Hey all! I’m back with another income and traffic report to share with you today. I started doing income reports as a way to be more transparent about my business and hopefully shed some light on ways that you can grow your own online business, too.

I know that sharing one’s income online, for the world to see, is kind of a strange thing to do. Trust me, it took quite a bit of courage (and convincing from my friends!) to share this data with you. In fact, I held back from sharing my income reports in the past because I never (ever!) wanted to appear like I was flaunting my results. Rather, I do this because I genuinely desire to help you grow your own business and want to provide some behind-the-curtain results of how I’ve grown and tweaked my own. I want to show you both what worked for me and what didn’t so that you can apply those lessons to your own dreams. My overall hope is that my income reports inspire or inform you to create and grow your own online biz. 

Thank you for traveling with me, behind-the-scenes, while I take you through my income and traffic reports each month. I’m grateful that you’re here. And if you’re working on growing your own business and blog? Best of luck to you, my friend. Now, let’s get into it!

Hey you! It’s been awhile since I did an income report. I got all kinds of busy the last couple months during the launch of The Blog Hive that I just never got around to it. Bah! But I’m going to try to keep up with them each month because of all the sweet emails and tweets I got from people who were hoping these reports would make a reappearance.

Honestly, when I first started doing income reports, I was scared of what people might think, so I’m glad that these reports are helpful and/or motivating for you. That was my plan all along. *Mr. Burns Fingers*

Anywho! Let’s get down to it, yeah? Here are my income and expenses from the previous month:

December Income

• E-Course Sales: $45,881
• Affiliate Commissions: $8,064

Total Income: $53,945

December Expenses

• Affiliate Fees: $2,200
• The 90 Day Year E-Course: $1,999
• PayPal + Stripe Fees: $1,193
• Facebook ads: $950
• Virtual Assistants: $474
• Giveaway: $450
• Teachable*: $299
• Infusionsoft*: $278
• Edgar (6 months plan): $195
• CAOC E-Course Installment Payment: $97
• Zapier: $20
• Google Apps*: $17
• MotionMail: $10

Total Expenses: $8,182 (Anything with an * next to it is an affiliate link)

Net Profit: $45,763

Can we all just take a moment to say, in unison, “daaayummm expenses much?” Ha! As I was creating that list of expenses, I was certainly surprised myself, since my expenses are usually closer to $1,500 than 8-freaking-thousand. But alas! December was a big month. My biggest, ever, actually. In 2013, my annual income was about $55,000, which is so close to last month’s income that it just blows my mind. Like, how did this happen?

Anyways, let’s boogie, shall we? Here’s what went down in December…

I launched The Blog Hive

This was truly game changing for me in so many ways. The Blog Hive is an 8-week e-course that shows you how to take your blog and turn it into a profitable business. It’s a course I’d had in my mind for over a year. I actually remember having a mastermind meeting with a couple friends back in 2014 and telling them about the idea. It just took a little while to actually make it come to fruition. 😉

Anyways, when I launched TBH in December, it brought in a little over $100,000 in two weeks, which was exciting and mind blowing to me. In case you’re wondering why my income report isn’t $100,000, then it’s because 30% of course sales happened during my first webinar, which was at the end of November. And another 30-40% will be paid out over the next five months via payment plans. It’s also nice to have that monthly recurring revenue being paid out via payment plans each month, so I know the baseline for how much I will make each month.

Aside from earning a big paycheck from launching The Blog Hive, I also felt like I began to find my calling with courses. I LOVE the material I’m teaching and it literally thrills me to see my students saying it’s helpful for them. One of my favorite parts about this course is that it has a strong community focus. We have an active Facebook group, I do Q&As for students every couple weeks, and everyone is put into a Mastermind Group, where they can chat with 2-3 other students in a more intimate setting. The Mastermind Groups are crazy cool.

It just makes me so freakin’ happy to see people connecting with each other. You know how some people say that they knew since they were a kid that they were born to be an entrepreneur? Well, honestly, I didn’t really ever have that feeling. I liked “tychoon” games and started or led lots of organizations in high school and college, but money was never part of it. But the thing I did always feel burning inside? That I was born to connect people. To make them feel good. Empowered. And able to achieve goals with the support of others. I see that with TBH and it just brings me this deep sense of pride and happiness.

I can’t wait to relaunch this course in the future to bring a new class of students into the mix. 🙂

Screw people who say December is a bad time to launch 😉

I launched TBH in December, even though there are mixed opinions about whether or not it’s a good time to launch. Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend launching Christmas week, but other than that? December can be a great month to launch. Here are two reasons why I think this is:

• People are already in the “buying” mood. Which other months during the year are people used to buying things as much as they are in December? November and December are big months for buyers, with Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas. So, it’s a bit of a different mindset around this time of year. People are used to paying for things, so pulling out your wallet to buy a course doesn’t feel as strange as it might during other times of the year.
• People are thinking about The New Year. The start of a new year is always a transformative time for people who want to change their life or make a dramatic shift. So, if your product can help people reach a new goal, then it can be very convincing.

…Basically, people who say that December is a bad time to launch are probably people who have never launched in December. 😉

Expenses moving forward

Even given my laundry list of expenses last month, I have a hard time hiring people to help me with my business. Even though I know it’s vital to growing a business, it’s the one type of expense where I realize I could do it myself, but shouldn’t. It’s been a big mindset shift for me to see the difference, but I think I am finally coming out the other side!

I read something recently, where someone said that they were just going to try to follow through with all of the decisions that brought them fear. So, if hiring a new assistant sounds scary and expensive, then do it. If working with a CPA sounds unnecessary and costly when I’m used to TurboTax, then it’s probably something I need to do. Having this “fear formula” has been helpful for me. And honestly, hiring people to help me with my business has become both necessary and wonderful. If I really want to grow as a business owner, I need to focus on my priorities and delegate the rest. Anyways, this was a big lesson and source of resistance that I’ve had to work through, but I’m glad I did. 🙂

Traffic Report for December:

My monthly traffic didn’t change a whole lot during October/November/December! For the past few months, I’ve been blogging dramatically less. I’ve decreased from about three posts per week to more like one post per week. I was nervous at first that people would just forget about me and TNC, but I realized that I have so many other touch points for my brand (like the Facebook group, newsletter, webinars, social media, etc!) that having less blog posts doesn’t make a difference.

In the case of my traffic, it really hasn’t made much of a difference at all. I also have quite a lot of posts in the archives, which certainly helps to keep people entertained and interested. I’m working on a new blog design and plan to make the archives more accessible, too. 🙂

Bottom line: decreasing the number of blog posts you share may not affect your brand, so long as the posts you create are valuable and you have other ways for people to learn from and interact with you.

Alright y’all! I genuinely hope this was helpful for you. If you liked it, then you can view more income reports here. Have a sweet day. 🙂

Got any questions? Comments? Insights? I’m all ears! Let’s chat down below.