Make money with Chop Shop: who, how and how much?

“I don’t understand why anyone would publish their income reports.

What purpose would that serve? Is there a reason for this madness?”

That was the question one of my Facebook fans asked me in our recent FB discussion about income reports.

As Jeff Rose said in his income report (listed below):

This is why we do the income reports:

Accountability. These will allow us to finally keep track of our total online revenue – something that I’ve been horrible at.Progress. Now that we have it documented, we’ll be be able to chart our progress as our income increases (hopefully!)Truth. To show people that you really can make money onlineTransparency: We want others to see how we do it so that others can do it too.

With that said, not only did I publish my own income report earlier this week, but decided to also collect reports from other bloggers around the web.

Since I organized this post by how much any particular blog made in September, it would be appropriate for me to start with Pat Flynn’s handsome sum of $56,000, but the truth is I am too jealous of him, his online standing, and, most of all, his income.

Seriously, can I please read a single post that doesn’t mention Pat Flynn? Anyone?

So I decided to go against the grain and DON’T mention Pat in this post.

OK, starting now…

Main income stream: Advertising

Jeff and Mandy Rose are a husband and wife blogging team that are making things happen, mostly with Jeff’s financial blog Good Financial Cents (love the name!), as well as with Mandy’s family blog House of Rose.

The $10K include income from all their blogs and come mostly from paid advertising.

Main income stream: undisclosed authority niche site

My income report for September 2012. Did my earnings go up or down? Plus what three valuable lessons did I learn from the past month…

I do love Steve’s no-fluff blog mostly talking about affiliate marketing.

The bulk of his earnings comes from an undisclosed authority niche site.

The second biggest earner is Amazon Kindle books.

You can learn more about how Steve does it in his How to Make Money with Amazon Kindle Books post.

Main income stream: Advertising

The income report for Pinch of Yum from September 2012. Includes tips on how see what is pinned on Pinterest from your website and tips for getting Google Alerts for your food blog.

Lindsay and Bjork’s income is impressive, especially for a non-internet marketing niche blog.

The bulk of their income comes from advertising.

Some of it also comes from affiliate sales for completely non-food related products (like Bluehost and Thesis theme), which is very surprising.

I need to remember to ask them how they sell burgers to vegetarians, so to speak.

Main income stream: Advertising

Kirsty earns most of her income from advertising on her multiple (not sure how many) travel niche websites while wondering the world (sounds like she is somewhere in Africa right now).

Main income stream: Freelance Writing

“September was definitely a month for investing time in projects that I hope will pay off in the future.

Beyond my usual freelance writing work (which typically takes up around 3-4 hours of my working days), I was busy working on my one hour authority site project, my upcoming freelance writing guide, and of course this blog.”

If you’ve got a writer in you like Tom Ewer does, you might want to think about becoming a freelance writer.

Good thing Pay Flynn doesn’t have those ambitions, so your future freelance career looks like clear sailing…

Main income stream: Affiliate Marketing

Why did I say “about $800??

Because Rob publishes his income report once in a quarter, so the post above is his quarterly report.

Rob’s main earners were:

Affiliate sales (most notably Genesis WordPress theme, Bluehost hosting, and Aweber).His own products: Rob has currently two ebooks for sale; great to see that the time he put into writing those ebooks is paying off.

Main income stream: Affiliate Marketing

I’m very serious about building passive income projects and it’s become a bit of an obsession now as I have begun to follow entrepreneurs and marketers who only build passive income projects and stick to that business model.  I’m in it for the long haul, and know that it takes more than a month to build a real business.

Jay Piecha is “fresh off the boat” starting from scratch with a fresh perspective and a specific goal – to build a business that generates $1k/week in passive income.

His blog is just about 1 month old.

I like the goals Jay set out to achieve with his passive income explorations and look forward to future reports.

Main income stream: Affiliate Marketing

I’ve been getting to know Lisa fairly well recently: mostly via my Traffic Generation Cafe Facebook fan page (click on the LIKE button in the sidebar to join the fun!) and some emails that went back and forth (see, I told ya – as a TGC email subscriber, you definitely get a direct line to me).

And I really like her, to be quite honest.

Turns out we have a lot in common: we both suffer chronic MIS (multi interest syndrome) and acute SOD (shiny object distraction).

Plus, I definitely enjoy Lisa’s style: it takes guts to blog about making money online when you “haven’t gotten there yet”.

Thumbs up to your $100, Lisa.

Every month I recap the past, present, and future of my personal journey and the voyage of Value of Simple. Here’s a September 2012 “Pulse Check”.

Yes, you read it right – Joel’s monthly income was a whooping ten bucks.

So why did I choose his income report to be included in this post?

It made me feel better that at least someone is making less money than I do with TGC.We all have to start somewhere.

And that’s where most of us are right now in our journey to making full-time income online (whatever it means to each one of us) – SOMEWHERE.

Joel happened to be at his $10 mark, but he’s blogging, his traffic is growing, and if he has the guts to stick with it, he just might make it.

There’s only one flaw I see in that income report of his – he too mentions Pat Flynn…

“Blogs don’t make money – businesses do.”

~ Sonia Simone (Copyblogger)

(thanks to Nicole Rushin for mentioning this great quote in her comment on my recent review of Empower Network.)

If you are serious about growing your business, this is one of the best ways to do it.

Check out the blogs I listed above.

Figure out what makes them special, what makes them work.

Find the gems you can take back to your business.

See what you can do better than they do.

Grow.

And share this post with friends (but don’t share it with @PatFlynn please):

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"When it comes to traffic generation, Ana knows her stuff. She provides actionable information about the latest tips, trends, and technology that can result in getting more visits to your blog or business. Not only does she give great advice, but she puts it to the test and shares the results in a regular income report so you know that her strategies really work if you are willing to put in the effort!"

"Ana has become someone I look to for a unique insight into all kinds of aspects of running an internet business, but especially for updated SEO information. She does the research and testing to back up her claims, so I refer back to her content when I need to see what is fresh and current in the world of generating traffic to your website."

Yaro Starak, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

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