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Net worth update: December 2017 (288,552.22€)

My current net worth is €288,552.22 (43.07% of my first goal – €670K).

This year was a unique year in my life! I was dizzy for the most part, struggled hard with CFS, but managed to grow my portfolio like never before!

If you remember, one of my goals for 2017 was to hit €300,000 in net worth (or very close to it), and I actually managed it. Well, let’s say that 290k is good enough. ^.^

My state of mind

I have finally made peace with the growth rate of my net worth!

I want to focus on my health above all and have enough energy to focus on my projects, including my company and my career. I do hope that 2018 will be the best year of my life, the year in which I reverse my illness! I promise to work hard and do my best towards that goal. To mark this commitment, I just spent a week without a computer and a cellphone.

Rental income

RP#1 is now my Primary Property (PP), as I said before, so it will show up as such in the next reports.

The rental income in December was €1,225. I’ve been saying it should be close to €2,000, but the renovation works in RP#3 took way longer than I expected. Also, I sold RP#4, which means €200 less in the total rental income.

In February, I should get over €1,700, as the renovation or RP#3 will certainly be over.

During 2018, I expect to hit €3,500/mo at some point and I am positive I will do that.

Online income

My online income in December was very low. As I said before, I either increment my SEO quality badly or it will be difficult to reach an amount that makes it a real business (at the very least €15,000/yr).

As I also said before, I don’t think that I can make a lot of money on my blog if I don’t push it or I start displaying ads, which is something I am not particularly keen on doing. The strategy to my blog will definitely have to be carefully planned, but for now, I am not desperate to make money with it, so I will just stick to the original plan (no ads, no monetization, focus on growing the blog organically as much as possible).

If you want to have instant cash do NOT replicate my strategy; this one is for the long haul!

My Real Estate business

My Real Estate business is still growing. Next year, I will try to make about €100,000 and cash out a part of that in dividends and mostly buy real estate through the company.

Goals for December

Create and stick to my perfect routine (I will write a post on this). FAIL. I did improve my routine but being dizzy all the time doesn’t help. Yet, this has actually more to do with procrastination than being dizzy. In 2018, I can’t fail!
Write at least another chapter of my second book. DONE!
Put the computer away on Sundays – every single Sunday. FAIL. I am so god damn hooked on the online world…
Write 8 posts on the blog. DONE!
Write at least 1 guest post. DONE!
Go to bed before 10.30pm every day. FAIL. This is something I really need to improve.
Follow the nofap protocol aggressively (for health reasons, not social phobia or anything like that). ALMOST DONE! And in January I will be taking it to a point where faps are inexistent, I hope!
Make at least $200 online.
DONE!
Increase my page authority beyond 50. FAIL. This is really surprising me. I should be doing much better at this point in time…

Goals for January

Stick to my perfect routine (I will write a post on this on January 8th).
Finish my second book.
Take 1 week 100% off (and do this for the next 6 months!).
Write 8 posts on the blog.
Write at least 1 guest post.
Take at least 7 cold showers.
Go to bed before 10.30pm every day (I will actually try 9:45 to create a safety buffer).
Follow the nofap protocol aggressively (for health reasons, not social phobia or anything like that).
Increase my page authority beyond 50.

Enjoy life guys!

Ben

online income report income diary report how to make money online

Reports,

November 2017 (Online Income: $503.17)

My online income and blog stats in November 2017

Welcome to my income diary. If you wonder how do websites make money and how to make money with a website, you may find my reports useful.

I release reports on my online income every month. In 2017, I am projected to make $15k on online income.

I’ve received many e-mails concerning this matter. Most people ask me “What can I do to start a side online business?” or “What can I do to make a few hundred bucks at the end of the month”? First, know that I offer consulting services for this, on 1:1 consultations. Either way, let me hash out a general recipe here:

0) Choose a niche. Many people choose niches based on keyword search. I highly recommend people to blog about what they are passionate about instead. If you add value, any niche will work out for you.

1) Set up a website. I host my website on Bluehost, which I highly recommend. For one, its cheap, two is highly reliable. If you are interested in starting a blog of your own, I created a tutorial here, to help you start off.

2) Blog. A lot. You may have noticed that I’ve posted twice in the month, on specific months when I started From cents to Retirement. Doesn’t work. It won’t tie people in, it won’t please search engines and your blog will rapidly be forgotten. Note that I am not saying “publish crap”. Do not, if you expect to have loyal fans and grow. But do not forget to publish.

3) Promote your blog. A big part of having your blog out there for people to see is through high-quality posts – eventually, people will share. Promoting your blog will not only get it out there faster but deeper. Promoting your blog can be very hard, but its necessary.

4) Monetize. Adsense is an option. I like Amazon a lot. If you offer consultancy services, as I do, you need to show you can do it yourself first, but clients will pop up eventually.

So, how did I make $503.17 this month? First, the breakdown:

Bluehost : $0 (vs $0 in October)
Affiliate marketing : $21.05 (vs $29.26 in October)
My book : $31.12 (vs $49.10 in October)
Consultancy fees : $0 (vs $0 in October)
Google adsense : gave up!
Paid surveys : $0 (vs $0 in September)
Sponsored posts on other sites : $300 (vs $0 in October)
Produts to review: $151

Total : $503.17

Disclaimer: the BlueHost and the Amazon links are affiliate links, which means that I get commissions if you buy products or services through them. The amounts reported above are before any fees, taxes or expenses. I can’t say exactly how much I will net from this.

