How My Blog Made $150,000+ In May 2009…Seriously
Hello Everyone
Today I have got together with a great blogger to share with you how he earns 6 figures not a year but a month! His name is Timothy Sykes and my regular readers will remember his from a interview I did last month.
After brushing up against the monthly-six-figure-income-barrier not once but twice in the last few months (In April, my blog brought in $88,000+… and last December the figure was $83,358…), I wasn’t sure if my miniscule visitor traffic to my website TimoySykes.com (3,000 daily visitors, approximately 1,000 of them unique, mailing list of 13,000) would be enough to support anything larger, and despite my stock-market-crushing performance (I’m up 370%+ in the last 18 months, making me the #1 ranked trader/investor out of 25,000+ on Covestor, the only financial site that actually verifies results) my sole marketing strategy for TIMalerts (real-time trade alerts newsletter) and PennyStocking instructional trading DVDs (teach my trading strategy) was to mention them incessantly, along with my customer testimonials like HERE and HERE, which I know are hugely annoying, but boy do they work.
Bragging aside, how did I just DOUBLE my blog’s monthly earnings from the $80,000 range to$153,450 in May 2009?
Here’s the breakdown:
May 2009: $153,450
$29,968 TIMalerts
$85,514 Instructional DVDs
$25,725 Advertising & Affiliates
$980 An American Hedge Fund
$11,263 Trading Profits
The secret to my success?
An incredible work ethic. No 4-hour workweek for me, more like 100+ hours/week. My business is hitting on all cylinders so I’ve working my butt off to answer each customer’s questions (1+ hours/day), blog 3x/day (2 hours/day), research (2+ hour/day), create daily watchlists (2 hours/day) make stock trades whenever the ideal setups occur (2 hours/day) all while developing new DVDs/websites/applications that will propel my business in the future (3 hours/day).
Central to my success, the very thing on which my entire business is based, my stock trading has been dead on as my account gained 20%+ in May alone, proving some of the critics wrong that I could only make money in bear markets (nope, I excel in bull markets!) and building on the success I’ve had for the past 18 months and decade (yeah, remember my background)
In order to take the fullest advantage of my trading success, I experimented with special DVD product offers and rebates at first, then actually raised prices late in the month once I saw the kind of people who were beginning to trade (some people shouldn’t be trading as it is risky business), which is good ethics and business-wise).
My TIMalerts subscription business was actually pretty flat month-over-month, the only other thing that made this such a breakout month was some lump affiliate payments from my sponsors and advertisers, which is also helped December 2008’s gains.
So, most of you don’t have stock trading blogs/websites, but the things you can learn from my success are:
1. The best thing you can do to grow your business is be a proven expert in your niche…not because your affiliates, partners or friends say so (in email blasts or in affiliate-linked posts), but because your numbers/customer testimonials speak for themselves.
2. Working hard is not necessarily required, but I sleep better at night knowing that I answer each email/question and am totally transparent. Making money feels great, but it feels even better take pride in your work. I run my business the way I wish all businesses were run with the goal of growing and enriching myself by providing useful/valuable content
3. Don’t for one second listen to any failed blogger/web marketer who says making a ton of money online isn’t possible. Just because they’re too inexperienced/ignorant/incompetent to achieve success doesn’t mean those smarter and more determined aren’t loving and capitalizing on the opportunities out there!
4. Follow Michael Dunlops “Make Money Online Blogging eCourse” to learn how to get your blog online and earning your first $1000.
To Your Success In 2009,
Michael Dunlop and Timothy Sykes
About Michael Dunlop
I'm Michael, I created this site back in 2009 and since then it's received over a million visitors from all around the world. We offer tutorials and inspiration for online entrepreneurs wanting to achieve more.
14 comments so far… Leave a reply
Josh C
June 13, 2009 9:36 PM
Good to hear that hard work pays off. Not that I've ever doubted it but feels good to see it in action. Congrats!
Timothy Sykes
June 13, 2009 9:41 PM
Thanks again for featuring my site, I'm just one small example of what making money online is all about, keep up the great work!
Michael Dunlop
June 14, 2009 9:04 AM
Thanks Tomothy, I have watched you for a couple years and you really are hitting the ball out of the park right now! Michael
Andy
June 14, 2009 8:59 AM
Great interview. And 150,000! Amazing!
Internet Marketing
June 14, 2009 3:28 PM
Thank you so much for that interview. Just last week, i kept saying to myself how some of these IM gurus succeed claiming they just work 2 to 3 hours a day. But after reading your interview post -- well, good old conventional hard work still is the best. Slowly but steady... Thank you too Timothy..
Brenda
June 14, 2009 4:11 PM
That's great news I love to hear, I'm having trouble getting to that 7 figure monthly earnings figure myself. I suppose that's because I don't sell any products of my own and the only form of income is from affiliate product links.
Mikael @ Retire Rich
June 15, 2009 9:21 PM
What I enjoyed about this post was not just reading about the money and the great advice that Timothy gave but rather the fact that a post like this is motivating like hell and something that will have you take more action that if you hadn't read it. I try my best to find posts like that (or movie) at least once a week in order to keep me going and achieving. Thank you Timothy and Michael. /Mikael
elmot
June 16, 2009 9:28 AM
wow! as always hardwork, focus and dedication pays off, and for you it really paid off quite well.
Daniel Matthews
June 17, 2009 11:26 AM
I've always been a strong believer in hard work, although the internet lifestyle is great only having to work a couple of hours a day, sometimes its nice to have the satisfaction of your hard work paying off. Congrats on your success Timothy. Great interview Michael.
Barry Dunlop
June 21, 2009 11:14 AM
READ the Message from Michael again -- Top Tip for sure! "I can’t stress enough how important this is, I would be a lot more well off if I experimented with different ways to monetize my website. Everyone goes to the top website in their niche and just presume they have the best monetization model, well often thats not the case!"
Albert-System
July 13, 2009 5:20 PM
Great idea, thanks for this tip!
IQ-s
July 14, 2009 12:52 PM
Damn, that sound's so easy if you think about it.
Isaac Yassar
July 18, 2009 9:14 PM
Interesting interview. "I wasn’t sure if my miniscule visitor traffic to my website TimoySykes.com (3,000 daily visitors, approximately 1,000 of them unique, mailing list of 13,000)", isn't it suppose to be TimothySykes.com instead of TimoySykes.com? "$11,263 Trading Profits" Does he really trade on his blog, not on the stock market?
Bill Bartmann
September 2, 2009 2:37 PM
I'm so glad I found this site...Keep up the good work
The comments are closed.