Well folks, winter is now well and truly upon us and Christmas is just around the corner. One could be forgiven for slowing down given the circumstances but I took it upon myself to set some pretty ambitious targets for myself in November.
At the end of October’s income report I was full of optimism for the launch of my freelance writing guide, but at the same time I had absolutely not idea how successful the launch would actually be. My whole information product project has been a process of one uncertain step after another — the launch was the culmination of all my work.
On a more lighthearted note I decided to grow a mustache in November for the Movember movement — a great cause. I promised to keep you all updated on its “progress” via my Facebook page.
So, how did it all work out?
What Happened in November?
As you would expect, the launch of my freelance writing guide completely dominated the month. It launched on 6th November whilst I was in the USA visiting my sister prior to a Caribbean cruise.
Once the guide launched I went off on my cruise and barely did anything for a week. Upon my return I resumed work on my One Hour Authority Site project and got my head down in preparation for December’s big plans (to be revealed soon!).
Finally we can’t of course forget my freelance writing, which still makes up the bulk of my income. With my income streams diversifying and my rate ever-increasing I took the opportunity to assess this part of my business in November and lay out a strategy for optimizing both my earnings and time.
But enough of all that — let’s get onto the numbers!
Monthly Income Report — November 2012
- Freelance writing:
- Income: $3,576.12
- Expenditure: $19.82
- Profit: $3,556.30
- Websites:
- Income: $2.03
- Expenditure: $22.70
- Profit: -$20.67
- Leaving Work Behind:
- Income: $410.51
- Expenditure: $64.28
- Profit: $346.23
- Information Products:
- Income: $2,279.36
- Expenditure: $384.25
- Profit: $1,895.11
Total profit for November 2012: $5,776.97
November’s earnings have absolutely smashed my previous record of $4,588 set in August, which I am delighted about. These figures probably comes as no surprise to those of you who read my post on lessons learned from my product launch, as I shared some in-depth numbers back then.
Leaving Work Behind’s income (from affiliate marketing) nearly doubled this month, which is great to see. However, this income stream will to continue to be relatively volatile and I expect a dip in December.
The eagle-eyed amongst you may spot that my freelance earnings have dropped consecutively in the last two months. This is due to me doing less one-off work and relying instead on my regular client work only. My equivalent hourly rate continues to climb though — in November I freelanced for a total of 48 hours, which equates to an hourly rate of $74 when calculated by net income. I’ll take that!
As I previously alluded to, I am currently in the process of consolidating my freelance business so that my equivalent hourly rate is maximized. More on this soon.
Oh, and let’s not forget that mustache I grew for Movember. Here’s the (unfortunate) evidence on days 6, 15 and 30:
I’m glad to see the back of it! I’ll have to think of something a little more outlandish for November 2013 😉
What’s in Store for December?
Now that I have gained a bit of traction in terms of income streams outside of freelance writing, I am not going to pause for breath.
I have a fairly major update for my guide planned plus a couple of surprises for those of you who are interested in learning more from me about freelance blogging and beyond. I also have a new idea that I have been toying around with that I may launch in the New Year. I am pretty excited about it and think it could be another great case study for you guys to see develop here on the blog.
I’ll also be working hard on my authority site, although I do not expect anything exciting to happen in December as I finish off my initial content drive and start to work on link building.
As for the guide, obviously I don’t expect it to make nearly as much in December as it did in November. In fact, I know that I have a lot of work to do in terms of optimizing the sales page in order to generate more sales. I’ll keep you updated on how I get on with respect to this.
Finally, I am running the Houston marathon on January 13, so I’ll be busy training for that in sub-zero temperatures here in England. To the right you can see a screenshot I took on my iPhone at the end of a run last Friday evening!
Until then I will of course be sure to keep you updated via my Facebook page, Twitter, and via my newsletter. If I don’t speak to you beforehand, have a wonderful Christmas and an awesome New Year!
Mike From Maine says
Congrats, man. You’re really crushing it!