This month, I haven’t consulted as I am still sick and I don’t feel like consulting. I feel dizzy and overwhelmed, and I experience nausea throughout the day.

Note that although I am committed to release my income diary and help those who want to know how to make money with a blog, if they and blogging for money, my primary focus is not to make money with the blog, but create a very valuable platform that people love.

Expenses

I ordered two infographics on Fiverr at $12 a piece.

Views

Still dizzy and nauseous (for 11 months now!), I’ve been able to post as often as I wanted. I haven’t posted as much on Quora – I actually prefer to invest my time on awesome posts for From Cents To Retirement. I have been targeting posts with at least 2000 words, that are really comprehensive on the topic I post on.

Unlike what I thought, I haven’t been featured in another big newspaper again and so the views came down to “normal”:

And the number of sessions:

Fortunately, I have been able to steadily increase the number of organic searches I have every month, and they finally surpassed 30% of the total number of visits. This is awesome! In fact, my next goal is to be at 1,000 views per day exclusively from organic searches until July 2018, and 25,000 likes on Facebook. If I am able to do this, my blog will have enough views to build the basis for a reference for early retirement. This is why I am so focused on hitting these two numbers!

My authority has increased: the domain authority is now at 34 and the page authority is 45. I actually thought I would have a higher increase based on last month’s acquired links, but this hasn’t been the case. Therefore, I am onto SEO once again.

My Alexa rank continued to reverse as the traffic from last month was considered:

Social Media

My Facebook page grew from 2015 likes to a total of 2059 likes. This is an increase of about 2.14%, which, compounded, would make me hit roughly 2400 likes by July 2018. Of course this is not good and I need to dramatically enhance what I am doing with my Facebook account. 🙂

As I said before, I am not keeping track of Pinterest anymore.

As for the subscriber count, I was able to grow it from 1726 to 1739, which means an increase of less than 1%. This is because I lost some subscribers as I sent too many newsletters (as I predicted before).

Goals for November 2017:

Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 2200. FAIL. I got way too excited about the results from last month.
Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1800. ALMOST DONE. I am now at 1739 subscribers, which is good since I lost many subscribers last month as I sent too many newsletters.
Write at least 2 guest posts. FAIL. I got way too excited about the results from last month as well 🙂 I could not write a single guest post.
Make about $200 online. DONE. Not because affiliate or book royalties were good but I was able to do really well this month.

Goals for December 2017:

Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 2200.
Maintain the number of blog subscribers, as I will clean up some that don’t open newsletters.
Write at least 1 guest post.
Make about $250 online.

In the meantime, let me know if this information is useful to you by commenting down below.

Your biggest fan,
Ben Davis

Reports,

Net worth update: November 2017 (260,235.25€)

My current net worth is €260,235.25 (38.84% of my first goal – €670K).

Never a net worth decrease was this tasty! Not sure if you realized that, but RP#4 is not on the books anymore. The perfect flip is now over! I sold RP#4 for a $10,000 profit! Plus all that in a matter of 45 days. Yay!

This profit comes in handy because RP#3 is starving and I need to pay off the bills of the second renovation phase as they come.

Here’s the rest of the expenses on RP#3 that I expect until the end of the year:

Renovation materials: about €2,000.
Kitchens: about €2,500.
Windows and exterior doors: €4,000.
Appliances: about €900.
Labor: about €13,500.

I have also replanned where this money will come from:

€2,000 (renovation materials) from my main checking account;
€2,500 (kitchens) from a job bonus I should collect in January;
€13,500 (labor) profit from RP#4 and dividends from my real estate company;
€5,000 from my toxic credit (which I hope to recover until February 2018).

Hopefully, there will be no hidden costs and this will be all of it.

This means that I will be able to invest my savings starting from January 2018. 🙂

My state of mind

Although I made peace with the growth rate of my net worth, I am always thinking of ways to grow it. In fact, I have been carefully planning 2018 over the past 2 months, in terms of what I am going to do to grow my net worth, what I will work on, etc. Finding good balance between working on increasing my net worth and enjoying life and do stuff I love. I have actually started to put together a rough sketch of what 2018 is going to look like:

From Cents To Retirement – I am looking to partner up with some friends and hire someone to do most of the work that doesn’t pertain to actually blogging. I estimate that I will spend 1 week every month writing the posts for the blog and producing content. I am currently posting 2x/week (on Monday + Thursday or Tuesday + Friday) and I am OK with the current amount of time From Cents To Retirement requires from me.
Health – 2018 will revolve around fixing myself. The dizziness spells, the strong neck pain and the tiredness that I suffered during 2017 were a serious advice from my body: I am doing something very wrong in terms of stress or lifestyle and it will be my number one priority to fix that next year. I will write a series of extended posts on this.
My Real Estate company – Our company grew a little bit this quarter and I do expect a significant growth during next year. I don’t want to shoot for projections at this point, but I am confident I will be able to cash out more than €50,000 in dividends or retain that in the company to further scale the company’s portfolio.
Consultancy – I have been consulting less and less as time goes by (expect in the real estate company, where we sometimes get clients that manage RE investing funds and what not – those are juicy consultancy jobs, to be honest). I am not sure how much consultancy I will do through 2018, but it will probably not be much. If you want to get some consultation with me, check out my service. I am now at $150/h – otherwise, it is not a good return on my time.
Part-time job – I love science and I see myself having a part-time “career in science” if that makes sense to you. I am fortunate to have a part-time job that pays so well and lets me do other things I like – or doesn’t force me to go to the office when I am not OK. If I had a classic 9-to-6 job I would have been fired a long time ago. In 2018, I will continue with this job.

