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August 2016: Passive Income Report while Traveling Eastern Europe!
https://www.johnnyfd.com/2016/09/august-2016-passive-income-report-while.html
This month was insane! I started out in Poland and flew to Sofia, Bulgaria to start my epic journey through Eastern Europe entirely by land with my buddy Sam Marks. We took a bus from the capital of Bulgaria to the Black Sea coast then a train up to Bucharest Romania, visited Dracula's castle in Transylvania, took an overnight soviet train to the capital of Moldova and somehow made our way to the Ukraine.
The craziest part was the fact that I was able to continue earning passive income while having almost no time to work as we were too busy sightseeing and having epic adventures. If you want to know more about where I traveled and what I did, read through my last four blog posts including my guides to Warsaw/Krakow Poland, Sofia and Black Sea Bulgaria, Transylvania and Bucharest Romania, and Odessa and Kiev Ukraine. Or keep reading this post to see how I hopefully earned more money online while traveling than I spent. As always I have no idea how much I made or spent this month until I actually sit down and write these, so I'm just as excited as you are to find out!
*If you prefer the video explainer version, you can watch this month's here.
Still super happy for all of the new reviews and sales from both books. The first only talks about how to live and travel cheaply in Thailand, and the second talks about how to go from less than $1k to making my first $30k which needs to have an update soon but the biggest benefit of these books is to show people how to go from step 1 which is often forgotten.
Kindle Sales: $195 +/-
Paperback Sales: $5.80
PDF Sales: $47.94
Even though the summer months peaking in August is normally a slow months for ecommerce sales anyways, the big dip came mainly because we dropped the ball. It turns out that my customer service guy hasn't been answering sales calls for the past three weeks and no one noticed until now. It's completely my fault as I should be the one checking in on my VAs and employees but since I haven't been working, everyone else running the business has also decided not to work either.
Good news is that even with that, we still made $5,342.00 in sales last month from my dropshipping store and that should increase next month assuming everyone actually gets back to work again.
Total Sales: $5,342.00
Costs of Goods:
Shipping Costs:
Customer Service: $150
Spiffs and Commissions: $0
Ad Fees: $974.70
Shopify Fee: $59.25
Total Profit: $ +/-
This month was an decent month for my investments as I earned $240 through my Vanguard account and around $650 from my Forex account. I also went a bit wild and invested $28,000 into my PeerStreet account, after listening to this episode with their cofounder but we'll see starting next month when the payments start coming in. (if you want to open an account yourself, you can use my referral link and we'll both get an extra 1% yield)
As for profits, everything mentioned is still on paper as I haven't actually sold any investments so I won't count any of it into my income reports but I'm super happy to have found something that I'm comfortable investing half of the $60,000 I got from selling my dropshipping store a few months ago. The goal has been to take that money and invest it into something completely passive and I think I finally found it. I'm also excited that since the money from PeerStreet won't be automatically reinvested I'll actually be able to start counting the loan repayments on my monthly income reports starting next month.
It was super fun making new videos while traveling for my youtube channel but to be honest, they're more for me to watch and reminence as well as embed in my blog posts than it is to make money on Youtube itself. But still it's cool to know that I'm getting paid $78 a month just for doing what I would do anyways.
Youtube Red is still super slow and I'm starting to doubt it'll ever take off. Personally I don't know anyone who subscribes to their premium service, do you?
I also made $300 from taking a phone coaching client on last month which i'll included here.
Increase from $61.28 last month.
The best thing about reciving affiliate income is that as long as I continue to only recommend things that genuinely work, the more people are happy to remember to use my links in my resources page whenever they buy something that I've mentioned. Every single day I get emails asking if I can promote XYZ or so and so product or program and I always turn them down.
From day one I have only promoted things that I personally use and would recommend to a friend or family member. It's because of this relationship that the majority of my affiliate commissions comes from people who have been following my blog for months or sometimes years and have gotten great results or returns from things I've recommended to them in the past. The formula is simple, help 20,000 people and earn $20,000.
