It’s New Year guys and what better way to start your year than a recap of last year.
2018 has been a memorable year filled with ups and downs but unlike those other years, I finally took up the initiative and started up different businesses in areas I didn’t really have the knowledge in.
Though my interests and niches are but various today, one essential skill that still remains number one is Online Marketing because without my blog and without the content, I wouldn’t be able to grow my revenue let alone get any sales to begin with.
Want to know how my website fared the last quarter of 2018? Read on as I unveil the bigger picture, starting from…
My Website Statistics! -Let’s have a Look at Numbers.
Since my last monthly report ended on August 2018, I’ll be covering September till December.
I didn’t manage to start posting regularly due to the numerous events that I had to handle since it’s the end year but hopefully my site would sustain its monthly traffic.
For September 2018, I received 2,385 web visitors.
It’s not a lot as compared to my previous stats when I was still active in posting content but at least it’s sustaining itself.
Notice the huge spike at the graph? That’s from one post that I did last September and it actually went up 3 times more than the average traffic I get daily.
Wondering how I did that? I thought you’d never ask!
Last September, there was a viral media whereby two university students printed a photo of themselves and hung that portrait at McDonald’s and nobody, not even their own staff noticed!
It stood there for 2 months and nobody said anything as they thought that that particular portrait belonged to McDonald’s when it clearly did not.
The whole internet went viral when those two students exposed their scheme and they were even invited to feature as artists on the Ellen Show.
In fact, McDonald’s HQ even offered them an opportunity to work with them to be a part of their next campaign and they even paid both those students $25,000 each as a thank you.
Talk about whoa!
I took the opportunity to ride along that wave and wrote a case study on how that method went viral and how the internet went crazy about that and to my surprise, my retweets went off the charts hence the sudden spike from just that one blog post.
That sums up September, let’s take a look a what happens on October 2018…
On October, my web visitor rate went up a bit to 3,049.
I was still a bit busy with numerous events for the year end but in order to sustain my site, I created one good blog post which was a bit similar to that of the month before but this time, it’s a much bigger one.
I spent the whole month creating a roundup post to get all the bloggers together on one page and as a result, many shared back hence the sudden spike in that month.
Moving on the month after on November 2018, my stats went down to 2,309 web visitors.
November was a very busy month as I needed to constantly do field work for events and sometimes, I come home 4am in the morning.
Sometimes, 8am.
Because of that, I couldn’t find the time to write as I work every day so even when I come home late, I still continue working the day after.
Last but not least, for December 2018 which was just last month (I’m writing this post in January 2019).
I was completely occupied with work that I didn’t manage to publish any articles at all except for answering some comments on my site and connecting with people.
It isn’t impressive, but this year in 2019, it’s all going to change.
Now that we’ve got the stats down, I’m sure you’re all curious on the next part…
How Much Were My Sales? -The Breakdown of How I Earn.
Okay explaining how I earn this time is going to be tough.
Usually, I write my monthly reports… monthly of course.
But since I’ve missed out on 4 months already, I’m going to breakdown my earnings roughly so that you guys can see easier, starting from…
For September 2018, I earned $600, yaay!
But that’s not all that I earned because I also have a few other sources of income so here’s the total earnings compilation for the month…
- WA earnings – $600
- Uber Referral earnings – RM400 ($100)
- Kitamen Shah Alam earnings (My Gaming shop) – RM5,000 ($1,250)
- KAMIRA Event Management earnings (My Event Management company) – RM3,500 ($875)
- Total for September 2018 = $2,825
Moving on to the month after, my blog earnings dropped a bit…
From $600, you can see that my WA sales dropped to $270 as I didn’t work on growing it much.
Here’s the total earnings breakdown from my other sites…
- WA earnings – $270
- Uber Referral earnings – RM200 ($50)
- Kitamen Shah Alam earnings (My Gaming shop) – RM2,000 ($500)
- KAMIRA Event Management earnings (My Event Management company) – RM30,500 ($7,625)
- Total for October 2018 = $8,445
That’s a huge drastic improvement from the month before!
As some of you might know, besides my affiliate earnings, I also earn through event projects that I promote solely from my event management website and for October, I got one of the biggest projects I’ve ever done.
It was a Gala Dinner for an aeroplane maintenance company from the US which has a base in Malaysia and I was handling for its Malaysian branch.
Of course I couldn’t just show my bank statement to you as proof as that is confidential for our company but I can show the amount paid from my client here…
You can bet how excited I am, and all this from one simple call I received from my website.
I do receive a lot more calls of course but most of the other clients are usually on a tight budget and that they only want to rent some of my equipment instead of organizing their whole entire event.