Rental income

RP#1 is now my Primary Property (PP), as I said before, so it will show up as such in the next reports.

The rental income in November was €1,460. Honestly, I thought I would be doing more at this point but things are just taking longer – it is not like they are not being done.

I also said many times that in December I would be very close to €2,000, but this will not be so anymore as I sold RP#4.

In December, I should get €1,255 and in January I should get over €1,700, as the renovation or RP#3 will certainly be over.

Next year, I expect to reach €3,500/mo at some point and I am positive I will do that.

Online income

My online income in November was low on the conventional channels – because I let it go on autopilot – but did experience a considerable boost on new channels. As I said before, I either increment my SEO quality badly or it will be difficult to reach an amount that makes it a real business (at the very least €15,000/yr).

As I also said before, I don’t think that I can make a lot of money on my blog if I don’t push it or I start displaying ads, which is something I am not particularly keen on doing. The strategy to my blog will definitely have to be carefully planned, but for now I am not desperate to make money with it, so I will just stick to the original plan (no ads, no monetization, focus on growing the blog organically as much as possible).

If you want to have instant cash do NOT replicate my strategy; this one is for the long haul!

My Real Estate business

My Real Estate business is still growing steadily. I still expect to make about €25,000 net with my company until the end of the year. Next year, I will try to make about €100,000 and cash out €50,000 in dividends or buy real estate for the company.

Goals for October

Continue to calm the f* down even more, and make it a commitment to enjoy life every single day. Use the power of attraction (beyond visualization) by starting the day with a simple question. FAIL. I really need to create a schedule and stick to it. I haven’t been able to do this as much as I want to.
Finish my second book and upload it. FAIL. I did write another chapter of my book, but I certainly didn’t finish it. It will take me another 2 weeks if I dedicate full-time to it (so possibly not this year).
Put the computer away on Sundays. FAIL. This was failed all along. I wasn’t able to do a single Sunday. 🙁
Write 8 posts on the blog. DONE. I am happy with the current yield of posts on my blog. It does take me A LOT of time, but I actually enjoy it. You may have also noticed that I focused on very large posts (such as flipping houses with no money or investing in small towns), so now one post takes me about 3-4 times as much time as a single post use to take me back in the day.
Write at least 3 guest posts. FAIL. There is a month every now and then that makes me believe I am superman, as I publish like 10 guest posts. I tend to maintain my superman mood and then I get disappointed as I realize I can’t keep up.
Go to bed before 10.30pm every day – this is a serious 30-day challenge. ALMOST DONE. I failed in the last 2 weeks (some days were OK, others weren’t). Thi is something that pertains to my perfect routine (as in 1.) and I seriously want to reverse this.
Follow the nofap protocol aggressively (for health reasons, not social phobia or anything like that). ALMOST DONE. I failed occasionally but overall I did a good job.
Make at least $200 online. DONE. Stay tuned for the report.
Increase my page authority beyond 50. ALMOST DONE. Maybe next month – it bumped to 45 already.

Goals for December

Create and stick to my perfect routine (I will write a post on this).
Write at least another chapter of my second book.
Put the computer away on Sundays – every single Sunday.
Write 8 posts on the blog.
Write at least 1 guest post.
Go to bed before 10.30pm every day.
Follow the nofap protocol aggressively (for health reasons, not social phobia or anything like that).
Make at least $200 online.
Increase my page authority beyond 50.

Enjoy life guys!

Ben

Reports,

October 2017 (Online Income: $78.36)

My online income and blog stats in October 2017

Welcome to my income diary. If you wonder how do websites make money and how to make money with a website, you may find my reports useful.

I release reports on my online income every month. In 2017, I am projected to make $15k on online income.

4) Monetize. Adsense is an option. I like Amazon a lot. If you offer consultancy services, as I do, you need to show you can do it yourself first, but clients will pop up eventually.

So, how did I make $78.36 this month? First, the breakdown:

Bluehost : $0 (vs $0 in September)
Affiliate marketing : $29.26 (vs $116.09 in September)
My book : $49.10 (vs $49.10 in September)
Consultancy fees : $0 (vs $0 in September)
Google adsense : gave up!
Paid surveys : $0 (vs $0 in September)
Sponsored posts on other sites : $0 (vs $22 in September)

Total : $78.36

This month, I haven’t consulted as I am still sick and I don’t feel like consulting. I feel dizzy and overwhelmed, and I experience nausea throughout the day.

Expenses

I didn’t have any expenses with the blog this month.

