your Time”.

Net result: $1159,66

GREEN! My first 4 figure month ever!! 😀


Previous Income Report: April 2014 || Next Income Report: June 2014

Fourteenth Income Report – May 2014

19 thoughts on “Fourteenth Income Report – May 2014

  • June 2, 2015 at 3:01 pm
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    Congrats on James tweeting your article! That’s incredible! And well done on having your first ever four figure month!

    Reply
  • June 2, 2015 at 3:07 pm
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    I can relate very well to your Release Your Kid’s Dormant Genius story. Sometimes in life, we do not always achieve the goal we initially sought out for. But it’s important to always look for the lesson. There’s usually something else to gain from it!

    For me, while I do not write at my blog regularly any more, and perhaps would even consider myself to have “failed” to achieve what I wanted to with it, starting that blog was still the catalyst to many good things that would come later on. I too do not regret my 5 months or so of consistent writing at the blog.

    I’ve just seen James Arthur’s performance. Man, that was one really heartfelt performance. You could see it all over his face as he sang. And it must have took a whole lot of courage to be able to show his vulnerable side like that.

    Reply
    • June 2, 2015 at 4:34 pm
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      I’m very glad I wrote it. It sells about 10 copies a month, but its reviews are the most dear to my heart.

      Yes, James was incredible.

      Reply
  • June 2, 2015 at 5:31 pm
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    Congratulations, Michal! I applaud your perseverance and hard work. It always pays off. I also read your First Income Report and I honestly think that you reached success way before your income became 4-figure. You reinvented yourself, became published author in a foreign language (!!!), it’s insane 🙂 I always had reservations about publishing my work in English, it’s not my native language as well. You are a good example to follow, Michal. Wishing you further, greater success in future. Blessings!

    Reply
    • June 2, 2015 at 5:51 pm
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      Thanks Anna.

      You are a good example to follow

      Wow, that hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s almost word by word a sentence from my personal mission statement.

      Reply
  • June 2, 2015 at 9:22 pm
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    Hi Michal,

    Thanks so much for the mention. I appreciate it and it was a pleasure to help out, any time.

    I have also read all your income reports and I just love the real honestly. Even if I do sometimes feel depressed after reading, because you’re in the red. But still, you haven’t grumbled or quit. You persevered and succeeded. Hello 4 figure month… Congratulations.

    I hope you don’t mind me giving my opinion on this, but it sprung to mind when I was reading through the post. Your book “Release Your Kid’s Dormant Genius” sounds amazing and the kind of book many parents need. Maybe I’m wrong, but it might have been the title why you didn’t reach the sales you wanted. Parents are bombarded with different books, I think your title was to generalize.

    But in your post I think you wrote the perfect title. I’ve copied and pasted this from the post above. You wrote… “I transformed him from a layabout into a decent student. He finished two school years in the row with honors.”

    I think your perfect title was there… How I Transformed my Son From Layabout to Top Student. With maybe a sub title… When Him Finishing in the Row With Honors.

    But just my opinion – as you know I’m no author!

    Thanks again for mention. I do appreciate it.

    Naomi xxx

    PS – Have you seen what’s happened to James Arthur? He was dropped from the dark lords (simon cowell’s) record label and I haven’t seen him since 🙁 Shame I loved his voice.

    Reply
    • June 4, 2015 at 1:22 pm
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      Thanks Naomi,
      I highly value your marketing sense. Maybe I’ll try another title when I take down the book from KDP Select.

      PS. James is doing fine. He’s lately concerting around UK.

      Reply
  • June 7, 2015 at 7:05 am
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    Congrats on the 4 figure income, Michal!

    Let it be the minimum revenue for the next months :))

    Reply
  • June 17, 2015 at 12:31 pm
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    Nice job!

    I remember your earlier article about James Arthur. Good job with that retweet. You are one tenacious dude!

    Obviously this was a while ago, but it sure builds anticipation to find out what you’re making today. Maybe I’ll find out in another year.
    🙂

    Reply
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  • June 25, 2015 at 2:34 pm
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    I might be a few weeks late to this post, but let me just say two things.
    1. You’re going to be in the 5 figure months very, very soon. I see a hustle in the actions that you’re doing that I don’t see often enough.

    It seems to me that the only obstacles that might be holding you back are going to prove miniscule compared to your drive 🙂

    2. Why the 1-year delay? I couldn’t get the link to work at my work computer :/

    Reply
    • June 25, 2015 at 2:58 pm
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      Ad. 1. Sincere thanks.

      Ad. 2. “I want to make it believable so that you undestand that you can do it too. You can’t look up to me at this moment, when I have 5 books published, when I have a couple of months with royalties exceeding $1k under my belt, when I’ve already sold thousands of copies.

      I think you might better relate to the guy who is full of self-doubts, who is discovering how this electronic publishing industry really works, who just hit the ‘publish’ button for the first time.”
      And it’s much easier to manage.

      Reply
  • June 28, 2015 at 6:03 am
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    Great achievement! I was looking forward to this first bump of the story. Haha. Would you say this is the time when the “portfolio of books” start to take effect? Oh boy, I have more work to do!

    Reply
    • June 29, 2015 at 7:16 am
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      Not really Rob. I estimate that about $100 of this amount was the ‘portfolio effect.’ On Kindle market usually the last book is making the main bulk of money.

      This effect kicks in when you are able to drive the traffic to your books from outside the Amazon store. I’m working hard on that.

      Reply

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