I'm really happy with the results my students inside Earnest Affiliate are getting as a lot of them are starting to make a few hundred or even a few thousands of dollars per month! In fact, just as I typed that last sentence I decided that it would be a great idea to create a member's facebook group so they can even more easily share their successes and victories.
So if you're a paid member of the full version of Earnest Affiliate check your email for a link to join the secret group.
It's pretty insane to think that my income keeps increasing month after month even though I've technically been on vacation and haven't worked for more than 4 hours a week since I left Chiang Mai mid June. My original plan was honestly to let my income decrease a bit and just live off of savings and my truly passive income over this summer as I traveled and took a great from building businesses but that never happened. It seems like the work I've put in earlier in the year and the foundation I've built in the past two years have held up and my income just keeps growing even in maintenance mode.
The next two weeks will really be the test as I'll be on a cruise without any internet access aside from the ports. My goal is to truly take a break and disconnect for days at a time and hang out with my parents, sister, niece and nephew as I know how important family time is for me. I'm glad to have everyone following the journey and sincerely hope that you along with every single person reading this loads of success.
Donation to Muay Thai Isaan (monthly recurring for children)
Donation to Warm Heart Worldwide (monthly towards Biochar Project)
Monthly Check to Parents ($1,000)
Warm Regards,
Johnny FD
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The craziest part was the fact that I was able to continue earning passive income while having almost no time to work as we were too busy sightseeing and having epic adventures. If you want to know more about where I traveled and what I did, read through my last four blog posts including my guides to Warsaw/Krakow Poland, Sofia and Black Sea Bulgaria, Transylvania and Bucharest Romania, and Odessa and Kiev Ukraine. Or keep reading this post to see how I hopefully earned more money online while traveling than I spent. As always I have no idea how much I made or spent this month until I actually sit down and write these, so I'm just as excited as you are to find out!
*If you prefer the video explainer version, you can watch this month's here.
Income from Books
Still super happy for all of the new reviews and sales from both books. The first only talks about how to live and travel cheaply in Thailand, and the second talks about how to go from less than $1k to making my first $30k which needs to have an update soon but the biggest benefit of these books is to show people how to go from step 1 which is often forgotten.
Kindle Sales: $195 +/-
Paperback Sales: $5.80
PDF Sales: $47.94
Total Profit from Book: $247.74
Decrease from $323.88 last month
 |
| New review from 12 Weeks in Thailand |
 |
| Latest reviews from Life Changes Quick |
Income from Udemy
Great news for instructors is that Udemy headquarters decided to drop their price cap and now courses can be sold for $200 again which is going to boost sales for everyone involved.
For an example my Dropship Lab Formulas course is now $200 on Udemy which means even though you can still buy it for $50 through my site, when people see it on Udemy's platform at $200 it looks like it's 75% off which gives people the incentive to buy it today as the price may go back up in the future. If you have a course on Udemy, I encourage you to raise the price for your best courses and then discount it if needed from there.
My favorite thing about Udemy is note that the majority of sales this month were completely organic which means for zero work I made around $470 completely passively without any promotion on my part.
Total Profit from Udemy: $509.25
Increase from $446.07 last month.
Income from Dropshipping
Even though the summer months peaking in August is normally a slow months for ecommerce sales anyways, the big dip came mainly because we dropped the ball. It turns out that my customer service guy hasn't been answering sales calls for the past three weeks and no one noticed until now. It's completely my fault as I should be the one checking in on my VAs and employees but since I haven't been working, everyone else running the business has also decided not to work either.
Good news is that even with that, we still made $5,342.00 in sales last month from my dropshipping store and that should increase next month assuming everyone actually gets back to work again.
Total Sales: $5,342.00
Costs of Goods:
Shipping Costs:
Customer Service: $150
Spiffs and Commissions: $0
Ad Fees: $974.70
Shopify Fee: $59.25
Total Profit: $ +/-
Income from Investments
This month was an decent month for my investments as I earned $240 through my Vanguard account and around $650 from my Forex account. I also went a bit wild and invested $28,000 into my PeerStreet account, after listening to this episode with their cofounder but we'll see starting next month when the payments start coming in. (if you want to open an account yourself, you can use my referral link and we'll both get an extra 1% yield)
As for profits, everything mentioned is still on paper as I haven't actually sold any investments so I won't count any of it into my income reports but I'm super happy to have found something that I'm comfortable investing half of the $60,000 I got from selling my dropshipping store a few months ago. The goal has been to take that money and invest it into something completely passive and I think I finally found it. I'm also excited that since the money from PeerStreet won't be automatically reinvested I'll actually be able to start counting the loan repayments on my monthly income reports starting next month.
