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


views_16II2016At the very beginning of February 2016 I invested $200 into producing my first audiobook. I decided to create it for A Personal Mission Statement: Your Road Map to Happiness, my first book ever published. It was very short, so I didn’t have to pay much 😉

Quora adventure continued

views_13II2016I was still excited by the traction I got on Quora. I remember noting in the middle of the month that I became the most viewed writer (meaning one of the top 10 writers) in Weight Loss category. I was busy also chasing another shiny badges and awards on Quora. Publishing there was so much fun!

In Early February I discovered a hack for repurposing my books’ content into Quora answers. For my books creation I used a very specific outlining process and its last step is filling the outline points with questions.

I discovered that it’s relatively easy (easier than trying to search relevant questions manually) to pair Quora questions with questions from my outlines. It saved me a lot of research time.

Publicity

I published a couple of guest posts in February. One was inspired by my Quora success. I also gave one or two podcasts interview.

On 17th of February I got an offer from a fellow author who met me in an authors group on Facebook. He wanted me to contribute to his book about writing. The book was going to be in form of interviews with authors. I gladly agreed and spent 4 days writing my answers to his interview questions.

Marketing

Inspired by Steve Scott I gave another shoot to getting on BookBub. I chiseled a nice comment and the answer was the same as always: nothing. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I quit on any new attempts for the whole next year.

Half-accidentally I discovered that adding readers’ reviews in Editorial Reviews section on a book page provides much higher conversion from browsers to buyers.
I added those reviews to The Art of Persistence page while preparing it for a BookBub pitch.

Then I noticed that the sales for this book increased out of the blue.
February 2016 Income ReportWell, “the blue” appeared to be editorial reviews. I started gradually adding this section to most of my books. Puzzling, but not all of them enjoyed the same effect of increased sales. I discovered why in September at last.

Taxes

I was preparing to include my royalties in my tax form for the first time. In 2014 I paid 30% of tax withholding and Amazon didn’t collect my Polish tax ID, so I saved myself the trouble and didn’t reveal to a tax office this income stream. In the end I wouldn’t have had to pay even a dime of taxes, because 30% was a way more than a starting author should pay. But in 2015 the withhold was only 10% and it was collected under my tax ID.

I phoned to a few accountant firms before one of them hesitantly agreed to have a look. When I met with them their people seemed to be as afraid of presenting this strange multinational atypical stream of income to a tax office as I was.

Also, both my accumulated incomes from Coach.me and Draft2Digital exceeded $100, so I decided it was high enough to bother with filling tax forms for them. I had to fill some US forms and provide my Polish tax ID. I managed to do that in February, but I was too late for the February payment for D2D.

Lent

Lent started early in 2015. I decided to attend breviary prayer at 6 am with my church community every day. The plan was (apart from obvious spiritual benefits) that it will force me to better organize my evenings and after the Lent I will be able to wake up 4 am every day and work for an hour or two on my business. The first phase went good.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income:
Amazon royalties: €791.72 ($878.81)
CreateSpace royalties: €77.56 ($86.09)
Coach.me fees from 2015 and January 2016: $186.5

Total: $1151.4

Costs:
$21.5, proofreading services Fiverr
$30, View From the Top Community fee
$29, Aweber fee
$40.40, royalties split with co-author
$200, audiobook of A Personal Mission Statement: Your Road Map to Happiness
$4.9, Kindle business books of my mentors
$30.75, first month of Business on Purpose mastermind
Total: $356.55

Net Result: $794.85


Previous Income Report: January 2016

Thirty Fifth Income Report – February 2016 ($794.85)

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