Views – the BOOM I’ve been waiting for!

Still dizzy and nauseous (for 10 months now!), but I’ve been able to work more and publish more often. I haven’t posted as much on Quora – I actually prefer to invest my time on awesome posts for From Cents To Retirement. I have been targeting posts with at least 2000 words, that are really comprehensive on the topic I post on.

However, what really increased the traffic this month was a series of features on other blogs and huge sites. For instance, I wrote a very nice post for Budgets Are Sexy, called “What I Learned From Interviewing 19 Millionaires“, which was very well received by the audience and was worth a mention on Business Insider!

But wait, this is not the end!

In the same month I was featured on Budgets are Sexy and Business Insider… I was featured in one of the biggest newspapers in Portugal – Jornal Económico – which decided to write about my story. You can check out the article here (in Portuguese). This site receives between 4 and 6 million views per month!

As a result, my story went viral (having been shared for 3300 times) and my blog and my Facebook page went crazy!

The good news is that next month there will be more. 🙂

Being featured on big sites is the dream of every blogger. Here’s why:

This has allowed me to achieve the second best month ever for the blog! And check out the number of sessions:

Look at these juicy stats. 🙂 Let us put the spikes (the biggest being from Jornal Económico) aside. The number of sessions per day has increased since last months and I am finally getting closer to respectable bounce rates. I really hope I can get to under 60% until July 2018. The average session of 3 minutes is awesome.

I have also written many guest posts, which is definitely helping with my SEO. Right now, I am above 100 sessions from organic search every single day. Hopefully, I will hit 1,000 sessions until July 2018 – that is the goal.

My authority hasn’t moved a bit: the domain authority is 33 and the page authority is 43. We’ll need to wait until all the new links are considered, which will raise both authorities a lot, I hope. I will also continue to publish more and more guest posts and promoting the blog further to help with this process.

My Alexa rank started to reverse due to the huge traffic boost:

Social Media

Being featured on large sites is also great to social media. My Facebook page grew from 1158 likes to a total of 2015 likes. This is an increase of about 42.53%, which is of course not sustainable in the long term. If it was, I could hit almost 35,000 likes by July 2018. I would love to grow my Facebook page to this number, but being sick and tired doesn’t help!

As I said before, I am not keeping track of Pinterest anymore.

As for the subscriber count, I was able to grow it from 1259 to 1726, which means an increase of about 27%. This is the largest increase in subscribers ever, and it has to do with the massive exposure I had this month. Last month I said I’d hit 1500 subscribers until the end of the year and this is vastly surpassed already! 🙂

Goals for October 2017:

Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 1400. VASTLY SURPASSED. Being featured on big sites is GREAT!
Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1400 (aggressive goal, but I think I will get there). VASTLY SURPASSED. Being featured on big sites is GREAT!
Write at least 2 guest posts. SURPASSED. I wrote 5 guest post and I was featured on big sites as well!
Make about $250 online. FAIL. Honestly, I think that I need to push affiliate sales or consult a lot to make decent money. Being dizzy most of the time, this is difficult to do.

Goals for October 2017:

Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 2200.
Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1800. Note that I will lose some subscribers as I will send lots of newsletters this month.
Write at least 2 guest posts.
Make about $200 online.

In the meantime, let me know if this information is useful to you by commenting down below.

Your biggest fan,
Ben Davis

Reports,

Net worth update: October 2017 (269,935.44€)

My current net worth is €269,073.99 (40.16% of my first goal – €670K).

After a very decent net worth increase, I have started to go downhill! This will last for a big while, as bills on RP#3 will come every second week and I will need to pay them as I go. I will also be able to pay some of these bills with the dividends I will get from my company, but until I am able to cash them out entirely, I will need to use my checking and investment accounts.

Here’s the breakdown of expenses on RP#3 that I expect until the end of the year:

Renovation materials (2nd batch): about €500.
Renovation materials (3rd batch): about €1500.
Renovation materials (4th batch): about€500.
Kitchens: about €2000.
Appliances: about €900.
Labor: about €13,500.

I also know where this money will come from:

€3,000 from savings until February 2018 + €1,200 from my German account.
- With some budgeting, maybe I can use this money to pay for all the materials, appliances and kitchens.
€4,000 in dividends from my company.
€6,000 from my toxic credit (which I hope to recover until February 2018).
€2,500 from a job bonus in January/February 2018.
€1,000 from my salary from February.
- These together should be able to pay for the costs with the labor associated with this renovation.

Hopefully, there will be no hidden costs and this will be all of it.

If I do sell RP#4 until the end of the year, as I expect, this math will become way simpler because I will have another “spare” 10k. 🙂

This month, I finally made peace with my net worth and how quickly it is growing. Actually, I think that, should my projections for the next 2 years be right, I should actually be able to retire by the time I turn 31! I am on track to retire by 33, and given that I expect my income to increase over the next 2 years, I will beat the projections. During this time, I will definitely be enjoying life way more because I will exclusively work from home! Hopefully, this will help me with my health issues – and with my dizziness being the most important one!

As for holding on to cash, I plan to increase my liquidity right after I finish the renovation of RP#3. If RP#4 is sold until the end of the year, I will definitely keep that cash in interest bearing accounts with maximum flexibility.