My purpose is not to brag, but merely to show that Online Marketing does work for any business that you choose. All of these lessons I learned are from an Online Business platform called Wealthy Affiliate.
It is there that I learned everything there is to know about starting your own Online Business or growing an existing one which I highly recommend you guys to check it out.
That’s for October guys, moving on to the next month…
For November 2018, my blog got me $659.
It’s a huge increment from the previous blog sale which was $270 and as for the total breakdown here you go…
- WA earnings – $659
- Uber Referral earnings – RM200 ($50)
- Kitamen Shah Alam earnings (My Gaming shop) – RM3,000 ($750)
- KAMIRA Event Management earnings (My Event Planning company) – RM8,000 ($2,000)
- Total for November 2018 = $3,459
For this particular month, there weren’t any huge events that I covered unlike the previous one besides equipment rental hence the low revenue from my events firm as compared to the previous month.
Last but not least, let’s have a look at the final month of the year 2018…
I was reluctant to share with you this part because my earnings dropped pretty bad, and I only managed to get $140.
But as I promised you guys earlier to be transparent and show my progress on my journey, I decided to show it to you anyway so that you get an insight that some months may give you higher sales than other months due to the seasonal holidays.
For December, blog earnings may vary as people tend to focus more on spending for Christmas and of course, for their outings.
Do not despair though, because my external projects came through again here…
- WA earnings – $140
- Uber Referral earnings – RM200 ($50)
- Kitamen Shah Alam earnings (My Gaming shop) – RM3,000 ($750)
- KAMIRA Event Management earnings (My Event Planning company) – RM28,000 ($7,000)
- Total for December 2018 = $7,940
And that’s it! My earnings for the whole entire four months explained 😀
For December though, I managed to get a last minute job for an exhibition and I was in charge of setting up the stage, decoration, arch and LED frame on the stage.
It was a crazy man’s job and I had to stay up for 1 week just to make sure that our stuff finishes on time but luckily, we managed to make the event happen and wow the client as well.
It was extremely tiring and after the event ended, I went into a deep sleep for 2 days and still got tired even after waking up.
If you ask me, it was a golden experience and I would definitely do that again if another opportunity arises.
Doing what I do is not easy, I’m spreading myself a bit too thin which made me lose time on the other businesses if I focus on one.
You can see that when I focus on blogging, my revenue increases while the other jobs decrease in revenue but if I focus more on my event projects, I earn more there at the cost of my own blog revenue.
My goal is to make enough money to hire more people to help me with my work to take a step back and focus more on blogging.
What Was I Up To You Ask? -10 Things That Kept Me Busy.
Yup, 4 months.
There are of course a lot of things that kept occupied so much so that finishing my blog post writing took longer than expected.
1) I was in Charge of an Aeroplane Maintenance company’s Annual Dinner
This was one of the reasons as to why I was terribly occupied.
It’s been a while since I’ve last organized an annual dinner from scratch and it was well worth it too as I got to handle all the performances, the décor, and activities for the whole entire night.
One night, 2 months of preparation. Phew!
2) My Best Friend’s Wedding
I don’t have many friends but those that I have are very close to me and affects my life greatly.
As my best friend’s wedding was getting near, me and my friends started getting busy in organizing so that took most of my time too.
3) Business Trip to Singapore
This is the part I loved most.
As I work, I tend to be stuck in front of my computer either in the office, or at home.
Sometimes when I want a change of air, I bring my laptop out and do my work in the park or in my garden where it’s breezy and calm.
But after a while, I started to miss travelling so when I stepped foot in Singapore for the event, I ended up going all over the place and spent the whole week there instead.
Coming back to the main point, while in Singapore, I was invited along with several other Malaysian eSport organisers as guests of honour for the event.
4) Esports Tournament for National Sports Day
This was another eSport event that I handled in conjunction with the National Sports Day.
We brought all our equipment from my small gaming shop as well as my team to handle the tournament there.
The event was jam packed and we couldn’t have space to leave the room, it felt as though we’re in a can of sardine but it was well worth the time.
5) Interviewed by University Students
After managing events with various institutions, I was again invited for an interview.
This time it wasn’t anything big as it was only university students from UNISEL (Selangor University) and we ended up spending the whole entire day teaching them about managing startups.
6) Another one of my friend’s wedding
Nothing much here, just another one of my childhood friends getting married.
It seems like 2018 is the year when almost all my friends got married.
7) Yet Another Annual Dinner Job
Yup, you’ve read it right.
I was in charge of handling another annual dinner, and this time it’s for a very sweet company which produces cleaning sprays.
