Let’s jump right in with this October 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!
October 2020 Income Report: An Overview
I think it’s pretty funny that, after last month, when I talked about having outlier financial months and how cashflow sometimes plays out in weird ways…that it happened again this month! Except, in the opposite way 😂
It’s a little strange, because normally our month-to-month finances are pretty consistent, since our clients are made up of long-term retainers and monthly packaged services. Our income just doesn’t tend to fluctuate that much! (Obviously the goal is to grow, but that tends to be a slower process — not with big jumps, which is exactly how I want it.)
I’m expecting November to be a bit more of a “normal” month…and then December might look a little weird because of the holidays. But besides that, we should be getting back into a more consistent rhythm.
This month, was not consistent at all. Firstly, we had a bunch of annual software renewals, which is always fun. 🙄 So our expenses were significantly higher than they have been. But the biggest thing was our revenue…which hit over $20,000! 🤯(Our highest revenue month since October of 2019!) And our profit margin was the best we’ve ever had, at 57.65%.
BUT… it’s not as exciting as it sounds. The reason this happened was because I was recently doing an affiliate program audit (highly recommend doing this if you haven’t done one in a while!) and realized that I had never been paid for one of the affiliate programs I belong to, due to some sort of tech glitch with their software… And, over the course of the past 3 years, had accumulated almost $5,000 in affiliate revenue that was just sitting there! 😅 So we had a big deluge from that, but it was a total fluke and, obviously, we won’t see this every month.
I did the math and, if we hadn’t gotten that big payout, we still would’ve hit our goal of making over $15,000 in revenue this month (yay!), and the numbers would’ve looked much more normal (actually a little worse than normal, at least for our profit, due to those software renewals).
A Few Highlights:
- Temporarily closed doors on some packaged services — Due to how busy we have been with client work lately, and because I want to take the time to update and revamp a few of our offerings, I made the decision to temporarily stop taking on any new clients, except for our Pinterest and Blog Post packages.
Business Goal Setting
My Goals For October 2020: Success or Failure?
- Make at least $15,000 in revenue. — SUCCESS! We hit our goal on this, even considering the weird affiliate income fluke!
- Relax after this most recent launch. — FAILURE. I feel like I kind of succeeded? But definitely not as much as I wanted to, due to several reasons. So I’m counting this one a failure.
My Goals for November 2020 — Let’s Do This!
- Make at least $15,000 in revenue.
- Have a more normal, consistent month in regards to revenue and profit.
October 2020 Expenses
- Team Member Payments = $5,843.86
- Loomly = $864.00
- Transaction Fees = $474.96
- Website = $300.96
- ClickFunnels* = $297.00
- Utilities = $268.13
- Canva = $119.40
- Later* = $74.00
- Quickbooks* = $72.76
- PicMonkey = $72.00
- Active Campaign* = $70.00
- Zapier = $50.00
- Adobe Creative Cloud = $44.92
- GSuite = $42.82
- Deposit Photos* = $29.00
- Referral Payouts = $25.00
- Client Gifts = $20.13
- Rev.com = $17.75
- Education (Courses + Memberships) = $10.00
- PennyPipe = $9.95
Total Expenses = $8,537.24
October 2020 Income Report
- Interest Earned = $1.43
- CapitalOne Cash Back Rewards = $107.32
- Affiliate Income = $4,947.08
- Passive Income Products + Coaching = $622.00
- Done-for-You Packaged Services = $7,663.65
- Hourly/Custom Client Work = $6,925.00
Total Income = $20,157.59
Total Net Profit = $11,620.35
October 2020 Income Report: All the Stats & Analytics!
- Number of blog posts = 2
- Monthly blog page views = 8,199
- Email list subscribers = 7,827
- Facebook page followers = 1,510
- Instagram followers = 10.5k
- Twitter followers = 6,149
- Pinterest followers = 29k
- YouTube subscribers = 211
Final Notes on My October 2020 Income Report:
Although I’m obviously happy and excited to have received almost $5,000 of surprise income this month… I feel like it says a lot about who I am as a business owner (and a human) that I’m also almost a little annoyed? 😂 I’m NOT ungrateful for it. But it’s also not like it was a random gift. In reality, it’s money that we were owed and that should’ve been paid out to us on a more consistent basis instead of coming over in one lump sum. And now, instead of it fitting seamlessly into my regular monthly affiliate income, it turned into this weird anomaly that dramatically affected this month’s finances.
Over time, I’ve realized that while growth is good and it’s still obviously something I’m striving for — I also REALLY like stability and consistency. I like being able to predict my revenue and know what the numbers are going to look like every month. What I don’t like is being surprised by our finances in a way that makes me think “WTF.” Even when it’s a good WTF it’s still a WTF…ya know?
At my core, I just really like having a routine and being organized with our finances (and everything else!). Other business owners may not feel this way, and I’m not sure that I did when I first started my business either. But now, being able to accurately foresee our income is a super comforting feeling that I love. Especially since COVID, when pretty much everyone’s finances have been affected. Now, normalcy is something I crave more than ever.
This type of consistency is also something that I’ve worked really hard for. I talk about packaged services in my content and in The Systems Society a LOT — and it’s something that I truly believe in. It’s this amazingly powerful way to offer services that allow you to have really predictable revenue without needing to do things like launch, build your list, or spend time on things that aren’t a direct ROI.
Over the course of years, I’ve heavily focused on utilizing retainers and packaged services to create a very consistent monthly revenue for us. And, again, I still want to grow. But even the growth is (usually) predictable when it happens, if that makes sense. Like, if I want to make more revenue, I know the exact steps that I need to take and am able to plan for it and foresee that it’s about to happen. It’s a steady climb, not a rollercoaster.
This year was a little all over the place and not necessarily as predictable as I would’ve liked it to be, for obvious reasons. But I am hoping and anticipating that our finances will be a bit more normal and consistent throughout 2021!
Even as I say that, though, I’m still not 100% sure what that will look like, as we are making some changes to our offerings and our revenue split, as I’ve talked a little bit about in this income report and last month’s. I will share more on this as it comes into play! Right now, there are still a couple of things up in the air as to what exactly our finances will look like moving forward. But I think that, at some point in the next few months, we’ll get to a place where it will be pretty clear how 2021 is going to play out for us, and I’ll be able to get a really good idea of what our “new normal” will look like. Regardless of exactly how it happens or what it does look like, it will be consistent — and I’m really excited about that!
