My, how the first three months of 2016 have wizzed by! Every quarter I detail the passive income profit my business has earned. Passive income is earned from assets – the passive income assets in my business are mostly digital products. I can sell one digital product a day; or I can sell a million. It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to do anything. That’s passive. Here’s a cat.
I’m delighted that my passive income reports have helped many people. For example, a lot of you guys have followed me to Udemy and made money there. On the other hand, blog income reporting is not for the faint-hearted. You get a bit of hate as well as a lot of love.
My passive income
Never make money from just one source. My various passive income streams include: the sales of digital products (such as e-books and video courses), affiliate commissions and advertising revenue.
Never make money from just one source Share on XLast quarter I made $16,027.20 passive income profit. The target for this quarter is $20,000. Let’s see how I got on.
Udemy
Udemy is an online learning platform. I’ve known how to make money on Udemy for a while and it’s been my most consistent passive income earner for the last two years.
| Period | Revenue |
|---|---|
| 2015 Q2 | $11,381.66 |
| 2015 Q3 | $11,646.15 |
| 2015 Q4 | $11,905.57 |
| 2016 Q1 | $14,058.32 |
This quarter, we have $14,058.32 – up from last quarter. The Udemy January promo did very well and then I did a couple of good promos myself in February and March.
On April 4th 2016, Udemy introduced a new course pricing strategy and stopped those ridiculous deep discounts. This, in my opinion, is a good thing. No more sales offering $300 courses for $2.
All Udemy courses will be priced between $20 and $50 – a more sensible price range – and there will be no special offers of less than half price. Even at the highest possible discount, a $50 course will never sell for less than $25. And no course, anywhere on Udemy, no matter what its full price, can ever be sold for under $10.
However, I expect a dip in revenue from Udemy next quarter as I won’t be able to do so many successful promos to my own students.
Skillshare
Skillshare is another online learning platform that I have my courses on. Again, it’s consistent income but not nearly at the levels of Udemy.
| Period | Revenue |
|---|---|
| 2015 Q2 | $852.27 |
| 2015 Q3 | $921.05 |
| 2015 Q4 | $820.06 |
| 2016 Q1 | $841.95 |
Other online learning platforms and deals sites
There are many more places where you can put courses. I’m sure there is more money to be made out there. For example, Stone River eLearning made me $501.19 this quarter. Nothing from Dealfuel this month. But I made my first money from StackSkills: $52.75.
More to come here. Here’s an article I wrote about alternatives to Udemy.
Amazon Kindle
Kindle publishing is great for a personal brand like mine. You can absolutely make sure your Amazon Kindle can be a bestseller which is great. I decided to take my foot off the Kindle gas peddle towards the end of last year and you can see what has happened as a result. Here are my seven Kindle book titles:
- Running A Web Design Business From Home: How To Find and Keep Good Clients and Make Money with Your Home Business
- How To Sell Video Courses Online: How I make $2000+ passive income every month
- From Freelancer to Entrepreneur: Escaping work and finding happiness
- Build a Brand, Create Products and Earn Passive Income
- Create the Website You Want with WordPress
- Free Your Thoughts: How I Re-programmed Myself For Happiness And How You Can Too
- Free Yourself, Leave Your Job and Be Your Own Boss: A Guide for Entrepreneurs
I’m thinking writing a book about the travelling I’ve been doing these last two years.
| Period | Revenue |
|---|---|
| 2015 Q2 | $1,301.56 |
| 2015 Q3 | $1,393.91 |
| 2015 Q4 | $894.09 |
| 2016 Q1 | $527.70 |
The red line above constitutes book sales; the blue line borrows.
| Period | Number of books sold |
|---|---|
| 2015 Q2 | 1119 |
| 2015 Q3 | 1126 |
| 2015 Q4 | 527 |
| 2016 Q1 | 313 |
As you can see, as I haven’t launched any new titles in the past 5 months or so, the numbers are really taking a nose-dive. This shows you how Udemy is a better platform for me, revenue-wise. Udemy income keeps on coming even if I stop making new courses. Kindle is so competitive, you’ve got to write a book a month, or so it seems.
My membership site
I also sell my courses on my membership site. Feel free to sign up for one of my free courses.
| Period | Revenue |
|---|---|
| 2015 Q2 | $851 |
| 2015 Q3 | $2,405.01 |
| 2015 Q4 | $1,836.03 |
| 2016 Q1 | $1,953.50 |
I recently took one of my courses off Udemy and raised the price on my own site: Earn $5000+ a Month Passive Income Selling E-books and Video Courses. This made me over $1300 by sending two emails to my list over a 5 day period.
Google advertising income
This is revenue from ads on my YouTube channel as well as a little bit of Adsense on my website.
| Period | Revenue |
|---|---|
| 2015 Q2 | $324.89 |
| 2015 Q3 | $295.96 |
| 2015 Q4 | $222.02 |
| 2016 Q1 | $322.72 |
Affiliate sales
I am an affiliate for certain products that I recommend or mention here. I get a commission if a sale is made through one of my affiliate links. The links below are affiliate links!
| Affiliate product | 2015 Q2 | 2015 Q3 | 2015 Q4 | 2016 Q1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genesis WordPress theme | $240.28 | $298.14 | $566.62 | $346.84 |
| WPML WordPress Multi-Lingual plugin | $675.00 | $296.00 | $180 | $101.00 |
| Aweber email marketing and delivery | $86.40 | $104.70 | $87.30 | $111.00 |
| Others | $504.48 | $521.20 | $589.06 | $779.64 |
| Total: | $1506.16 | $1220.04 | $1422.98 | $1338.48 |
Others include:
WishList Member $266.40;
Dreamhost $71.34;
Udemy $148.37;
Your Digital Formula – Steven Aitchison’s amazing program to sky-rocket your Facebook Likes $159.20;
Hostgator $134.33
This article shows you how to make money with affiliate commissions by blogging.