I loved every moment of the event as everyone there was super nice and friendly, I was surprised that they reserved a whole table of hotel dinner just for me and my team to eat if we’re hungry.
You can imagine how surprised I was and just so you know, clients usually do not spend part of their food for organisers.
Definitely a company I would want to work with the next time around!
8) Interview with Roope Kiuttu
In the midst of all of that, believe it or not my friend came all the way from Finland for a short visit.
I was super excited as it has been a long while since I’ve last seen Roope and just so you know, he is one of my closest friends inside the Wealthy Affiliate community which is the Online Business platform I was talking about.
We started both our blogs just about the same time and because we were newbies back then, we usually share SEO tips and of course, ways to increase revenue to so that we can grow our blogs faster.
On his visit, I managed to do a short impromptu meeting here…
It wasn’t much since it’s my first ever interview video but more to come and I’ll definitely do a better one in the future!
9) German Expats visited me
Well not exactly expats but rather my friends from Germany.
Back while I was in the UK, I was working in the Mayfair hotel and since it was my first time living there, I was clueless as everything was different, even the accent.
I met my friend Bastian there who was also clueless so we explored London together and I told him that if he ever comes to Malaysia I’ll give him a tour.
I learned that he too is slowly delving into the business world and he sells LED which is done mostly through his Online Marketing efforts.
I learned a lot from him as well and it’s certainly one of the many reasons that gave me the added push to continue blogging.
10) My first exhibition fabrication job
Yup, everything you see in that picture was exactly what I and my team did.
I’m super impressed with myself, we barely had any sleep for the entire week just setting up everything – Designs for an arch, fabrication décor, and even balloons dropping down from the top floor of the mall.
Even the Beetle (Short name for the car) was a last minute thing we helped the client with as they wanted to give a brand new car for the lucky draw but due to the last minute timing, we couldn’t buy one so we got ourselves a second hand car just for show before giving the new one.
I didn’t even know how to set up most of that and we all did it last minute by collaborating with some suppliers and of course, YouTube for tutorials but amazingly, the event ended up beautiful and the client was really impressed.
Final Word
I seem to have typed quite a lot for a simple monthly report but it’s worth it.
Looking back, with multiple businesses that I have to handle today, it would seem that I have spread myself a bit too thin with my event projects.
Building a startup isn’t easy but the money’s good and I couldn’t have grown any business without the Online Marketing skills that I’ve learned within Wealthy Affiliate.
My end game is to stabilize everything until my company can run by itself and from that moment onwards, I plan to fully be behind my computer to blog with ease 🙂
Thanks for reading guys, I really appreciate it and I wish you a Happy New Year!
Tremendous article Bro!
Now I know why you kept telling me “you were busy with the events business” and now enjoying a well earned break up in Langkawai!.
Well done on the fab numbers and hey $600 (ish) from a site you tend to not so often is pretty darn good!
Gotta have a look at outsourcing some of the work for MIQ and see if you can handle that on “proof read and SEO articles” basis.
Just one article a week, $40-50 weekly but has that ability to grow your traffic and site…and pretty much hands off while you tend to your other business interests.
I have a very good multiskilled VA of whom I will only share his details with you!.
(you know where and how to find me – buzz me if interested).
Get accepting guest posts – hey that’s content that will rank your site, get traffic and sales for…all while others ehh pay you to write on your site…and give you great content.
Thank you for sharing with us ¨December 2018-My Internet Quest-Monthly Report¨. I´m a newbie, so please understand that a lot of things are new to me and I have a lot of questions.You mention that your web visitors and WA earning for the period Sept- Dec./18 were as followsSelected Website Statistics- Number of Visitors and WA Earnings
September October November December TOTALVisitors 2,385 3,049 2,309 1,928 9,671WA Earnings ($) 600 270 659 140 1,669 The first thing that strikes me is that the number of visitors has no relationship with sales. I would have thought that the higher volume of traffic (# visitors), the bigger the sales (WA earnings). Why isn´t this so?.Then you mention postings as the major factor for the increase of visitors. What kind of content makes this figure to fluctuate from a high of 3,049 (October) to a low of 1,928 (December)? Then I have questions on WA earnings . What are you selling? Are your products related to the blogs you write?. What´s your niche?. Is your niche particularly profitable?. Finally, I would like to know your use of Jaaxy for traffic and sales? Was SEO values responsible fro your WA earnings?
Slow down Enrique,
I would advise you to please read the article before asking. Traffic does affect sales and the more traffic you have, the higher your sales but since it’s the end of the year, sales fluctuate due to seasonal holidays. It is unpredictable for people to spend, some people might want to focus on spending on WA while others spend more on other things online since there are celebrations like Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, even New Year’s Eve.
