The Month of April: An Overview
April was filled with a ton of ups and downs…
I created a course, 90 Days to Your Blog’s First $1k, and am currently right in the middle of pre-launch!
I also hired a design intern, which has been going amazingly well! Up until now, I’ve personally been running 100% the graphic design aspects of my business, and have really been needing someone who knows their way around InDesign.
One of my goals for this month was to make $2,000 in sales, but unfortunately that just didn’t happen. And I have to be honest with you guys that I’ve been pretty bummed out about it! I think the problem is that I’ve finally reached the limit of how much money I can take in without making drastic changes to my business.
Since I’m working just about as hard as I can and I’ve now got multiple employees helping me out, it’s clear to me that my business just isn’t physically capable of making more than around $1-2k per month, because we are simply trading time for money at this point.
So I feel sort of stuck! But because of this, I actually ended up joining a new program that I’m really excited about! It’s a 4-month group mentoring thing, run by somebody that I really look up to. Signing up for this was a pretty risky move for me, as it was a pretty hefty investment, but I’m really hoping that this will help me get a new perspective on how to really scale my business, and allow me to figure out what I truly want to accomplish by the end of this year.
A few highlights:
- I hired my first graphic design team member, and now Miranda Nahmias is made up of 4 people!
- 90 Days to Your Blog’s First $1k is available to purchase!
- I started watching three new shows that I LOVE: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Nurse Jackie, and United States of Tara. I think Nurse Jackie is my top recommend out of those three if you’re looking for something new to watch and appreciate dark humor.
- My bridal shower was at the beginning of April and it was so much fun! I can’t believe Brent and I will be married in a little over a month.
Business Goal Setting
My Goals for April 2016: Success or Failure?
I’m not sure if my sleep has gotten any better, but I have been working on it! I downloaded this neat little free app Sleep Cycle that analyzes your sleep patterns and tells you how well you slept throughout the night. It’s probably not actually helping me, but it’s kind of cool to look at your sleep cycle chart every morning.
I have been working on increasing the hours of my team members! They are still very much part-time, but one of my overall goals is to have at least one full-time employee (besides myself) by the end of the year.
Success was also had in my goal of sending out at least 5 newsletters! I’ve really been working on upping the quality of my newsletter this month and putting a lot of effort into making sure I’m giving you guys a ton of value in there. My unsubscribe rate has been decreasing, too!
My Goals for May 2016: Let’s Do This!
- Have a plan in place for running the business while Brent and I are on our honeymoon
- Make $2,000 in sales
- Meet my sales goal for 90 Days to Your Blog’s First $1k
- Reach 1,200 email subscribers
April 2016 Expenses
(P.S. Red is less profit than last month, green is more profit than last month, and black is same profit as last month)
- Boardbooster = $5.00
- Tailwind (annual fee, divided by 12) = $8.67
- Design Elements = $107.00
- ConvertKit = $29.00
- Buffer = $10.00
- LeadPages (annual fee, divided by 12) = $24.97
- Blog Hosting (annual fee, divided by 12) = $10.47
- Software (Adobe programs, Dropbox, etc.) = $120.39
- Paypal & Wave Transaction Fees = $43.00
- E-Courses & Ebooks = $402.00
- Ads & Marketing = $91.61
- Office Supplies = $0.00
- Team Member Payments = $497.80
Total Expenses = 1,349.91
April 2016 Income Report
- Affiliates = $0
- Google Adsense = $4.85
- Virtual assistance + design clients = $1,368.00
- Upwork clients = $95.00
Total Income = 1,467.85
Total Net Profit = $117.94
Wow, my profit was low this month!! This was unusual, and mostly due to three things:
- I did less client work than usual so that I could focus on creating 90 Days to Your Blog’s First $1k
- I delegated more work to my team members and therefore needed to pay them more (about twice as much as last month!)
- A few extra expenses, including $100 to upgrade my Dropbox account and the cost of that group program I mentioned.
ALL THE STATS AND ANALYTICS!
Let’s take a look back at what my March 2016 stats were:
- Number of blog posts = 5
- Monthly blog page views = 4,931
- Email list subscribers = 686
- Facebook page followers = 231
- Instagram followers = 1,473
- Twitter followers = 1,460
- Pinterest followers = 790
- Google+ followers = 17
Now, here’s what was going on in April 2016:
- Number of blog posts = 5
- Monthly blog page views = 6,195
- Email list subscribers = 901
- Facebook page followers = 255
- Instagram followers = 1,501
- Twitter followers = 2,469
- Pinterest followers = 958
- Google+ followers = 21
Yay! So much growth. I’m really happy specifically with my page views, email subscribers, and Twitter followers!
May, here I come!
Let me know in the comments how much YOUR blog grew in April! Any big successes?