Total revenue
So, if we add it all up. My passive income revenue in the third quarter of 2015 was: $19,596.61 that’s slightly up from $19,027.20 last quarter.
Expenses
Here are the expenses I’ve incurred for this quarter.
| What? | How much per quarter? |
|---|---|
| Outsourcing (oDesk, Elance and direct) | $1800 (est.) |
| Hosting (LiquidWeb) | $270 |
| Email marketing (Aweber) | $400 |
| Cloud storage (Dropbox) | $30 |
| Video storage (Vimeo) | $30 |
| Audio storage (Libsyn) | $30 |
| SSL (Godaddy) | $15 |
| Domain registration (NameCheap) | $25 |
| Kindle editing, formatting, and promos | $400 |
| Total | $3000 |
Remember that some of these expenses are company expenses that are incurred to support my active income. For example, web hosting is needed for my web design business which isn’t passive.
But I always like to err on the side of caution with these income reports as I’d hate to exaggerate here. So, bear in mind that these figures are always an underestimation.
This quarter’s total passive income profit
So the revenue ($19,596.61) minus the expenses ($3,000) is … $16,596.61 which is, again a slight improvement on last quarter’s $16,027.20 – but still far from my best.
I explained last quarter how I’m uncomfortable with these figures. They’re plateauing. I’m not a fan of plateaus.
The Udemy income represents almost three quarters of my passive income revenues. If Udemy were to disappear overnight I would experience a noticeable drop in earnings. Remember these profit figures aren’t the entirety of the profit in my business. I also do web and graphic design work for clients (as I have been for 10 years now).
However there are two privileges my business’s profits have given me (bear in mind I have no wife and kids to support):
- Time
- Money
I have tried to invest both into new ventures to spread and increase the passive income streams. One of them is my introduction and into selling on Amazon with Amazon FBA.
Amazon FBA
I will include the revenues and expenses from my first product in next quarter’s report. Why? Quite simply because I hope I can show profit. No chance this quarter. I’m trying to get my first product established.
As you can see, I’m still losing money on Amazon FBA after a month of selling. That was expected. I can’t say I enjoy it … losing money is never good. More info on my Amazon FBA adventure to come.
If your business has a surplus of cash, reinvest the profits to grow further Share on XComparison with previous quarters
| Period | Revenue |
|---|---|
| Q3 2012 | $2,447.10 |
| Q4 2012 | $2,611.03 |
| Q1 2013 | $2,036.93 |
| Q2 2013 | $3,949.05 |
| Q3 2013 | $5,191.36 |
| Q4 2013 | $4,626.56 |
| Q1 2014 | $7,215.82 |
| Q2 2014 | $10,230.49 |
| Q3 2014 | $15,435.79 |
| Q4 2014 | $21,624.45 |
| Q1 2015 | $23,118.12 |
| Q2 2015 | $13,578.49 |
| Q3 2015 | $16,027.20 |
| Q4 2015 | $16,596.61 |
Target for next quarter
My target for next quarter, Quarter 4 2015, is: $20,000 passive income profits.
Passive income – You can do it
To make passive income you need to build a brand, collect customers and create awesome products. All the details can be found here in my free mini course on passive income.
I’m interested to hear what you think in the comments.
To make passive income you need to build a brand, collect customers and create awesome products Share on X
Nice job Rob, I have been following you for few years, and I like your transparency.
My pleasure, M.H. 🙂
Ok I’m in, I want learn how to do this.
You’ll be best off starting with my free courses, Raul, here: robcubbon.com/freecourses
I will, be sure of that, I desire to write fiction stories that will become books, but I need to have the motivation-dicipline to acomplish it and i want to make sure someone read my stories and starting the studies needed for that just now in my free time.
Everyone starts in their free time, Raúl 🙂
Rob,
Thanks for the honest side of things. Very refreshing and candid.
My pleasure, Gary.
I’m very intrigued to see how things go with the new udemy course pricing!
Yeah, me too. Initial signs are not great but too early to tell.
Ive been reading this blog for a long time. And you really deserve this income, you give alot of great information. Its worth it.
Thank you!
Do you think it is more difficult to promote the Udemy courses now they dont allow those BIG coupons/discounts?
Yes, it’s certainly looking that way at the present moment. I’ve seen sales go down on Udemy across the board – organic, affiliate, advertising and through my own promotions. We’ll have to see if that carries on.
Sorry to hear that. I hope it will correct itself after people are no longer chasing for coupons
It may well correct itself, Philip, as a lot of buyers on the Udemy site are new to the site and therefore don’t know the old discounts. 🙂 But we’ll see.
Hi Rob,
This really inspire me a lot. You are doing very good. Hope I will also be a successful blogger.
Please continue sharing your income report. Thank you very much.
The income reports are private now and can only be accessed by paying a massive $4, at the moment! 🙂