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!

February Income

• Passive Income: $3,950
• Monthly Recurring Revenue: $9,506
• Other Income (List Surge, Webinars, Etc): $31,020
• Affiliate Income: $5,533
• Ad Revenue: $200

Total Income: $50,209

February Expenses

• Business Coach: $1,500
• PayPal + Stripe Fees: $1,050
• Infusionsoft*: $389
• Teachable*: $299
• Hotel for Conference: $279
• Web Hosting (annual): $252
• Facebook ads: $213
• ActiveCampaign: $205
• Airbnb for Meeting: $170
• Travel to Meeting/Conference: $146
• CoWorking Space: $105
• CAOC E-Course Installment Payment: $97
• OptimizePress: $97
• GoDaddy: $106
• PO Box: $43
• Zapier: $20
• Stocksy: $20
• Google Apps*: $17
• LeadPages Template: $15
• MotionMail: $10

Total Expenses: $5,033 (Anything with an * next to it is an affiliate link)

Net Profit: $45,176

The final List Surge launch numbers

The launch of List Surge ended in February, and the final revenue number came out to $45,549 with 441 total students, as you can see from the screenshot below (from my Teachable account). The reason there are two courses is because one is hidden so that I can create a bunch of trackable payment links for use in things like webinars without people seeing those links on the sales page. Y’know, in case you were wondering. 😉

These numbers are kind of crazy to me seeing as I just wrapped up a launch in December for The Blog Hive, which I sold for $497. The Blog Hive brought in around $100,000 in revenue, but the amount of work it took to create and launch is completely disproportionate to the amount of time it took to create and launch List Surge. By comparison, List Surge started as a $97 product and during the launch, I raised the price to $147. Now, it’s $197.

Obviously, List Surge only made about half as much as The Blog Hive, but it took probably 1/8th as much time to create and market. It has definitely made me rethink how I price and structure my courses, and it’s a welcome lesson and experiment.

Now I’m not saying that there was anything “wrong” with the launch of The Blog Hive and I’m still really happy with how it went. But I think it’s important to consider that, yes, you can earn more money creating higher priced products, but is it worth the extra work to do so? Or would it be better to spend less time creating smaller products? I could share arguments for both sides, but it’s an interesting debate!

Another  aspect of the List Surge launch is that it really wasn’t planned. Wait, what? Yeah, List Surge was originally going to be a pretty relaxed, live workshop without much hype around it. It was only after I started planning the content that I realized it would work better as a full-on course, as there was a lot to cover.

My income goal was about $10k and my plan was to talk about the workshop for a week and then host it live. But I noticed immediately that people were really excited about this topic, so I decided to do things a bit bigger with more webinars and extra emails. It worked.

Aside from talking about the revenue of the course, I’m also just really happy that the course itself is bringing a lot of value to people. I think there’s always that worry, even if you’ve created a bunch of courses, that it won’t help anyone. But I’ve been getting comments, emails, tweets, or Facebook notifications almost everyday from people who have said that List Surge is the saving grace they needed to help them grow their list.

The course also works for people no matter where their list is at, which is something I love. I’ve got students who are just starting out (one person said she has 7 subscribers — one of which is her dog) and others who are total pros (another student said she has 70,000 subscribers!). Love it.

Rebrand in progress

Now this is something I’m really excited (and nervous!) about. I don’t know about you, but I’m really over the current design on this site and don’t feel it accomplishes the things I want new visitors to do when they visit my site. /endrant.

The new site design is a lot more intentional in its design and is more suited for the direction my brand and audience are headed in. I think it will be a design I keep around for quite awhile (here’s to hoping!). I’m also excited because the archives will be a lot more accessible and easy to search through (since I now have almost 700 blog posts on this site! Whoa!).

And perhaps the biggest change of all? A new name. My heart is racing even typing that, but I’ve been thinking about a name change off and on for the past year and I know that now is the time to do it. I’ll tell you ALL about the new name (and my reasoning behind the decision) when the site redesign is revealed. Stay tuned!

I moved!

Let me tell you a little story.

As some of you might know, when I started this blog, I was living in a 300 square-foot studio apartment in Tokyo. I didn’t have a desk because I couldn’t afford one and had no extra space, so I used a bar cart, that my boyfriend-at-the-time owned, as my makeshift work area. It was shoved in the corner of my apartment, near my dog’s crate.

Since then, I’ve moved four times (in the past three years), eventually upgrading to a desk in my bedroom, followed by a one-bedroom apartment where my living room was my office, and then a dining room where I did all of my work. Phew! Working out of random rooms in my little apartments was necessary, though at times demotivating and messy. I felt like I never escaped my job because it was everywhere I looked.

But a couple weeks ago, I got the privilege of moving into a two-bedroom where I have an office all to myself (with a freakin’ door! And walls!). It’s such an exciting space to me and I love having a place where I can feel inspired to sit down and do the work. Not to mention, I’m crazy excited to go to town on decorating it. Here’s a picture of what it looked like when I first moved in. And here’s a picture of the blue couch I just bought for the space! I’ll be sure to do a full tour once it’s all decorated. 🙂

Here’s how you can take action:

I wanted to start including a “take action” section for you within my income report posts. I want these posts to be as useful as they are motivating, so this section will have practical advice or action items that you can implement, based on something I learned during the month.

This month’s advice? Try launching a product with a price that’s out of your comfort zone. For me, this meant launching a less expensive course than I normally do, which led to interesting results. For you, it could mean doubling or tripling your prices.

During a recent webinar, my friend Ankur (the founder of Teachable), told everyone to choose a price for their upcoming e-course. And then double it. I loved that! Too often, we undervalue our expertise and price our knowledge too low.

So, if you normally lowball yourself, try doubling your prices and see how that goes. And if your products are on the higher end, try creating something more accessible. Experiment, experiment, experiment. It’s my favorite way to get ahead.

If you really want to create a digital product this year, I recently released a totally free, 21-day challenge called From Purpose to Product. It’s designed to show you exactly how to find your purpose and calling, along with specific products you can create and the step-by-step process you should follow, from planning to marketing to making sales. You can sign up for FP2P here.

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

I also have a private Facebook group where I’d love to chat with you and answer your Qs! Click here to join.