As for my health, I am still struggling with permanent dizziness but this month was way better than the previous ones. As I am writing this posts, I feel nauseous and dizzy, but I feel that I am getting better and better, as I started a new therapy I really rely on. I hope to have exciting news for next month!

Rental income

RP#1 is now my Primary Property (PP), as I said before, so it will show up as such in the next reports.

The rental income in September was €1,460, the highest ever. As I said before, this should be very close to €2,000 in December or January next year, once the renovation or RP#3 is finished. My plan actually changed a bit, of what it pertains to RP#3: I actually agreed with the company to only rent them out two units, for €290/mo. The third unit I will rent out to one of my tenant, who is happy to pay €400/mo.

Online income

My online income in October was kinda low, because I let it go on auto pilot. Honestly, I don’t think that I can make a lot of money on my blog if I don’t push it. This is because I don’t sell anything other than my book and I chose not to have ads on the blog. I will need to think more about my strategy and how to monetize the blog without looking spammy. If you want to have instant cash do NOT replicate my strategy; this one is for the long haul!

My Real Estate business

My Real Estate business is still growing steadily. I still expect to make about €25,000 net with my company until the end of the year. Next year, I will try to make about €100,000.

Goals for October

Continue to calm the f* down even more, and enjoy life without thinking about Early Retirement and how to grow my net worth faster. Partially DONE. I was definitely more able to relax and enjoy life more, and I convinced myself that I am on the right track to retire early, so this is a big victory!
Take 3 days off to finish my second book, relax a lot, watch movies and TV series. FAIL. I did indeed write another chapter of my book but I wasn’t able to finish it.
Put the computer away on Sundays. Partially DONE. I am so hooked on to the online world it seems impossible to put it down every now and then. I really want to follow this rule so I will try to do this next month.
Write 8 posts on the blog. DONE!
Go to bed before 11pm every day. FAIL. I did go to bed earlier in the second half of the month, but not before 11pm every day. However, I know this is very important for adrenal fatigue, so I will religiously go to bed at 10.30pm every single day next month.
Continue the nofap protocol (for health reasons, not social phobia or anything like that). FAIL.
Make at least $200 online and write 5 (yes, FIVE) guest posts. DONE! I will talk about this in the online report, but I am very happy with this goal!
Increase my page authority beyond 50. FAIL. It hasn’t moved yet, so I guess it wasn’t updated at all. Let’s see what happens next month. 🙂

Goals for November

Continue to calm the f* down even more, and make it a commitment to enjoy life every single day. Use the power of attraction (beyond visualization) by starting the day with a simple question:

and by applying these:

which Jim Carrey really puts simply here:

Finish my second book and upload it.
Put the computer away on Sundays.
Write 8 posts on the blog.
Write at least 3 guest posts.
Go to bed before 10.30pm every day – this is a serious 30-day challenge.
Follow the nofap protocol aggressively (for health reasons, not social phobia or anything like that).
Make at least $200 online.
Increase my page authority beyond 50.

Enjoy life guys!

Ben

Reports,

September 2017 (Online Income: $225.19)

Welcome to my income diary. If you wonder how do websites make money and how to make money with a website, you may find my reports useful.

I release reports on my online income every month. In 2017, I am projected to make $15k on online income.

4) Monetize. Adsense is an option. I like Amazon a lot. If you offer consultancy services, as I do, you need to show you can do it yourself first, but clients will pop up eventually.

So, how did I make $225.19 this month? First, the breakdown:

Bluehost : $0 (vs $0 in April)
Affiliate marketing : $116.09 (vs $54.75 in August)
My book : $49.10 (vs $23.40 in August)
Consultancy fees : $0 (vs $170 in August)
Google adsense : gave up!
Paid surveys : $0 (vs $0 in June)
Sponsored posts on other sites : $60

Total : $225.19

I haven’t consulted as I am still sick and I don’t feel like consulting. I feel dizzy and overwhelmed, and I experience nausea throughout the day.

Expenses

I didn’t have any expenses with the blog this month.

Views

Even though the dizziness and nausea don’t seem to want to go away, I was able to publish more posts and to post more on Quora, which increased the traffic a bit (check the figure below) I still have no time for proper promotion and write some awesome posts I had in mind, but at least I could do more. I hope to get these things fixed until the end of the year, otherwise I will never come close to what I thought I could do with From Cents To Retirement.

and the number of sessions:

It is funny how the number of sessions went up by 35%, compared to last month, and the average session duration didn’t even change by a second. Remarkable! 🙂 The bounce rate decreased a little bit (although I think I’d be getting like 60% at most) and the rest of the stats improved altogether.

Like I said before, being in a state where I experience dizziness and nausea on a daily basis, I can’t keep up with the expectation of writing 10 guest posts a month. Even one guest post sounds like a very hard challenge to me right now, but I was able to write one this month. Next month, I think I could write 4 or 5.

My authority decreased slightly since the last update (domain authority decreased from 34 to 33 and page authority from 45 to 43). I need to reverse this aggressively but publishing more guest posts and promoting the blog further, which I hope to do next month!

