One of my favorite things to do is to lift up the hood on my online business and share with you exactly how much money I make, how I make it, my expenses, and my stats and how much I work so that you can get an idea of what it really looks like for someone who was working a full-time job and growing an online business on the side – and what it looked like for me financially when I decided to actually quit my day job.
I'm also sharing my numbers with you while I’m still small (I fully intend to grow this into a multiple six-figure business) to show you what the journey looks like for me, a midwestern, 38 year old married girl that had a pretty intense day job, no kids (awesome nieces and nephews), a family, a needy dog, and who loves to spend time with her friends and family on the weekends.
Also known as, a totally boring person who had a normal midwestern upbringing who lives in a normal cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood.
I'm sharing this with you because I want you to know that if it's your dream to be able to make a living doing what you love with an online business, it's totally possible.
If you want to learn to build a website, start blogging, sharing your expertise and earning money doing what you love, it's easier than you think! Click here to learn how to build a website for under a $100!
Okay, so let's get to the good stuff!
How Much Money I Make & How Many SubScribers I Have
Here’s what the past few years have looked like for me in terms of revenue & subscribers:
2014: $8,403 Revenue | 0 Subscribers
2015: $18,640 Revenue | 1800 Subscribers
2016: $57,877 Revenue | 4192 Subscribers
2017: $70,773 Revenue | 4567 Subscribers
How I Make Money Online
The breakdown in 2016 and 2017 is about 50% 1:1 Client work, 25% affiliate revenue and 25% selling my own online courses and training programs. I intend to shift this to 25% client work and 75% affiliate revenue and coaching, courses and programs in 2018.
How I Grew My Business – A Slow Start
When I first started out back in July 2014, I was doing freelance web design in spare time outside of my day job. I was charging $40/hour. I figured I could slowly increase that hourly rate as I got more projects under my belt and build it up enough to replace my day job income and slide right into freelancing.
Um, nope! It was a disaster, and you can read more about how that all panned out here.
I had no idea an online, service based business was even a thing! I almost gave up, because there's no way $8403 was getting me close to quitting my day job. When I discovered that I could share my expertise online, I was so pumped to get started that I used my freelancing money to buy a Macbook and fund the next phase of my business.
In January 2015, I launched the Free 5 Day Website Challenge, a free video training series teaching entrepreneurs how to build their own websites.
I figured if I could just teach people how to do it themselves I could help more people, make more money and have more time, which was the whole reason I started my business in the first place.
So I pretty much stopped all one-on-one client work. In fact, I turned down almost all requests to build websites for people and focused all of my energy into growing my email list, hustling to get as many people as possible to join the Free 5 Day Website Challenge.
That year I made $18,640, still working full time, and I was spending much of my time outside of working consuming all the free training I possibly could from all my favorite online marketers so that I could reverse engineer their tactics and grow my business.
Which totally didn’t work, by the way, and you can read more about why in the 4 Myths Preventing You From Creating a Profitable Online Business.
Again in 2015, I put money back into the business by hiring a photographer to do a photo shoot and a graphic designer to do branding.
The Changes I Made to Triple My Revenue
By the end of 2015, it became crystal clear to me that I was making little progress by trying to figure it all out on my own for free, so I hired my business coach and invested in some courses to help me grow my business.
I also switched from MailChimp (free) and OptimizePress ($97/year) to Infusionsoft ($2000 to start plus $300/month) and AccessAlly ($79/month) to run my email list an my online courses.
Those decisions totally paid off because in 2016, I nearly tripled my revenue to $57,877 while working about the same amount, which was about 20-25 hours a week on top of my day job.
How?
I stopped trying to figure it all out on my own for free.
I unlocked the limitations of free tools and invested in ones that help me grow.
I invested in help from a VA so that I could put my time into things that only I could do that would help the business grow.
I invested in a systems expert to help me systematize my 1:1 client projects so that they were profitable and worth it instead of taking all my time and making me hate my life.
I had an actual plan instead of winging it and trying to cobble together enough free info to figure out how to grow my business.
I had someone with much more experience than me to help me over the hurdles that I had no idea I would encounter.
Why I Decided to Quit My Day Job and Take My Side Hustle Full Time
It was super-tempting to quit my job in 2016. Even though I was making nearly six-figures at my day job, I knew with more time invested in my side hustle, I'd be able to grow it even faster. Instead, I decided, “I’m going to grow this business as much as I possibly can while working full time. And when my growth slows down, I’ll know that it’s time to quit.”
In 2017, those seeds I had started to plant in 2016 paid off even more as my income continued to grow.
But I didn’t triple, or even double it. I only earned about $14,000 more than the previous year.
I was spending so much extra time at my day job in that last year that I had to pay subcontractors to help me do the 1:1 client work, so a big chunk of my income was going right back out the door to pay other people to do what I didn’t have time to do.
And even though I wasn't able to give consistent time and effort to my business, and I STILL made over $70,000 in revenue.
You guys, this is why I think if you have a day job, it’s super important to leverage it to help you build your business. When you have a salary already coming in, it’s so much easier to invest what you make in the business right back into it to build a solid foundation.
Because I had a paycheck coming in every 2 weeks, I was able to bootstrap this whole thing, meaning, I didn’t have to use any of our personal money to start it, I didn’t have to go into credit card debt to run it, and I didn’t have to borrow money to grow it.
I'm also pretty risk averse. When I hear about people who just quit their day job and dive into their passion, and sink a bunch of money in and go for it, and that's how they built their successful online business, I think wow, that's so brave, I could never do that! And then my very next thought is, I wonder what happened to all the people that did that and didn't make it… we don't hear about them.
I had a long-term vision of building something sustainable that would replace my six-figure income at my day job, and that meant having the freedom and flexibility to invest in the right tools, education and support to make it happen.
How Much I Work
When I still had a full time job, I would get up around 5:30AM, be ready by 6:30, work on my business at home til about 8:30, and then leave for work. I'd probably spend an hour during my lunch break checking emails and social media, and then one or two nights a week I'd work a couple hours in the evening.
Weekends, I'd work most of the day on Saturday, til like 3PM, and on Sundays I'd also probably work a few hours – both days from the couch with my laptop. Most of it doesn't really feel like work, so weekends felt like MY time to work on my stuff, which was totally awesome!
Now that I'm self-employed, I'm still a morning person. I usually start working about 6:30AM, but I take breaks during the day to walk my dog, go to lunch, run errands. I'm typically wrapping it up by 5PM, but I'm only working a total of 8 or so hours, so a normal work week right now.
Confession: I still work on the weekends if we've got nothing else going on! I love what I do, it doesn't feel like work and I look forward to it! Unlike my day job days…
What My Business Looks Like Today
I quit my day job in December 2017, and today I’m fully focused on the growth of my business – by focusing on helping other entrepreneurs grow theirs through helping them overcome the tech barriers holding them back from growing their business online!
I’ve got a strong foundation built – a consistent brand, the right tools, people who know more than me to guide me, and a team of talented people to help lighten my load so I can focus on marketing and building our community.
I’m refining my 1:1 web design process even more, because I’ve got more clients at one time than ever before, and I want to give them an amazing experience.
I’m serving my audience of do-it-yourselfers with more actionable free content. I’m giving people that want to go deeper, who really want to grow their businesses and who want personalized guidance and support, opportunities to work with me through my signature programs and I’m even doing some one-on-one coaching.
And I'm living the life I envisioned for myself 4 years ago when I sitting in that beige office with no windows, feeling drained and depressed, where I dreamed up this scheme of being my own boss.
Now I just gotta dream up what the next 4 years will look like…
