My dear dudes,

As promised, I will start to release reports on my online income. I won’t necessarily release one every month, as I will only release one if I make least $500 that month. As for December 2016, I’ve hit $1000, so it is actually ideal to start my reports on online income. I am projecting to do $20k on online income alone, during 2017. I think that online income may become a cornerstone of my Early Retirement!

This blog started out as something very small, but it has been growing over time. We’ve reached 700 subscribers and 250 likes on the Facebook page (if you follow me, please like our Facebook page if you haven’t yet). For 2017, however, I am actually planning on working on it at least 2 days of the week.

I’ve received many e-mails concerning this matter. Most people ask me “What can I do to start a side online business?” or “What can I do to make a few hundred bucks at the end of the month”? First, know that I offer consulting services for this, on 1:1 consultions. Either way, let me hash out a general recepie here:

0) Choose a niche. Many people choose niches based on keyword search. I highly recommend people to blog about what they are passionate about instead. If you add value, any niche will work out for you.

1) Set up a website. I host my website on Bluehost, which I highly recommend. For one, its cheap, two is highly reliable.

2) Blog. A lot. You may have noticed that I’ve posted twice in the month, on specific months, when I started From cents to Retirement. Doesn’t work. It won’t tie people in, it won’t please search engines and your blog will rapidly be forgotten. Note that I am not saying “publish crap”. Do not, if you expect to have loyal fans and grow. But do not forget to publish.

3) Promote your blog. A big part of having your blog out there for people to see is through high quality posts – eventually, people will share. Promoting your blog will not only get it out there faster but deeper. Promoting your blog can be very hard, but its necessary.

4) Monetize. Adsense is an option. I like Amazon a lot. If you offer consultancy services, as I do, you need to show you can do it yourself first, but clients will pop up eventually.

So, how did I make over $1000 this month? First, the break down:

Bluehost : $60
Affiliate marketing : $661.78
Consultancy fees : $355
Google adsense : $14.41

Total : $1091.19

Disclaimer: the BlueHost and the Amazon links are affiliate links, which means that I get commissions if you buy products or services through them.

The amounts above are for the month of December and they are before any fees, taxes or expenses. I can’t say exactly how much I will net from this, but direct expenses sum up to $200.

If you are interested in starting a blog of your own, I created a tutorial here, to help you start off.

This month, the blog has hit a record in page views. As I show below, I’ve finally passed the 50k barrier, as I’ve had a total of 64k views:

It is not bad, but one of my goals for 2017 is to hit 250.000 views in a month, and stay stable afterwards. I will also invest more on social media (such as Facebook), as I said before, and start promoting high quality, highly informative posts on Real Estate.

As I go, I will increase the content and detail of each online income report. Next in this regard:

• Expand in partners for Affiliate Marketing.
• Resort to other sources of online income (e.g. surveys).
• Promote my blog massively – includes SEO!
• Publish a book.

Goals till January 31st:

• Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 1000.
• Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1000.
• Finish writing my book.

In the meantime, let me know if this information is useful to you in the comment section down below.

Your biggest fan,
Ben Davis