Love the mustache 🙂
Tom Ewer says
Thanks Mike!
Dave says
$74 an hour for freelance? Definitely a very respectable rate. I’ve been trying to build up my freelance writing rate as well. Do you find yourself doing more SEO or freelance blogging?
Great to see your success though, always inspiring for those of us who may be a few steps behind! Keep it going!
Tom Ewer says
I’m not totally sure what you mean but I don’t do any specific SEO consulting — just freelance blogging. Cheers!
Tracy Oeser says
Very inspirational! Love the mustache too…
Tom Ewer says
Thank you Tracy 🙂
Jean Galea says
That’s massive Tom! I’m really glad your ebook is doing well too, it’s a fantastic product. I think I’ve postponed releasing my own digital products for far too long, and this will probably spur me into production mode. Keep them coming!
Tom Ewer says
It should do — I’ve also got a post coming out in a couple of weeks that will give you another kick if you haven’t started by then 😉
Darren says
Well done Tom, it’s great following your monthly progress and your transparency on the eBook launch is really great!
I’m very interested to see how sales of it stand up over the next few months (as I’m sure you are!).
Good stuff indeed.
Tom Ewer says
Yep — it’s definitely going to slow right down if I do nothing, so I need to work hard to ensure that the most is made of the product!
Joe Cassandra says
Great work Tom and stache! Looking forward to tackling your guide this month…keep it going, love seeing these reports (definitely motivating)..cheers!
Tom Ewer says
Appreciate the support Joe!
Andrea Guerra says
Congratulations! I love reading about your experiences, thank you for sharing!
Tom Ewer says
It truly is my pleasure Andrea 🙂
Jamie Alexander says
Great job on the income report + looking like a 70s pornstar lol
Tom Ewer says
Thank you on both counts 😉
Justice Wordlaw IV says
Congrats with your success this past month.
Tom Ewer says
Thanks Justice — how are you doing?
Diane says
Tom: Many congrats on your best month ever!!
I’ve got to agree with Jamie; you DO look like a 70s porn star with the mustache…
Diane
Tom Ewer says
70s porn star / Freddie Mercury I think…neither of which are good! Glad it’s gone 😉
Quinn says
Great stuff Tom, really awesome launch. Good to see you doing well. Why the Houston for a marathon? Great goal for mid winter for sure.
Tom Ewer says
My sister’s doing it (she lives in Houston), I’m going to be over there for Christmas, so why the hell not! 🙂
Jesse says
Congrats Tom,
Continued success to you.
Tom Ewer says
Thanks Jesse, appreciate it 🙂
Tom Frearson says
Hey Tom,
Some great numbers there! My partner also earns a good income from her freelance writing… why did I study engineering again??
Keep up the good work, look forward to seeing your progress.
Tom Ewer says
I’m sure you’re making good use of that engineering degree! And if not just become a freelance writer — I don’t have any qualifications! I’m sure there are some engineering trade magazines out there that would pay a pretty penny for a qualified writer…
Charley says
Impressive! You deserve a 1-week vacation for your successful attempt at increasing your aggregate income. It seems you love running passionately. For me, I’d rather do 50 stomach crunches, pull ups, and some flexibility training, in addition to 2 hours of football 😉
Tom Ewer says
Given that I only had a one week vacation a couple of weeks ago, let’s just say I had it in advance 😉
Iain Robson says
Hello Tom,
I’m glad to hear that your book it so well.
I’m curious about this new adventure you’re talking about in terms of consolidating a whatnot.
let us know how it goes.
Iain
Tom Ewer says
If you have a whatnot it is best to consolidate it 😉
Iain Robson says
Ha. I think that I meant ‘and.’
I meant to say that I am curious as to what is going to happen with your consolidation.
I was using voice dictation. Guess that didn’t work out well. I should have checked my comment again.
Tom Ewer says
Don’t worry about it, I got the message 🙂
Iain Robson says
Glad you did.