My Alexa rank continues to tank but I am not that concerned with it, as there is a strong connection with traffic:

Social Media

I’ve been working really hard on my Facebook page, and I could grow it by almost 100 likes this month, to a total of 1158 likes. This is an increase of about 8.3%, which, if maintained, would mean a total of 1470 likes by the end of the year. I know, this is so far away from my goals that I feel that I threw a random number out there, but we must consider that I’ve been sick and not hustling as I thought I would do!

As I said before, I am not keeping track of Pinterest.

As for the subscriber count, I was able to grow it from 1181 to 1259, which means an increase of about 6.2%, much better than 2% in August. As I will send a few newsletters until the end of the year, this number will decrease, I am sure, but I hope to be stable at 1500 subscribers at the end of the year.

Goals for September 2017:

Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 1250. FAIL. Again, an aggressive goal, which resulted in failure. I need to work more on my Facebook page.
Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1250. DONE! This is actually a very good result
Write at least 1 guest post. DONE! Not bad for a guy that seems best friends with dizziness! Check my interview for PhysicianOnFire, here.
Make about $350 online. FAIL. I still managed to do almost $250, which is not bad at all given the circumstances.

Goals for October 2017:

Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 1400.
Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1400 (aggressive goal, but I think I will get there).
Write at least 2 guest posts.
Make about $250 online.

In the meantime, let me know if this information is useful to you in the comment section down below.

Your biggest fan,
Ben Davis

Reports,

Net worth update: September 2017 (269,935.44€)

My current net worth is €269,935.44 (40.28% of my first goal – €670K).

Finally, a decent net worth increase… After so many months of sideways updates, I finally have a decent increase. However, this one is primarly due to rental property #4, which has finally been transfered into my name. I bought the property for €50,000, but I suspect I can sell it for at least €70,000 – I will do a complete post on this soon.

I have already started to cash out some dividends out of my real estate company, which will go exclusively towards the renovation of rental property #3. Therefore, they don’t show up here, as the renovation has already started and I moved the funds directly to the contractor’s account. I will update the value of rental property #3 in the next net worth update.

Despite I have a considerable net worth increase this month, I still think my net worth should be growing faster. In fact, this increase has exclusively to do with the acquisition of rental property #4, and I hope that I can sell it until the end of the year (the post will say exactly why). If I don’t sell it, this net worth increase will not mean a lot;

You can see that I am also having less and less cash. This will not put me in a comfortable situation if there is any significant market correction soon (both in the stock market and real estate). This is another reason why I want to resell RP#4, for a profit. I will definitely hold onto the cash then, unless I see another quick flip like what RP#4 seems to be.

It is too bad I am still anxious about getting financially independent, but pragmatically speaking, I am quite on track. I feel I should be enjoying life calmly, while testing small things here and there to accelerate my growth. I wouldn’t mind being this uncomfortable with my growth, if I was completely healthy because I actually happen to think that it could play to my favor. However, being dizzy, tired and weak, I wish I was more calm.

I am still struggling with permanent dizziness but I could post quite more often than in the last months. I also prepared some awesome posts for October and hopefully I will stay one month ahead so that there is no shortage of posts on the blog.

Rental income

RP#1 actually become my Primary Property (PP), as I said before, so it will show up as such in the next reports.

The rental income in September was, again, €1,055. I said that I was going to cash in €1,270, but I forgot that one of the units in RP#2 doesn’t pay rent in August. In October, I will cash in €1,460, which will be the highest rental income I’ve ever received in a month. As I said, this should be very close to €2,000 in December or January next year, once the renovation or RP#3 is finished.

The renovation of RP#3 has already started, as I said above, and I’ve been using the dividends from my company to fund it. I will do a complete post on this renovation later this month (I will even include pictures ;)).

Online income

My online income for September was better than in the last months, because I posted more, which generated more sales. I will comment on this in the online income report/income diary.

My Real Estate business

My Real Estate business is growing steadily. I still expect to make about €25,000 net with my company until the end of the year. Next year, I will try to make about €100,000.

Goals for September

All goals for September were achieved!

Calm the f* down, and enjoy life without thinking about Early Retirement and how to grow my net worth faster. Partially DONE. Still not as I would like to, but better than last months.
Take 3 days off to write my second book, relax a lot, watch movies and TV series. Partially DONE. I could indeed write another chapter of my second book and did watch a movie. Need to improve this next month.
Write at last 4 posts on the blog. DONE.
Go to bed before 11pm every day. DONE. In the future, I will try to do it at 10.30. For now, let’s stick to 11pm for another month or so.
Start the nofap protocol (for health reasons, not social phobia or anything like that). DONE. This is a really though protocol, but I can see the merits. I will go clean in October again.
Make at least $200 online and write 1 guest post. DONE. I actually wrote 2 guest posts and made more than $200 online. 😉

Goals for October

Continue to calm the f* down even more, and enjoy life without thinking about Early Retirement and how to grow my net worth faster.
Take 3 days off to finish my second book, relax a lot, watch movies and TV series.
Put the computer away on Sundays.
Write 8 posts on the blog.
Go to bed before 11pm every day.
Continue the nofap protocol (for health reasons, not social phobia or anything like that).
Make at least $200 online and write 5 (yes, FIVE) guest posts.
Increase my page authority beyond 50.

Enjoy life guys!

