Before diving into 2018, you’ll notice that there is some overlap between this year’s and last year’s chart. This is because I incorporated my business on November 12 of 2017, so the fiscal year for my corporation runs from November to October.
You’ll also notice that the income shown for November 2017 on this chart is less than the income reported for November on the actual 2017 chart; that’s because in this chart I included only the sales that I made after incorporation—so sales made post-November 12.
With this in mind, and because I’ve already covered November and December’s monthly breakdown in the 2017 report, I’ll begin here with January 2018.
A final thing to keep in mind before diving in is that because my daughter was born in December, I didn’t do ANY work for the first 6 months of the year. While I still made serious money during this time, I wasn’t actively growing my business, and this started to show in the second half of the year through decreased overall sales. While it’s true that I could have earned much more if I’d kept consistently publishing new books throughout the year, I’m ecstatic that I was able to take such a large amount of time off and rely on the passive stream of income that I had created in order to spend that quality time getting to know my baby daughter.
Moving onward…
*The following chart reflects only paperback royalties earned; royalties earned from non-fiction and fiction e-books are not included.
TOTAL EARNINGS
$130,270.96 USD
£3,949.27 GBP
€3,658.32 EUR
Units Sold: 61,052
January
$21,950.34 USD +136%
£698.03 +12%
€665.04 EUR -18%
Units Sold: 9,419 +48
In January I was in full baby mode, and the only “work” I did was open up my accounts at the end of the month to see how much money I made.
This may have been the first month that the full impact of the passive income stream that I had created really sunk in: I had stepped away from my business for an entire month, yet still generated well over $20,000 USD! This was what I’d really been working for since the beginning and the first time I’d allowed myself to enjoy the “passive” side of this passive income. And let me tell you, it was a GREAT feeling.
Looking over the January report to see where this massive boost had come from, I saw that while several titles were each generating about $1,000 each, one title in a seasonal niche that started to snowball in December had now completely exploded and had generated over $11,000 in a single month! Another contributing factor to the huge boost in sales was the cashing in of all those Amazon gift cards people received for Christmas.
February
$16,197.90 USD -26%
£244.20 GBP -65%
€369.31 EUR -44%
Units Sold: 6,776 -28%
With the aftermath of the holiday season finally winding down a drop in sales was expected, though my one new star title still managed to generate over $10,000. Again, busy with my baby, I didn’t even open my laptop until the end of the month to see my earnings.
March
$13,888.52 USD -14%
£286.31 GBP +17%
€278.23 EUR -25%
Units Sold: 5,647 -17%
March was an incredibly difficult month for me. I’d been dealing with an ongoing medical issue that had all but destroyed my ability to breastfeed my daughter, and while in the midst of that stress I found out that my mom had brain cancer. Two weeks later, she was gone. The rest of the month went by in a daze of funeral planning, continuing to deal with the feeding challenges and basically just trying to get by with my now three month-old baby.
On the publishing front, another hot seasonal niche was beginning to fade, as were the sales of the titles within it, but at this point I wasn’t thinking about creating any new titles. I was in survival mode and just thankful to have the money continue to roll in.
April
$12,442.70 USD -10%
£206.56 GBP -28%
€269.73 EUR -3%
Units Sold: 5,012 -11%
Nothing new happened in April; it was almost an exact repeat of March in terms in revenue. Sales of my titles in the seasonal niche were continuing to soften, as expected, but no major drop-offs had occurred.
May
$10,085.97 USD -19%
£213.51 GBP +3%
€173.84 EUR -36%
Units Sold: 4,417 -12%
As sales continued to decrease I knew that I’d have to get back in the game pretty quickly. The beginning of July marked the beginning of another seasonal trend within a particular niche I had discovered in 2017, and I’d need to start producing those titles as soon as possible. I decided to give myself until the end of May—6 full months of being with my baby and doing not one ounce of work—before I got back into a semi-groove of a few hours per week.
June
$6,711.85 USD -33%
£210.79 GBP -1%
€121.77 EUR -30%
Units Sold: 3,073 -30%
When June rolled around I began to get back into publishing new low-content titles—sort of. I didn’t really get back into a routine at this point, but I was putting in a few hours per week to replace the seasonal titles that were no longer producing adequate revenue. At the end of June I had several new titles up.
July
$5,943.31 USD -11%
£138.48 GBP -82%
€128.27 EUR +5%
Units Sold: 2,888 -6%
I’d really let things slide by this point, and July sales really showed it. I have to admit that I was a little ashamed of myself for letting the impressive numbers I’d been pulling in for quite some time dwindle to what they were now. I wasn’t even in 6-figure territory anymore, and that felt alarming. I knew I had to cut myself some slack—I had a still-new baby and I was still grieving the sudden loss of my mother pretty hard. I felt emotionally overwhelmed and was finding it difficult to squeeze in the time to work on my business—I’d put my daughter down for a nap and then run into my office and try to bang something out before she woke up an hour later. I won’t sugar coat it, it was hard.
August
$15,074.42 USD +154%
£291.56 GBP +111%
€216.76 EUR +69%
Units Sold: 7,296 +153%
In August something kind of strange happened. My star title that had blown things up in January earning $11,000, then slowly dwindling as the months went by, experienced a resurgence. I was surprised that this seasonal title was making any sales at all at this time of year, but it’s July sales of just over $3,000 actually doubled to $6,000 in August. It was as if it was riding some sort of algorithmic wave. This title was pretty far out of season at this point, and while I couldn’t quite understand why people were still buying it, I was more than happy that they were.
September
$9,862.14 USD -35%
£476.80 GBP +64%
€573.90 EUR +165%
Units Sold: 5,157 -29%
Things dropped “back to normal” this month, with the resurgence of my star title dropping back down to the $3,000 range again. But the back to school season was now in full swing, and a few titles I’d created in a niche related to this time of year started to really increase in sales.
By now my daughter was down to two naps a day and I was managing to get between 10-12 hours per week to work on building back up my business. It had been a very rocky year of ups and downs for me, but it was time to get back into a proper schedule.
October
$5,134.85 USD -48%
£339.39 GBP -29%
€249.30 EUR -57%
Units Sold: 2,679
Up until this point I had been publishing all of my low-content books on the Createspace platform, and those books were then sold on Amazon (which had purchased Createspace in 2005). October was the month in which the two platforms were to completely merge, and all books printed on the Createspace platform were to be migrated over to Amazon’s KDP platform, where I had published all of my nonfiction and fiction e-books.
Many publishers reported a big dip in sales this month as the two platforms were being merged, and Amazon later admitted that there had been an issue with their sales reporting during the transition.
While this may have been an issue for me also, I can say that most of the drop in my sales was still due to that one popular title continuing to dwindle. It was way out of season now, and I couldn’t believe it had lasted this long. While it was disappointing to see my sales slump this low, I was glad that I’d got such great mileage from that one title.
As you can plainly see, the road to real success is paved with a few potholes. While the bars on these graphs don’t follow a nice, neat, continuously upward trajectory, I think it’s valuable to see how a series of wild ups and downs can still result in the overall freedom and immense financial gains that I now enjoy. And the skills that I’ve learned are continuing to propel me forward and reach ever-higher goals, both in my businesses and my personal development.
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