Income from Investments: $0
Read above for why I'm not counting any gains yet.
 |
| My Forex Account from ILAB Ep 03 |
 |
| All of the loans I made on PeerStreet in August 2016 |
Income from Misc
It was super fun making new videos while traveling for my youtube channel but to be honest, they're more for me to watch and reminence as well as embed in my blog posts than it is to make money on Youtube itself. But still it's cool to know that I'm getting paid $78 a month just for doing what I would do anyways.
Youtube Red is still super slow and I'm starting to doubt it'll ever take off. Personally I don't know anyone who subscribes to their premium service, do you?
I also made $300 from taking a phone coaching client on last month which i'll included here.
Total Profit from Misc: $378.13
Increase from $61.28 last month.
My latest video uploaded to Youtube
Income from Affiliate
The best thing about reciving affiliate income is that as long as I continue to only recommend things that genuinely work, the more people are happy to remember to use my links in my resources page whenever they buy something that I've mentioned. Every single day I get emails asking if I can promote XYZ or so and so product or program and I always turn them down.
From day one I have only promoted things that I personally use and would recommend to a friend or family member. It's because of this relationship that the majority of my affiliate commissions comes from people who have been following my blog for months or sometimes years and have gotten great results or returns from things I've recommended to them in the past. The formula is simple, help 20,000 people and earn $20,000.
Total Profit from Earnings: $22,505.53
Increase from $22,191.59 last month. |
| Earnings from my Amazon Associates Account |
 |
| All confidential case studies are inside EarnestAffiliate.com |
Income from Courses
I'm really happy with the results my students inside Earnest Affiliate are getting as a lot of them are starting to make a few hundred or even a few thousands of dollars per month! In fact, just as I typed that last sentence I decided that it would be a great idea to create a member's facebook group so they can even more easily share their successes and victories.
So if you're a paid member of the full version of Earnest Affiliate check your email for a link to join the secret group.
Profit from Courses: $2,202.00
Decrease from 2,875.50 last month. |
| New student signups for EarnestAffiliate.com |
Total Passive Income August
It's pretty insane to think that my income keeps increasing month after month even though I've technically been on vacation and haven't worked for more than 4 hours a week since I left Chiang Mai mid June. My original plan was honestly to let my income decrease a bit and just live off of savings and my truly passive income over this summer as I traveled and took a great from building businesses but that never happened. It seems like the work I've put in earlier in the year and the foundation I've built in the past two years have held up and my income just keeps growing even in maintenance mode.
The next two weeks will really be the test as I'll be on a cruise without any internet access aside from the ports. My goal is to truly take a break and disconnect for days at a time and hang out with my parents, sister, niece and nephew as I know how important family time is for me. I'm glad to have everyone following the journey and sincerely hope that you along with every single person reading this loads of success.
