Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for July.

My expenses in July were a little higher than I prefer.  We had free rent this month due to a move-in special.  We just had to pay pro-rated rent for the last week of June.  Since we didn’t have rent to pay I used the extra money to pay off my credit card debt.  The debt was from using a 0% credit card balance transfer to pay down my student loans.  I was able to roll this debt over at 0% a couple of times but decided it was time to get rid of it.  It seemed like a good idea at the time to use the transfer to reduce the amount of my student loans but since then they changed the rules for paying back my loan making it no longer a good deal.

Household expense will be up this month since we have to pay rent.  Cable/internet will also be up since we had a free month of that.  On the plus side there won’t be any debt payment.  I would also like to reduce our food bill to under $300.  This shouldn’t be too hard since we get a lot of free meals from mystery shopping.  It would also be good to reduce our transportation expense.  We spent almost $400 on gas in July due to trips to Kansas City and Jeff City, in addition to lots of mystery shopping trips.  We don’t have any long trips planned this month and we’re trying to be more selective on mystery shopping trips since the gas expense is seriously reducing our profits.  My goal for this month is to get our expenses under $2000 and I’d like to eventually get them under $1750 a month on a consistent basis.

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

Google Adsense – $244.82

Affiliate Income – $208

Brokered Ads – $56.52

Direct Ads- $2286.91

Kontera – $86.42

Ehow – $3.29

Total – $2885.96

June was a record month for online income.  This was the first time I made more than $2,000 in a month and I came very close to $3,000.  Things have slowed down quite a bit this month but I’ll still come close to making $2,000.  This level of ad sales isn’t sustainable but I have some ideas to bring in additional income that I will implement next month.  I also have a possible offline business opportunity that could provide a nice income.  If that opportunity comes through I’ll have less time to spend online but I should still be able to make some changes.  Making a full-time income online is looking very possible.

Here is a breakdown of my income for June.

June was a great month for income.  This was from making some big advertising deals for my blogs. It is nice to make this kind of alternative and passive income. I was thinking about getting a job after I sit for the bar but it looks like I can delay that for a while.  I’ll post my online income report later this week or next week.  I don’t think I’ll make as much money this month but I am already over $1000 in blogging income so I think it will still be pretty good.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for June.

My expenses were up for June but that is partly because these figures now reflect the entire household’s expenses rather than just mine.  For those who don’t know our household consist of me, my wife, and her daughter.  I don’t have our expenses totally integrated for tracking yet but I estimate this figure is at least 90-95% of our expenses.  This means my past expenses can’t really be compared to my current expenses but I felt that showing the entire household’s expenses was a more accurate way to report.

I moved our dining out expenses from the entertainment category to the food category.  This left us with zero entertainment expenses for June.  We did go to the movies a couple times for free via mystery shopping but other than that we just used free entertainment options.  The food expenses broke down to $170.79 for groceries and $127.56 for dining out.  I guess that is ok but with all the free food we received from mystery shopping I think it could have been lower.  I was happy that our transportation expenses were under $200 which is lower than they have been.  This total was all for gasoline, we didn’t have any repair or other transportation expenses for a change.

I also paid $430 for bar exam software and $133.90 for hotel expenses while taking the bar.  I won’t have those expenses in July and we will have free rent for the month so I expect expenses to go way down. I’m hoping we can get our expenses down to $1500 for July.  We will see how that works and I’ll adjust my August goal as necessary.

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

Google Adsense – $325.57

Affiliate Income – $230.63

Brokered Ads – $54

Direct Ads- $208.03

Total – $818.23

My online income was down about $100 from the month before but I am not complaining.  I’m making a very good amount of income online considering how little work I put into it.  I was happy that my Adsense got back over $300 for the first time in a few months.  I thought I had finally figured out the best placement but it looks like Adsense will barely be over $200 this month so I guess the $300 month was just a fluke.  I would like to increase my affiliate income to be a bigger part of my income.  That is easier said then done though and I don’t want to write a bunch of posts that are just promoting affiliate products.  I have greatly increased my direct ad income this month and it looks like I will be able to maintain that for at least another month.  There is still a lot of year left but it looks like I should not have a problem meeting my goal of being a five figure blogger.