December 2016 Dividends Received and Passive Income

So, December was a hell of a month for the purposes of creating income outside of the usual work. My December dividend haul was a nice array, mostly from the oil and gas stocks, which was a welcome change from the very quiet month of November…which I think I just got an Apple dividend during that span. Outside of that, I finally finished my first accounting course, got an A, and have already started a second which is condensed into half a semester…should be fun. The Christmas season was absolutely beautiful for my passive income, setting record highs on that front.

I made a very small addition to my XOM drip account, just to bump me up to the next full share. That was the first non-dividend investment in that since 2015 and I may turn back on the monthly automatic investments but we shall see. Also, I put some more into PG stock for the first time since they switched from Computershare to Wells Fargo hosting their direct stock purchase plan. No really big additions as of late, but I am still in the planning stages of what I want to do this year.

With that in mind, here’s what happened to close out the year:

Dividends Received

VTSMX- $13.64

XOM- $8.48.

PSX- $4.53

UNP- $3.94

BP- $4.73

RDS-A-$1.15

RDS-B- $15.11

Total Received: $51.58

Passive Income Received

Viglink- $16.49

Kindle Sales- $8.24

Adsense- $485.70

Clickbank- $154.44 (Net Total)

Amazon Associates-  $1992.93

Total: $2657.80

While it’s hard to be mad at being sent that total amount of money for work I’ve done in the past…I do have to say that I was kind of disappointed in December’s earning in some ways. First, the Adsense total was actually lower than last year’s amount. Secondly, while this is the first year with Amazon and it’s awesomeness, my traffic was roughly the same and I was expecting 15-20K more page views…which would have meant hundred of more dollars.

Clickbank has been so sporadic…no sales for weeks and then 3 will pop up in a day. I really want some consistency with that. Also, Kindle…I need to write more books, so that I can bundle them and use Amazon’s internal advertising to actually turn a profit while advertising. With the cost per click and Amazon’s cut of the sales, I figure I’d probably need $8-10 profit from sales to break even while advertising. So, spend $100 on ads and make back $100…that’d actually be really great. More sales=higher ranks=more random sales=more reviews=more sales. Compounding is in full effect, at that point.

I’ve been really lazy the past month or so, but I’m back on my grind and cranking out new material to help keep this passive income momentum going. If I’m honest with myself, then I know that there really aren’t any days off in this…I should be writing thousands of words per day and creating new content for 5-10 sites each week. That kind of persistence will translate into big payoffs down the line, it’s just tough when you fall into the lack of motivation periods of your life.