Let’s jump right in with this April 2020 income report! I’m super excited to share with you guys what’s been going on with me lately.
What’s Up With These Income Reports, Anyway?
Ever since my very first month in business (I made a whopping $87), I’ve been sharing my income and expenses for each month, in order to give other online entrepreneurs a good baseline of what a real business looks like during its start-up phase.
My goal with these posts is to give you guys a super realistic look into what type of income and expenses you can expect from being a “girl next door” type of online entrepreneur who isn’t making 6-7 figures each month (yet!).
Let’s do this!
April 2020 Income Report: An Overview
In last month’s income report, I kind of bared my soul when talking about the financial issues our business has been having this year. Things really went off the rails and a few different things (including losing a big client and COVID-19) have had a big impact on our revenue.
That being said, I think it’s a good thing that I’m being transparent because in case anybody reading this is also having financial issues, hopefully we can commiserate together!
This month was better than last month! I’m hoping that the worst has past and we are now fully in the rebuilding phase. We focused a LOT on cutting expenses and, because of that, we were able to make a decent profit, even though our overall revenue was much lower than it is normally.
By working on streamlining our processes, we were able to cut our team member expenses considerably, and we also tried to reduce some of our expenses related to the tools that we use. I cut down on the number of stock photos sites I belong to and (although it’s not reflected in this month’s report) decided to cancel my DeadlineFunnel account.
A Few Highlights:
- Launched The Systems Society! — I’m so proud of the fact that, even amidst all of the chaos, I was still able to complete this launch. I’ve been working on revamping my membership program for MONTHS, so it was a huge win that I was finally able to relaunch it and bring in some new students! I wasn’t able to get it completely done (I still need to create a fancier sales page and set up some of my evergreen marketing sales channels), I did get it out there and I’m so happy and excited about that! You can check it out here: https://www.thesystemssociety.com
Business Goal Setting
My Goals For April 2020: Success or Failure?
- Keep total expenses under $9k. — SUCCESS! Phew, we just made it! See details below.
- Keep team member payments under $6k. — SUCCESS! Wow, I wasn’t sure if we could do this one, but we did!
- Make $1k from passive income. — FAILURE. We didn’t hit the $1k mark, unfortunately, but I knew this was a big goal. I’m happy with what we did do!
- Make at least $4k profit. — SUCCESS! We just barely squeaked by on this one, but we did it!!
My Goals for May 2020 — Let’s Do This!
- Keep total expenses under $9,500.
- Keep team member payments under $6,500.
- Make at least $4,500 profit.
April 2020 Expenses
- Team Member Payments = $5,963.40
- Transaction Fees = $485.57
- Referral Payouts = $50.40
- Postage = $7.56
- Podbean.com = $47.47
- GSuite = $12.84
- Rev.com = $9.25
- Active Campaign* = $70.00
- PennyPipe = $9.95
- Adobe Creative Cloud = $44.92
- ClickFunnels* = $297.00
- Quickbooks* = $72.76
- Minimalist-Work.com = $10.00
- Later.com = $36.80
- Zapier = $50.00
- DeadlineFunnel* = $67.00
- Deposit Photos* = $104.20
- Utilities = 129.48
- Website Expenses = $11.88
Total Expenses = $8,653.68
April 2020 Income Report
- Interest Earned = $0.45
- CapitalOne Cash Back Rewards = $127.14
- Affiliate Income = $614.50
- Passive Income Products + Coaching = $501.80
- Done-for-You Social Media Packages = $6,707.00
- Hourly Client Work = $4,725.00
Total Income = $12,675.89
Total Net Profit = $4,022.21
April 2020 Income Report: All the Stats & Analytics!
- Number of blog posts = 2
- Monthly blog page views = 9,655
- Email list subscribers = 7,547
- Facebook page followers = 1,503
- The Systems Strategy group members = 2,577
- Instagram followers = 10.5k
- Twitter followers = 6,284
- Pinterest followers = 27,096
- YouTube subscribers = 189
Final Notes on My April 2020 Income Report:
Before I dive into this wrap-up, I just wanted to mention that my goals for the past two months have been really focused on our financials. Normally, I have some other types of goals as well, but right now (as I mentioned above) we’re really in this “rebuilding” phase where we’re trying to boost our revenue back up towards the $20k/month mark. Because of this, and because we’re still being affected by everything related to COVID-19, my goals are all financial so that we stay laser-focused on that specific area of the business. Right now, we need to put all our efforts towards growing our income and reducing our expenses so that we can make enough profit to keep the lights on and also hopefully build up our savings and get our revenue back up to where I want it to be.
I can remember writing last month’s income report and, honestly, I was in a pretty dark place. I was starting to feel these small sparks of hope, but definitely was still having moments where I was nervous that things were going to get even worse. Seeing this income report in comparison to last month’s has me feeling a LOT more hopeful.
I’m still not entirely sure what the next few months will bring, but I now definitely feel like we are going to get through this FOR SURE. And although some of the bigger dreams we had are going to take longer to achieve because of the setbacks we’ve had recently, we are absolutely going to get there at some point.
I’ve come to terms with the fact that 2020 isn’t exactly going to be “my year,” but I’m really proud of how we’ve handled ourselves throughout the chaos of the past few months and I’m excited for what’s next. We’ve hit some speedbumps, but we’re in our grind working on being even bigger and better than what we were before. I’m hopeful that, within the next few months, we’ll be able to build our revenue back up to where it needs to be, and then we can refocus on those original goals we had originally set for 2020…although it might take us a good part into 2021 before we actually achieve them.
Instead of being hung up on those dashed dreams, I’m choosing to look to the future and be happy that we weren’t affected worse than we were. I’m lucky and privileged to be in the position I’m in (although a lot of it is because of how hard I’ve worked, too!), and I’m really excited about what’s to come in the next 1-2 years.