Ben

Blog, Reports,

August 2017 (Online Income: $248.14)

Welcome to my income diary. If you wonder how do websites make money and how to make money with a website, you may find my reports useful.

I release reports on my online income every month. In 2017, I am projected to make $15k on online income.

4) Monetize. Adsense is an option. I like Amazon a lot. If you offer consultancy services, as I do, you need to show you can do it yourself first, but clients will pop up eventually.

So, how did I make $248.14 this month? First, the breakdown:

Bluehost : $0 (vs $0 in April)
Affiliate marketing : $54.75 (vs $71.80 in July)
My book : $23.40 (vs $13.55 in July)
Consultancy fees : $170 (vs $130 in July)
Google adsense : gave up!
Paid surveys : $0 (vs $0 in June)

Total : $248.14

I haven’t consulted much, as I was sick and honestly, not keen on doing consulting. Yet, I collected a check from previous consulting hours.

Expenses

I didn’t have any expenses with the blog this month.

Views

Sadly, I am still sick – I experience nausea and dizziness on a daily basis. This makes me have way less time to write for the blog, produce kick ass content and promote it correctly.

Although last month was very bad, this month was even worse and the worse in the last 12 months… when it comes to visits. Remember that I am looking to my blog on a 5-10 year horizon. I don’t care about money, I want to create value and a nice platform to deliver kick ass content! The views will increase at some point, I am sure.

and the number of sessions:

Considering the very low activity of the blog, I should be happy that my authority hasn’t decreased… Being this sick, it is impossible to keep up with the expectation of writing 10 guest posts a month. Even one guest post sounds like a very hard challenge! Since the last update, my authority actually increased (while the domain authority is still at 34, page authority has gone up from 44 to 45). This will probably decline if I don’t post more often and I don’t write guest posts…

My Alexa rank continues to tank but again, I am not that concerned:

Social Media

This month my Facebook page grew by 63 likes to a total of 1062 likes, which is again on the lower end, as we are talking about an increase of about 5%. As I said last month, I had a few tricks I could use to grow my Facebook page and these seem to work beautifully. I am sure that the 5k like mark I talked about in a previous report is almost impossible…

As I said before, I am not keeping track of Pinterest.

The subscriber count grew from 1154 to 1181, which means a shy increase of about 2%. I would like to hit 2,000 subscribers until the end of the year. Let’s see how I do until then.

Goals for August 2017:

Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 1200. ALMOST DONE. I had a reasonable goal, but I am not far from it, so I am am not said with where I stand at.
Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1250. FAIL. I assumed that if I managed to post more often, the number of subscribers would go up.
Write at least 2 guest posts. FAIL. Being sick sucks!
Make about $500 online. FAIL. Not posting often can’t lead to much money.

Goals for September 2017:

Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 1250.
Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1250.
Write at least 1 guest post.
Make about $350 online.

In the meantime, let me know if this information is useful to you in the comment section down below.

Your biggest fan,
Ben Davis

Reports,

August 2017 (251467.24€)

My current net worth is €251,467.24 (37.53% of my first goal – €670K).

Errr… “why am I growing my net worth so slowly?” is the type of thought that floats around my head most of the time, when it comes to money. Although my company is doing relatively well, I planned to hit a net worth of about 300,000€ this year. Not sure I will able to (even though I will be withdrawing about 30,000€ in dividends from my company next month).

This month, my lower increase has to do with the fact I had to pay my IRS from 2016.

There is an elephant in the room that I must address. Although I feel comfortable with my current lifestyle (not my health – that comes below), I feel that my net worth should be increasing much faster. I see people becoming rich all around me, and sometimes I feel my own wealth should increase faster. Being anxious doesn’t help health or success, so I will try to work on this very hard, and learn to live calmly and stress-free. Enjoying life should be a top priority.

As for my lifestyle, I am living alone in a renovated rental and I drive a nice car. I’ve got plenty of time to rest and do my own things, as my job only requires my presence every now and then. Yet, my job is still causing me stress, because whenever I need to go to my employer I need to drive 300km and leave my home (and comfort zone) altogether.

As for my health, I am still struggling with permanent dizziness and that is why I haven’t been posting as regularly as before. It has been 8 months feeling dizzy now, and I hope this changes soon. I made some progress, but I am still not:

Meditating for 15-30 minutes every single day.
Going to bed between 10pm and 10.30pm.

Until the end of the year, I will:

look into diversifying my investments to land.
Be a silent partner in a bigger Real Estate company.
Finish the renovation of Rental property #3, and start a line of credit based on it.

Rental income

I am living in RP#1, as I said before. This property is listed for sale at the same time and I may actually receive offers soon, according to the broker. If I do sell, I will try to strike a deal for a 1-year leasing contract and stay here until the end of the year, while looking for another primary property and investing the capital somewhere else. The plan is pretty much the same: I will put €35k to work and throw €10k into P2P lending / the stock market, as I said before.

The rental income in August was €1,055. This was due to one my leasings, which exempts the tenants from the rent in August, as they are students. In September, I will cash in €1,270. Until December, the rental income will increase by 540€, as I secured a lease on the 3 units of RP#3, after I renovate it. Sadly, I could not start the renovation of the property yet, due to legal issues, but it will start next month for sure. This will increase the rental income to €1,810/mo. As I said last month, the garage of RP#4, which I bought last month, is rented for €190/mo, thus increasing the total rental income to €2,000/mo.