Total Profit for August: $26,242.65
Business Expenses
Intern Expenses: $600
Coworking for Intern: $100
Coworking Membership for me: $0
PDF hosting with e-junkie: $5
Web hosting with SiteGround: $14.95
Email Marketing with Aweber: $50
Email Optins with OptinMonster: $16.59
Email Accounts with GoogleApps: $8
Total office expenses: $794.00
 |
| Written from Betahaus Coworking in Berlin, Germany |
Travel Expenses
Flight Warsaw to Sofia: $249.26
Hostel in Sofia (4N private): $91.31
Bus to Burgas (Black Sea)
Hotel in Burgas: $64.61
Train to Bucharest:
Hotel in Bucharest: $169.20
Train to Moldova:
Hotel In Moldova:
Car to Odessa: $20
Hotel in Odessa: $191.98
Bus to Kiev:
Hotel in Kiev: $454.61
Coworking in Kiev (2 days): $12
Tour to Chernobyl: $165
Flight to Warsaw: $190.36
Hotel in Warsaw: $314.17
Train to Berlin:
Hotel in Berlin: $369.35
Bike Tour Berlin: $31
Coworking Space Berlin (1 day): $17
Food: $900
Drinks: $300
Misc: $1,000
Total Travel Expenses: $4,539 +/-
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| Photos from my travels on Instagram.com/johnnyfdk |
Other Expenses:
Donation to Muay Thai Isaan (monthly recurring for children)
Donation to Warm Heart Worldwide (monthly towards Biochar Project)
Monthly Check to Parents ($1,000)
In depth explainer of this month's report
Final Thoughts
I hope everyone did super well this month! My Eurotrip is coming to an end soon and next month I'll be back in Chiang Mai, Thailand getting ready to revamp my dropshipping stores and create some new ones so keep an eye out for that!
If you want to know more details on everything mentioned in this month's income report including more about my travels as well as income breakdowns and expenses, watch the youtube video explainer above!
Johnny FD
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Great to see your continued success with affiliate marketing. As a member of earnest affiliate, I can attest to the quality of that course and the great knowledge you pass on to us students there. Thanks for all your hard work and keep it up. See you in Chiang Mai in October!
ReplyDeleteHey thanks Trevor, that means a lot having you say that, I'm glad you're enjoying the course! Looking forward to meeting you in Chiang Mai!
DeleteHey buddy, this is awesome, couple questions if will. Your drop ship biz where taken $5k from 3 orders in screenshot, this must be a high ticket drop ship you're operating? I recently sold a shopify store and looking to build another one again and looking at higher ticket items where don't need so much traffic. Also your affiliate income dashboard screenshot underneath the Amazon one, what platform is this pls? Super inspiring as always, cheers! Richard
ReplyDeleteHey Richard, congrats on selling your first store, how much did you end up getting for it? As for higher ticket items, I love $1,000+ items as they are higher profits per sale but I don't' recommend it for beginners as ad prices for $1k+ items are super expensive and it's an easy way to burn through thousands of dollars in ads if your store isn't set up right. But since it's your second store I'd say go for it. Ask me more inside Anton's member's forums (www.AntonMethod.com)
DeleteAlso as me anything affiliate marketing related inside the forums of my Earnest Affiliate course. http://www.earnestaffiliate.com/ - I show my dashboards inside the case study videos there.
great work johnny. been following you for years. i'm thinking about your Earnest affiliate course but not sure if it's for someone brand new to it with NO audience or followers. Is it aimed for those with content already?
ReplyDeleteHey Kevin, glad to have you been a follower for so long! You gotta start somewhere! Imagine the audience you'd have by now if you started when you first started following me. My course teaches how to get started and build it from scratch but don't expect to it to come overnight, it generally takes people 3-6 months from scratch.
DeleteDropshipping is a good option.
ReplyDeleteHi Johnny,
ReplyDeleteI've been following you for a while now. Really excited for your crazy month. I've watched you grow from making a respectable income dropshipping to killing it with this new affiliate business. Is this new business something that spawned out of taking Anton's new course? And also, is most of the affiliate income coming from your course or affiliate $$ from recommendations?
Hey Paul, glad you've been following along! If it wasn't for Anton's courses I never would have gotten to my level of income I am now so I highly recommend everything he teaches starting with www.AntonMethod.com then looking at the higher end ones once you start being profitable with the first.
DeleteHey Johnny,
ReplyDeleteI was searching for podcasting mics and I came across your webpage. Respect to another yellow brother doin it big. But dude, for real... We look like twins lol. I'm glad to stumble across your blog.
Hey Johnny,
ReplyDeleteI was searching for podcasting mics and I came across your webpage. Respect to another yellow brother doin it big. But dude, for real... We look like twins lol. I'm glad to stumble across your blog.
Glad to have you on board!
DeleteThanks for sharing this great information !!
ReplyDelete