Welcome to my March Income Report! Each month I publish an income report to take you behind the scenes of my side hustle and reveal exactly how much money I make, how much I spend and lessons learned along the way!
If you want to build a website and learn how to make money online, check out this blog post on how to get started!
View all of my income reports here!
Important Things That Happened in March
Social Media Marketing World
I kicked off March with a trip to San Diego for Social Media Marketing World – an amazing trip that really pulled me out of my comfort zone. I highly recommend this conference to anyone who seriously wants to make a living from their online business.
You can read more about my experience at Social Media Marketing World here.
While I was at the hotel, I took a deep dive into Pat Flynn’s Power Up Podcasting Course, which I had actually purchased a year earlier at Chalene Johnson’s Marketing Impact Academy (also an awesome conference in San Diego).
I knew when I purchased it that I didn’t need it right away, but there would definitely be a time when I would be launching a podcast so I wanted to get in on the super special intro price!
When I returned home, I got right to work on Pep Talks For Side Hustlers, a daily podcast and Alexa Flash briefing that gives tips, motivation, and actionable advice to help side hustlers and people starting an online business to stay the course.
I feel very passionate about this topic because I know first-hand how hard it can be, but I also know the rewards waiting on the other side.
It’s also an entirely new way to connect with my existing audience and attract an entirely new audience.
So throughout March, I brainstormed episode topics, wrote several weeks worth of pep talks, built my podcast website, recorded, edited, and produced a few weeks worth of episodes, and streamlined my whole process so that I could hand it over to my VA team and all I would have to do is write, record, and edit the episodes.
I’ve also incorporated some list-building tactics and affiliate marketing tactics into the podcast as well.
The first episode went live on March 24 and I invite you to check out the first few episodes on iTunes here, and would LOVE it if you would leave me a rating and review 🙂
Personal
On a personal level, I lost my beloved aunt to lung cancer in March.
One of the things that I am most grateful for about being my own boss is that I don’t have to ask for time off to drive my mom to the hospital to be with her sister when we get the phone call that the pneumonia is winning.
That I don’t have to ask anyone to to spend a few days up at hospice with my loved ones as we spent my aunt’s final days with her. And that I don’t have a set number of days of “bereavement” leave for the funeral.
Review of My Goals
Again, my goal each month has been to generate $10,000 in revenue because my rough breakdown to replace my paycheck, cover business expenses, and pay taxes is:
- $5000 – Income to cover my paycheck.
$2500 – Expenses
$2500 – Taxes
What I Focused on in March
I put my best effort into closing out as many one-on-one web design client projects as possible so that I could transition my time to working on the new 5 Day Website Challenge and list-building and growing the revenue that’s scalable rather than the revenue that requires my one-on-one time and is not so scalable.
I also decided to put some serious effort into a Pinterest strategy in the month of March because Pinterest can be a big traffic generator. I signed a contract with a Pinterest team to get me up and running. More on that in future income reports.
Creating Pep Talks for Side Hustlers as a way to reach a new audience was also a big focus.
In March I also started to implement the strategies I discussed in my meeting with the Bluehost affiliate team on my website. I’ve already seen significant results from our time together, and you’ll see that in upcoming income reports.
That being said, here’s how much money I made in March 2018:
Total Income: $9882.86
- Passive Income Total: $3957.40
- Time for Money Total: $5924.86
Total Expenses: $6731.16
Net Profit: $3151.11
Get the full breakdown of income, expenses and net profit month by month here.
Biggest Lessons Learned
By the time I hit March and I was watching my bank account and my sales and expenses, it was pretty clear to me that my expenses were way too high and I could not continue at this level of spending and still meet my goals.
There were a few places that I needed to either cut back in order to make ends meet… or I needed to significantly raise prices and bring in more one-on-one clients to offset the imbalance.
But since my time was already maxed out, in my mind all that would end up doing is adding more to my subcontractor expense because I’d have to outsource the work anyway to make ends meet.
If I’m making $3093.86 on Done For You Projects but I’m turning around and paying out $2000 to subcontractors to help with them and I’m spending 60 hours and month working on them myself, that means I’m making $16.67 an hour.
Not why I left my day job, and not sustainable.
So it was time to raise prices significantly on Done For You projects – or consider pressing the pause button on them altogether because they aren't as profitable as I need them to be and put my time into more scalable revenue streams.
I felt very overwhelmed and confused about what to do, and even though my business coaching is a pretty big expense each quarter, it’s critical to me that I have the guidance to help me work through this stuff for as long as I can swing it.
I also came pretty close to burnout in March. Maybe I actually reached it… I don’t know. What does someone do when they are burnt out? Ignore it and keep pushing? That’s what I do…
As I look back through my planner, I can see that I had not yet implemented my new practice of blocking my time and I was trying to cram in way more work than humanly possible into every single day.
I was distracting myself from dealing with the emotions of losing my aunt by putting my full attention into Pep Talks for Side Hustlers (I’m sure there are more unhealthy ways of avoiding emotions than working, but still not something I want to make a habit)…
And here’s why I tell you all of this:
We see so many people talking about how much money they are making online, but we never see the behind the scenes.
They don’t share the emotional toll or how much it costs them to make that much money.
We don’t see the mistakes and missteps, and it’s just not possible that you and I can have the exact same outcomes, even if we follow the exact same steps, because LIFE!!
So to end this income report on a positive note, March was a profitable month, and I’m very glad I had a cushion in my bank account for months like this when I don’t hit my profit goal.
I accomplished quite a bit, I planted many, many seeds for future growth with my podcast and other projects, and I’m learning how to run a business as I grow.
And as you’ll see in April, May and June income reports, I’ve got some tough decisions to make ahead of me…