This is why I said I was positive I will hit €2,000 until the end of the year. After this year, I will start a 175k line of credit (I will write a post exclusively on this) giving RP#3 as collateral. This will enable me to increase my rental income to €3,000/mo, at least.

Online income

My online income for August was also bad, as I barely invested anytime online. I will comment on this in the online income report/income diary.

My Real Estate business

My Real Estate business is growing steadily. I still expect to make about €25,000 net with my company until the end of the year. Next year, I will try to make about €100,000.

Goals for August

August’s goals were reasonably achieved:

Spend more time in nature and do things I love. DONE.
Optimize supplementation. DONE.
Take one week entirely to write my second book, relax a lot, watch movies. FAIL. Permanent dizziness was the reason though.
Plan the renovation of RP#3 and furniture RP#1 entirely (so I can live there properly). DONE.
Write a lot on the blog. Two posts a week and do not fail. FAIL. Permanent dizziness was the reason though.
Make at least $200 online and write 1 guest post. FAIL. Permanent dizziness was the reason for this too.

Goals for September

Calm the f* down, and enjoy life without thinking about Early Retirement and how to grow my net worth faster.
Take 3 days off to write my second book, relax a lot, watch movies and TV series.
Write at last 4 posts on the blog.
Go to bed before 11pm every day.
Start the nofap protocol (for health reasons, not social phobia or anything like that).
Make at least $200 online and write 1 guest post.

Enjoy life guys!

Ben

Blog, Reports,

July 2017 (Online Income: $215.35)

Welcome to my income diary. If you wonder how do websites make money and how to make money with a website, you may find my reports useful.

I release reports on my online income every month. In 2017, I am projected to make $15k on online income.

4) Monetize. Adsense is an option. I like Amazon a lot. If you offer consultancy services, as I do, you need to show you can do it yourself first, but clients will pop up eventually.

So, how did I make $215.35 this month? First, the breakdown:

Bluehost : $0 (vs $0 in April)
Affiliate marketing : $71.80 (vs $118.66 in June)
My book : $13.55 (vs $99.94 in June)
Consultancy fees : $130 (vs $0 in June)
Google adsense : gave up!
Paid surveys : $0 (vs $0 in June)

Total : $204.86

As for consultancy fees: I haven’t consulted this month, for the second consecutive month, because as I said earlier this week, I’ve been very sick in the second half of June. If I am well, I plan to consult a lot until the end of the year.

Expenses

I didn’t have any expenses with the blog this month.

Views

Sadly, I am still sick – I experience nausea and dizziness on a daily basis. This makes me have way less time to write for the blog, produce kick ass content and promote it correctly.

This was the lowest month – in terms of views – in the past 12 months! I ain’t sad about it, though. As I said last month, I am looking to my blog on a 5-10 year horizon. I don’t care about money, I want to create value and a nice platform to deliver kick ass content!

and the number of sessions:

IMG

I am happy with the progress in terms of authority, but I know this will not keep increasing unless I re-start guest posting. Being this sick, it is impossible to keep up with the expectation of writing 10 guest posts a month. Even one ain’t possible – remember I am not producing enough content for my own blog at this point! My authority seems stable right now (Domain authority is at 34 and Page authority at 44). This will probably decline if I don’t post more often and I don’t write guest posts…

My Alexa rank also decreased accordingly but again, I am not that concerned:

Social Media

This month my Facebook page grew by 195 likes to a total of 999 likes, which compares really well against the previous months, representing an increase of 20%. As I said last month, I had a few tricks I could use to grow my Facebook page and these seem to work beautifully. Next month, I will go all in with this trick and hopefully grow beyond 1000 likes. I won’t hit 25k likes until the end of the year, which was my goal, but I think that I can still reach 5k without ads.

As I said before, I am not keeping track of Pinterest, and I will hire a VA to take care of it for me.

The subscriber count grew from 1091 to 1154, wich means an increase of about 6%. I didn’t grow as much as I expected because although I wrote many guest posts, most of them weren’t published yet. I am still convinced that the goal of reaching 6000 subscribers until the end of the year is achievable because I have a few tricks that I will use, and I still expect to be featured on major sites.

Goals for June 2017:

Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 1000. DONE! I’ve continued with the same technique I’ve used before, and it works really well. I believe I can escalate my Facebook page further, as long as I am not sick.
Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1200. ALMOST DONE. I have now a total of 1157 subscribers.
Increase the number of followers on Twitter to 350. FAIL. I haven’t promoted my Twitter account at all. I simply lack the time to do this.
Write at least 10 guest posts. FAIL. Having been so sick, I didn’t have the time to create enough content for my own blog, so I ended up not writing any guest posts.
Reach at least 40k views on my blog.
Make about $1000 online. FAIL. I have been sick, that says it all.

Goals for July 2017:

Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 1200.
Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1250.
Write at least 2 guest posts.
Make about $500 online.

In the meantime, let me know if this information is useful to you in the comment section down below.

Your biggest fan,
Ben Davis