Servando Silva says
Hello Tom.
It’s always a pleasure to read your income reports. You’re doing quite well as a free lancer, and i hope you can get more later, but for this Christmas, I think you’re almost done 🙂
BTW, I’ve been following your 1 hour project and I did something different on my side. My results are quite different and traffic is arriving slowly but steady. The point again is that there was no SEO involved at all.
Tom Ewer says
Care to share Servando? 🙂
Servando Silva says
Yes. Somehow your answer’s email got filtered trough my SPAM inbox but luckily I check that from time to time.
It’s a blog I did with my girlfriend back on March 2012. She worked on it for 3 weeks only, with an average of 2 hours per day. I just helped her setup everything so she could do the posts.
In total, that’s around 30 hours project and then we leaved it alone. No SEO, no promotion on other blogs, and barely a hand of likes or shares on Pinterest. We just forgot about it for 6 months!
Since my blogs are starting to get steady traffic already, I remembered that blog 1 month ago, and I was joking with my GF that it would already have like 100 daily visitors. She actually was mad at me because she dropped the project and I was joking about that.
Well, I got curious and checked the WP dashboard just to realize the blog was getting 200 daily visits already. In fact, right now is getting almost 300 hundred visits per day. Using majestic SEO i checked the number of Backlinks and it has only 5 registered backlinks and PR 0.
Yet, it’s somehow receiving more traffic than my main blog. My GF started working on it ASAP as she noticed it.
I’m not sharing the link because I don’t want you to think I want to promote it. I was just remembering back when I commented on your 1 hour project post and one of the main ideas was to get a blog well ranked and get traffic without doing SEO at all and with little amounts of work hours just by posting articles based on Google Search results.
We can go over more if you want, of course 🙂
Wish you a successful December!
Aleshia Green says
Sounds like you had yet another successful month. What a way to end the year. Even if December sales slow, you will have achieved more than you ever planned for the year and will have more to take with you into 2013 to focus more on.
Good luck to you and early MErry Christmas and Happy New YEar to you as well!
Aleshia
Tom Ewer says
Thanks! 🙂
Spencer says
Congrats Tom! Glad to see the income rising and LOVE to see that you are still running! I’m doing a half marathon in February…we’ll see what happens after that.
Tom Ewer says
Awesome Spencer — let me know what time you do so I can be spurred on to run faster!
Kevin Muldoon says
Congrats. It won’t be long until the commissions from your info products is exceeding your freelancing income.
Tom Ewer says
Here’s hoping Kevin! 🙂
Sarah Russell says
Haha – I love a man who celebrates Movember 🙂
Congrats on the record-breaking income and the successful product launch!
Tom Ewer says
Thank you Sarah!
Rohan Advani says
Great income Tom 🙂 , I hope it triples the coming months !! Love the kids especially maggie is really cute:)
Tom Ewer says
Triple would be nice 🙂 Thanks!
Rohan Advani says
Good Luck buddy 🙂 and do let us know !! 😉
Joe says
$5k is awesome! I made just over £500 from writing in November (my second month doing it) thanks to your inspiration and reading this blog. So thanks for that!
Still haven’t found a regular gig though so not sure what will happen in December. I’m aiming for an hourly rate of £20 / $30 per hour in the next few months and some steady clients.
I must confess though, that although I bought your book I haven’t read it! I’m just too busy at the moment.
Do you have any plans to covert it to Kindle format as I’d love to read it on my kindle? Any time on my computer has to be spent working rather than reading.
Good luck with all your plans for 2013 and have a good Chrimbo!
Cheers, Joe
Tom Ewer says
Congratulations on the earnings Joe — that’s awesome!
As for a Kindle version, stay tuned — I’ll have something for you before Christmas 🙂
sonesh says
Congratulation
And beSt Luck for your Future
Tom Ewer says
Thanks Sonesh 🙂
Vijaygopal Balasa says
Congratulation Tom Ewer,
i’m just inspired you