How Do You Track Profitability of a Project?

CCarter

Final Boss ®
Mar 15, 2008
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@MercenaryCarter
www.moneyoverethics.com
I've been looking around, and noticed I have several dozen projects going at one time, but am horrible at tracking the profitability of each project, etc. Any recommendations on how to keep everything under control?

For example, a month ago I purchased a cluster of domains with huge profitable potential, and I am in the process of purchasing another cluster but in a different niche. Besides looking at my adsense/affiliate income/bank account, how can I aggregate the data of how profitable one project is, versus another, without having to individually account the costs for each project. I would like to be able to input my income for here, and there in accordance with the project, and see how far I have to break even, etc. Open source would be best, doesn't matter if it's online versus offline, if offline though, I'm on a Mac, so, yeah, I'm one of those type of linux/mac people.

I look into my back account, but that shit aggregates everything, I need to know what niches to put my attention towards, and what is good on autopilot.
 


actually that is a good question.
Problem is that every affiliate network uses it's own tracking system. not easy to track if you have many projects. i don't see any automated way of checking that. Try choosing your best performing projects and pay more attention to these, i learned that it is better getting couple of killer projects then spreading to million small ones.
 
I don't necessarily want to automate the process. Let's say I have a bunch of Autoblogs bringing in some change here and there. I want to be able to once a week/month, go in and update the amount of money made, and track until I break even. I can input everything manually if necessary. If I run a niche of sites, I can group them together and see when that mini-network is profitable.

I'm just try to see what others are utilizing when they have multiple personal projects going on, not just affiliate.
 
I'm not exactly trying to track my results, It's more along the lines of tracking costs of projects, and when I break even. I guess it would be like a stock portfolio tracking. Once inside a project, it's fairly easy, but overall, stepping away, the big picture, my ups and downs in general. More along the macro level, not micro. I don't know if this even makes sense. It looking like excel is the simplest answer.
 
Maybe you should focus on doing less things if you aren't good at tracking and comparing shit. Don't expect some tool to be built exactly to your needs and have it do all the work. Every business model and setup has unique analytics and accounting needs. Unless you want to build your own accounting CRM.
 
I suck at this too, and start 1000 projects at the same time, moreover I fix small shit whenever I see it on my sites.
In other words, I have the worst approach to this kind of business.

Lately ( now ) I'm trying to stick to the bigger project I'm working on and go ahead straight until it's completed, but it's something rather big so it's taking a lot of time and some other stuff needs to be done occasionally.

I'm selling the sites I don't plan to use in order to have less stuff that can distract me

I don't have that many different projects to require an excel sheet to be tracked
 

lawlwut should be the other way around

money in < money out = win

money in > money out = murder/suicide

yeah, what he said... stick2Herbs, look at what you wrote...


Yes, I'm sure.

Your "money in" (or your money invested) should be less than your "money out" or your return on investment.

So, therefore, "money in < money out" means that the money in is less than the money out, therefore making a profit...

Unless I'm totally fucking something up lol

EDIT: ROFL you guys meant money invested by "money out" and "money in" by money made. I thought "money in" meant money put into a project, and "money out" the outcome of a project. So technically, both of us could be wrong/right, depending on how you interpret it.
 
I keep this bitch around my neck at all times exactly for that reason:

abacus-necklace.jpg