Expense/Income Tracking

I decided to keep track of my hours spent blogging last month so I could determine my hourly wage for blogging. The resulting figure is very misleading.  I spent 21 hours on blogging in February.  That figure includes actual time writing posts and working on the blog.  It doesn’t include time spent reading other blogs or corresponding with other bloggers.  If that time was included my hours would easily double.  The total hours is also lower than normal due to February being a short month and my spending little time on the blog while on vacation.

My blogs made $617.40 last month.  That is by far my best month and won’t likely be repeated.  My income being abnormally high and my hours being lower than normal result in an hourly wage that is much higher than normal.  I’d guess my usual blogging wage is closer to minimum wage but last month was the first month I kept track of my time spent so I can’t be sure.

If I could make that wage every month I wouldn’t look for a job I’d just spend more time blogging.  That wouldn’t really work since some of the income realized this month covered several months of sales.  Also doubling my hours blogging wouldn’t result in a doubling of income.  The return for hours spent blogging would rapidly decline as my hours increased.  It is nice to make that much for the month though and it makes a goal of earning a living online seem possible.

Here is a summary of my income for February:

My online income was by far my best ever.  This won’t be duplicated soon though because I was paid for two year long link placements which likely won’t be repeated.  Also I received my Adsense payment which usually takes me a few months to hit the minimum payout.  It could have been even higher but the referrals I received from Prosper and Lending Club I invested in loans and will count them as income as payments are made.

The interest income includes  ING Direct referrals or it would be much smaller.  I’ll probably have quite a few of them this month as well.  I’ll have to find some more ways to increase my income.

My net online income for 2007 was $883.84 out of a gross income of $1025.38.  Which comes out to roughly $73.65 a month.  I’ve got a long way to go if I want to be able to live off my online income.  Although I do also make money from other alternative sources such as paid surveys and bank bonuses.

Most of my income was generated by my other blog Bank Bonuses.  I’ve yet to fully monetize this blog.  I don’t want to put Adsense on here and I want to keep any ads unobtrusive.  But I do want to make more money so I’ve got to come up some other ways to generate income from this blog.

Here is a breakdown of my income for January.

My income was down quite a bit because I only worked half a month due to returning to law school.  I did manage to increase my online income a bit.  Since I don’t count any money made as income until I actually receive it there will be quite a bit more money that was earned in January that will be reflected on February’s income.  In fact I’ve already made more this month than in January.  With no job income I need to keep increasing my other methods of income.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for January.

I’m happy that the total was under $1000 but I do have some areas in need of improvement.  My goal for food is $100 a month and I’ve been going over that.  The main reason I’ve been going over is that I’ve been buying too much junk food and fast food.  That makes going over doubly bad.  It will be the main area I concentrate on for February.  My utilities were too high with my gas bill being over $100.  I’ve already taken steps that should cut that down significantly.  I won’t have a book expense this month unless I decide to buy some study aids.

The category of transportation was down quite a bit since I only worked half the month.  Also I didn’t need to do any repairs or maintenance.  That will change this month since I plan to have some work done on my car.  Household and entertainment expenses should be roughly the same.