As for the posts, I have mentioned that I did a Roundup Post and a Viral Case Study.
And for what I’m promoting in WA, well it is Wealthy Affiliate itself and I have other projects too that I’m working on with all the links you can find within the article above.
I haven’t been promoting Jaaxy so I barely have any sales which explain why I didn’t put it up there.
As for the other questions, all of them can be answered if you would go through my previous blog posts as it would take me thousands of words to write here. Here are some links for you to check out…
1) My Resources -The 9 Blogging Tools I Personally Use
2) What is MailerLite? -The Best MailChimp Alternative.
3) How to Find Top keywords with Low Competition?
4) 10 Easy Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website For Beginners
5) How to do SEO for a Website in 10 Simple Steps
6) What is the Best Way to Increase Website Traffic? -Getting Smart With SEO.
Good evening, Riaz, (my time). You certainly are a very busy young man. There is no way I could do all the things you do and still be able to drag myself out of bed for the next day. I have forgotten what it was like to be young, (I’m 69 2/3).
I must commend you on your efforts to become independent and build a life that will give you the freedom that you seek. Your openness and honesty is to be commended as well and is quite possibly the reason that your readership stays consistent.
The only other thing I would like to say is that I am really glad that you found Wealthy Affiliate and got the right training as a newbie and you have taken the action required to start seeing success and working toward your goal. As long as you stay focused I believe it will happen.
This blog is also inspiring to me. It shows me that someone who knows nothing about internet marketing can definitely make it work by following the steps and doing the hard work.
Great report Riaz and keep up the good work. I hope you can accomplish your goal of more time writing content for your website and wish you all the best in the year ahead.
Wayne
Thanks so much Wayne, that means a lot to me 😀
We definitely do not need prior experience to blog, all we need is the dedication to start writing and publishing consistently because if you have that covered, the others skills will come to us as we’re working on our piece. We’ll constantly strive to finish our work faster and we keep ourselves updated to the news that could help bring us up.
At least that’s how I learned it. Thanks for dropping by and hope you have a great weekend!
Your success is mouth-dropping! Congratulations man! I thought I had my hands full, but you’re busy nonstop it seems like. I love your ambition especially with you being (looking) so young. Did Wealthy Affiliate get you connected with all those different companies for the dinners, shows, etc.?
I have my experience in the online business world, most recently affiliate marketing, but nowhere as much as yours. How long did it take you to build so many sustainable businesses? I’d love to know more about what to do to create wealth from your perspective since you’re so good at it.
Thanks for the compliments Tim!
I wouldn’t say I’m good at it, I’ve been doing it for 4 years now with a lot of pitfalls along the way but this year, I’m going to go all out and see where that leads me. And to answer your question, yes, WA did connect me with all those companies but not directly.
I learned Online Marketing and SEO from WA and with that knowledge, I set out to build an event management company to see if it works and turns out, it did and I received a lot of calls sole from my online site. From there, it was up to me to do the closing on sales which is how I got those projects.
Hi there! Thank you for sharing your journey for the last few months. It all sounds very exciting and I love that you also shared some statistics that you were not so proud of. This shows that consistency is key and that you will get more out of what you put into it. Good luck to you in the future and I look forward to hear about your next three months!
Michelle
Thanks Michelle!
Hi; your blog report carries a lot of information, your honesty in spreading yourself too thin, is something of which to take notice. You are energetic and healthy. You will need to give more time to what you are doing that earn you the most $$$$.
However, now that you have learned the online marketing business from Wealthy Affiliate you should spend more of your energy on the platform blogging about your Niche and prove how well blogging can pay you each month
DorcasW
Good to know Dorcas thanks.
Raiz, thank you for sharing your earnings and that’s an incredible result. I really admire your untiring efforts and time you have put into your online and offline businesses. Further, you have good planning strategies in hand and l believe in no time your online business will skyrocket. I will be back to see your progress in your next report and much success to you.
Thanks Shui Heyn! It’s tiring but it was worth the effort 😀
Its really great to see your monthly reports. These are fantastic results and you have worked hard. It does go to show with consistent hard work that online marketing works. I think it was a clever idea to do a blog post on the two boys whose poster went unnoticed in Mcdonalds, I remember reading about this on the news website. Also to do the other post that gave you that other spike in website traffic. Doing things like this really does help in getting more traffic. Wishing you all the best for 2019 and you are going to have a great year. Thank you for sharing your results and I enjoyed looking at what you did through 2018.
Awesome Eden thanks!
