Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of our expenses for February.

Expenses were higher in February than in January despite it being a shorter month.  That is mostly from the purchase of train tickets and a hotel room for my hiking trip this month.  A bright spot was the transportation expense which was just $169 this month which was just gas purchases.  This is the first time in a long time that we haven’t had additional transportation expense in addition to gas.  I thought our food cost would go down but it stayed about the same.  I think it might go down this month since I’ll be gone the last two weeks of the month.  Our entertainment expense should go down as well since most of this month’s entertainment was paid for last month.  Everything else should be about the same.  Our expenses still aren’t at the level I’d like but they aren’t too bad so I won’t complain.

Here is a breakdown of my online income for January 2012.

Google Adsense – $362.75

Affiliate Income – $708.89

Brokered Ads – $62.24

Direct Ads- $3396.17

Total – $4530.05

My online income was up quite a bit this month which was a pleasant surprise. The addition of Investorz Blog plus a larger than normal amount of affiliate income was responsible for most of the increase. I’m still making about 95% of my affiliate income from Bank Bonuses, if I can start making some decent affiliate income from Investorz Blog and My Retirement Blog as well then I should start making $1000 a month from affiliate income.

Some people are wanting to know about my expenses. My biggest expense is the 25% commission I pay on most of my ads. That was about $500 last month. I don’t worry about this expense because it only goes up when my income goes up. Other than that last month I spent $20 for some writing, $10 for carnival submissions, and $5 on Fiverr to have Investorz Blog moved to my new host. I’m going to pay for more staff writing this month but otherwise my expenses shouldn’t go up. Other than that my expenses are pretty minimal.

Here is a breakdown of my income for January.

January was another great month for income.  My acquisition of Investorz Blog in December helped boost my online income.  If it continues to earn at the same rate I should have the blog purchase paid off in a few months. My sources of income are not too diversified since almost all of my income is online income.  However, my online income comes from several sites and from several different sources so the online income itself is quite diversified. I do plan on selling off some stuff this month but it won’t add much to my overall income.

Here is a breakdown of our expenses for January.

Expenses were lower in January than in December but still not quite as low as I would like. Our health expenses were high because I paid for a six-month health insurance policy upfront and we joined a fitness center.  The other area we can improve on is food.  We didn’t eat out too much but we spent over $300 in groceries.  About $60 was spent on a package of all natural meat.  It is good meat but I’m not sure if it is within our budget.  We are planning out our grocery purchases in advance this month which I hope will save us some money. It might even save us enough to continue to buy all natural meat.  Our other expenses will likely be about the same this month as before.

Here is a breakdown of my online income for December 2011.

Google Adsense – $327.58

Affiliate Income – $284.11

Brokered Ads – $62.25

Direct Ads- $2894.72

Total – $3568.66

My online income was down just a smidgen from the month before. If my income plateaus at this level I really can’t complain but I’m still working on increasing my income. The purchase of Investorz Blog has already resulted in a couple of advertising deals. I just hope I’m not stealing business from my other sites. Most of my affiliate income comes from Bank Bonuses. There isn’t any reason I shouldn’t be making affiliate income from My Retirement Blog and Investorz Blog as well since they are a good fit for financial affiliates. The reason they aren’t making any affiliate income right now is because I haven’t put many affiliate links on them. I’m going to work on adding those without making the sites spammy. I might even add some more affiliate links here if I can figure out a way to work them into my posts without doing posts just for the purpose of promoting an affiliate product.

My main affiliate on Tight Fisted Miser right now is SwagBucks. I don’t make actual cash from promoting them but I usually earn a $5 Amazon gift card or two each month from them. Swagbucks is a good product to promote because readers can make a little extra money from it and I can make a little extra money from it without having to buy anything. I’ll be looking for more win/win products to promote.