Income reports are everyone’s favorite. I know I read them religiously as a blogger back in the day. The point of this post is to show you that some of the RICHEST freelancers out there, are doing digital marketing.
Here’s how it played out for my (Julie’s) client work this month.
Pipe & Lime Media
TOTAL REVENUE: $18,254.78
This includes client work (Copywriting, Web Design, Sales Funnel Design, and Facebook Ads), my 1:1 intensives, and affiliate revenue.
This is ABSOLUTELY possible for those of you who are ready to eat, sleep and breathe digital marketing.
CLIENT work…
Affiliate Revenue (we split the affiliate revenue between P&L clients and CYLL)
TOTAL EXPENSES: $8,149.04
These expenses include mainly contractors and my salary ($4,000 gross). A few hundred dollars in online software as well.
NET PROFIT (after salary paid): $10,105.00
I’m really happy with this month! Especially as I look ahead to switching up my business model for P&L *exclusively consulting and ONLY done-for-you services as a joint venture* I know it’s going to be an adjustment to get those new kinds of clients.
Create Your Laptop Life
For those of you who are looking to create a massive movement and brand, building revenue through coaching, courses, and other products, here’s the income report for Create Your Laptop Life™.
TOTAL REVENUE: $56,803.00
TOTAL EXPENSES: $17,426.00
Expenses include…
- Contractors
- Madelaine and Julie’s Salary
- Legal Fees (for trademarking)
- Affiliate Payouts
- Travel
- Online Software
- FB Advertising
- Refunds
NET PROFIT (after all is said and done): $35,063.00
Create Your Laptop Life has had two REALLY big months.
We anticipate this revenue to drop sharply in March and April both, since all the front end payments for our Chicago event, our Scale Up! Mastermind, and some of our legacy CYLLers will no longer be trickling in for the remainder of the spring.
We plan to use the savings to carry out the Chicago event (which – we had 48 people sign up so the expenses are well over $10k for that), pay legal fees, help add on more assistance in the administrative department, and prepare for the next push of sales which will happen in May when open CYLL again.
We’re also discussing hiring a professional videographer to shoot some promo videos, plus work on a new advertising campaign. Now that CYLL has split out into the Academy, Network, and Masterminds, there’s some uncertainty as to how the monthly sales will play out.
We also hope to add some e-comm as well!
In a regular brick and mortar business, you look for somewhere around 10-15% profit AFTER salaries and expenses. For an online business, you want that number to hang around 30% or so.
If you look at the organization as a whole – Pipe & Lime and Create Your Laptop Life together have a 60% profit margin this month. It’s deceiving because we know these kinds of months don’t stay this way. The online world is volatile. Client work ebbs and flows.
When we shut down the CYLL Network to spend time building a new (bigger!) foundation, we hoped there would be enough sales to help carry us over in the next 2 months so we could focus on the strength and growth of the organization as a whole. It seems to have worked!
Now you just need to remind us of this in April when we’ve blown through savings. We’re also coming to the end of the first quarter. Madelaine and I take a distribution at the end of each quarter, and we look at the savings, take 30% of that amount, and split THAT 30% in half. It looks like it might be around $15,000 each.
For those of you solopreneurs who use your bank account balance to figure out how much money you have to work with, STOP! You need to use your budget and/or your profit and loss. If that’s how we operated, we would be terribly irresponsible with the cash on hand. There’s nearly $200,000 saved in our bank account…but that is for EVERYTHING – all of our savings, our tax bill (gulp..it’s gonna be a DOOZY), and other such stuff.
We know that our accountant is going to tell us to hand $30k + to the IRS this year and so if we didn’t keep a big cushion, we’d be screwed.
The good news is we have some financial courses coming to the CYLL Academy later this spring, because you gotta know your numbers! It’s something we talk a lot about in The CYLL Network as well, so if you aren’t on the waiting list, GET UP ON IT!