Thank you for sharing this and also being honest about it, Your report really inspiire me and motivate me to do more work on my website. Am a newbie on Wealthy Affiliate but I am finding the trainings and lessons very interesting and really helpful. I want to take time to digest all the trainings and put it into practice and come December 2019 I want to share a nice success story. Thank you.
I’m honoured to be the one to inspire other people Clement, I’ll work harder to keep up the momentum. Good luck on your site growth!
Riaz,
I’m exhausted just reading what you have accomplished in the last 4 months. 🙂
I do appreciate you sharing exactly what you made during that time. You’re proving that with the right training you can achieve building a strong business online.
Wealth Affiliate has a lot of great training and I’m looking forward to learning more. I would like to “be like you” and make money with my blog.
All the best for 2019!!
Thanks Nancy! Writing this is harder too, as I have to reflect back on what I did in order to write them out but I’m glad you liked it 😀
Reading this post gave me so much motivation of how I should view the rest of my year in terms of business.. this goes to show how much possibility is there to make a steady income online… Sometimes things might seem to be going downhill but I think if we keep pushing and accept it as a part of the journey that’s what will change everything for us.. definitely got a lot of motivation from reading your post.. thanks for sharing this information…
It’s definitely possible Michael! Glad you I was able to give you insight, cheers
Wow Riaz! This article has really got me pumped to keep going full throttle! It just goes to show that when we put all our might in something we believe in, we can achieve anything we want! We just have to keep pushing forward!
I really enjoyed the interview with Roope! You guys are both inspirations! All the hard work that you guys have put in your businesses is paying off. You are where most online entrepreneurs wish they could be, so give yourself a big pat on the back!
Wow that means so much to me coming from Denis, thanks! I’m nowhere near Roope’s level yet but I hope to get there soon! Let’s both work hard to achieve that my friend, here’s to 2019!
Thanks so much for being so transparent about your earnings. It’s really cool to see that you have been able to leverage the things you have learned in Wealthy Affiliate to earn with your blog, and also to bring customers into your more traditional event management company. Very cool.
I am also using Wealthy Affiliate and I’m just over here plugging away trying to climb the mountain that will eventually lead me to a sustainable income. So far I have made 8 bucks. Not much yet, but I’ve got hope and I’m going to keep working.
8 sale’s a great start Mariah,
it means you’ve cracked the code and all you need to do is to duplicate your actions consistently so that it’ll grow even more. Some people quit before they even make their first sale so you’re on the right track. Good luck on your blog growth!
wooooo,RIAZ.man talk about taking the bull by the horns after going over your site im thinking i have to get off my fingers,i like the way you keep things on graphs i need to learn that,359 hits has got to be a rush,i think i would feel overwhelmed, you seem to be quite busy W/A is were im at now just starting out uber,gamer and management jobs???your hard work is paying off,congratulations to you 2 friends getting married i know it dosen’t sound like much but wedding are a big deal im not sure what e sports are if you get a chance send me a link, that photo of you at the cleaning spray dinner shows hard work and need of a good night sleep th o top it off with the fabrication job(did you organize that or hands on)because that looks the the Grammys good job and good inspiration i like the lay out of this site easy reading im for sue going to follow you in WA, THANKS,tcheck
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Wow the Grammys? That’s a huge honour for me Tcheck, thanks!
And to answer your question, yes it was hands on. I usually have people do it for me but due to the lack of time, we needed to prepare that hall in less than a week so everyone needs to join in the fun. Thanks so much for the kind words, time to work harder!
Outstanding achievements! Do you sleep? Many people think that affiliate marketing or what some call internet marketing is easy. You can earn passive income but you do need to do the work up front to get to that point. Even then you still need to keep updating your sites and information to keep current and interesting. The difference is that it is always a challenge, but a challenge you manage on your own terms. What are your projections for the next quarter? (that’s if you don’t have any more weddings to go to lol)
I sleep barely when there are events as I have to run around a lot, Paul. My projection for the next quarter is to have at least $1,000 per month coming from this blog as I have the other sites up and running well already.
Hi Riaz – first of all, congratulations on your success. Your article and recap of the past couple months was both very intriguing and rather inspirational. You provided a lot of great information and provided thoughts on how others can be successful as well.
I really enjoyed reading this post and learning that My #1 Recommendation is a good business model that does work.
Nice job,
Michele
Awesome to hear that Michele, thanks!
wow!! you have been very busy! I don’t think I could do all of that plus my website. This is amazing!It great to see your progress and how Wealthy Affiliate really works if you put effort on it. I will come back to see your progress this year and get more tips to improve my own business.Thanks for sharing!
It’s a struggle but it’s a great experience to go through Jenny, appreciate the kind words thanks!