Passive Income Update For August 2008
Finally got some time to add up all the passive income for the month of August. While June was a record breaking month with over $3,300 in passive income, July and August have been pretty lackluster in comparison. July’s income was $2,115.61 and August’s total was hardly any better with $2,134.57.
Maybe I can use the same excuse that government statistians use when talking about the economy and blame on seasonal variations! But the fact is that revenue dropped due to 2 main reasons. I pre-sold annual advertising in June that rightly should have been ammortized over the year (according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). Also, since I was busy with my move to Los Angeles, I didn’t really have time to look for advertisers or respond in a timely fashion to those that contacted me.
But the good news is that traffic to the site didn’t drop off, and apart from direct advertisers, revenue that was dependent on traffic remained almost constant. And of course, my dividend income was pretty stable despite the recent large drop in equity prices and the strengthening dollar which caused a 5-8% drop in the value of my foreign dividends.
Here’s the breakdown:
- Online Income: $$1179.75
- Adsense: $161.15
- Linkworth: $234.83
- TLA: $286.30
- Kontera: $35.60
- Direct Ads: $60.00
- RevResponse: $61.50
- Prosper Referrals: $75.00
- Amazon: $16.24
- Ebay Publisher Network: $222.74
- Other: $68.78
- Savings Accounts: $123.8
- Direct Oil Drilling Investment: $318.75
- Dividends from Canroys: ~$453 (approximation)
- Other Dividends: $59.37
A reader emailed me a few days ago asking what’s the best way to start generating online income. I told him to start blogging about something he was passionate about. That way, he’d be able to keep up his motivation during the initial few months when he probably wouldn’t be making any money. Once he had written a few dozen articles or posts, he should start seeing some search engine traffic. If you’re in a highly competitive niche, you’ll need to make sure you have a lot of other sites linking back to you. Do a search for creating a back-link campaign to find out how to do this.
Once you see search engine traffic you should include ads in your site. I include ads from Comission Junction, Adsense, Linkworth, Text-Link-Ads, ADSDAQ and Kontera. While individually they aren’t significant amounts, the income is consistent and together it all ads up.
Amazon affiliate income has dropped a lot since the beginning of this year. Not sure if this is seasonal since there are more sales between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I’ve finally gotten around to adding an affiliate link prominently on the site and I expect this to have a positive effect. How much of a positive effect remains to be seen.
The affiliate income from Ebay has been growing steadily. It’s up nearly 7-fold in the past 5 months. Last month I added a storefront on this website which focuses on business, cheap real estate, gold coins and other income producing ventures and this has already started producing referrals. Some of the other sites are .info sites that I bought for $0.99 from GoDaddy and they were created using BANS. For a little more info on how to generate passive income from sites, look at the 2nd half of this post (look for the section on Niche Sites).
RevResponse did well last month, partly due to a $50 bonus. They basically provide free publications and white papers on various topics ranging from finance and banking to search engine optimization and car detailing. Check out the Free Financial Magazines link. Bloggers might also want to check out the Sales & Marketing articles too. Mature programmers might remember a famous programming magazine called Dr. Dobb’s Journal. Well, it’s available for free too. And the best part is I get paid for providing my readers with free useful information! Yes, you can money selling magazines! (well, technically you’re giving them away).
A lot of oil and gold stocks have been beaten down recently. My portfolio of Canroys wasn’t spared either, but I’m not going to panic and sell them right now. I’m getting a decent amount of dividends each month and I’m happy to keep on holding them for a while. We’ve seen some pretty bizzare events in the financial markets lately and I’m sure not going to panic after everyone else already has (the time to panic is before everyone else!).
Anyway, its time to wind up this post. I have the last 6 hours of Math camp tomorrow! It’s a lot more fun than I thought it would be!
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September 10th, 2008 at 3:38 am
Not a bad take home. I can see where you want some growth though.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:06 am
Congratulations on your passive income. I always looked forward to reading your monthly reports. Keep up the good work!
September 11th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Very interesting blog (new reader here). I wonder if you can publish the ROI for different types of investments (e.g. what is the net rate of return for Canroys?). In praticular, I’m interested in what you think are the best investments in terms of returns right now because commodities are sinking fast, stocks and bonds also, foreign currencies also,…
September 13th, 2008 at 3:02 am
[...] passive income [...]
September 13th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Hi Passive,
I guess I haven’t left a comment in a while.
Here’s my breakdown of monthly dividend/interest for month of
Aug:
1. VWEAX - $1209. The NAV on this one took a brutal beating this year but so did the stock market. Thus, I’m down less than 4% on this puppy YTD (that’s including the dividends YTD).
2. VFIJX - $836. The NAV on this one held on well but took a surprising jump when Fed took over FNM and FRE. I’m not complaining on this one
3. AUD - $991 (based on 3 months CD interest of $2973). Man, AUD took a HUGE beating…went from almost par with USD (1.02) all the way down to 1.26 before recovering at 1.22 yesterday. Lost a brand new BMW 3 series on that huge beating (imaging the amount of AUD I have). I don’t expect this to recover as NZ has recently announced that it is in recession and AU is not far behind from announcing as well (I suspect). Look for the rate to drop all the way down to 5.5 or 6% (which should drop my AUD CD rate down to possibly 4.5% APR). I’m going to hold onto AUD as I don’t believe USD will go up forever with all these LEH, WAMU, MER, and other financial issues abound.
4. BofA preferred shares - $200 (based on quarterly div of approx $600). I’m looking to load up more of this as I believe LEH and WAMU will drop this back down to approx $22 which should make the div % hitting close to 10%. I’m betting that BofA will be the “last one standing” amongst the big financial companies and so this preferred is probably safe.
Total div/interest for Aug 08: $3236
Of course, this doesn’t include my 401k div as well as my wife’s CD account and my puny MM div. My goal now is to increase my MM holding (load up on USD) and wait for the next president to settle before making my move in 09.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:45 am
[...] - Living Off Dividends posts his passive income updates for August. I must say that I find a lot of inspiration in reading these monthly posts on [...]
September 20th, 2008 at 3:00 am
[...] A passive income update [...]
September 21st, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Hey LOD you have not posted a detailed divi update in a while that I’ve seen. I remember a while back you said you had bought into Priszm. What is your take on them now (if you are tracking)?
September 25th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
TLA just hasn’t done if for me. I’ve given them a whirl actually twice and I must have just not been able to find the niche for them yet. Nice work on the take home though!